Elvik finds himself in a very dusty, but otherwise uninteresting place; between the floor of the attic and the ceiling of the museum rooms below. His sense of direction puts him straight above the room with the mounted animals. The ceiling holds for now, but it's clear that it was not really meant for holding any weight.
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Dusklord looks over the side of the collapsed floor without much sympathy.
"Someone be a dear and lower a rope to the poor fellow," he says absentmindedly, as if doing so himself is not a consideration. "And do take greater care next time...this will make it much more difficult for the rest of us to traverse."
With his unhelpful comments said, the wizard looks into the room again to see if there is anything of interest.
Stephani has no trouble pulling Elvik up, if he'd be inclined to take the rope. Dusklord doesn't find anything else of interest in the attic. Indeed, the wooden walkway seemed like it failed due to old age and rot, not from deliberate sabotage.
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Strange, organic-looking patterns wind across the walls and ceiling of this chamber, and the stone walls look as though they had grown winding tendrils that enshroud the area. At the chamber’s center stands a massive, rust-covered device of gears and arms about fifteen feet across. The end of each arm supports a different colored sphere. Strange projections and barbed arrows point through each of the globes, their directions seemingly random. Opposite from the chamber’s entrance, a naked and clearly dead body is impaled by a rust-red arrow. The corpse faces a gray, wooden door, which stands ajar.
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Dusklord enters the room, but is too fascinated by the corpse to pay much attention to the device.
"Death lurks here...from the machine, or from the next room is not clear. Can we tell which direction the arrow came from, I wonder?" the wizard asks.
He then casts detect magic and studies the machine.
As soon as the first few of you enter the octagonal chamber, a strange vibration takes hold of the room. The light you’ve brought seems to bend and waves as a dark presence manifests itself. A horrific vision invades your mind. In the vision, a withered humanoid figure with an elongated, pointed tongue bursts forth from the gray door and grabs the then-living Anumet, subsequently tearing him apart with its jagged claws and teeth. As the terrifying vision fades, the monster hisses, "The gate shall soon open!"
The wounds on Anumet’s wounds begin to sizzle and turn green, and you realize that this is not part of the vision. They are about to burst forth.
1st - Dusklord, Serak, Starling, Aeleth (both surprised)
2nd - Haunt
3rd - Elvik, Stephani (both surprised)
As Dusklord decides that discretion is the better part of valor, Serak reaches for a bottle of holy water to deal with this presence. He's not quick enough, though, and the wounds on Anumet burst open in a spray of acid at Stephani, who had walked over to examine the corpse. She's not quick enough to avoid the spray of acid, and it starts eating at her flesh and clothing.
Once the wounds on the corpse have burst, the haunting presence in the room fades as quickly as it emerged. The vibration stops, the light shines as brightly as it used to, and all is peaceful.
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Starling moves into the room just as Stephani screams in pain, watching the acid burn her skin. She is horrified for a moment but comes back to her senses and helps Stephani scrape off as much of the acid as possible without touching it herself.
When everything calms down again, she comments to the others in a concerned voice, "That was... creepy."
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Dusklord cautiously enters the room again, and takes a notepad from his belt pouch and starts scribbling some notes.
"Fascinating," he mutters. "Undeath in its most nebulous form...a psyche that is not at rest, but yet does not possess a form it can maintain indefinitely. This bears additional study."
After he finishes his notes, he says "Well, someone see what is in the next room. One of you brawny types will do splendidly."
Stephani finds that the body of their colleague Anumet is, unfortunately, really dead. He has horrifying wounds that could not possibly have been caused by the machine itself. Something has feasted upon the corpse, devouring much of its skin and cracking the skull open to devour its contents. Anumet’s clothing and effects are nowhere to be seen. There is a lingering evil here, probably belonging to the haunt. Dusklord does not find any magical auras. He does note that it's unknown when the haunt might manifest again. It could be a matter of minutes, hours, or days.
--
When you peek around the door to the west, you see scattered scraps of parchment and torn bindings cover the floor of this small chamber. Scratched glyphs cover its stone walls and even span part of the ceiling. A foul reek hangs in the air, like the stench of something long dead. There is writing all over the walls of the room.
