Zorab and Sons Godown

Description

Rain comes off the river in sheets and the godown smells of wet jute, opium mash and the cold mineral smell of the Hooghly at low tide. Ranked chests fill a fifth of the floor and the rest is swept brick. Somewhere above, a shutter is banging, and nobody goes up to fix it.

What’s Here

• The sale floor: a long warehouse lit by trestles of lamps, crowded on Wednesday 12 October 1814 with collectors, East India Company men, and the Armenian family conducting the sale of the effects of Movses Zorab. Lots included Tibetan bronze figures, manuscripts and Lot 14 (Brain Cylinder Lot 14). Lot 11 was a set of bound slats of bark, thinned down and inked with strange, unidentified characters.
• The loft stairs: the porters kept their eyes carefully off them; a shutter bangs rhythmically in the wind above.
• Opium chests: stacked at one end under Company seal; they are not the Zorabs’.

History

A long warehouse at the ghats on the Hooghly River. The site of the auction of artifacts brought down from the Himalayas, and it later bears the scars of a Mi-Go attack, including a gaping hole where a banging shutter once was. A brick warehouse on The Strand with a river frontage and two floors, with about a fifth of the goods it was built for; the firm sublets floor space now.

Related

• People: Hovhannes Zorab — patriarch of the firm that holds the sale here Emma Wentworth — came for the Zorab sale (Chapter 4, Session 13). Georgiana Wentworth — came for the Zorab sale (Chapter 4, Session 13). Katherine Ward — came for the Zorab sale (Chapter 4, Session 13). Adrien de Montferrand — came for the Zorab sale (Chapter 4, Session 13). Havildar Pratap Singh — came for the Zorab sale (Chapter 4, Session 13).
• People: Gregor Zorab — guarded Lot 14 here
• People: Mariam Zorab — ran the sale here
• Places: The Strand — the godown stands on it
• Things: Brain Cylinder Lot 14 — Lot 14, sold from here

Campaign Log

• Session 13 - Sundry Fittings — the party drove here through the rain for the Zorab sale. Lot 14 spoke in a dead man’s voice when Dr Venn seated a fitting, and the crowd stampeded. After the night’s events the party returned Gregor to his family here and found Mariam bandaging Hovhannes amid the bubbling remains of a Mi-Go that had attacked in their absence.
• Session 14 - A Morning of Manners and Monstrosities — seen shuttered from Mullick’s tour, with damage to the roof and a Magistrate’s peon at the door.