Jerry: "I left the military, gave up my willingness to command, because I could not keep my troops alive." A swirl of sand and wind, a flare of tan light, and she finds herself in a cooler place. She smells faintly burning incense, and old parchments. There's a low drone of scratching, and a rush of wind. The interior of the building is dimly lit, and she's standing in 10' wide 15' tall arch. In front of her is a glass cylinder, from as far down as she can see, going as far up, with vines and branches within the fogged glass. She stands on a threshold, between bookshelves on either side to her rear, and balconies above her. The balcony is 15' from the arch, and there are other balconies stacked above, with criss-crossing balconies over the central void. Floating books move in paths between floors.
But all that is behind a slowly-approaching 8-foot-tall humanoid, with a shining mane of hair down to the neck. Tanned skin, hazel eyes, and orange rings around his pupils. Wearing a garment that looks like spun wool, but the color of bronze and gold. The approaching figure moves without stepping. "A new arrival. This is most interesting."
Jerry recognizes that this creature is attempting to portray itself as humanoid, but it is a poor replication thereof.
"A military woman, ah. And what group did you lead?" Insistent eyes stare at Jerry.
Jerry feels grouchy. She rattles off her entire service record, from boot camp until she left the military, just naming units. And she gets to where she retired, and the creature sighs. Jerry continues: "But what group do you lead?"
A voice comes out of nowhere and echoes through the place: Percival, saying "I fear I over-rely on the knights of the summer court, for I have left the financial backing of my house." Percival appears in a swirl of wind.
"It's a very curious whatever-it-is," says Jerry, "but let's hear what it has to say first."
"Oh! I am the Arbiter of the Temple of Ioun, the Arcadia Infinatum!"
A voice booms from the ceiling; "A title self-given."
"I am more an arbiter than you!" shouts Jarasoom.
A whoosh of wings, and a new figure lands: An androsphinx!
"What are your claims to the titles?" Percival asks.
"I spend more time talking to people," whines the Arbiter.
"I am the guardian of all the knowledge here," says the Guardian.
"Who was here first?" asks Percival.
The bronzed man makes to speak, but now Embersia's voice overrides all: "I was the reason why the shield was stolen. I never should have trusted Sergith." She appears, and blushes.
The metallic man introduces himself: Jarasoom. He's interested in us and our stories. Jerry replies that we're interested in him, and the contents of this house.
Percival: "We're not going to talk about Embersia's admission?"
Jerry: "We can deal with that later."
Percival: "But she doesn't know Sergith is dead!"
This revelation is discussed within the Party, for a little bit, and we note that the number of people who knows about Sergith's death is now eight — no, ten — no, the whole library is scratching away.
We ask how long they've been here. The question is complicated to answer; apparently time moves differently here. But we will leave the library after we entered it.
We ask how long it's been since they had a visitor. The androsphinx says it was 980. The most-recent handwriting is Embersia's handwriting, describing her truth. And above that is Percival. And above that is Jerry. Percival asks and receives permission to flip to the beginning, and we see it's created by The Knowledge Three: Denier the Scribe, Ioun the Keeper, and Ogma the Inspirer. They created it in 20 A.R. One of the early inscriptions says, "I have lost all, but am still looking." Percival flips through and finds notes from a hero that he idolized: "I let my village burn."
Jerry walks to the edge of the balcony, and looks down and up. Down, the glass pillar goes down 20 feet, and below that, the pillar cannot be seen because of so many layers of overlapping floating desks. The quills on the desk write on their own. One is making a copy of a book, and the newly-created book flies off up into the skies. Not every floor has a balcony, but well above us are three stone figures that loom above the central void, arms outstretched beneath a multifaceted oculus.
An older man, with a chest symbol of a candle and eye over a book
A female figure with what looks like an eye of Horus on her chest,
A younger male human, with the symbol of a scroll.
Those are the Knowledge Three.
The cylinder of glass has vines and trees growing in it, shrouded by mists.
Jarasoom introduces the androsphinx: Rajahtesh.
Percival asks permission to look at sheet music.
This floor has the symbols of history.
The next floor up has symbols for bed, water, pot: religion. Then something else, then arts and nature. Below us is the writing pit.
A small silver tray comes floating towards us, stacked impossibly tall with a quivering pile of saucers and teacups and a teacup on top. It follows Percival towards the music section.
