"I do not, however I can open some doors for you if you'd like. There are a few around here that are locked." she says as she gestures to the full key-ring attached to her hip.
The group moves down the hallway with the woman in tow as they try the next door, but find it to be unlocked. They open the door and find a reading room. Five broad desks line the walls of this study room. Each work surface is covered with stacked volumes brimming with page markers as well as numerous open books.
"My name is Iliyana Baslee, by the way." she remarks to the Pathfinders. "There should be no one else down here while the performance is going on upstairs." she informs you.
Falco finds a few tidbits that interest him about the Crusades.
The cipher is K-Y-V-W-K-C-E-C-O-O-M-I-M-E-C-F-G-C-Q-F-C
He also has the mindset of putting everything back so as not to arouse suspicion that they were here, while Pandoor just flips through books, moves chairs and tosses the crust of a sandwich near the trash can.
Bookcases cover nearly every inch of the walls in this room, which is only faintly illuminated by small lights set into the ceiling. A glass-paned door seals each panel of shelves, keeping the ancient tomes stored within free of dust. This darkened room contains many of the oldest, rarest books in the entire collection, and the dark conditions and sealed cases help to keep the paper in good condition.
Each cabinet has a simple lock, but the glass-paned doors are easily broken (harness 1, 2 hit points, break DC 5).
"You might try the books in the center shelf on the east wall. I was banned from looking at them when I had my sight, but they are probably special or noteworthy." she remarks.
"I can open the doors, but they have not given me keys to the shelves." says the woman to Falco.
The woman leads you to the next set of doors. "This is the administrator's room." she says, unlocking the door.
Two rows of tall bookshelves flank the imposing yet beautiful wooden desk that presides over this room. Over the door hangs a portrait of Grand Prince Stavian III, portrayed wearing an especially smug grin.
This room is the part-time office for the administrator of this facility, responsible for overseeing the maintenance of the collections and the training of the students. A brass plaque on the frame of the portrait reads, “A cunning lie is never told twice.”
The top drawer of the desk contains a potion of gaseous form and an elixir of vision.
At the far end of the room, Pandoor is barely able to spot a hidden door and he sees a wooden lever under the nearby desk that might be of assistance in opening it.
Pandoor pulls the lever and a poisoned dart shoots out of the door, slamming into Pandoor's back.
The door, however, slides open as Falco spots some titled "Taldan Cipher" on the desk.
The door leads to a hallway that exeunts into a room with cabinets with two tall drawers that each line the east and west walls. A relief carving of a lion’s head dominates the south wall, hanging imperiously over a low stone step. Six freestanding statuettes of lions in various poses stand atop the furniture.
Each miniature lion is portrayed in a different way to symbolize a particular virtue. One crouches as if preparing to ambush its prey. The second is roaring as it leaps at prey. The third wears a yoke that is chained to a large block that the lion strains to pull. The fourth wears a tiny pair of spectacles and reads from an ornate scroll. The fifth is draped in the flag of Taldor. The sixth sits erect and wears a crown.
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"Well, since it would be folly for us to mess around in here without knowing what we are doing, let's go back to those first few rooms we missed on the way in. Hopefully they will yield something more useful."
Falco leads the way back to the first room and looks around.
After a thorough search of the first room, Falco heads to the next one.
And then leads the party to the third room in the first hallway.
The group backtracks to the first room in the original hallway and the lion smiles at them. "Do not forget our deal!"
The group moves into the room and finds that it appears to be a classroom. This well-lit room holds many chairs aligned towards two giant chalkboards that hang on the north wall. Along the opposite wall, several shelves hold books on sundry topics. Simple but colorful tapestries hang along the north wall, giving the room a bright appearance despite the lack of sunlight and the dour portrait of Grand Prince Stavian III affixed to the south wall.
The shelved books cover a wide range of topics. A 15-minute hourglass sits atop the desk. A brass plaque on the frame of the portrait reads, “To serve Taldor, I must first learn the history of Taldor.”
The group doesn't find much of interest in the room, however as they move to the second, which appears to be a recital hall. This room’s well-worn wooden floor sets it apart from the others. The west wall is lined with shelves that support books, a variety of instruments, and dozens of rectangular baskets that contain loose sheaves of paper. Several chairs are pushed against the wall, and a portrait of the Grand Prince hangs to east, surveying everything in the room with magisterial authority. The brass plaque on the frame of the portrait reads, “Persevere, persevere, persevere!”
Most of the texts in this room relate to music, yet there are still two noteworthy clues that you find in this room: the Esoteric Alphabetization and a third chapter on Taldan ciphers.
This library uses a strange system for organizing its texts: it alphabetizes its texts based on the progression of major musical scales instead of using the Taldan alphabet.
Taldan Cipher: This text contains an example of an encoded message that uses a common substitution cipher (in which each letter represents a different letter). It claims that “DQFIZ KPIED WZYWS QIVKO ZKXFW ZIMVT DQFXW CFPAF PDFZ VFTJF” translates to “The orcs of Tar-Baphon circle around the lake’s western edge.
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"Well, this is a start. Gather up what we've found and let's go back to the lions to see if we can work this out." Falco leads the way, counting them off as he goes.
Each miniature lion is portrayed in a different way to symbolize a particular virtue. One crouches as if preparing to ambush its prey. The second is roaring as it leaps at prey. The third wears a yoke that is chained to a large block that the lion strains to pull. The fourth wears a tiny pair of spectacles and reads from an ornate scroll. The fifth is draped in the flag of Taldor. The sixth sits erect and wears a crown.
"First learn the history. . . so the one with the spectacles and scroll first?"
"A cunning lie is never told twice. The ambushing lion perhaps?"
