The ratling, who you now see is a female, responds to Mashiki's words in Aklo. To anyone who doesn't understand Aklo, it is a hideous language, guttural but with strange pitch changes and obscure sounds, entirely alien.
"I have no idea what's going on. We live in warrens deep in the rocks below this place, in tunnels too small for the big folk to traverse. But the earthquake collapsed some of the tunnels, leaving us cut off in the upper areas from our kin below. We came up here to scavenge a bit. Oh, please don't cut off my tails! I have two, you see, that's why they call me Genny Two-Tails."
At the end of the creature's speech, she gestures towards her hind end, pointing at a pair of wormlike tails, with a bit of a grin as if she is very proud of them.
Broom frowns in frustration as she shakes her hand, shedding a small cloud of purple sparks as the spell is dismissed.
Remembering that not everyone could understand the language, Broom huffs a bit, feeling a little bad for what happened despite the fact that the ratlings had started the fight and threatened to eat them.
"This little ratling's name is Genny Two Tails. She says that they were driven up here when the earthquake collapsed the tunnels in their warren down below and cut them off from their home. She doesn't know anything about what is going on here." Broom said, taking the ratling at its word.
Broom sat down on the edge of the book case, looking down on the library as the ratlings had been doing moments before. "You don't suppose there would be anything in here that would help us figure out what was happening, do you?" she asks, looking at Pouch.
"Well, we have no idea unless we look. Although we may want to check out why that door on the other side is stuck, too." Pouch seems somehow at home in the library, well, now that the ratlings aren't a problem anyway.
"Do you think they keep patient records in the library?"
Pouch shakes his head. "I seriously doubt it. But there might be some books that talk about the history of this building and the land underneath it. Perhaps there's a clue there." There might also be some interesting spell books. I should have a look just in case.
"Do you know what are in these books to make them so precious to you, little one? Do they have knowledge of the strange mists or monsters wandering these damned halls? Help us and we will not pursue you or your kin."
"We like all books. You never know what secrets you might learn. Also we just absolutely love scrolls, and we were looking for some here. But we haven't found any. I don't know much about these damned halls, as you call them. Seems like a creepy place in general though, I like it."
Briarstone’s library boasts an impressive collection of texts covering advanced psychological theories and treatments, common medical practices, and matters of regional record. Many of the books seem to be copies of texts held at Rozenport’s Sincomakti School of Sciences; some have even been pilfered from that collection and bear the university’s stamp within their covers. Regardless of the tomes’ pedigree, almost any matter relating to medicine, psychology, and Briarstone or Versex history can be researched here.
There don't seem to be any patient records here.
Broom simultaneously felt revulsion at Genny's rattiness and sorry for killing Genny's companions now that it was revealed that they were just up here looking through the books. But the ratlings were the ones that attacked first and they did threaten to eat them, but considering what was going on attacking first wasn't completely unreasonable and the part about eating might have just been bluster.
She climbs down from the bookcase "Uh, should we take Genny with us? We mean, it seems like this was just a misunderstanding and she is all alone now because of us. Maybe she can help us and we can help her get home? Though, We don't know how she would feel about joining the people that just ummm... killed her companions?"
Harrow nodded at Genny's words.
Harrow then stands and, patting the ratling on the head, leaves her be. "I see no reason to stay unless we have something worth researching." He says to the others in Common as he slides down the ladder to the floor. He picks a random book and makes a show of flipping through the pages before setting it back on the shelf. "Don't we have more pressing matters to attend to, besides?"
Looking up at Broom, Harrow talks in Aklo.
"How is it that everyone seems to speak rat except me?" Cage asks.
Genny continues to chitter away in Aklo.
"Well, if its all the same to you guys, I'll stay here in the library for now. If you need any help later, I owe you for sparing my life. I'm good at finding books."
The doors to the north, out the opposite side of the library from where the group came in, are jammed, but no serious effort has been made to unjam them or break them down.
"Don't worry, I have no idea what they're saying either."
Miniel puts away her bow, still confused, and looks around to locate the arrows she'd expended in the fight, finding only one that is still usable.
