"Oooh thes do be book I mest read." Thangardt says as he quickly grabs Maximize Thine Investigative Prowess - 100 Tippes To Unravel The Mystery and Wheneth and Whenethn't to Expect the Inquisition. "Jazaka, ye really needent run through here. If we do be dead don't we have all tha time of eternity?
Jazaka slows down and looks back at Thangardt a bit surprised "Oh, yes of course. My apologies Thangardt. I seem to have gotten carried away...." She trails off as she stops to look at one of the shelves near the pile of books.
When he sees that his companions have not yet come back down the ladder, Ekan sighs and slowly climbs up the ladder.
Upon reaching the top, Ekan takes a moment to scan for signs of which way his companions went.
On the shelf Jazaka is looking at, one book in particular stands out; Areth Thine Armes Liketh the Nooddle From the Kitsune? A Practical Guidee to the Disnooddleing of Thine Armes.
The floor of the library is not sufficiently dusty to hold any prints Ekan is able to follow, nor any he is able to find in the first place, and as such, in utter confusion, though hearing muffled sounds from somewhere ahead, he'll have to make a decision: he must go north or south of that first large pile of papers and books
"Oooch...eh...mayhaps this library is not so friendly..." He peers closely at the shelf before carefully trying to pick up the book again. "Doesn't seem ta be anything else bad here..."
"Now what mighten bea so important ta need such nasties?" He shoves Maximize Thine under his arm and opens Wheneth as he walks to where Jazaka stopped to look at another bookcase. "There doesna seem ta be anything I understand en here. Jazaka, would ya take a look?"
While waiting for Jazaka, he opens Maximize Thine. After being momentarily engrossed in the book he looks up with a start, "ehhh...I...uh...thet was a...tha best book I've ever read."
Jazaka studies the shelf in front of here while waiting for Thangardt to catch up. "This looks interesting," she picks up Disnooddleing
"Ahhhh...what the....I....the books....that was...." After taking a moment to get her breathing under control and make sure nothing caught on fire Jazaka shakes her head in bewilderment and opens the book only to be thoroughly engrossed by it for a moment before feeling her strength surge as she looks up. "That...I...wow...Thangardt..." She gives a start to see him standing next to her holding out a book.
They begin to short out who has which books, only to be surprised by the colorful orbs.
"This is definitely an odd place..." Jazaka starts by opening the one Thangardt couldn't read and is once again momentarily engrossed in the book before snapping out of it, this time wiser than before.
Thangardt tries to read Disnooddleing while Jazaka tries to read Maximize Thine
As Ekan makes his way into the library, the noise Jazaka and Thangardt are making seems to be echoing louder from the south, so Ekan carefully and quietly makes his way in that direction, again going south at the first split in the passage.
Ekan, blind as a bat, misses a slew of interesting titles, but does spot, towards the end of the shelf on his left hand (assuming he is facing south), just about at eye level, a book titled Lawefulle Good? Improveth Thy Outlooke On Liffe With Theesse Simple Triques.
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Jazaka cannot make heads or tails of Maximise Thine, the scratches not even remotely resembling an intelligible language.
Thangardt's efforts to read Disnooddleing are slightly more fruitful, as he does understand the diagrams, on a superficial level, but the instructions are as useful as a black bear pelt in the desert; no epiphany strikes him.
Jazaka sighs and returns her books to a shelf, "It seems like these only have a mystical effect once. Shall we?"
"There do be another book or two that did catch me eye a bit back..." Thangardt says as he turns to retrace his steps. About to reach for Doth Thine Nemesis Leave No Fingereprintes? Freteth No More, Herein Thou Shalt Find Thine Answer, he thinks better of it. "Eh, Jazaka, perhaps yee could assist me in inspecting these shelves for any more surprises first?
If they see nothing, Thangardt will take and then try to read Fingereprintes
"What's this now?" Ekan takes Lawefulle Good? Improveth Thy Outlooke On Liffe With Theesse Simple Triques, intending to quickly flip through it.
