Thundering through the door, Gar manages to smash his way into the archives moments before the steam cylinder fires the heavy iron door firmly closed with a shuddering bang.
"Nothing I can do about them, I'm assuming our resident chemical purveyors have some acid..." Amelia then speaks a word and vanishes.
The swarm is several feet above the highest of the shelves... but, apparently having detected the group within the archives, is starting to descend.
Image of the Archives for clarification of Shelves vs Ceiling Height.
Elliomander hesitates at Vera's warning. Quickly calculating distances and trajectories, he draws his arm back...
as long as I don't miss this throw it should be safe...
Biting his lower lip in anxiety he moves to just within thirty feet of the swarm and tosses the small, volatile vial...
Vera draws her rapier and looks at the ceiling, realizing that her weapon will be nearly useless against a swarm of angry bees.
"We need a plan, fast! Frill, can you..." She cuts herself off when she see Eliomander throw a firebomb in a room filled floor to ceiling with wooden shelves stacked with paper.
She cringes at the explosion, looking around to see what might have caught fire and whether there are any exits.
"Frill, you summoned a swarm of rats earlier... Can you summon a swarm of something that can fly?"
"I like the way you think, sugar. I can bring some bats to the party and have them delay the wasps, if nothing else.". Frill starts casting her Summon Swarm spell. (1 round casting time).
Elliomander's vial, bubbling and fizzing as it flies, smashes as it strikes masonry next to the boiling swarm... and molten metal, catching fire as it comes into contact with the air, drips down into the cloud of wasps. The swarm is visibly diminished as it starts to descend towards Mama Frill... and the upper shelves containing the burglary records of '4400-4500AR' start to wisp with smoke...
...and at the door, Gar steps quickly out of the way as the steam piston breaks free from the door and starts wildly swinging...
Pulling off her cloak and throwing it over her arm, Vera climbs the shelves and scrambles along the top shelf to get to where Eliomander's bomb has started a fire. Once there, she tries to beat out the flames.
Alert to the danger from Elliomander's incendiary, Vera is quick to scrabble up the shelves - which prove to be remarkably sturdy in supporting her weight - and leaping across to the smouldering papers, beats the flames down before they have a chance to catch...
Fort v poison
Fort v distraction
Frill finishes her spell and a swarm of bats come into existence. She summons them on the southern outskirts of the wasp swarm, hoping the two would fight.
Swarm damage
Frill withdraws to the north, moving 30' away. As she fled she warns Vera, "Get away,honey! I can't control the bats now!"
"What the--" Gar ducks reflexively just as the piston jettisons by, tickling the hairs on the back of his head. Tumbling south he comes to stand near Eliomander. "Well, so much for that. But if you had planned on throwin' a party, I woulda liked an invitation."
Gar readies a create water spell should the fire appear to grow unruly.
Swooping and diving through the swarm of hornets, the bats feed... and as the mass of agitated insects draws closer to the group at the entrance to the archives, it truly is diminished - little more than a shadow moving through the dimly lit room.
Amelia watches those with the proper skills deal with things...
"Ya got any more juice in that blunderbuss, kid?" Gar asks Lio nervously as the swarm draws closer. "'Cause I don't think my sword's gonna do much against that."
Gar readies another create water if a fire breaks out, to create a "downpour" effect.
Vera watches the proceedings from her vantage point on the top of the shelves. "Not much I can do against bees. Get away from them, and just let Frill's bats eat them!"
Amelia moves to stand near Gar, her voidglass scythe, invisible, surely too close for comfort... had it been seen...
Elliomander draws a flask of liquid ice and prepares to throw it if the hornets seem to gain the upperhand against the bats, or move to attack anyone else.
Gar shivers as the air ripples with the chill of undeath.
Hope I ain't comin' down with somethin..
The bats, feeding hungrily, have nearly dispersed the hornets but the remaining wisps of the swarm still move quickly towards Mama Frill... seeing the threat, Elliomander pulls a second flask from his belt, this one already covered in a diamond sheet of frost, gauges the distance... and the speed at which the hornets are moving... and throws.
The flask cracks against the corner of one of the shelves releasing a cloud of frozen air... and from the small fog fall hundreds of instantly frozen insects - smashing to dust and ice where they impact the floorboards...
With the feeding frenzy over, Mama Frill's bats fly upwards towards the beams across the ceiling of the great room... roosting, they chitter towards each other excitedly before... one by one... blinking out of existence.
"Everyone check out the papers. Try to clean them up us much as we can. No telling who might need all this stuff one day," Mama says as she surveys the damage.
"Now, Mama's got no choice but to ask herself, how did a swarm of flaming wasps get down here? I bet you babies know the answer...someone's not going to stop til they succeed at taking us out. Or we get them first."