Pouch pats Cage on the shoulder. "If it makes you feel better, I don't speak rat either. Perhaps you could lend your shoulder to that door on the other side."
Laura shrugs distractedly and shakes her head to indicate she can't understand the talk either. She sits down and begins taking deep breaths, wincing slightly as if she is ignoring the pain in her abdomen.
When she realizes the doors are jammed, she lifts herself up again and plods over to assist with the efforts to open them.
"Don't bother picking up any of my arrows. Those little rat wizards cursed them."
Broom starts putting books back on the shelf and picking up bundles of papers, straightening them into tidy stacks and placing them on the table, square with the edges. She makes no effort to sort them in any order, the fact that they are simply stacked neatly satisfies her.
As she straightens up the place she strains to reach an upper shelf to replace a book. As she does so, a sudden thought flashes through her mind and almost unbidden a word she had never heard of before escapes her lips accompanied by an almost reflexive gesture. With that, the book float up out of her hand the last few inches and inserts itself into its space.
Broom's eyes go wide as she gives a little gasp of surprise and excitement. Glancing to see if the others have the door open yet, she begins putting books on the top shelf with delight at her new ability. After a little playing around she finds that it isn't very strong, there are tomes that are too heavy for her to lift with it, but it is quite dexterous.
"This is going to make cleaning cobwebs from the rafters and dusting high shelves so much easier!"
Laura and John manage to shoulder the northern door open to reveal an L-shaped hall that runs from a collapsed space in the west to a small waiting area to the north. Some of the doors in the this wing are closed, but it appears that some of the doors are open or ajar.
You notice mucus-like smears on the tile floor.
The antiseptic-smelling smears form a trail that runs between several of the doors, all but one of which are open or slightly ajar.
Next to the door at the end of the hall is a large nameplate that reads "Administrator Eliege Losandro."
Panting a bit from the effort, Laura/Rope scans the area on the other side of the door for danger.
She raises her arm to block others from racing forward, pointing at the floor. "Uck, some kind of slime on the floor. Watch out." She sniffs. "Maybe a creature moving from door to door, that's its trail."
"That is just a lovely aroma," Harrow grins, once again breathing deeply. "I don't know why, but this smells of home to me."
"Please stop that."
With the door opened, Broom moves over and takes a peek down the hall:
"That's an odd, We feel like We have smelled that odour efore, but We don't know where. Oh! One moment!"
Broom takes a small scrap of paper and evokes her new found ability. She tries to keep a straight face, but can't hold back her grin of delight as she uses the invisible magic hand to send the scrap of paper sailing over to the slime trail, collects a sample on the scrap and brings it back.
She beams as she holds out the goopy scrap, now suspended just above her hands by the magic, to Pouch for closer inspection. "Just in case it is dangerous, now we can look without going into the hall"
As she does so, she notices the little bite marks on her arms from the swarm of rats, each one a little smear of black.
"Oh, oh umm..." she stammers as she covers her arms back up and looks a little uncomfortable "Would someone be able to mend Us please?"
"Ah, yes. Sure, I think I can do that." Miniel grasps her holy symbol and lets positive energy flow through her touch, mostly fixing up Broom's cuts.
Laura looks at the elf casting healing spells and expressively raises her eyebrows.
"You too? Oh, fine, but it'll drain all my power for the day."
Pouch examines the goo to see if he can tell anything about it.
+
"Hmm... eww. It looks like whatever it is must have gone into one of those rooms with the door closed. Perhaps we should leave those closed for the moment and check out the administrator's room."
Laura/Rope bows in gratitude for the healing, hefting her axe again and standing in front of Miniel protectively.
Xander is fairly certain that the slime is a mix of preserving fluids (possibly formaldehyde), biological mucus consistent with tissues or organs stored in such liquid, and traces of ectoplasm.
Deciding to investigate the strange goo trails later, the group moves down and John cautiously opens the door to Administrator Losandro's office.
Yellow fog soundlessly roils against the cathedral-like windows of this opulent, two-story office. The ground floor features overstuffed furnishings, elegant side tables, and an altarlike desk of dark marble. A delicate spiral staircase and balcony of dark iron rises to a lofty library overhead. Both floors' fixtures frame the lake of blood spread across the room's center.
