Scatter the Pieces [IC]

[Ajadea]

Pulling seems to work just fine. The door swings open very suddenly, revealing a cluttered room with what looks like an exploded clockwork halfling in the center. It is difficult to make out much more about the room, but it's big.

[SPoD]

Eztra peeked into the room, then looked at the floor. "Do you think it's safe to cross the floor?" she asked.

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This is as much for Ajadea: Are we free to enter the room just by walking in, or do we need to cross the ledge to get to the door? I'm not sure if I'm correctly picturing where the room is in relation to the drop-off.

[Ajadea]

The humans can stretch far enough to get in properly. Magdi has issues with that due to her height, but it's easier for her to balance on the remaining floor due to her center of gravity being lower and her being smaller (and therefore needing less space to walk on).

Once you enter:

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The room is a mess. The broom in the corner has likely never been used as anything except decoration.

Piles of books are shoved against the walls, split open and slammed on the ground, and generally abused in such a way as to make almost all librarians throw an almighty fit. Three tables covered in vials of colored liquids and self-heating pots make a U shape in the far right corner. Only one looks fit to serve as a table-the other two are propped up on dictionaries and wooden boxes, and one leg of a table has been completely replaced by a mess of clockwork parts. There is a hunk of yellow cheese on the table, next to a flagon of ale and a half-eaten slice of something that might be fruitcake. There is some ancient bread as well, but even the ants crawling along the table shun it. There is enough mold on that bread to make a semi-sentient creature.

Splintery wooden shelves line two walls. They seem to be held together primarily with what appears to be a mixture of various bone glues and hope. The shelves are stuffed with ink and parchment and vials both empty and full. Three cages of brown rats are stuck in the topmost shelf, crawling over each other and squeaking. Most everything is stained with soot, chalk, or various liquids.

The only things that have avoided heavy staining are giant sheets of parchment that cover most of the remaining wall space. Every inch of the parchment seems to be covered in writing or drawings in all colors of ink. Drawings of beating hearts and blinking eyes, of clockwork and machinery. There are drawings of beasts with two legs and four legs, beginnings of incantations written and crossed out repeatedly, and a sketch of a tree done in dried blood.

There are boxes tightly sealed and stacked to your left, next to gigantic barrels that reek of cheap strong alcohol, the sort you'd get from mysterious dwarves in back alleys. There is a whole shelf filled with nothing but parts of life-sized dolls and piles of sacking. Here a wooden hand, there a cloth head, there a ceramic knee. The ceiling is covered with a yellowish drape that is decorated with embroidery a six year old would be ashamed of. You aren't sure if this place is habitable, but the cheese and fruitcake speaks for itself.

[Starwulf]

As Samuel walks in, his eyes are immediately drawn to the various clockwork items & the multitude of summoning or ritual items. "I think we may have stumbled upon either a summoners preparation chamber, or an artificers chamber. There is a lot of various parts around here that look like they would go well on a golem, albeit a clumsy sort of golem. Not sure what we may find in here, but we should definitely have a look around, there is bound to be something of importance in here. Hard to believe our mild-mannered librarian would have a room like this though, he never struck me as the type." Finishing speaking, Samuel wandered around the room, keeping an eye out for anything interesting or that looked like it might have some bearing on their search for clues.

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Search check: (1d20+2)[18]

[PollyOliver]

Sorra follows Sam into the room, staring at the mass of parts and drawings.

"Would a golem-maker need rats?" she asks, still looking around. She stops, starting at the drawings of moving, human-like parts. "I didn't think golems needed real hearts. This seems like something...different."

She searches the room alongside Samuel, paying special attention to any sign of what might be in those boxes that smell of alcohol.

