Of the Proud Tradition:
https://rememberdismove.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-black-auction.html
https://rememberdismove.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-black-auction-2.html
https://rememberdismove.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-black-auction-3.html
https://as-they-must.blogspot.com/2021/08/a-catalogue-found-in-bus-stop-in-karok.html
https://haruspexhovel.blogspot.com/2023/03/a-manuscript-recovered-from-personal.html
Dear ________,
Please be reassured - despite the unanticipated disruption to the Black Auction of 2020, the Black Auction of 2024 shall proceed as planned, albeit with an understandably-reduced catalogue and membership.
The Auction shall take place on the evenings of December 7th, 8th, and 9th in Doha. Due to security concerns, precise details of location and attendance procedure will be delivered to participating members in a personalized format closer to the commencing date. For the first time in the Auction's history, vetted members may also choose to participate in the Auction via telepresence using the approved channels.
Though we who are mighty may be laid low, remember that that which has fallen may rise again so long as the light which illuminates the path is well-kept.
Please find enclosed a partial accounting of the current Auction catalogue. We cannot guarantee that this will reflect the catalogue available when the Auction occurs:
LOT 1. ELECTRIC SARCOPHAGUS
A 10-ft. tall copper sarcophagus adorned with images of human slaves making offerings, some living, to gigantic humanoid figures with heads resembling those of Typhonic beasts. When a properly-mummified body is placed within, the currents passing through the sarcophagus will animate it as a mouthpiece through which one may communicate trans-temporally with the priests of the temple of Shtegg. These priests belong to a species of cetacean offshoots now extinct outside of cryogenic preservation, who ruled an empire centered on the then-vibrant Sahara during the Pleistocene, and claim credit for the selective breeding of homo sapiens as servants, gladiators, concubines, and snacks.
LOT 2. HEAD BROTH BOX
Reportedly taken from an itako murdered by Tokugawa Tadanaga after she prophesied his death at his brother the shogun's orders. A cubical wooden box, painted white and reinforced with iron. The box contains a reddish-brown liquid composed chemically of an even mix of sake and human putrescence, as well as the skull of a middle-aged woman. Drinking the liquid stimulates the salivary glands to produce generous quantities of ectoplasm, making the drinker an easy spiritual medium. The skull within the box was once capable of drooling out fluid to replace what was drunk, but unfortunately lost this ability after being removed from the box for examination.
LOT 3. ZYTKIEJMY DEVIL
A hairy, horned, short humanoid with a spiked tail, yoked to the grindstone of a mill in the woods near the town of Zytkiejmy by three chains of iron, silver, and maiden's hair. It speaks an archaic dialect of Polish, and is capable of milling grain into gold dust. The being must not be made to work on the sabbath or any Catholic feast day. By right of its binding, the devil may challenge its master once a year on Christmas Day to a riddling contest for its freedom along with its master's soul. Winning ownership of the devil will come with a pamphlet of impossible riddles in its Polish dialect, along with a pronunciation guide.
LOT 4. ARMORED PERSONNEL CARRIER
An M113 Armored Personnel Carrier. The interior was once covered in a homogenized blend of human tissues, but this has decayed to reveal a beautiful, mandala-like pattern of metal and plastic. In his 1938 expedition to Tibet, Ernst Schäfer heard stories of a passage in the Tarim Basin to a sort of anti-Shamballa. Though he was unable to ever get the budget to follow up on these stories, his notes ended up in the hands of a covert unit of the American army, which during its occupation of Afghanistan launched its own investigation. This APC is all that remains of them. Meditation within the APC produces super-normal feelings of peace and clarity. Prolonged meditation awakens memories of "the womb within the womb". Achieving such a state more than once in a given year is not recommended, as this will result in the metamorphosis of the brain into an ambulatory and self-sustaining form which escapes the skull and any further confinement through extra-spatial movement. Bidding for this item will begin at $40,000 due to transportation costs.
