Rhanloi will collect the magic items for study later. "Gag him, too. Some spells only require your voice...I will examine these items later when I have prepared better." Finally, Rhanloi will examine the book to see if it is a spellbook or a journal - or perhaps both.
There are two books on the desk. One of them seems to be a journal, though it is written in a language Rhanloi doesn't understand, one of jagged lines and angles, bereft of curves.
The other is a spellbook, written in carefully tidy text. Rhanloi will need read magic to understand it, though.
1st - chill touch, mage armor, magic missile, obscuring mist, ray of enfeeblement, cause fear, identify
2nd - acid arrow, blindness/deafness, command undead, mirror image, false life, ghoul touch
3rd - halt undead, stinking cloud, displacement, vampiric touch, gentle repose
Rhanloi tries to decipher the journal, and stores the spellbook for later study.
Pick tests the heft of the dagger and finds it satisfactory, but he does not claim it for himself. The elder will decide the apportioning of things. The wands, potions, keys, coin pouch, and all the rest of it get laid out on the desk for the drow-cousin and Hammer to look at.
Pick dutifully obeys by gagging the dead-waker as well, and then he sits down, and thinks about the oddness of what happened.
He heard the old female voice in his head, and then he.... did something strange. He touched the big man, and healed his wounds. Pick lifts his hands, square palms with stubby, strong fingers, and gazes at them in mystification. He is... a god-servant now? But that voice was not the Sleeper. What god would have him-- not Eye-medah, surely, or Dez-na, or any of the other top-side gods he has heard of...
This is concerning. Pick's brows knit together, and he watches Big Man move around the room as if the man might turn into a snake, or something. He cannot explain what he did, or how he did it. Only that the old voice he hears sounds... pleased.
Rhanloi concentrates on the magical auras of the items for several moments, trying to determine what they might hold...
There are two scrolls of animate dead, a potion of cure moderate wounds, a potion of gaseous form, a wand of gentle repose (17 charges), a wand of identify (15 charges) and a wand of false life (29 charges).
Unfortunately for Rhanloi, he simply doesn't understand the language that the book is written in. However, he does find a few images of the seven-pointed star drawn into the journal, and he recognizes the word for "Thassilon" referenced a few times in the book.
Khalbar stands beside trying to recover while Rhanloi examines the scrolls and books, and does this wonderful trick called "reading".
"Well, let's get our prisoners into cells so we can question them later...I'd like to take the journal to my friend in town - perhaps he can help decipher these strange runes."
Rhanloi will split the items with Flibble for now, knowing they will examine them more completely later back in the Rusty Dragon.
Pick jerks from his own brooding thoughts and nods. He might even smile, at the thought of locking up the man in one of the cells above. That seems.... proper, he thinks. Even and fitting. He starts dragging the bound dead-maker towards the stairs, not-too-gently.
Still feeling quite wounded, Khalbar sits on the stairs, binding his many wounds, while the others tend to the mess.
Khalbar is passed by Pick, when Pick returns downstairs. Pick stops, and gazes at Khalbar a moment, squinting. Then, he point at the spot where Pick had touched, earlier, in the heat of battle.
"Pick see?"
---
Pick tugs at Flibble's sleeve until he has the gnome's attention, then relievedly reverts to the silent tongue rather than try and explain things.
We should go through building and see if all the chained are head-broken or some prisoners without cause. Talk to them. By which he means, Flibble should talk to them.
The second floor is the only floor with other inmates, and there are only three. The first cell is occupied by a venerable old human man, still looking very healthy but obviously very advanced in age. Habe's files state him to be called Wald, a senile old man without a family. The second is a blind old man called Sedge. The third, who Habe's files reveal to be a wererat suffering from severe mania, is called Pidgit. All three jump to their feet and begin to holler and shout, banging on their doors, when Flibble and Pick enter the room.
Pick flinches at the sheer volume of the screaming madmen. So much noise. That alone would be proof of madness to him if not for his learning, over the past year, that all top-siders can be just as noisy.
He no longer thinks the Sleeper is going to wake at any little scream, now. A year of being on edge has slowly taught him that the Sleeper must sleep very deeply indeed.
The noise is still unpleasant, though.
"Be still," Pick grunts to the first man, the healthy one. "Silent. Quiet. Still!"
The shrieking no doubt intensifies. Pick puts both hands over his ears with a silent growl.
Rhanloi watches from the back, and muffles a snort of laughter at Flibble's prank on Pick.
Pick feebly tries to quell the noises of the three inmates, and Flibble tries to play a prank on Pick, but neither work as the stubborn old men continue to shout, holler and laugh. The old man who Pick has approached roars out in a loud and scratchy voice, "When's dinnertime? MY BELLY'S A-RUMBLIN'!"