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Can I take 20 on the boxes? Otherwise (1d20+5)[7]

[Eleanor_Rigby]

Magdi took a deep breath and wobbled across the ledge and through the door, narrowly avoiding falling to her hands and knees at the end by grabbing at Sorra's coat. She apologised meekly then straightened up to observe the room.
Samuel posited a theory about golems, mentioning Mr Casli again in a fairly casual way. It was as if this lovely gentleman who'd answered so many questions and pardonned so many slights had become little more than a case study. It shouldn't have been surprising though: how are you supposed to deal with so many losses if you stop and remember that each one was somebody's friend and or family member?
These drawings were rather more intricate than most of Jory's and usually considerably more macabre. The shelf full of false body parts reminded her unpleasantly of the horrid lantern they'd witnessed. She'd been pretty callous herself, with that lantern: they'd just left it there lying about. Hardly respectful to the original owner or owners of those body parts. She should have done something to give them a bit more dignity, it seemed hard to think what could have been done though. The orc was gone now after all, so hopefully the dishonourable treatment of its remains wouldn't do it any more harm.
She felt an almost overriding temptation to set the squirming rats free. She left them for now - they could be carrying any number of diseases and she wouldn't be able to do anything about it if any of her new friends contracted one of those. She strolled over to the cheese and cake on the table, picking up the cake and tapping it against the table to check how stale it was.

"Whoever made all this mess must have been a very curious person," she observed, "you know: the sort who takes things apart to see how they work?" She didn't see any signs of rats that had been taken apart yet though.

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This is a stretch, but could I do a Local Knowledge check on the food to see if Magdi can guess where it might have come from or maybe on the doll parts? Or perhaps on whether there are groups in Sunpeak that traditionally keep rats or basically if anything's vaguely familiar?(1d20+8)[23]

[Starwulf]

Samuel nods his head in agreement"That is correct. A normal golem-maker wouldn't need any of this, but" here he hesitates, not wanting to voice his suspicions, but realizing he should, he continues on but there are some types of golem-makers who would. Necromancers, flesh-golem makers, use all parts of human beings and animals, and sometimes they like to combine them with other types of golems, making entirely new, horrid abominations" Samuel looks slightly sick as though he's about to vomit after speaking the last few words. He spares another look around the room, hoping his suspicions are baseless.

[Ajadea]

Samuel

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There is a wooden door, which was partially hidden by a mound of robes that badly need washing. It is closed, but an experimental twist of the rusty knob reveals that it is not locked. The books are mostly on anatomy and theoretical racial relations. Nothing by Celyni Aedlara, and no mention of heaven.

However, something to note is that all the things here are clearly sized for humans and species of similar size. This place could have belonged to thousands of people. But not a gnome, and certainly not Mr. Casli.

Magdi

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Your own people are known to keep and sell rats as a cheap pet, or failing that, as a food source. Cheese is a common food around here, given how well it keeps. Fruitcake is a halfling thing, really. At least, you know of no non-halflings who can enjoy the stuff without being quite inebriated. No one sells doll bits, though they did have a few giant puppets for complex scenes at the theater. Some were animated.

It's the barrels that smell like alcohol, incidentally.

Sorra

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The boxes are filled with metal joints and half-carved limbs, cloth and leather, and bags upon bags of gears and cheap gems.

[Starwulf]

"Hey, I found a door over here!" Samuel says excitedly, motioning towards the pile of dirty robes that are mostly obscuring it. I wonder what's behind it. Should we open it and find out? Also, something I've noticed after some careful examining of the room, is it's sized for a human, certainly not someone of Mr. Casli's stature. I'm not sure what we've stumbled upon here, or if Mr. Casli knew about it, but it's definitely something out of the ordinary" as he finished speaking, Samuel looks closely at the door, checking to see if there are any traps guarding it.

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Search check for traps on the door: (1d20+2)[6]

[SPoD]

Eztra was carefully examining the ink and parchment stuffed on the bookshelves when Samuel announced he had discovered a door. "I don't know, it doesn't look like anyone's been in that room for a while," she replied hesitantly. "I can't see how an abandoned closet would have much to do with the giants...but I guess maybe we should check it out anyway?" The last was said with a look to Sorra, to verify that there wasn't some perfectly level-headed reason to leave it be that Eztra herself was simply forgetting.

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I would have been searching the parchment and ink vials on the bookshelf, possibly pocketing a few of the inks, especially colored ones.