Gar, sword drawn, carefully passes through the rows of the archives, searching for the possible source of the hornet swarm.
As Gar goes to move, a semi-transparent scythe blade appears several inches from his head, moving in an arc that goes over his head. Amelia's voice speaks a few inches from his ear. "Well now, that was certainly unpleasant." Her voice is cold and controlled, as cold as the falling wasps. "Now, I wonder where those came from..."
Amelia continues her summoning ritual to bring Lilly forth, her scythe dancing in the air near Gar as the ritual continues, before he moves away to search the stacks.
Retracing the flight of the swarm back to its origin, the group find a wastebasket lying on its side beneath a study table and, lying next to the wastebasket is a large rough sphere that appears to be composed of some greyish papier-mâché... a cursory check confirms that this badly-dented sphere is a hornet's nest.
Gar whistles to draw the others' attention to the nest. "Ain't much of a beekeeper, but it strikes me odd t'find such a thing in such a place. And Braken's name on the list, t'boot. They's clearly more to this'n we've been led to believe."
"Clearly paper wasps didn't build a nest in the archives. Looks like someone put the nest in the wastebasket and then threw it to stir up the swarm. But who?"
Vera then starts looking around for signs of an unknown individual who could have come in here to do that, and what path they could have taken back out.
She also glances up to the ceiling, to see if there was a catwalk above, or possibly a window or skylight that someone could have dropped the nest from.
Elliomander cautiously makes his way around the perimeter of the room looking for ways someone could have gotten in or out.
"So do we follow up on this Crowns Justice member Brakens? Mama's all out of leads right now. Any of you sweethearts have any clever thoughts?"
Mama looks around the library, hoping to make sure the library was no longer in danger of going up in flames.
Looking around the room, even going so far as to look for secret doors behind shelves and the like, the group become increasingly sure that there is only one way in and out of the Archives. Returning to the crumpled nest where it lies on the floor and looking at the detritus around it, fallen books, the waste paper bin and fragments of the nest itself, it becomes apparent that this wasn't dropped as such... more that the nest had been placed in an upturned bin behind a pile of precariously balanced books - and when those books were disturbed, they knocked the bin - and the nest within - to the floor. What disturbed the books, it is impossible to say other than it may have been accidentally nudged by one of the investigators and fell a sort while after... or a loose floorboard... or something else entirely.
Regardless, the hornets have been almost entirely dispersed, the steam piston on the fire door has stopped - eventually - swinging around and there is no sign of any fire taking hold - the group can, at last, relax... and maybe consider the documentary evidence from the Muncy files...
Examining the set-up, Vera frowns. "Clearly, somebody set this up as a trap. And I don't know how they could have triggered it. I really don't think that we accidentally tripped it... Someone doesn't want us on this case!"
At that, she returns to the study table she'd been at, pulls out the Muncy file she'd stowed in her satchel, and begins reading it.
Retrieving the piece of paper, heavily blacked out with ink redactions, Vera reads Muncy's words from some twenty years past...
REDACTED 34, Portmuth Building in Theatre Town REDACTED 2000 hours on 4/8/97AR REDACTED my wife REDACTED was dead when I checked for breathing REDACTED Blood REDACTED drying REDACTED Adelaide REDACTED Blood Loss REDACTED Rebecca REDACTED Wife and Child REDACTED Murder-Suicide REDACTED Depressed REDACTED
The hand-written report is signed 'Muncy, Hogan (Con)'.
Amelia paces, Lilly zooms around above everyone's head, obviously agitated, glaring at Gar when she sees him (then again, she glares at everyone who makes eye contact). "I'm probably seeing things that don't exist... however..." She ticks off on her fingers as she talks, her mind obviously in overdrive. "Child shaped marks near murders in a town that had dozens of child murders 30 years ago. 20 years ago, there was a murder involving a child and mother with those same signs. Now, there's more murders involving signs of a child in two locations..." She looks at the archives. "30, 20, now... what is missing? 10 years ago. Where are the records of murders from 10 years ago?"
She continues to pace. "Why is Muncy's records redacted? This is a secure records room, and Jack's cases weren't redacted. Something is going on in the government as well. Our judge? Why do I have this image in my head of a spirit, that goes from victim to victim, switching bodies and killing it's former host in a bloody way. That would at least explain how Jack managed to sneak into places, nobody suspects a child. Why the 10 year pauses? Why switch to killing old people? Why the old man? Why the Violet Lady? How did they know we were coming here to set up the trap with the wasps?"
She freezes, and spins to glare at Vera. "Nobody redacts all copies of anything in a government, someone may need it eventually. Where is the most secure records room in the district?"
Worryingly, given how easy it was to gain access into the archives, Vera is fairly sure that the Office of the Watch maintains no other secure storage...