The platter returns to Jerry and Embersia. Jarasoom implores us to take the tea, calling the tray, "the poor thing" and so Jerry reaches out to take the tray. The tray continues quivering violently, so she instead takes the top cup from the stack, and pours hot water from the empty teapot into a bamboo-and-mint design cup, which fills with a light herbal tea. She passes it to Jarasoom, and takes another tea cup for Embersia. Rajahtesh flies away, and Jerry pours a third cup. The tea tray settles a little bit.
Jarasoom drills Embersia on her story. She says she wanted to join the Third House, to be Sergith's second-in command.
All the book spines are blank, Jerry discovers. The first is a collection of children's tales. The second is History of Castles, the Making and Wars of Great Castles.
Percival finds another hallway full of sheet music. Two hallways with sleeves for the music sheets. He pulls out a sleeve, and finds a children's song. 30' down the hallway, it grows dark. He walks down, into the dark, but it becomes increasingly dark. He pulls another sheaf from the shelf: it's a very advanced piece of music, which he plays. The acoustics do not obstruct his playing.
Jerry sips at her tea, absently, and is given a pleasant, minty taste. She asks the air, "Where can I find a history of The Divergence?"
Jarasoom notices.
Something catches Jerry's attention, and she looks down the hallway into the darkness, where there are a few light-blue points of illumination. Way far down.
She goes back to Jarasoom and Embersia, and waits for a hole in the conversation, and there is not one. She waits for Embersia to run out of breath. Embersia has good lungs.
From the ceiling calls the next voice, Ryltar calling out in anguish: "I do not trust myself!" He appears kneeling on the floor.
Jarasoom pauses for a moment, and Jerry says, "Hi Ryltar, hold on a moment. Jarasoom, when I asked that question, there were some lights at the end of the hall. Is it safe to go visit them? Do I need to bring a light?"
"It is safe, as long as you do not bring back those who have succumbed to obsession, or have been led a stray from the light."
"That really didn't answer my question."
Ryltar interrupts: "What is going on here?" The tea tray rattles in front of him. He pours himself a tea cup: chamomile. His magic vision sees that Jarasoom is surrounded by a transmutation aura, a magically-changed creature. He says to Jarasoom, "nice to meet you."
Jarasoom says, "Nice to meet you. You don't seem to be trusting."
"Trusting? I trust them."
"But not yourself."
"Sometimes it's easier to run." He pauses. "You're not human."
"How did you guess?" We all chime in: Colors, height, eyes.
"Height?" asks Jarasoom? And suddenly, without growing any shorter, he's only as tall as Jerry, at 6'7". Ryltar recognizes that Jarasoom is a brass dragon. He asks if Jarasoom has ever met a green dragon called Kerjes. Nope. He doesn't get out much.
Percival asks the halls: "Show me pieces known to have magical effects." None. "Show be pieces known to be the best at the time they were written." Several flares. He goes down to one, and sees a 20-pointed star pointing out a sheaf. It's a symphony. He turns back to the entrance, and is suddenly back at the entrance to the hallway.
Jarasoom shows us the doors: dorms, bathhouse, kitchen. The history level for ancient past and antiquity.
Second level: religion, myths, legends, and a temple for each of the three deities.
Third floor: also the battle room, which is a starry expanse. There are bridges which approach the glass cylinder, 40' in diameter. The terrarium is "a good place to take a walk," says Jarasoom, and says that you can use it to pick fruit. Open a door and there's a mulched path. Ryltar wants to visit an orchard, and around a bend there's fruit trees. He looks up, and there's still the glass cylinder above the trees.
The library caters to physical needs so that you are able to stay and satisfy your research needs.
"When you need to leave, where's that?" asks Jerry.
"I'll get to that at the end of our little tour," says Jarasoom. "You want to get the full sense of this library before you leave.
Fourth floor: Arts and Nature. The library is full of alcoves, benches, desks, places where you can sit and think and copy and compose. Percival joins the tour. One of the doors has an orrery. And a music hall, and a map room.
And then we go back to the ground floor. Percival asks if it's okay to smoke, and a tray arrives with a humidor full of cigars and pipes. The pipes, when smoked, are self-filling with lit tobacco.