Taking 20 if Sorra did (timewise), otherwise: Search: (1d20+2)[13]

[Ajadea]

Eztra

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The first thing that you notice is that those are some really nice inks. All shades of blue, a bit of red, a few rounds of dry ink to be used with fine brushes and water. There is a little bottle of sickly green ink that labels itself as 'Maester Makk's No-Stain Glow Ink!!!', next to a thin vial of swirling silver and pink liquid. There are black inks mixed with gold, silver, and even things like powdered amethyst.

The parchment isn't all parchment. There is real paper as well, thin and pale, flecked with rose petals and crushed lavender. Some of it is illuminated in great detail. It must have cost quite a lot.

Most of the parchment seems to be covered in raving scribbles, but there is a sheet that catches your attention. It too is scribbled, but there is a certain amount of coherence in the writing. You can pick out the phrase 'if this is true', repeated nine times in various parts of the paper, and a single mention of someone named 'C. A.'

[SPoD]

Eztra carefully collected the ink bottles one by one, wrapped them in a small sack andl put them in her pack. Good astrology charts required colored ink, and she had been forced to leave hers back in Harta. The owner of these was unlikely to come back anytime in this life.

But the papers made her stop suddenly. "Guys," she said, a piece of fine paper in her hand. "Can anyone read this handwriting? There's something here about 'C.A.' and some other stuff, but I can't make out most of it. It's Erlisan, but really messy."

She shows the paper to the others...

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Most of the parchment seems to be covered in raving scribbles, but there is a sheet that catches your attention. It too is scribbled, but there is a certain amount of coherence in the writing. You can pick out the phrase 'if this is true', repeated nine times in various parts of the paper, and a single mention of someone named 'C. A.'

[Eleanor_Rigby]

Magdi observed Eztra's taking of the inks with pursed lips.
"You don't think the curious person is coming back then, I take it?" she asked glancing back at the writhing caged rats.
When the paper was proffered Magdi squinted at it, not expecting to be able to make anything of it.

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decipher script - (1d20+4)[23]

This done, she pushed the nearest table closer to the rat cages, with the piece of paper tucked under her chin, and contemplated standing on top of it to get a better look at the animals.

Kander had kept rats back at the village. She remembered him trying to comfort her with them when she'd lost her second younger sibling. He'd put one on her shoulder and another directly into her hands - they'd been soft and snuffly and the feeling of the little, almost humanoid hands resting on her bare skin had been curiously reassuring. The shoulder rat nibbled at her hair and its whiskers tickled the inside of her ear whilst the hand rat sat perfectly contentedly in her palm as she stroked down its back.

She realised she still had the fruitcake in her hand and wondered if the rats might like it. Kander's rats had enjoyed sweet things.
"I don't suppose we could let them out, could we...?" she asked the room in general, "Only, if their owner's not coming back then they'll have quite a horrible time of things: they're all cramped up in there and perhaps with nothing to eat... except each other of course..."
She wondered if they were particularly stressed over something specific or if they were just wanting a bit of space.

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Knowledge:Nature check on the rats to see if their behaviour is normal? (1d20+6)[14] I've put two rolls in the one post but I'm kind of expecting the Decipher Script one not to come up with anything useful. ETA: although amusingly enough that's easily the best Decipher Script roll she's done so far. Although, looking back at the SRD Decipher Script is a Trained Skill and Magdi has no ranks in it so she probably can't do it anyway

[SPoD]

Magdi observed Eztra's taking of the inks with pursed lips.
"You don't think the curious person is coming back then, I take it?" she asked glancing back at the writhing caged rats.

Eztra raised her eyebrows in surprise at Magdi's question. The goblin had seen the devastation, the death in the streets. No one was coming back. If the person who had been working here was alive, it would only be because they would have been hiding here in the first place. Which they clearly weren't. However, she thought pointing out the overwhelming loss of life to Magdi yet again would be cruel, so she simply answered, "No. I think not."

"I don't suppose we could let them out, could we...?" she asked the room in general,

"It makes no difference to me, as long as you think they won't bite us," Eztra answers.

[PollyOliver]

Sorra looks at the rats. All her life rats have just been pests on the farm, but she can't help but think that they look like poor little things, all locked up like that.