At the room's center, Doctor Eliege Losandro kneels in the pool of blood, her back straight, her mouth gaping at the ceiling. From her soundlessly screaming mouth an unsteady torrent of purple mist spurts like a fountain of gritty sludge, rising up into the air like smoke to gather near the ceiling in a strange cloud.
"Maybe there are patient records here, but let's not disturb the doctor's body. Nothing good will come from that."
Laura stares at the transfixed doctor suspiciously, keeping herself interposed between her body and the others. She looks up at the cloud with narrowed eyes, echoing the ranger's sentiment in her expression.
Broom's eyes go wide at the sight of the doctor. As Cage speaks she asks
"Her body? How do you know she is dead? If she is still alive, we should help her. Since she is a doctor, she tried helping people get better, and now that she is the one in need of help it doesn't seem right to just abandon her. But..." she trailed off for a moment, looking at the purple mist and then back down at the blood "What happened to her?"
"What is that?!" Miniel is perplexed by the sight of the doctor.
Pouch does not hold any of Broom's optimism about this woman being alive. "I... I have never seen ANYTHING like that. I don't know that anyone has."
+ (is that something I can aid Miniel with? Or vice versa?)
Harrow says nothing, waiting at the room's threshold for something to go horribly wrong.
Do you think that purple thing is something insider her like Harrow has?" she says before calling out in aklo
"I think we should leave her alone."
Laura winces and clutches her belly, as if she has felt a kicking. Her distended stomach writhes visibly and she begins taking deeper, anxious breaths. She looks around for somewhere safer to go, and shakes her head stubbornly when she doesn't see anywhere better. "We better do something soon," she pants, "or whatever was in the hallway might find its way in here after us."
Oneirogens were once normal mortals who suffered a rare but terrible curse. Within them lies a sliver-sized tear between planes, a crack hardly larger than a pinprick that destroys everything they once were in an endless deluge of planar power. Created by magical mistakes and otherworldly conjunctions, oneirogens wander in a haze as living husks whose grip on any reality has been erased. What little remains of their minds is bent on self-preservation, even as they are locked at the center of storms of strange powers endlessly streaming from their mouths and nostrils. The death of their personalities might be a mercy, but what lingers on are primal beings, slaves of uncontrolled planar might.
While the portal trapped within an oneirogen might connect to any plane of existence, it most commonly provides a path to the Dimension of Dreams. As mortal minds already drift toward that realm, breaches between the waking and unconscious worlds might occur when potent magics attempt to tamper with the boundaries of dream. Some rare, unsettling reports tell of groups of oneirogens collecting in a single place, flooding the surrounding area with planar energies. The effects of such energies on the world surrounding them are unpredictable and usually deadly to native inhabitants.
Oneirogens might arise from any humanoid race, but always appear as mysterious figures cloaked in a strange haze or fog. These creatures rarely live for long, as their bodies swiftly wither from exposure to planar energies, and most lack enough sense of self to bother with eating or other basic needs. Only if protected and tended will an oneirogen live for more than a week.
The woman does not respond to Mashiki's call. The purple mist swirls and eddies on unseen currents, threatening to obscure the woman at its center from the party's sight.
Cage circles around the fog-spewing doctor to the marble desk and searches it.
The marble desk, like the rest of the office furniture, looks very expensive. The craftsmanship is exquisite and every detail down to the smallest carving and fitting is perfect. There are several drawers, filled with mundane writing supplies, files and papers and the kind of small personal items someone tends to accrue in their desk- things of no interest to Cage and the party.
There is one locked drawer, though.
"Locked drawer..." Cage tells the others.
"Lemme try to jimmie it."
Conferring with the elf, Pouch says, "We think it's an Oneirogen. I don't know that I've ever seen one before... I certainly don't recall it anyway. Seems like it would stand out." He scratches his chin thoughtfully. "As best as I can discern, the good doctor is effectively dead, a husk possessed by dimensional energy. Ending her suffering might well be a mercy."
Intrigued by the locked drawer, he wanders over to help Cage, keeping his distance from the swirling mists.