Rajahtesh has a perch at the top of the library.
At the arch in which we arrived, is written in every language, saying, "release, release." Jarasoom says that this is a riddle that we shouldn't put our minds to until we're absolutely sure we're ready to leave.
Rajahtesh is here as the guardian. The library is a store of knowledge and magics about the world. It draws people from across the world. There are those who gin that knowledge to save people, or to overthrow kingdoms. And there are those who should not delve this knowledge, to find it.
The log records the last person was here, 18 years ago. 30 years ago, Gallidan was here.
Browsing the library
Ryltar
Ryltar asks after tomes about Wint, in history. He finds books with light-blue symbols of snowflakes, the only symbols on the shelves. There are 5 books here; he takes them and returns.
Percival
Percival goes after Belladonna, in religion. He follows the light, It's a long distance, and he keeps walking, and the books in this section that would be right next to each other have spaces between them, every once in a while. More spaces. It feels like dust hangs in the air. More spaces now. Eventually he comes to the one book, which is lit with the shape of a berry. He turns back.
Jerry
Jerry goes after the Divergence, in history. There must be a light down there, she thinks. She walks and walks and walks, and walks, and finds spaces between the books, more spaces, an air of dust in the nose. The space between books approaches 50%. Jerry starts to hear panting. With a 17 Perception, it doesn't sound like there's a language there. And there's now a tapping noise among the breaths, and claws batting at things.
Jerry continues, stealthily, under Pass without Trace. Books are scattered on the floor, and there's a figure in the distance. A figure muttering to itself in a language Jerry does not know. A medium hunched figure, two arms, two legs, skin tight against the flesh, bony, with an exaggeratedly-bumpy spine. Arms longer than needed, And a glow of some sort, from the single eye in the middle of the oversized forehead, over a gaping mouth. It's flipping through pages of books, It's only about four feet tall, hunched over.
Jerry climbs the shelves and walks past it. The creature tosses aside a book, and reaches out with a long arm to grab another book.
The light is past the creature.
She arrives at the light: three ellipsoids overlapping, stacked atop each other, like we saw in the pharaoh's pyramid. It's one book, with vacancies beside it, and jerry picks it up and turns back to the entrance.
She takes 5 points of slashing damage from the creature, and its second attack misses. She flips it over,
Round 1.
Jerry tries to grab it. It evades, and dodges. She calls out to the Guardian.
The creature's eye pulses; her body withers for a moment and then she resists.
Round 2
Jerry casts Web
It is bound, but rips out.
Round 3
Jerry shoves it twice, into the web, and then starts running. Jerry doesn't make it to the entrance.
The creature breaks from the webs, and comes after Jerry.
Round 4.
Jerry casts Ensnaring Strike and hits the creature with a dart. It is bound. She runs 40 feet away, raising it to 55 distance.
The creature remains bound.
Round 5.
Jerry uses Dash and goes 80 feet, total 135 distance.
The creature breaks free, and begins running towards Jerry, getting slowly closer.
Jerry emerges from the hallway, and Rajahtesh is there. She slides between his paws, and Rajahtesh roars into the halls.
She describes what she saw. Rajahtesh replies: "Do not be consumed by your obsessions. You have seen someone who was." He retreats to his perch.
Embersia
Embersia goes looking for histories of calendars, and tries to understand how the calendar has changed over the history of the library. Near the entrance are a few books, and further down there are more books. The symbols are clock faces. The books are things are about the history of names in the current calendar, and then Embersia is shunted back to the beginning.
Concurrences
The book she Jerry found is a personal journal, from someone who lived in that time Post-Divergence, Arwenette Gloussfed. The first few chapters are about how the person became a better follower of Pellor.
Ryltar's books:
Tales from the Age of Heroes, a book Ryltar's mentor wrote about pre-Divergence history. After publication, the mentor used a copy of the book as a journal, writing over the text his escape from Wint's Lair, which we followed backwards. The "Age of Heroes" is called such because there's nothing beyond what was written on tombs. Those are the only ones whose histories were saved.
Three books that we had round in Wint's Lair
A new journal from Wint. The end of the journal concerns ways of conveying messages across death. He's seen his end. "When I am gone, people need to know." Sketches of ice towers; ways to infuse ice with magic so it doesn't melt. References to "My Lady, Lily." "I've sent word. I hope that she will receive it."