Fingerprintes is booby trapped;
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As Ekan grabs the book he found, he is surprised to hear Jazaka's voice in his head. For a little more than 10 seconds, unwittingly, he reads Jazaka's mind. Her thoughts strike him as quite superficial, and not at all in good taste for someone holding the rule of law close to heart.
The effect wears off soon enough, and he is free to open the book.
Realizing that something nasty is tied to Fingerprintes, Thangardt motions for Jazaka to stand back a bit and begins work to circumvent it.
"Oooch...that's...crap...." Thangardt winces, waiting for the inevitable pain to come from springing the trap. When nothing happens after a moment, he scowls at the book and then shrugs and reads it. "...hmm...yes...of course...why didna I think of that...naturally...
While waiting for Thangardt to fail to disable the effectless trap and read his book, Jazaka takes a closer look at the shelves near her.
After gaining much insight from Fingerprintes, Thangardt (backed up by Jazaka) inspect the area around Rearrange the Range of Thy Ranger Bow.
With Thangardt reading it if no traps are found.
Ekan scowls at both the mutilated book and the mysterious pill and mutters to himself "perhaps Thangardt or Jazaka can make something of this." He leaves the pill in the book and puts both into his pack, intending to show it to his companions as soon as he finds them in this maze. With his companions not having made any significant amount of noise in the last few moments, he soundlessly continues along the () western passage, this time with significantly more attention paid to his surroundings.
Jazaka does no find anything of note; most of the writings stacked in this corner are papers and parchments with unintelligible scrawls.
Together with Thangardt, however, she sees that Rearrange has some kind of trap associated with it. She also spots that the blade trap on the shelf itself, that Thangardt triggered but managed to evade, has reset itself while they were busy reading those other books.
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Ekan, silent as a mouse, sees that the shelf next to him has a nasty trap on it, triggered by touching anything on the shelf, or the shelf itself. Now, on the shelf he spots a tantalizing book; Expecteth Thou to Triumphe in The Arenae?. He can tell that the book itself is also trapped, separate from the one of the shelf.
Quite grateful for Jazaka's keen eyes, Thangardt begins work to actually disable the nasty blades guarding this shelf. (Jazaka has prudently stepped back, 10ft away from both the bookcase and Thangardt.)
He quickly jams the blades and moves onto the trap on the book itself.
Disappointed to find no meaning in this book, Thangardt begins to hand the book to Jazaka then thinks better of it and puts the book on the ground, backs up 15 feet, turns around and puts his hands over his eyes before saying, "Perhaps ye shood take eh look."
Jazaka, recognizing the wisdom in Thangardt's precautions, walks over to the book, turns around, puts one arm across her eyes, and bends down to pick it up behind her back. After waiting a moment for something to happen, she opens her eyes and flips through the book, but quickly shuts it with a sigh. "No, there's nothing in this one either."
Having investigated everything that had grabbed Thangardt's attention initially, the two of them continue along the corridor (Jazaka in the lead with Thangardt a step behind her), past the not remotely suspicious or ominous pile of books at the end of it.
Thangardt grabs Jazaka's pack just it time to stop her from walking onto the trapped floor, "Oooch...Jazaka, hold on just ta tad. There do seem ta be another trap here." They switch places and Thangardt works on disabling it.
Ekan's eyes light up upon seeing the book, "Ah, now this is what we need!" But his expression quickly turns to annoyance at the double traps preventing him from getting to it. "I think Thangardt mentioned something about being handy with traps when he and Jazaka were talking earlier." He looks around as if he expects his companions to appear out of thin air just because he needs them. He tentitively calls out, "Thangardt...Jazaka...I found a book here that we must look at. It seems you were correct to come this way first". If there's no response he'll try repeating himself several times, getting a louder each time.
Ekan's eyes light up upon seeing the book, "Ah, now this is what we need!" But his expression quickly turns to annoyance at the double traps preventing him from getting to it. "I think Thangardt mentioned something about being handy with traps when he and Jazaka were talking earlier." He looks around as if he expects his companions to appear out of thin air just because he needs them. He tentitively calls out, "Thangardt...Jazaka...I found a book here that we must look at. It seems you were correct to come this way first". If there's no response he'll try repeating himself several times, getting a louder each time.