Cage isn't able to unlock the drawer but when he gives Pouch a chance to try the half-orc is able to get it open.
The locked drawer contains a trove of valuable items, including a magnifying glass, a vial of smelling salts, 4 doses of antitoxin, 2 doses of opium, 2 vials of a crystalline powder, 2 vials of sweet and wholesome-tasting blue liquid, 3 scrolls, a candle crafted of ectoplasm and wax, a small tin filled with sweet-scented incense, a talisman inscribed with the arcane names of the four winds on a thin silver chain, a talisman invoking the help of renowned healers and healing spirits on a braided leather cord, and a talisman bearing legendary warriors' names and symbols of power and martial prowess on a heavy steel chain.
In addition to the minor fortune in medicines and useful equipment, the drawer contains the Administrator's personal journal. While it is largely mundane, filled with research ideas, patient observations, and notes from staff meetings and interviews with patients' families, an observant reader notices that over the last year the names Haserton Lowls and Count Lowls- the man Winter Klacza said she was was sent here to investigate- appear with increasing frequency. The last page, in particular, is of interest to the group.
In addition to the desk, there are several bookshelves and other small tables scattered around the room. They could all probably be reached without getting too close to the pool of blood or the swirling mist, if one was careful about where they stepped.
Miniel nods at Pouch's statement, though she has a bit more speculation: "We don't know how long she's been like this, though. If it's been a while, someone - or something - is keeping her...it...alive. That may be the source of those trails we saw outside."
She adds under her breath: "...and...the planar rift...may be the cause of this nightmare that we're in right now."
Xander takes out the scrolls and examines them (with read magic). He'll cast a detect magic as well to identify any other magical signatures in the room.
Cage reads the last page of the journal and asks the others:
"Hey, you guys don't think we're the amnesiacs that this lady is talking about in here do you? Does the name 'Count Lowls' ring any bells for any of you?"
Broom stood there staring at the woman in the centre of the room for some time, oblivious to what was going on around her. The purple mist rising from the woman's mouth and collecting at the ceiling entranced her for some reason. As she watched the mist she felt uneasy. She wasn't able to quite say why, but part of her felt the mist was changing things and another part of her intuitively knew the mist was changing things. Or was it just some kind of delusion?
Her brow furrowed and she cocked her head for a moment, blinking a few times as she suddenly felt different. She looked around the room at her companions with a look of mild confusion. Did they look different? "Did anyone else see or feel that? Something's different, We feel different but We don't know why."
She looked about the room again "Everything looks the same, but it doesn't feel the same". She continued to look about the room, trying to find something concrete which would confirm or disprove her feeling. Finding nothing she shook her head "Sorry, We just feel strange around the purple mist."
She edged closer to Pouch and stood close to him while occasionally glancing at the mist with concern.
With the short respite while they are investigating the drawer, Laura ("Rope") manages to get her breathing under control. Sucking on her cheeks, she rejoins the others, trying to appear like nothing is the matter. The large violet scar that is visible on her belly has widened slightly, and a pair of tiny human eyes can be seen watching within.
She shakes her head at Cage's question. She doesn't seem to recognize the name Count Lowls.
"Never heard the name before either."
"Of course, AS amnesiacs, we might not recognize the name at all, even if we should. Yet it seems likely we would be the ones spoken of. How many amnesiacs could there be?" He cocks his head and scratches his chin. "Unless there was some sort of outside force... or chemical... something that is actively removing memories."
Xander spends some time examining the scrolls and items from the drawer and is able to identify the blue liquid as soothe syrup and the crystalline powder as alchemist's kindness. The purpose of the candle, though, eludes him.
He reads the scrolls and finds a pair of useful spells: one holds fox's cunning and two have remove paralysis.
With his eyes attuned to magical signatures, Xander sees that the incense and talismans are all magical as well.
While Xander examines the contents of the drawers, Cage pokes around on the shelves, looking for anything of interest.
"Rope" stares at the administrator while everyone searches around her. "She is still alive," she says hesitantly with a hint of wonder. She looks down at her axe and back at the administrator. Then she looks to her colleagues who have ranged weapons and gestures with her head, taking up a position ready to charge if the mist-shrouded body does anything.