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"Hard tellin' not knowin', but those bolt capital letters probably mean somethin'. Either way, if things don't go as planned I'm sure Valsin would appreciate the picture, even if he doesn't say so."
"We find any other odd stuff I missed? What's this strange language on the bottom of the note? Devil?"
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“I don’t think the stuff at the bottom is infernal, if that is what you mean. Looks more like some sort of code.” She scrunches up her brow a bit in puzzlement.
“As for the capitalized words, you’re probably right. As I said, she likes word play. Notice how it capitalizes King but not the name Favian? That isn’t a mistake.” Iovo replies.
“Vent, Lion, Scales, King, Centaur.”
Then she reads off the last normal line. “I can only hope his understudies will follow his capital performance.”
Pointing towards the vent in the room, she then asks “Shall we see where it goes?”
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"Infernal, devil speak, whatever you call it. More codes.. great. Maybe you need some lemon juice to reveal the invisible letters... sounds pretty Gnomish if you ask me." He grumbles in distaste, taking a few steps closer and bending down to take a look at this vent. Measuring just how large it is.
"Looks like the job for some little folk..." He turns to eye the elves and gnome with a comical smile.
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After a moment's study, you realize that the punctuation on the garbled sentence at the bottom of the note matches the punctuation of the first sentence, providing a key to the list found on the table, which has been encrypted with a simple letter substitution cypher.
Though the grating of the vent has been designed to be as unobtrusive as possible, it does seem large enough for even a stout dwarf to crawl through. Prying off the molded cover, you find a small valise containing a stash of 600 gold pieces, four opals, a fancy hat, a shiny ring, a pouch of dust, and a cloak, as well as official-looking documents establishing several different false identities for Zarta Dralneen.
This crammed vent leads to a series of old ventilation tunnels, 3 feet wide and 3 feet from floor to ceiling. The floor and some of the walls of the tunnels are plain stone or plaster, but in many places the walls and ceiling display pieces of crumbling mosaics, frescos, murals, and bas-relief sculptures.
At the first junction, the wall to the left of the fork is adorned is adorned with the head of a lion, cut off from whatever mural sustained it in the room below, and the right side of the form shows an ancient banner unfurling.
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Iovo leads the way through the tunnels, pausing every thirty seconds or slow to allow the less nimble of her allies to catch up. At the first junction she meets, she mutters something about a lion and turns left. A short while later, she comes to another junction. This time, the right-hand fork is adorned with the scales of justice, while the left fork is plain wood.
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Just in case there's trouble, Ironshanks follows closely behind Iovo, but not so closely as to have his face up her tookus. At least Elves are cleanly folk. Not a chance I'd be this close to the backside of a half orc!
He helps collect the items "Bafore we get knee deep in sewer sludge, which one of you can tell us what these things are? Most my missions have things like these being pretty magical and helpful, best we know what kinda use they'll be sooner than later... If it doesn't take too long."
"Lions, scales, and a king? These from that note?" A road map of pictures hidden behind a picture... what's this world comin' to.
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Garif follows along behind as Iovo navigates the turns in the passage, passing the various items found between himself, Phin and Damiar to try to identify their magical properties. "Not my strong suit, this, but I'll give it a go," he says, as he opens the pouch and inhales a tiny puff of dust, causing a loud dwarven sneeze to echo through Iovo's communication spell.
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Four items in the valise detect as magical, but Garif is unable to discern their properties.
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Iovo winches slightly as the sound of the sneeze goes right into her ear.
When she hears the results, she suggests "Phinellippa or Damiar, can either of you give it a go? Otherwise, I will once we get out of these cramped tunnels."
When she gets to the next juncture, you can hear her whisper "Well, that is sort of disappointing. I guess the King is represented by just a crown. I was hoping for something more interesting."
She then proceeds down the right fork. "Hopefully the image of the centaur will be more entertaining. I have to admit, Zarta really must have done a lot of planning."
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The sneeze echoes down the vent, followed by the clang of a metal helmet hitting the ceiling and some solid swearing. "How do you turn this walky talky off dammit!"
Once his blood pressure gets back to normal, Ironshanks keeps a good set of eyes on the walls of the tunneling, making sure there aren't hidden doors or cache's along the way.
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Damiar pulls out her wand of Identify and uses four charges. Zarta was right when she advised me to pick up one of these with faction credit!
Damiar grins. "A hat of disguise, an improved ring of climbing, dust of disappearance and a cloak of elvenkind! Nice boogie bag!"
Then she climbs through the vent after the dwarves.
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"I could turn it off, Ironshanks, but right now it is a convenient warning for when we are almost out of time. When the spell expires, we have about twenty minutes to finish."
On hearing about the boogie bag, Iovo asks her sister "Oh! Very nice! Check the maker's mark on the cloak, see which community made it. Those items should make it much easier to get back to that waiting room quickly."
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Following the path marked with a crown, you come to a dead end with a vent in it. The middle third of a centaur wielding a bow adorns a wall of the tunnel, its arrow pointing to the vent. Within, you see a room full of bookcases, each full of official-looking volumes. A table surrounded by chairs occupies the center of the room. Of more immediate concern is the vent, which seems stuck in place.
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The vent clatters loudly to the ground, the sound echoing throughout the room. After a few moments of silence and held breathe, however, there doesn't seem to be any noticeable reaction to the noise.