Ekan shouts and shouts, .
Thangardt easily disables the trap, so Jazaka and he can move ahead.
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As Jazaka and Thangardt step past the pile of books on the floor, to their left coming out of the corridor of shelves, they see another, different pile of books just to their right. There is something, odd, about the piles.
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Out of the pile to their right, a somewhat large book comes thrashing out, teeth at the ready, dripping with some clear, gooey substance. It goes for Jazaka's leg, , but succeeds only in streaking slime across the floor.
Out of the pile to their left, another, similar book comes scooting out, also going for Jazaka's evidently tasty-looking leg; , but like it's companion fails to hit anything but air.
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Sweet nips, T! :-P
Jazaka and Thangardt go first!
When it becomes clear that his companions can't hear him, Ekan makes a mental note of where this is and continues his search for them, heading down the () right passage that continues forward.
"Eh..whet tha HAELL are these thengs? Books with TEETH?
He steps up to Jazaka's left and takes a swing at the book there.
"TEKE THET YE BITEY THENG!
"Uh...A....A BOOKS just tried to BITE ME! The hell...."
Jazaka lunges at the book to her left, claws and teeth out and ready to shred it.
Ekan, despite his best efforts, walks right into a trap; just as he is about to step past the narrowest part of the gap between the two shelves of the passage, a cone of fire hits him right in the face
The fire quickly subsides, and by that time, he can definitely make out some muffled cries and the thud of weapons connecting with enemies, to his north, past the central shelf in the space beyond the narrow passage he squeezed through.
Thangardt's mace connects nicely with the book flopping on the floor in front of him, while Jazakas two claws do some serious damage to it just after, torn pages flying .
Not terribly intimidated by Thangardt's puny mace, both the books keep on Jazaka;
but again they only succeed on flopping, rather than slamming
Ekan feels a sudden flash of head just in time to pull back from the small gap as flames singe his face. Despite his surprise, he hears the muffled shouts of his companions coming from around the corner in front of him and continues in that direction (keeping an eye out for more nasty traps).
Thangardt takes another swing at his book, but it is too fast for him this time.
Jazaka goes all out against the books, beginning with the one on her left and moving on to the one on her right if she manages to shred it.
Thangardt misses, his mace swinging wide. Just as it goes out of his field of vision, at the end of his failed attack, he feels the mace somehow grow heavier. Much heavier, in fact. It does not feel any more unwieldy than before, just heavier. Better. Bringing the mace back around, it has grown quite significantly. It is now about as large as he is himself.
Jazaka rips the already mangled book to shreds with her teeth, pages flying everywhere, and gouges some serious rends into the other book with her claws. The remaining book looks like it could need some glue and a steady hand to sort out the faltering binding.
Despite its poor state, the book lunges for Jazaka once more;
, its bulk connecting with her thigh quite uncomfortably; . Furthermore, the book is stuck on Jazaka's thigh
Ekan, at the precipice of battle, feels sick
"Oooch...I havna seen thet before..." he muses as he steps forward and brings his mace around to try to hit the remaining book, only to be thrown off by the changing weight and hurl it into the floor again.
Jazaka again tries to ravage the book in front of her but is unfortunately distracted by the odd behavior of Thangardt's mace and only manages to connect with one claw.
Ekan, suddenly feeling ill for some unknown reason, staggers up next to Thangardt to enter the fray with his great ax, but barely manages to lift the ax enough to push it in the book's general direction.
The book, most of its pages now simply adding to the mess of the pile snarls one last time, and falls still.
Ekan's sickness subsides quickly as he gets a chance to breathe.
While Ekan takes some time to steady himself and get his breath back and Thangardt plays with his mace to accustom himself to it's new size-changing, Jazaka casts cure light wounds on herself ().
Feeling better, Ekan pulls the mutilated book containing the pill out of his pack and shows it to his companions, "I found this on one of the shelves back that way. Any idea what it's about?"
The pill looks like any other pill, and does not exude any aura, and does, in no other way identify itself. It seems likely, Thangardt thinks, that the pill has some effect upon consumption.