"Maybe once we're done here?" she suggests. Then she joins Sam at the door, and quickly searches it herself.

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Searching the door, (1d20+5)[23]

[Ajadea]

Sorra

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The door looks fine, if perhaps a bit sticky.

Magdi

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You speak and read Erlisan quite fluently, so I'll let it slide. But I'd you suggest get some ranks in Decipher Script if you intend to continue using it.

The sheet of paper reads:

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The rats' behavior is quite normal. There must be nearly twenty rats in each cage, when that space would not be fit for three rats. They are probably hungry too, and they may indeed bite.

[Eleanor_Rigby]

"They probably wouldn't bite too much if we kept out of their way," the goblin said somewhat doubtfully, still gazing at the rats. "Perhaps we could just open up the cage doors if there are any when we're on our way back out...?"

She sighed and sat down on the table, which tipped onto its side as she did so. After reajusting herself on the thin edge, she held the paper up to get a better look at it.

"This um... this might be important after all..." she said with a slightly dry mouth.

[Starwulf]

"I really don't think it's a good idea to let those rats out Magdi. Assuming no-ones been down here for a while, those rats are probably very ill-tempered right now, and I don't want to have to fight off a swarm of rats trying to nibble on my toes and other body parts." turning towards Sorra, he adds "Shall we go through the door? I can't tell if it's trapped or not, never been my specialty, but considering how out of the way this place is, I find it unlikely that the previous owner bothered to set up traps." with that, Samuel waits a moment for Sorra to be ready, then opens the door and walks into the opening of the new room and looks around.

[Eleanor_Rigby]

"WAIT!" Magdi cried out, a little louder than intended. "I think I've figured out what the piece of paper says, and I think it's got to do with the book Nohar died with." she mumbled.

[Starwulf]

Samuel is just starting to turn the knob of the door when he hears Magdi cry out "Wait". After she proceeds to explain the paper is important after-all, Samuel decides to put-off exploring the new room for a few moments longer until Magdi explains what is on the paper.

[Eleanor_Rigby]

She shook the page for effect and began to read aloud for the others once Samuel had reappeared.

"...even find the other four. But... if this is true and if Ex-Rlla manages to work... then if the hypothesis C.A makes, if that is true..." she paused for breath.
"well. One could do a lot with something like that. Maybe I can make my ideas work... make what I think is true. I doubt that the first volume of his book was written after the second? Really now. But his theory... well, is what rats are for." here she scowled. Whether the curious person came back or not, she wanted to free the rats. Eating the creatures to stop your family from going hungry was one thing but this sounded like a sinister end indeed. She continued to read for the others.
"Yes. Ext works. As it must - is true. That means 18 is go. It must be true! This changes everything! Finally. Finally. I'll show them all. Thought I was lies it is truth. It is, always has been truth. It thinks and it talks and it begs for its ...life. It KNOWS it has life. A life for a life. It all makes sense. Should have seen sooner. Too late. YES." she tilted her head at an angle to read the rest of the text again more easily.
Robot... maa'S? still isn't working the are lies my work is true. Has to be."

She put the piece of paper down on her lap.
"Notes, like a diary I suppose," she concluded. "But if C.A. stands for Celyni Aedlara and the second volume is the same second volume that we... Nohar.. Mr Casli... Well. It might be important, is all." She stared anxiously at the toes of her boots, waiting for the others to react.

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Posting this as a new post just to make it stand out a bit more. I will refrain from using Decipher Script again until I level and can put some ranks into it.

[PollyOliver]

Sorra exhales slowly, resisting the urge to grab the paper so she can look at it more closely. Finally, something that might be an answer. But what does it even mean?

"So someone was making something," she says aloud. "Something...strange." She almost says "wrong" instead of strange. It feels wrong. But she doesn't know why. "And if Nohar burned that book...." She shakes her head. "Heaven and Earth. They wanted more than a golem--they wanted a soul?" She stares at the ground in front of her toes. She likes puzzles--liked puzzles--but she'd never really been smart enough for them. But she tries again. She has to understand.