Climbing down into the room is made easy by the presence of a bookcase right below it, and you find yourselves in a large, square room. The walls glow with a gentle blue light, and the air feels unnaturally cool and dry. Shelves line the walls and stand in ranks through the middle of the room, punctuated by a wooden table and ornate chairs. An imposing, unoccupied desk faces the main entrance to the room. On an easel in one of the aisles is a map of the room.
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Iovo picks up the vent and places it on the shelf where they came in.
Chuckling, she says “No cries of alarm or anything. Seems no one is home right now.”
Going over to the easel, she says “Phinellippa, any ideas how all this is organized? We seem to have names with some sort of number associated with them.”
“Let’s try to find what we can on Tancred first!”
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Garif clambers down through the opening, dropping onto the bookcase below and just managing to keep his balance so he can descend to the floor feet first rather than leading with his head. Nico drops down gracefully behind Garif, the cat's dark fur and fluid movements making him look briefly like a night-black waterfall flowing into the room.
Both cat and dwarf look around, and seem to shrug in unison as Garif says, "Hmm, not really my department, libraries and archives and such. But let me know how I can help." Nico shifts his eyes to Garif briefly, but makes no such offer, instead curling into large puddle of fur near the big desk.
Garif, curious where the double doors lead to, goes over to take a look at them. "Don't want to stumble into another demon-summoning keyhole," he says to himself as he carefully studies the door.
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As Garif approaches the double doors, he notices strange runes carved on the floor in front of the doors. They are magical, and seem to be placed to take effect if someone enters the room through those doors.
Meanwhile, Iovo walks around to the central bookcases, labeled “Internal Security: Receipts,” “Internal Security: Evidence,” “Imperial Security: Dossiers,” and “Imperial Security: Misc.” Before she can look any more closely than that, however, she's interrupted by a scraping of chair legs and a clattering of wood. Spinning around, she sees three of the chairs moving on their own, advancing quickly toward her!
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Ironshanks grumbles as he climbs out of the vent and into the room. He bends over and stands up straight a few times to stretch out after the cramped crawl. His helmet visor snaps shut each time, followed by a slow sigh as if trying to keep calm. "Ahh a library full of secret recipes and other strange things..."
He turns just in time to see the advancing furniture. Odds are they ain't tryin' to be friendly..
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"Oh no! Those are animated chairs! Because they're constructs, they have hardness, which means it's lucky that Ironshanks has an adamantine axe. The rest of us are just going to have to hit really, really hard and pray that it goes through." Damiar considers as she eyes her bow and sighs. "Also watch out for those arms! They look like they can grab someone."
I may have to use grease if those chairs are as grabby as they look.
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Rees acts quickly, firing off two arrows at the nearest chair . The first one hits, but clatters off the hard wood without doing any real damage. The second one hits a softer spot, sticking in with a *thunk*. Still, the arrowhead doesn't sink far in, and it doesn't seem to slow down the chair at all. Both hit the flat-footed chair, but only the second one got through hardness (and not much at that).[/ooc]
Before anyone else can react, the farthest chair bounds over to Iovo and tries to force her to take a seat!
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Ironshanks can't help but chuckle a bit as the chair forces Iovo to sit down, buckling her in like a child's seat. "Next I guess its gonna try feedin' ya mashed carrots?"
He draws out his war axe and steps up for a powerful overhead two handed chop. You're pretty sure this fella has split his share of firewood.
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Phinellippa's cone of fire engulfs both of the remaining chairs, leaving both of them (and the table between) scorched and charred in places!
The chair on the far side of the table ignores the fiery gnome, however, hopping over to Iovo and once again trying to force her to take a seat!
Iovo is ready for it this time, though, and nimbly dodges the furniture's clumsy attack!
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Nico rolls his eyes like a teenaged human coping with an impossible parent, then bounds forward and bites at the red-hued chair!
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A confused Garif conjures a bit of elemental fire, directing an equally confused cat to bite the chair. Nico reluctantly complies, but his hesitance is apparent as his jaws find only air.
The final chair pushes back from the table with a loud scraping sound, then leaps at the nearby gnome!
The small wizard ducks just in time as the wooden arms cross right over her head.
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As she does so she draws her rapier. “Am I going to be able to hurt it with this?” she asks worriedly. Then she ties to find out.
Ironshanks chuckles "More like, you gonna be able to hurt ANYTHING with a toothpick like that!" He winds up and works to make more firewood from the red chair harassing Iovo.
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"I'm curious, given my build and training what weapon would you have me use, Mr. Magee?" Iovo replies.
"I can see where an axe would be good in this situation, but I've never really used such weapons."
"Probably a pencil, or maybe a quill." He smirks behind his bushy beard.
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"Probably a pencil, or maybe a quill." He smirks behind his bushy beard.
With a laugh, she says "I have my doubts that such would work against these chairs. A sheet of vellum with the proper incantation inscribed could, but at the moment I don't have one."
"Guess I will have to see how I can make do with this."
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Damiar starts to inspire courage!
♫ We once had some chairs
Or should I say they once had us?
They showed us a seat
Aren't they good
Chelaxian wood?
Then Ironshanks axe
Came down with a smash!
Turning the chairs swiftly
Into kindling and ash!
Now it is up to the rest as well
Like Phinnellippa's burning spell
And chairs try gnomes to tame
It turns out they haven't great aim... ♫