My knowledge of the thing began in the winter of 1986-7 with the death of my uncle Adin Fasrol , Professor Emeritus of Experimental Semiotics in Harvard University, Massachussetts.

As my great-uncle's heir and executor, for he died a childless widower, I was expected to collect his belongings carried sparingly between continents. Much of the material found in its luggages, consisted in spread papers with annotations and drawings regarding the three tribes of the N'ma island.

The arrive of professor Fasrol in the district of Krakatoa is reported in different documents, however for the impossibility of legally undertake this expedition and according to my uncle papers, it appear that he managed to convince some locals not anymore attached to old superstitions, under a comparatively large amount of money, to help him to get in the island and assist him during that journey with help and food transported weekly during the night.

Other relevant notes report their arrives first in the Dibbomma's area, the last tribe of N'ma to resist the self-profecy of N'ma's mythology, and then in the Tak's one, which has been the first to disappear already in the late 1890's and which was considered the most violent of the three. These events would consequentially lead him to the discover the location of a certain temple which seems to be the main objective of the expedition and finally his return to America. In his last letter he states "What we are, we are, whether we be aware of it or not!"

I shall not dwell too much on these letters which events are far more complex than my short description and that in any case I'm going to publish in a complete collection as Linda suggests me. My focus, instead, must be directed toward another artifact, a box which I found exceedingly puzzling, and which I felt much averse from showing to other eyes. It had been locked, and I did not find the key till it occurred to me to examine the personal ring which the professor carried always in his pocket. Then indeed I succeeded in opening it, but when I did so seemed only to be confronted by a greater and more closely locked barrier. For what could be the meaning of the stone bas-relief and the disjointed jottings, ramblings, and cuttings which I found?

The bas-relief was a rough cone less than three inches thick and about five by six inches in area, containg a series of signs developing inside a spiral which ending point matches with the top of the cone. According to Fassrol's papers the cryptic object was an authentic repert of the Mu's tribe found in 1980 before the expedition, in a black market of New York, and which he unsuccessfully tried to decipher on his own. His professional interest led him to consults various experts in semitic languages which, however, discarded the symbols as a non-language, probably a pre-artistic medium meant to symbolize language but without meaning. Far from being satisfied by this assumptions, Fassrol passed the last 5 years attempting to find the key to read the signs that in his belief were hiding a mystery bigger than what usual language could conceive. Eventually, his fanatism led him to undertake his journey to N'ma and to come back without a solution to the enigma.

At that time I couldn't follow the case of my uncle with particular attention as I was completely assorbed with my job, however, year after year my interest was growing bigger and I started to reorganize all the events described in his papers in an attempt to decipher the meaning of the writings encraved on the spiralic stone. It was at that time, in 1992 that I contacted professor Linda Trent an old collegue of my uncle whose name I found multiple times in his papers.

Trent was oblivious of Fassrol's expedition to the N'ma island as well as the existence of the spiralic stone. Pofoundly shocked, she explained me that 20 years before they were close friend but a series of events that culminated with the foundation of the Miskatonic Virtual University, in the early 70s led to their total separation. Furthermore, she continued, the expedition of Fassrol followed exactly the steps undertaken by Echidna Stillwell and, before her,by Cecil Curtis.