Thraag sees the giant ooze and decides that this is a problem. Through his shaken state he calls upon his inner powers and sends a bolt of fire at the black blob.
”Good heavens!“ Mouth agape, Grimes stumbles backwards, moving away from the strange form rising from the tub.
”Quite right, Hannah dear. Running sounds like great plan.“
And she doesn’t have to ask twice. Grimes is already speeding his pace and fleeing the room.
Fleeing eastward, the party found another long hallway. This one, though, was collapsed at the north end, the roof and walls fallen in long ago. The door at the south end of the hall stood ajar, wedged open by a ledger that tumbled to the ground from within the room.
Looking through the doorway, the office beyond contained a low table and several dozen ledgers on shelves lining the walls.
A steep staircase on the southern wall ascended up to the second floor.
Thraag will enter and begin looking at the ledgers to see if they are labeled.
Thraag found the writing, both on the spines and on the page, to be utterly indecipherable.
Heading up the stairs, the group found a tidy office with sparse but tasteful decorations. Framed paintings of landscapes hang on the walls, including a many-spired city with marble walls and brass gates; a windswept waste beneath a distant, ominous mountain; and a gloomy port city constructed primarily of basalt.
paintings of landscapes from the Dreamlands hang on the walls, including a many-spired city with marble walls and brass gates (the city of Celephais); a windswept waste beneath a distant, ominous mountain (the Plateau of Leng); and a gloomy port city constructed primarily of
basalt (the city of Dylath-Leen).
While the decorations were nice, of more immediate interest was the man sitting behind the desk in tattered yellow robes bent over one of the ledgers from the office below.
"Yeah...this looks like it was done by a child." Thraag says and then shakes his head and moves on.
To Reine, the ledgers would likely have been illegible regardless. She didn't really understand the intricacies of that magic called "keeping books."
So she simply headed up the stairs with the others.
...Where she saw he man in yellow robes. Her expression went icy.
"Stand up, slowly," She said to the man, her voice sharp as a knife. "Keep your hands where we can see them, and tell us why we shouldn't end you out of hand."
The man behind the desk looks up suddenly at Reine's threat. He stands up slowly as bidden, hands raised, looking confused. "I apologize but have we met before? No, we must have or you would not have addressed me so. I see. It must have not ended well, I surmise." To everyone's surprise the man's face was familiar. It was Hasertown Lowls himself!
"Fortuitously, I have no memory of you or why I should be in any way disagreeable so I would be quite happy to assist you in any way I can. What is it you are searching for in this remote desert outpost?"
"Yeah...this looks like it was done by a child."
"It certainly looks like that. But no... There is logic in that apparent madness. The bookkeeper knew what he was trying to write." Grimes points at the scribbles on the ledger. "But all the letters and numbers are twisted, as is the hand that wrote them was cursed."
--
In the office, the inspector first notices the paintings. And he was about to call out the one portraying the many-spired city of Celephais, when he hears Reine's voice getting colder.
He turns to look, and his eyes go wide. "By the God! Count Lowls!" Hastily, he reaches for his gun. Once he finally has it pointed at the sought-after criminal, he deepens his voice: "Count Hasertown Lowls! I am placing you under arrest on suspicion of larceny, incitement to assault and murder, and trafficking of stolen property!"
Hannah was surprised by the reactions of her friends. "This doesn't feel right," she said, mainly to herself. It was... too easy. Count Lowls was right here, in the ruined caravanserai, the whole time? She shook her head, and tried to see if there was something else going on. "Remember, we are dreaming..."
Thraag has no clue if this is who they are pursuing, so he looks around expecting something strange to happen.
He turns to look, and his eyes go wide. "By the God! Count Lowls!" Hastily, he reaches for his gun. Once he finally has it pointed at the sought-after criminal, he deepens his voice: "Count Hasertown Lowls! I am placing you under arrest on suspicion of larceny, incitement to assault and murder, and trafficking of stolen property!"