Percival's book is about the tenets of the Circle of the Burnt Tree. "A world beset by Gods, changed beyond recognition, brought back to a natural state." "Worlds that have been brought back to Eden, scattered from the plane."
In Wint's Lair, we saw that the Divergence was in 7789 S.C., the year before the Post Divergence calendar. Maybe the A.R. calendar was before then?
Embersia learns that the point of calendar switch is to mark major events.
The back of the journal Jerry found documents a rise in concern between the Gods. Resistance to the coming conflict.
Tomorrow will determine the future of … the world.
The page ends there, with a blank space.
We are victorious. The cost was great. Orelle has mustered enough for rebuilding, A lot of work is to be done.
More blank pages, then after that, no more dates, but:
Settlements are being reestablished. It seems that the havens have survived. The Elves are a great help. Did they really …?
The Gods will be leaving us. We are to take care of ourselves .Govern ourselves. Be our own protectors and shields of this realm. The Gods will be accessible only when she shows true devotion. It is our own hands now.
0 P.D.
Jarasoom brings back books himself, saying that we gave him ideas.
The Orrery
The room is filled with a giant, somewhat-intangible mechanism, which has a sun in the middle, and a nice little sphere representing our planet, Elantis. On the walls are stars.
The Orrery shows tomorrow's date. It's moving faster than it would normally.
There's an observation deck, and Ryltar fiddles with it. He presses a sphere, and the cosmos is replaced with the Material Plane, split between dark green and black where normally it would be blue and red. Shadowfell is one of those?
He thumbs through the whole calendar, looking for interesting things.
Orelle
Percival and Jerry go off to look for Orelle, him in history and her in religion.
Percival journeys a while in history to find Orelle, and it takes him into the dark parts of the shelves. There are a couple books. They say that Orelle Fargeld is a folk persona, stooped in political debate, devout worshipper of Pellor, leader of a sect. He was the organizing spearhead of different organizations.
Jerry goes deep into religion, and finds one book depicting Orelle.
The books, put together, describe the history of the world and the timelines of things.
Constellations
Embersia goes to look for the history of constellation change, and finds many. She grabs several.
She's found maps. We look at them, but don't draw much from them.
Dinner?
We start getting peckish, and the highly-caffeinated tea tray comes clattering around. Our bodies are exhausted, but there's no change in the lighting.
We decide to push on.
Recipes
Percival goes looking for legendary pub foods lost to time. Percival finds poutine, and chocolate molé, and dumplings.
Jerry finds an older way of fermenting things into wine which she wasn't familiar with. And Jefferson's technique for artificially aging wine through agitation.
Lineage of Belladonna
Embersia goes looking for Belladonna's family history. It feels like she walks a mile into the book stacks, where there might be five books per shelf. The corridor is slightly curved, and she follows the reflections of the light. Her spear doesn't warn of any pending ambushes.
She comes to an arch, and at the apex of the arch is a figure composed of swirling black rags. It releases a torrent of maddening speech, and she resists its stunning power. She casts Destroy Undead with Channel Divinity. "Begone, spirit!" she cries, and it screeches in reply, drowning her out. It floats down, to try to reach into her mind. It fails, and tries to flee when she uses Destroy Undead again. It flees down the hallway, and the book is still beyond the creature.
She turns to face the exit, and is suddenly there. She plans to call for backup from the sphinx.
Constellations again
Ryltar goes looking for constellations that match what we know about the prophecy. Stars that fade in and out. He finds an astronomer's journal, which describes the light cycles of various stars, and then a new red star. A hundred years later, blue star. Couple years later, a green star. A significant amount of time later, a white star. Then what's both a star and no star, a "dark" star appears. And then one day the observer looks, and all five are gone.
7699 S.C. Red
7789 S.C. — last possible known pre-Divergence date
7802 S.C. Blue
7804 S.C. Green
7877 S.C. White and Black
7881 S.C. Vanish
These dates could possibly be pre- or post-Divergence, or that vanish is when the Divergence happened.
Bugfood's been telling us about the visions he sees: he's seen red, blue, and green so far. These are all from when we've found specific items.
Next session
Hints:
The three gods are the three stages of memory formation
The Arbiter and Guardian are Id and Ego. Who is Superego?