A small (2" l/1" w/3" h) bottle made of lacquered bone with a lozenge-shaped plug. The front and back of the bottle each bear an inked carving of two figures standing in a lush garden.
One side shows a of a voluptuously beautiful oriental woman in flowing robes. Her face is obscured by the black fan she carries, leaving only her eyes visible. To her right, a monk kneels, his belly slashed open and his guts falling in coils about him. The monk dips a brush into the pool of his blood, continuing to write on a scroll even as he is dying. Between the woman and the monk lays a bloody sickle.
The reverse shows an oriental woman of cold regal beauty with doll-like features and delicate hands with fingers that are oddly long and pointed. She wears a robe that is unbelted and almost, but not quite, reveals her charms. Kneeling before her is a man. Little can be told about him, as he is naked and mutilated, his eyes, tongue, heart, and genitals removed. The man offers up these tokens on a cushion to the woman. The man's fingers are torn to the bone and his arms are bloody to the elbows, indicating that the man mutilated himself with his bare hands.
A successful Cthulhu Mythos skill roll may reveal that the bottle depicts the Goddess of the Black Fan (also known as the Bloated Woman), an avatar of Nyarlathotep. Another Cthulhu Mythos roll reveals that the opposing face depicts Madam Yi, an avatar of the Great Old One Yidhra. Both are believed to operate in China.
If the bottle is opened, the next time the person who opened it sleeps, they will suffer a nightmare dream sending from either the Bloated Woman or Madam Yi (Keeper's choice). The dream sending involves the dreamer worshiping one of the pair and indulging in the wanton and degenerate pleasures of the dream sender's embrace. On awakening, the victim loses the appropriate amount of SAN of the entity they saw (1d8/1d20 for the Bloated Woman, or 1/1d8 for Madam Yi). The dreams corrupt the victim, resulting in a compulsion to travel to China and seek out the source of the dreams.
Naturally, anyone reduced to 0 SAN by the bottle's dreams becomes a worshiper of the appropriate entity. Note that the bottle may send only one dream each time it is opened, and that every subsequent dream requires a separate opening.
The bottle is briefly mentioned in the books 'The Goddess of the Black Fan' and 'The Tale of Priest Kwan.' In each book, the story is told of a worshiper of the Bloated Woman who cut off his own legs, and carved the bottle from his own femur, inking the carvings with his own blood, as an offering to his goddess.
Credits
This article was rescued from the Ice Cave. Its author is unknown.