The group decides to press ahead despite overwhelming paranoia. The monocle is used to investigate the woman’s aura and her lack of evil confounds party expectations. The gem of seeing reveals four astral guardians looming over the body on the slab – but the body’s spirit is walking the astral plane! So, the woman is alive though not localized. They begin by enlarging the hole in the door to try and snatch a staff from the ‘sleeping’ occupant, That is followed by a telekinesis attempt that fails. It becomes clear that the shroud somehow protects the person beneath.
More thoughts upon the matter finally culminate with an old-fashioned grapnel on a rope being used to pull the shroud off the woman’s body. As it is removed, it drifts away like smoke and the woman stirs.
She sits upright and swings her legs around to face the party. Malchor chats with her until everyone is convinced that there is no threat here. .She introduces herself as ‘Thanta the Medium’. It seems that she has been ‘sleeping’ for the past decade and seems to have missed several important meetings. She seems perturbed by this and tells the group she is off to Calimshan to meet with another knowledge keeper. A bit more polite chit-hat takes place and eventually she announces that she is off. With that, she commands her disguised stone golem to follow her and she leaves the premises after making a few cryptic comments about the iron hydra below.
Now that she has left, the group sets about examining the library’s contents. There are three main areas of investigation: philosophy, the various planes of existence and the multiplicity of religious pantheons. They also find a text that purports to make the reader far more charismatic. During the fact-finding mission, the library announces that removal of the books is a “very bad idea(tm)” because Melkerech will be very upset.
Melkerech? Melkerech. Didn’t we kill him just now? I don’t know, who is to say? All liches look alike to me. Sheeeeet. Melkerech. Maybe it is just a recording. Well…anyway…
Malchor decides to honor the spirit of the admonition and says that it is proper to leave the knowledge here – for knowledge is neither good nor evil, right? They leave the text behind and resume exploration.
They find the hydra and use the sphere of annihilation to erase sections of it while it flails about. They examine the recess below, in which the body was housed and find no exits.
They cast about some more and eventually happen upon stairs that lead downwards. Beyond lie undead and extra-planar fiends. Good times!
Leave a reply