LOT 5. THE BULL OF THE PIT
A dog the size of a percheron, bred by a circle of Palladists in the late 1920s as the nexus of their efforts to introduce diabolical blood into the nascent "pit bull" dog lineage. By their design, every child mauled by a pit bull would act as a Satanic sacrifice that channeled energy into this, the pittest bull. While the dog could be an intimidating companion on its own, the real value is in this energy, which continues to be supplied in bulk thanks to the ongoing efforts of the Process Church of the Final Judgement. Responds to the name "Nanny".
LOT 6. BLACK LIGHTNING
A magnetic canister containing a sample of paradimensional force which resembles a lingering bolt of black lightning. Provided to DARPA researchers by the entities which reside beyond the portal within Saturn's "hexagon" in exchange for ritual killings conducted by Tiger Force (Recon) 1-327th, along with several other technologies instrumental to the development of the internet. The black lightning is capable of transmuting biological minds into purely electrical consciousnesses, and of extracting energy from minds experiencing states of extreme suffering in apparent violation of thermodynamics.
LOT 7. THE PAUPER'S NOOSE
A silver necklace set with glittering yellow lynguriums. By legend given to a Genoese beggar-girl by the King of All Cats, and used to behead her by the same when she befriended a stray dog. From there the necklace made its way around the necks of a rich merchant's wife in Constantinople, the mistress of a Burji sultan, and a duchess of Mecklenburg, to name a few. Besides being a beautiful and storied piece of jewelry, the wearer of this necklace is blessed with the loyalty of all sorts of cats - as loyal as cats get to any master, anyways. Its wearer could walk among a pride of starving lions without so much as a scratch. With this blessing it seems to come with a curse - many of its wearers have died, prematurely and gorily, with the necklace by some means involved.
LOT 8. 2012 TORRIT GREY
A unique annual blend of dry pigments collected from air filters used by the Gamblin paint company. A flat, metallic surface painted with the 2012 Torrit Grey and oriented towards the light of the decan Ruax for three days and nights will become sensitized to certain otherwise-invisible spectra, and discolour when exposed to cursed objects, rifts to other planes of existence, and suchlike in manners that suggest their nature and severity. This lot comes with seven buckets of the paint - all that could be recovered after its anomalous properties had been discovered.
LOT 9. MUSICAL AUTOMATON
A humanoid automaton made of bronze and lacquered wood. Though traditionally attributed to the legendary Yan Shi, modern dating technology places it a millennium and a half after his supposed lifetime. When its internal mechanisms are wound with a cord of dried skin taken lengthwise from above the spinal column, the automaton is capable of playing musical instruments with great skill. Of particular interest is its ability to perform songs which would have an incapacitating mental or spiritual effect on a human performer, and of which a recording would not suffice.
LOT 10. MONA LISA SCHEMATICS
Pages from an otherwise-lost notebook of Leonardo da Vinci. They detail in notes and diagrams the vivisection and reassembly of the subject of his Mona Lisa painting into a tower-mounted weapon of unknown effect, apparently at her own request. Initial cryptographic analysis suggests the location of this device is encoded in the schematics, though the full discovery, and whether the procedure can be replicated, has been left to the schematics' final owner.
LOT 11. SOUL-FIXER
A hexapodal pseudo-insectoid with a variety of hooked mouthparts. Its shell is made of marrowless bone and its body cavities are filled with phlegm-soaked hair. The being is depicted in a Nazca geoglyph since removed from the public eye. It was recovered for this auction from an American mercenary outfit operating out of Colombia. By reaching its mouthparts into someone's nostrils and tear ducts in a perverse sort of "kiss" it can remove the qualia of guilt, mercy, and suchlike, creating perfect liars, suits, and killers. If the removal was performed less than a week ago the being can be forced to regurgitate what it has taken - either to restore it to the person it was taken from, or to double it in another. Cooperation of the soul-fixer can be obtained through the application of capsaicin to its spiracles.