Instead of raising his hands the man scowled at Grimes, though he did back away from the desk. "Under arrest? Me? By what authority!? Are you a Royal Accuser? I demand you produce a writ from the Prince or put that weapon away!"
Hannah was surprised by the reactions of her friends. "This doesn't feel right," she said, mainly to herself. It was... too easy. Count Lowls was right here, in the ruined caravanserai, the whole time? She shook her head, and tried to see if there was something else going on. "Remember, we are dreaming..."
The Count and the office didn't disappear but Hannah could have sworn everything wavered for the briefest second when she reminded herself and everyone else that they were in a dream. Perhaps mentioning it risked waking up. Or turning it into something worse, like the shopkeeper or the thing in the baths.
"He's a noble," Reine said to Grimes, "they don't do 'under arrest.' They send people to arrest other people." She smiled, and it was sharp enough to cut silk.
"That's OK though, Milord, we don't need to be bothered by legal niceties, do we? Why would we, if one can simply make people disappear?"
She did not move. She did not threaten. Her voice was music itself. And yet, any being with a modicum of intelligence or self-preservation could understand the danger she represented.
"Why would you not remember me?"
The Count turned his scowl on Reine, who was far and away a better scowl-er than this man could ever hope to be. He half dropped his hands as he refocused his attention away from the constable. "Well, if you must. I am a shard of the Count's demiconsciousness. I have... most of the memories of the man you want," he glanced at Grimes, "to 'arrest' but I am an independent entity. And while I recognize that I should know you, I do not possess the specific memories in which you reside in the Count's mind."
"But you are his helper, yes?" Count Lowls's dream duplicate looked back at Reine. "You work for the Count?" He gestured vaguely at his own head. "I have impressions that you are a loyal servant, one who can be trusted with complex, independent tasks."
Hannah frowned. She wasn't surprised that this wasn't Lowls himself, but an... echo, for lack of a better term. "Do you know where he is? We heard he was entering the Dreamlands for... something. Or do you know how to reach him?" She wasn't very confident the echo would be able to help them, but it was worth asking... right?
"I-" Reine had been about to answer the dreamshard being, when Hannah spoke up. So Reine waited a beat for the priestess to finish her questions. Then she chimed in.
"He has definitely sent me off on at least one journey he didn't expect to need to supervise," Reine said, "and now I'm back. I'm good at what I do, and finding the count is what needs doing right now. I suspect - no, I know he is in mortal danger."
Every word of that was true. The fact that Reine, herself, was intending to be the source of that mortal danger didn't make the statement any less factual.
"So as the lady said, can you help us?"
"A shard of demiconsciousness..?" There is a bit of disappointment in Grimes voice. Is a shard of demiconsciousness responsible of the crimes of the original? A rather complicated case of law and justice. Nevertheless, the detective lowers his gun.
"How, and why, did that happen? This sharding of consciousness... And if you have the memories of the man, perhaps you could enlighten us what he wanted with Reine and her companions."
And the others had already voiced the most important question: Where to find the real Count?
The Lowls-in-yellow nodded. “I have no current knowledge of the Count's activities. You see, I was deconstructed from a greater whole, but that process can be reversed with you." He gestured at Reine. "You are likewise deconstructed, I posit, and seek to be RE-constructed in the inverse of my experience. In short, you can retrace Lowls’s steps to regain your memories and your whole self."
"Now, I cannot recall all of those steps — that was ‘after my time,’ so to speak, but I know the outcome: Lowls spoke with an ominous yet perspicacious prophet called the Mad Poet. This Mad Poet — an apt appellation, I assure you — has unimaginable power here in the Dreamlands, but he is fickle. Approaching the Mad Poet without the proper collection of gifts provokes his ire; worse, he might have nothing to do with you. Lowls learned some great truths from the Mad Poet; some truths so mind-shattering that I came into being as a result." He frowned and shifted uncomfortably. "I, ah, deem it serendipitous that I do not know what these truths are."