Elliomander examines the heavily redacted report. Paying close attention to the ink it was written with, and that used for the redaction, he attempts to determine if there is any possible alchemical means by which he could reveal the obscured writing.
"That's a good idea, Amelia," he answers, "anyone know where those records would be?"
Elliomander's examination of the redacted statement reveals that the redaction was little more than simple blocking with ink brushes... and that the indentation to the parchment caused by the original handwriting is almost certainly preserved beneath the redaction. By the brushing of fine aluminium or silver powder across the statement, it is probable that the entire text could be restored...
"Anyone have any silver dust?" Elliomander asks, "I think I may be able to reveal the redacted information..."
I have a file in my gunsmithing kit... I suppose worst case scenario I could file down a silver piece, though I'm not sure that's legal...
"Not to mention this feelin' we got. Bein' watched by eyes unseen, followed by footfalls unheard. Whatever that thing is, it's clearly spyin' on us. That's how someone knew we'd be here. That, or Constable Jones runs faster'n the wind."
"Ya listenin' now, ya son of a b~!#&!?" Gar bellows at the silent bookcases. "Get an earfull? Cuz we're comin' for ya, and you'll need all the help ya can get!" He lands sullenly in his seat, arms folded across his chest, glowering at the hornet nest.
Frill wasnt the best at figuring out filing down filigrees and such things. "Let's find an alchemist and get the necessary supplies. Mama can't figure out nothing to keep us here, especially if there is a baddie out there that might take another run at us. Let's get while the getting is good."
"I'm reasonably sure that all of the rekevant records would be in this very archive. Of course, given how easily we got access, someone else could have just as easily."
At Eliomander's discovery, Vera says, "I thought we might need to un-redact documents..."
She retrieves her alchemy kit from her haversack and produces a vial of silver powder.
Lilly giggles and pokes her head through Vera's pack. "What else got in here?" She asks, then jerks her head out, and looks at Vera oddly. "Woah... strange bag..."
With the silver powder, and some fixative solution, Vera works the documents for a good fifteen minutes or so... until, beneath the warm light of a lantern, Muncy's original words sparkle through the heavy redaction...
MATERIAL WITNESS STATEMENT
I returned home to my flat at 34, Portmuth Building in Theatre Town at approximately 2000 hours on 3/8/97AR at the end of my patrol beat. I observed my wife sprawled in a rocking chair in the living room. She was covered with blood and her neck was twisted to the side, clearly by the application of great brute force. She was dead when I checked for breathing and her limbs were already cold. The blood was tacky and drying.
On her chest lay our infant daughter, Adelaide. Adelaide had been stabbed 14 times. Most were superficial, inexpert cuts, but three of them went deep and hit veins. She was also dead from blood loss and already cold when I checked. The kitchen knife that killed her was still clutched in Rebecca’s hand which was beginning to stiffen with rigor. After calling for the Watch I examined the bodies and found no signs of stab wounds or cuts to Rebecca. All of the blood was apparently Adelaide’s as if the baby had been stabbed many times while my wife was holding her.
Adelaide’s fingers were locked on my wife’s neck around the windpipe area and were still clenched depressing the windpipe by at least two inches and apparently causing the twisting motion that caused the neck fracture. Rebecca likewise had many scrapes and bruises left by child size hands. I can only conclude that a fight occurred between Rebecca and our baby that resulted in Rebecca stabbing Adelaide repeatedly. In the process a tiny baby, not even a year old, managed to strangle and snap the neck of my wife.
This entire tragedy is WRONG!!!!! I don’t know what happened here, but I will NOT have my wife and child accused of murdering each other. Rebecca was a wonderful wife and mother. Adelaide was the perfect baby girl. This case needs to be closed NOW. Call it a murder-suicide if you must but make it clear that Rebecca was not in her right mind. She was depressed and had to be on the verge of a breakdown. That has to be what happened. Nothing else makes sense.
Signed 'Muncy, Hogan (Con)'
Garvid swallows thickly, face rawboned and pale, as Elliomander unveils the true words of the document.
"Well that's, that's just..." His thought lies, unfulfilled, no proper words coming to mind. Sometimes the truth was more than a man bargained for.
He nervously taps the fingers of his gauntlet on the table for a moment, clearly trying to make some sense of what he's seen and heard. "We know there's necromancy at work here. We saw them bloody dogs, and we're bein' stalked by some kind o'...spirit or somethin'. I don't wanna say this has anything t'do with Bloody J--...that man. But Amelia's theory is makin' more and more sense."
"And we know someone or somethin' is behind them street muggers and this hornet nest. And we have that name on the sign-in list. But that's almost too easy. If a man wanted to cover his tracks, why'd he spell his name clear'n bold on a paper like that. It leads right too 'em. Unless a man figures his name'll protect him, scare off the crows that might come peckin'. Either way, it's a lead."