LOT 12. ICON OF HALF-SAINT RADA
Orthodox icon made in honour of a woman who was martyred single-handedly defending her hamlet from Wehrmacht looters, who is not officially recognized and only locally venerated. Framed with welded bullet casings. When the icon is displayed in your home it will deafen and rattle intruders as if by nearby artillery fire, so long as you have not committed any sins against the Christian religion within.
LOT 13. CELESTIAL CORRESPONDENCE PHONE
A half-melted red plastic rotary phone, along with the tasteful late 19th-century wooden side table it's fused to. The dial does not have traditional numbers, but rather symbols reminiscent of those used in Al-Marjānī's zairjas. With the right combinations the phone enables communication with intelligences that variously claim to be angels, the plasmic essences of stars, enlightened ultraterrestrial gurus, magmic siliconoids, and suchlike. These intelligences are well-informed on natural issues of wide scale - gamma ray bursts, volcanic eruptions, and suchlike - yet struggle to understand anything of human concern. With the wrong combination, these same entities will quite literally fry your brain.
LOT 14. THE AVON SARIRAS
Pearlescent beads retrieved from the fire amputation pit used by a Noongar man who had fought with British forces and suffered a bullet wound in his leg that became infected. Buddhist priests who examined the beads confirmed that the man was the final incarnation of the wisdom king Yamantaka.
LOT 15. SCRUMPTIOUS MIKE
A 42 year old Caucasian male by the name of Michael Keller. He is missing his lips, tongue, genitals, and most of his right cheek. Both his legs have been amputated just above the knee. Thanks to his unique protein profile, Michael's flesh (and to a lesser extent, his bodily fluids) hold a neuro-chemically perfect umami flavour. Regrettably, the right to stud cannot be included with his purchase. Best paired with a fine Merlot.
LOT 16. THE ROOT RACE
Three breeding pairs of a transgenic species of vegetable humanoids created by a top secret Tanzanian black budget research and development program during the height of Cold War atomic fear. They are as obedient as well-mannered children, immune to the negative effects of all but vapourizing levels of radiation exposure, and can be tapped for certain extracts otherwise found only in high-grade homunculi.
LOT 17. MRNA ROYALTY OVERRIDE
A syringe containing a gene-modifying solution which will replace your own genes with those of a grandson of Charlemagne, reconstructed from blood spattered on a bandage kept by an obscure order of French monks who mistakenly believed it to be Christ's shroud. Several days of fatigue, fever, insomnia, and soreness around the injection site are to be expected, followed by some degree of hair shedding and skin sloughing. Usage of the syringe will place you thirty-third in line to inherit the crown of France, as well as an honourary title in the Knights Templar.
LOT 18. JEFFREY EPSTEIN'S PENIS
Preserved per his will along with several vials of sperm samples in a solar-powered cryogenic pod the size of a beer cooler. As a bonus, the penis and its accoutrements also come with the original, unedited copy of Eyes Wide Shut, featuring footage of the 1998 Black Auction that Mr. Kubrick regrettably chose to candidly record. To the disappointment of many members who vied for this hotly contested item, Mr. Epstein's head was lost along with many other invaluable items in 2020 and is no longer available for bidding.
LOT 19. HEAVEN SHAKER ASHURA
In the waning days of World War II a manned suicide torpedo was fired by the Japanese navy. This torpedo's propeller failed. This torpedo never detonated. The man meant to guide this torpedo went mad with rage within its metal shell, his screams reverberating endlessly even after he suffocated. The torpedo was recovered in time for this auction after its position was triangulated by psychic-sensitives, each of whom was driven murderously insane by its influence. We do not and cannot guarantee the impact of this torpedo's detonation, but by all accounts it will be wide, and reach high enough to shake the lower orders of the divine.
LOT 20. TEQUILA WORM