"If you do seek out the Mad Poet, appropriate gifts for the Mad Poet are scattered throughout the Dreamlands. They are rare, esoteric, and never easily gained. Lowls identified six or seven of these gifts. I can recall writing them down on the flyleaf of Dichotomous Translations of Aklo Syntax, but cannot recall what they were." Lachen, having helped the professors back on the Sellen Starling study the Count's tomes, recognizes the name of one of the books in the stacks of esoteric manuscripts.
"Lowls painstakingly scoured his tomes to research each gift, learning where to find it in the Dreamlands and then dreaming of that location. I recommend you do likewise."
"Some of the gifts required trickery or guile to obtain; others, delicate negotiation or brute force. I do not know the minimum number of gifts the Mad Poet will accept, but Lowls acquired all the gifts on his list. If you want to make do with fewer gifts, or if you have some problem acquiring them all, the Mad Poet might condescend to converse with you anyway. That’s up to you."
"Once you acquire sufficient gifts, return here. I will escort you to the Mad Poet’s oasis, and you can petition him for the answers you seek."
“... but that process can be reversed with you... you can retrace Lowls’s steps to regain your memories and your whole self.'"
Outwardly, Reine made no motion, spoke no sound. Internally, she was rocked to her core.
"Regain your memories."
Did she even really want them any more?
"Your whole self."
What had been lost, with those memories? Who - what - had she been before? Would regaining that change who she was now?
What if she liked who she was now?
What if she didn't?
In any case, she had to know, didn't she?
And, the rage within her insisted, Lowls had to pay for what he had done to her. For putting her through this. For... "deconstructing" her - and the others - like this.
If going through the potential pain of "re-construction" was the cost to make that happen, well, she would just have to pay it, wouldn't she?
"We'll do it."
Reine's voice was harsh. A far cry from the liquid music it normally was, as though someone had dragged a sawblade across strings drawn so tight they'd have snapped at a feather's touch.
"We'll get your damned gifts, and we'll go see this madman of yours. We'll do it."
This man is giving me quite the headache.. It's Lowl but without being the real Lowl, we thought we were here to kill him and now he send us on a quest for books and stuff to a Mad Poet... Dreamlands can be quite a nightmare. I should have gone drunk instead.
Lachen massages his brow
"Follow the footsteps of a madman, and you just might go mad," Hannah furrowed her brow, but she nodded to Reine. She, also, wasn't sure if she wanted to "become whole" again. Sarenrae had gifted her with wonderful powers. Would she lose them?
"Lord Byron?" Grimes' blurts out the first poet of the mad disposition that comes to his mind. But Lowls shard clearly put capital M and P to the mad poet, so the poet in question must be very mad indeed.
"Does the Mad Poet have a name, perchance? Who knows I'd come across him. London's socialites are full of eccentric fellows, many of them self-claimed poets."
Then, turning to the others. "Sounds like we must put the Dreamwalking into a hiatus for a while, and get started with some books. Do you happen to know this Dichotomous Translations of Aklo Syntax he speaks of?"
"If this Lowls is shattered, do you still need to find him?" Thraag asks as he looks at the others.
"Do you not know it? He is the Mad Poet, Abdul Alhazred, the man who penned the Kitab Al-Azif, the immortal seeker after secret knowledge." Grimes has, in fact, heard the name before. Has has also heard of the Kitab Al-Azif, the original Arabic name for the Necronomicon.
Lachen is familiar with the Dichotomous Translations of Aklo Syntax, one of the books he had studied with the professors back on the boat.
"Well, I suppose we have work to do," Hannah commented. "About time to wake up, you think?"
"I am ready, assuming we cannot just dream ourselves to one of these other locations now. Also, how will we continue to work with Grimes if he is not with us on Golarion to make plans with?" Thraag asks.
"Oh,that fellow? Now I understand the nickname." Yes, definitely a capital "M" in that "Mad".
Grimes rubs his chin in thought.
"How did you get here from your Golarion? Perhaps I could follow back there in your footsteps?"
"We dreamt our way here. Much like we will dream our way to these items." Hannah explained. She furrowed her brow in thought, "I am not certain we can bring you back with us; you will likely end up going back to where you are sleeping."