"Persevere, persevere, persevere repeated three times must be the third and clearly the lion with the yoke and block."
Falco thinks back. "In the end, loyalty is its own reward... so the one with the flag is last I suppose."
"So that just leaves the fourth and fifth positions for the crowned lion and the roaring lion. There must be another portrait that we missed or have forgotten."
Searching other references, Falco thinks that two tomes of interest may still lay in the room with the locked cases.
Falco grabs the four lions of Taldor and places them into the slot in the mouth of the large lion statue in the specified slots and the lion's head swings open.
Chests of expert craftsmanship line the walls, and on the far side of the room stand two bookshelves burdened with yellow-paged tomes and sundry ancient trinkets. Banners and tapestries cover nearly every inch of the walls, each representing long-dead nations or depicting conflicts left not chronicled.
Taldor keeps some of its most dangerous texts here, including primary, unmodified accounts of events from millennia ago, original versions of laws since replaced, records of foreign policy debacles quickly silenced in the interest of decorum, and remarkably objective (and sometime empathetic) biographies of enemies of the state. Exploring this trove of historical wealth in detail goes beyond the scope of this scenario, but you find titles of unpublished volumes and treatises that provide long-winded but potentially accurate explanations of Golarion lore.
Much of the relics and historical artifacts here are valuable by nature of their origins and age, not their condition or material. As part of the time spent searching for texts, you run across a heavy bronze shield decorated with a lion’s head in the same style as the Guardian’s. The shield has little intrinsic value, as adjudged by Titian.
the rules of succession throughout the history of Taldor. It also highlights times when the nation chose an heir in a way that was an exception to the rules. This matches the description of what the Pathfinder Society is tasked to recover for Princess Eutropia.
Grave Consequences-This is a thin journal that explores the origins of Tar-Baphon, studies the circumstance of his lichdom, and analyzes what the author knew of his necromantic techniques from the perspective of a scholar searching for a weak spot in the Whispering Tyrant’s defenses.
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"Sounds like our friend out in the main library. We've found quite a bit of information and I don't think we can risk being down here too much longer without being caught. Let's stop by our friend to ask him one last time if there is anything else we missed and then get out of here before the guards show up." Falco leads the way back to the main library and asks the lion if he knows any more information about the documents they have found or where more similar information might be. Barring that, he suggests heading back upstairs.
As you leave the secret section of the area, you place the lion statues back in place as you find the caretaker still waiting for you near the lion statue.
"Have you finished in here?" the blind woman remarks.
"Yes, have you brought me my tale, little ones?" the lion statue asks.
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"A grand tale. . . we, in fact, recently came back from helping a friend who was sleep-walking and unable to awake despite the harm he put himself in. Something had a hold of his mind and we could not break the connection so we lassoed him and followed him to his destination. It was an old place, ancient, and the wards were strange such that the weakest of us could heave open the heaviest door. We came upon a gnome trapped in an arcane circle and a divine woman in another. Luckily we were able to best the undead dragon guarding the chamber and free the angel before the gnome revealed his true self-a demon of treachery, trapped in the circle for eons. Have no fear, he was banished and haunts that cave no more. The angel we saved-she had sent a message to our friend through his dreams, urging him to come save her."
"Interesting, interesting!" says the lion, happy to hear the story. "Are you leaving now? It is sad that you will leave me to stay here in this dreary library, but it appears that there isn't much choice." remarks the lion.
"Mmm..." says the lion as a wry smile crosses his face before the statue immediately freezes and a willowy wisp of magic seeps out of the mane and infuses itself into the shield.
Soon the shield itself is talking to Pandoor. "Well, get a move on. We don't have all day to escape!" it remarks with a guffaw. "Hmm... we cannot leave Ilyiana." it mutters to itself as the mouth on the shield opens wide and the woman is sucked into the maw.
"Quickly, let us exeunt. I cannot keep her forever." he states, burping.
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You enter the room with your illusory doubles, who are playing cards. The group picks up the deck and your individual cards, dispelling the illusion as Titian hides the shield under his cloak.
After a few minutes, you hear the performance end and Tobias enters the room. "Have you all finished? The performance is about to let out." he remarks to you.
Venture-Captain Muesello excitedly welcomes you back and inquires what they were able to learn. Any hitherto unknown facts about the Shining Crusade excite him to no end, and since you escaped without anyone summoning the Lion Blades to investigate, he heartily congratulates you on a job well done.
Muesello sends your discoveries about the Shining Crusade to the Grand Lodge, which studies them in detail, writes up a report, and sends it to Mendev in the hope of providing the Mendevian Crusade an extra edge against the invasion that threatens all of Golarion.
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A halfling wanders into the lodge. The more experienced agents look him up and down. His armor, new. His cloak, unstained from the road. His weapon, far too new. His smile, infectious.
One grizzled and scarred dwarf mutters, "Another Flaxseed? How big in Torag's Taint is that clan?" The halfling either doesn't hear the comment, or doesn't care. He wanders the courtyard introducing himself, shaking hands and tipping the visor to his helm.
The simple but sturdy make of his cloak is accentuated with a butterfly motif. He walks with enough speed (for a halfling) to make it billow in the wind. He's muscular, but not overly so.
When he finally meets a Venture-Captain, his smile is so big it nearly splits the sky, "Pleasure to meet you! Name's Dorvhan of the Flaxseed Clan. I finally made it! Look I'm new here, but I'm eager to make a name for myself. I don't suppose you've got a mission? No? Can you at least point me in the direction of any clansmen that might be hanging out?"
Once given the answer, he bows deeply, "Long days and pleasant nights!"
His furred feet nearly skip as he makes off for his destination.