Heroes' Hearth

[Murkus]

[Floor 2 and 3]

Adir is about to offer his help with the stack, but she seems to be okay. He half rises and sits back down, scrunching up his face in thought as he looks at the book. "Anything you can think of on, uh, things that can end universes would be good. Entities on that level. I'll go through these in the meantime."

And so the stag does.

[Nova_Eclipse]

[Floor 2 and 3]

The librarian nods.

"There are a few. I'll go get them for you." She scurries off, leaving Adir to his research.

The books contain several accounts of creatures with powers similar to the ones Zenon has shown. A common motif is dark, ravening maws that consume nearly everything in their path. A second motif seems to emerge in some of the later observations: those of hosts. Specific members of different races that seem able to control, or at least, direct the ravenous maws to do their bidding. One of them even seems to possess the ability to don the "mask" that Adir saw Zenon put on first-hand when confronted by Jezebel during the negotiations. Things went quite a bit worse for the champion on the opposite side than they did in Riverside, however. It seems to be a relatively safe assumption that Zenon is this creature's latest "host", able to direct its powers in whatever way he sees fit.

[Murkus]

[Floor 2 and 3]

Now they might be on to something. Could the host be the weakness? The mask? Adir will ask specifically about looking into these hosts, and try to find accounts of people who may have fared better against them. Those accounts would be best... if any exist.

[Nova_Eclipse]

[Floor 2 and 3]

The accounts of the hosts all come from the initial author the librarian suggested. It will take several hours to work through all of the accounts, but by the time he's finished, Adir has learned that while the host can sometimes be killed, it won't stop the creature that powers them from gaining new ones. In fact, it seems as though the creature, and its hosts, seems fond of bargains. Several hosts have traded their service to the being the author has come to call The Devourer in exchange for their worlds being eaten last, before the creature subsequently consumes the entire dimension. Also, it appears the author's original visions of the creature were somewhat inaccurate, as he makes mention later of "skipping ahead"; which means he was viewing things in the past. Not only that, but the author at one point also mentions that by his calculations, it takes The Devourer several millenia to eat an entire universe. His accounts end with him unsure of how to defeat such a creature, though he theorizes it may be possible to send it back to a dimension it's already consumed. The means to do this, however, are unknown to him.

The librarian checks on him several times, and brings him other reference materials, mostly relating to eldritch abominations and how to confront them, deal with them, etc. None of the references she brings are able to tell him how to kill them, but a few do go into how to prevent their incursions. None of the methods presented, however, seem applicable to Zenon or the Devourer, however, given what he learned about The Devourer from the other books.

[Murkus]

[Floors 2 and 3]

Pretty much what Adir gets from this: he needs to either kill Zenon by getting past the Devourer's protection or else banish the Devourer back to someplace it's already consumed. What could do a thing like that? Powerful magic? The VIGIL people might know better.

The stag gives the poor librarian her books back. "Thanks a bunch. I'm sorry about all this trouble just for me. I didn't find any magic bullets in here, but it's more than I had before."

Unless she has anything more to recommend him, Adir will take his leave. With... most of the day gone. That's probably the longest he's ever spent in a library. Oh well. Straight back to VIGIL for him.