"So maybe the giants wanted to stop it? Or they wanted it, whatever it is, and Nohar burned the book to stop them from making another? But if this isn't his room, how would he even know to do that? And what would giants do with something like this? Unless they're working for someone else?" She tries not to grind her teeth in frustration. She wants to know why they did it so she can find them and kill them, not play riddles in the dark in some godsforsaken tunnel.

[SPoD]

"Maybe the giants were trying to stop something. Something wrong. Something so wrong, that it couldn't wait another day." She sighed. This was all just speculation, and it didn't feel right. The connection between the giants and this room was tenuous at best. The gnome may not have even known why the giants were attacking, he may have just feared the worst. But they had little else to go on. Just piles of papers written in beautiful colored ink. Such a waste to use such expensive ink on such ranting. Why would this lunatic even need fancy stuff like glow-in-the—

Eztra suddenly stood straight up, almost knocking her head into a bookshelf in the process. "Samuel! Can you dim your light? No, wait, you can't. Can you step outside for a moment?" She lifted up her lantern, opened the door, and blew the light out. "I want to see the room in darkness. Total darkness." She thought she kept the quiver out of her voice quite well the second time.

[Eleanor_Rigby]

"<Something so wrong that they had to murder hundreds of competely unrelated innocents?>" Magdi growled, standing up. "<I don't care what it is they were trying to stop: we did nothing to deserve this. They should have talked to us.>" She felt a blistering rage rising within that hadn't really found an outlet until now. She had been wronged - and worse, the people who had supported her had been wronged, irrevocably so, and for what? No cause was worth the destruction that All Saints' Day had brought upon them.
Outrage wasn't all that was bubbling up to the surface either, hot tears were starting to prick at her eyes seeking a way out too. Which was foolish. Samuel, Sorra and Eztra were only trying to make sense of all this like she was. They didn't need to listen to her wailing, they'd all been through much the same thing themselves. She sat down again, hoping her little outburst might be ignored.
With a couple of blinks she realised that her growls had been rather soft and Eztra was still speaking.*
"Darkness?" she sniffed, sitting up slightly, "Why?"
*

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Another reason why Magdi's speech might not have been noticed by the others is that she subconsciously slipped back into Gulgai, the language she spoke with her mother, in her frustration. She says "darkness" and "why" in Erlisan though.

[Starwulf]

"Umm... I guess so, sure." a very confused samuel stuttered before he removed his ring and dropped it into a pocket, causing the room to be enshrouded in nearly complete darkness. "There, so, why did you want the room in darkness for Eztra?"

[SPoD]

"I found a bottle of glow-in-the-dark ink on the shelf," Eztra said excitedly, "And it just occurred to me that if this person owned that ink, maybe he used it on some of his stuff...you know, to write secret notes or something."

As the room fades into darkness, Eztra waits and watches the drawings on the wall (and the papers in her hands)...

[Ajadea]

Why Eztra wanted the lights out is immediately apparent. The room comes to life in wriggling, scribbly, writings. Across the parchments, yes, but also parts of the floor, much of the tablecloth, several bottles on the table, and even the drape that covers the ceiling. Writings, drawings, maps and charts, snippets of nonsense and something that looks like sheet music, all glowing sickly green.

The largest is a simple diagram, with a squiggle of sorts in the center.

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[SPoD]

Eztra fought back her fears at the darkness, but was overcome with a strange sense of joy when the room erupted in glowing lines. No, not joy..satisfaction. It had been rare in her life to accomplish something on her own, so even a tiny victory—wresting knowledge, however confusing, from the jaws of obscurity—filled her with a moment of pride. Of course, then the question of what it meant sank in.

Eztra stares at the diagram. "Is that a letter L? Or just a squiggle? And those points...there are seven of them..."

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Any chance that those dots are representative of a constellation?

Astrologer: (1d20+2)[10]

[Ajadea]

Eztra

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If you cut off the topmost dot, it would look like the constellation of the Shield, drawn by someone who was half-blind.

[SPoD]

Eztra sighs. "I don't know what it means," she admits. "Anyone have any ideas?"

She looks through the other glowing writing, looking for anything that stands out as meaningful.

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Search check, I guess: (1d20+2)[5]