Blame this.
Roseate Boots of the Sauromatian Queen – Google Docs
Roseate Boots of the Sauromatian Queen
This particular artifact was first described by an obscure 19th Century German folklorist researching various equally obscure tribes in the Crimea. He came across one such tribe who claimed to be descendants of the servants of an ancient royal family, who ruled far to the East. The folklorist wrote of them:
…The elders told of a great battle where a Queen Sauromatia led her mounted archers to a terrible victory. Terrible, for as the battle ended she was thrown from her horse — taking most grievous wounds — and so, doomed to perish. She called forth her most loyal servants, and bade them to hide her regalia (including her famous Roseate Boots) and secretly bury their queen as a normal warrior, lest her grieving husband and people attempt to anger the gods by trying to return their beloved Queen to a semblance of life.
This was secretly done; and it proved wise, because when news of the Queen’s death spread, her husband did indeed have the most fell spell of resurrection and unholy revival cast. But without the body — for the servants who dug her kurgan chose to follow her in death, and thus kept her secrets — the magic spell could not be completed. In his anger and sorrow, the Queen’s husband banished those of her servants who brought him the Queen’s regalia, condemning them to ‘ride into the setting sun and not be seen again.’
This was done, and the servants went to the West to found new homes. But they still remembered their past service and sacrifice, and they also remembered the danger that remained. For a spell, once cast, cannot be uncast: and should the Queen’s body and her regalia ever be reunited, that spell would be completed, and the Queen’s soul would be drawn out of the afterlife to inhabit her bones.
The folklorist then went on to rather condescendingly dismiss the whole thing as unbelievable nonsense; which was perhaps understandable at the time, given that his research took place several decades before Russian archaeologists started discovering kurgans of Scythian women dressed as warriors and bearing weapons. Unfortunately, other more obvious errors in scholarship ensured that the folklorist’s work was ignored anyway. And the word ‘unfortunately’ is used here because, alas, the details about the unfinished spell is in fact completely accurate.
The Roseate Boots are currently in St. Petersburg’s State Hermitage museum (having come out of the second Pazyryk barrow in the 1940s), while the corpse of the Queen is still frighteningly well-preserved — thanks to having been preserved in some suspiciously-convenient ice — and resides in the Altai Republic’s Republican National Museum (where it is known as the Siberian Ice Maiden). The good news? The Boots and the corpse are far too far apart to complete the spell. The bad news? Well, one of the directors of the Hermitage has somehow gotten it into his head that it would be a good thing for post-Soviet relations if some of the Pazyryk artifacts were temporarily loaned out to other museums in the various republics. And, yes, the Republican National Museum is on the list. It is stubbornly staying on the list, too, despite the best efforts of not a few domestic and foreign counter-occult intelligence agencies.
That’s where the field team comes in; clearly the spell itself is trying to complete the esoteric circuit, as it were. The regular containment methods aren’t working, so now it’s time to try a little applied chaos. Which is to say, the average field team. Just keep in mind one thing: the only reason why the higher-ups even know about this situation is because a researcher happened to come across the original folklorist’s article, and then happened to talk to a psychometrist with a talent for understanding the gist of obscure languages while in a trance state. Don’t assume that the field team itself isn’t acting at the bidding of the spell, in other words.
What? No, of course they have to go resolve the situation anyway. Predestination is an unaffordable luxury.