Oblivious to Flibble's prank, Pick glaaares at the man. Be.... silent, he thinks, fiercely, trying to bore it into him by willpower alone.
Instinctively- or guided by an impulse perhaps not entirely his own-- he reaches out and touches the man on his forehead.
Still reelilng from his serious wounds, Khalbar can't help but be a bit tickled by the antics of the two smaller members of the group.
Pick reaches through the bars of the man's cell and pokes him on the head. Not of his own willpower, noise stops coming from him. His mouth is still gesticulating wildly, but no sound is coming from him. He stops talking and looks at his hands in confusion.
The other inmates also stop talking. One of them murmurs "Huh? What? What happened?"
It only lasts for a handful of seconds-- six, to be precise-- but it's long enough for Pick to blink, and lift his hand, and look at it in some confusion.
He looks at the inmate. He looks at his hand. He looks at the inmate.
"...good. Now. You all are... mad in truth? You should be here?"
(One definition of insanity: asking that question of, well, madmen, and expecting a useful response.)
Pick turns a look on Flibble that says, wordlessly, I have no idea, and I'm sort of scared, before he looks back at the crazy man.
"Shush!" Rhanloi says as he raps the gnome lightly on the head. "Let Pick deal with the residents and not be bothered by your incessant questioning. Said the pot to the kettle..."
Pick grunts wordlessly. Would it be possible to silence the noisy one with his hands now? That would be a god-gift worth having. He squints sidelong at Flibble, considering this possibility to himself as he sees if the old madman has any sanity at all.
Khalbar's attention has wandered since the fighting ended. He actually takes a moment to grab a quick nap.
After a few minutes of fruitless attempts to communicate with the lunatics, Pick grumpily shuts the door on them again, so to speak, and scratches at his jaw beneath his ever-present false beard (the original wolf fur has long since rotted to nothing. Pick has a much better beard, these days, from an actual disguise kit).
He looks uncomfortable, and eyes the others a moment before reluctantly speaking. "Who... takes care of... mad, now?"
Useless ones like these lunatics would not be tolerated among the People. Perhaps if their ravings were sacred, if they saw the true shape of the world-- but that is not the case with the ones inside here. They are simply little broken heads. Among the People, they would be killed, so that their noises would not wake the Sleeper.
Pick is aware, now, that this is not how the top-siders do things. They have people who just... take care of them. A whole building for it. Except the care-taker has turned out to be a bad one, so... now who will mind them?
And as for god-bothering... Pick grunts. "Pick only doing job," he mutters.
With quite a lot to think about, he follows back downstairs, to see if Hammer has woken their prisoner yet.
As the others move upstairs to question the other prisoners, Kyra takes a few minutes to step outside, and gazes up at the moonlight, trying to make sense of the information that they had gathered so far.
'Too many teeth' was the one that had come up the most, both coming from the bodyguard and being mentioned in his file. Of course, mention of a knife fit that description, too, but that one made more sense. Of course he'd seen a knife with what had happened. But too many teeth? What could that possibly mean?
Feeling frustrated, Kyra walks over to a tree and punches it, but there's no strength to her hit, and she does little more than lean against it for a moment. It wasn't the sparring that had happened inside, she barely broke a sweat from that. She was just tired, overwhelmed with the sudden understanding that she actually knew very little about what was happening, even within her own kingdom.
Annoyed and determined to find someone to make pay for this revelation, she returns inside, grinning with malice to find the wizard's unconscious body where they had left it. She kicks him in the side, hoping to wake him up, and hoping even more that getting answers from him might require a little... persuasion.
She looks up to see Pick and the others descending the staircase. "Any luck upstairs? I was just trying to wake our new friend."
Pick makes a surly way downstairs, his mind spinning with all sorts of confusing thoughts brought on by The Noisy One's gibbering. He's just close enough behind Noisy to hear his amused words to Hammer; Pick's scowl deepens.
"Stupid words," he growls as he comes into the room. He throws a dirty look at Flibble, then a more respectful one at Hammer. He gets out his waterskin ... bare hands and starts holding the already-bound man, for Hammer to do as she wishes to wake him.
The wizard (apparently named Caizarlu) is slapped awake by Kyra easily enough. He lays on the floor, held by Pick by his collar. He coughs, a fleck of blood coming out. "What the f+!@. You come into a man's home, you assault him. I'm an old man! You don't have mercy for an old man?"
He tries to wipe his hands on his robe but realizes that he's bound. He sighs. "What do you want?"