Stephani does not find any evil presences, save the slumbering aura of the haunt, concentrated around the body of Anumet.
Dusklord manages to learn the following:
The scrawled writing in the cell was written by a creature called the Devourer of Reason. Is was sent to Ralzeros the Overwatched to aid him in learning the secrets of the Dark Tapestry. However, following an unfortunate incident involved one of Ralzeros's assistants, the wizard locked the creature in this room. The writing starts out mostly coherent, detailing those events and how undeserved the Devourer of Reason considers his imprisonment. Eventually, the writing becomes ever more mad, as the years must have eaten away at the sanity of the ghoul locked within. Because of that, it's difficult to make out anything from the later writing, beyond the burning desire of the author to take revenge on Ralzeros and unleash the horrors of the Dark Tapestry upon Golarion.
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"We are no longer looking for Anumet, but for this Devourer," Dusklord muses.
"He appears desirous of unleashing untold horrors upon this world, and though I am familiar with horrors, even I would not wish this kind upon us--err, rather we must do all we can to fight this injustice!"
Dusklord looks around, then says "There was one more doorway up here, was there not? We should check it before we leave."
The group of Pathfinders check the room next to the Ossuary, just to be sure. There are no footsteps leading up to this door, and the door creaks like it has not been opened in ages. Inside there are just a couple of boxes. Some of them contain shards of pottery, wrapped in cotton wool. Others contain scrolls that crumble when touched. None of the items within seem particularly noteworthy.
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Dusklord responds to Starling. "It is not this Devourer that concerns me. It appears to be some kind of ghoul that I am confident we can handle, and perhaps I could even command it. It is whatever it is attempting to unleash that concerns me," the wizard says.
Considering their other leads, he says "Might it be best to search the Forae Logos for the tome he was reading? Perhaps we can find another copy there."
Nigel is waiting for you when get back down the ladder, into the storage room. "Well?" he asks you. "What did you find? What kind of curse befell Anumet?" He seems to think of something when he says the words, and takes a small step away from you. "All of you are still all right, aren't you?" His look says that he's not so much concerned for your well-being, as that he'd hate to have to go to the Lodge again to report a mishap...
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Serak mumbles something in an unintelligible language , and looks at Nigel hungrily before speaking in common in a low, evil sounding voice.
Ive never been better, little human. I am, however... HUNGRY!
If Nigel looks at all panicked, Serak burst out laughing.
You should've seen the look on your face! BWA-HAHAHAHAHA!!
Nigel stumbles back a few steps at Serak's impression of a zombie, then gives a deadly stare when he realizes he's been pranked. "Fine," he bites at the gnome, see if I care. If you've seen enough up there, I'm going to lock up. No good can come of that attic, I tell you. Everything up there can rot..." He demonstratively takes away the ladder once you're all down.
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Following one of the few leads you have, you make your way to the Forae Logos. Forae Logos, also called the Wise House and the Library of Kortos, is the largest library in Absalom and
is known as the greatest source of written knowledge west of the Pit of Gormuz. The books, scrolls, parchments, tablets, and folios of Forae Logos officially belong to Absalom itself, and the Founding Law forbids the removal of a single page without the unanimous blessing of the high seats of the Grand Council. The Grand Council requires that every book brought into the city either be left with the scriveners of the Logos to be copied, or be taxed a silver per page. While enforcement of this rule is haphazard at best, over the eons the law has produced extensive copies of books, scrolls, and lore from around the world. The Forae Logos is considered neutral territory for arcane, religious, and scholarly debates. Such discussions are welcome here, but anything as much as a raised voice brings the Learned Guard directly down on the violators. In fact, the district guard is housed in buildings around Forae Logos, and their mandate requires them to protect it before the citizens of the district. They are also the only guard unit that requires literacy as a prerequisite for entrance, to ensure all their guards can properly appreciate the value of the words they protect. It is also home to the Scrivener’s Guild, which cares for the tomes of the vast library in return for free use of its building.
Upon entering you find your way to one of the members of the Scrivener's Guild, manning the information desk. He is an elderly fellow with a dour face. "Yeees...?"