"Weeellll, I'm quite sure thes des semethen. Anyone wante try it? No? Well, then I suppose I might as well try..." Thangardt says as he swallows the pill.
Three seconds after consuming the pill, Thangardt feels a little bit of a shift, the nature of which is not entirely clear to him right away; when, in the past, he thought about helping older ladies cross heavily trafficked carriageways, he always got this sense of duty about it. It was his obligation to help the lady across. He felt good about it, but not because he had done a good deed, but because he had done that which was required of him. Now, on the other hand, helping the lady feels a little bit repulsive. What does tickle his fancy are the very many options he could choose instead. He could just not help; he could help her halfway, then trip her, causing mayhem on the road; he could throw her straight into traffic, gaining a similar result; he could attract the attention of guardsmen, insist the lady was of poor moral character, implore the guards to shut down the street, backing up traffic for miles, causing all sorts of goods to spoil, ultimately leading to the old lady starving in prison, or at home if, for some reason, the guards should fail to jail her. He didn't particularly desire mayhem, but found that should it arise, that was fine by him. He was, however, quite certain that some modicum of planning just plain belonged in any kind of interesting scheme.
Thangardt wisely keeps his new thoughts to himself and only says "Thet des feel semwhet odd. I duna thenk it hes dun much theugh."
Ekan shrugs and explains about the extremely important book that they must look at because it's actually relevant only Thangardt needs to deal with the traps protecting it because it's so important.
Jazaka gets an amused glint in her eye, "So, Ekan, it would seem that exploring a library full of knowledge is in fact a productive use of our infinite time?" After he only scowles back at her, she gestures in the direction they just came, "Well, then, lead the way."
Assuming they make it back to the relevant shelf without incident (other book of interest will have their locations noted to be returned to since Ekan is quite set on getting his hands on Triumphe and will not tolerate any delays).
Nothing happens, despite Thangardt's bodged job. Even after waiting for a long time, the trap has not done anything at all.
As Ekan squeezes through the narrowest bit of the passage, a cone of fire shoots out, hitting him, Jazaka and Thangardt.
Thangardt, although well and truly in the flames, doesn't even feel the heat of it, much less the burning of flesh, taking no damage at all. Ekan, on the other hand, is faring badly, having been killed
Once past the trapped passage, Ekan makes clear to Thangardt what book is to be untrapped. Thangardt easily sorts out the trap on the shelf itself, but bodges the one on the book. The trap on the book seems to have no effect, however, and Tangardt is free to open the book.
Seeing Ekan sucumb to the flames , Jazaka uses her second spell to cure him ( ), bringing him consious again.
"Thangardt, you don't seem burned at all? How is that possible?" Both Jazaka and Thangardt wrack their brains for why that may be the case.
Thangardt opens Triumphe after, at least to the best of his knowledge, having dealt with both traps. "This desna seem ta have anytheng in et." He bats Ekan's had away as he reached for the book, "We've hed books explode eh tad before when hending them around. So et might be better to wait untel ye look eh tad better in case this one des too." and puts the book into his own pack. "Eh, perhaps I should take the lead fer a bet? In case we mess more traps?" Thangardt leads the group down the lower left passsage from where they are, Jazaka a step behind him and Ekan further back (basically keeping Jazaka just within his sight). All three are also keeping an eye out for other interesting titles.
Neither Jazaka nor Thangardt possess the knowledge needed to solve the riddle of Thangardt's apparent immunity to the fire trap, and why he keeps failing to trigger magical traps when he bodges his attempts to disarm them. If, perchance, Jazaka were to, just on accident, sweep her cone of Detect Magic so that it brushes past Thangardt, she finds a distinct lack of an aura around him.
The pile of books looks to be nothing more than a pile of books.
As you make your unassailed way northward, you come across five books of seeming interest (Ekan can tell they are all trapped in the same way all the other interesting books were. As far as he can tell, none of the shelves are trapped themselves) :
1) Predictetheth Thee the Futuuree? Upeth Thine Oraculation By Theesse Pracqutiques
2) Cracked Cauldron? Ideas Withe Which a Witche Will Fixeth It
3) AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGETH!!! BLLLLLOOOOOOODDDDDETH!!! RRRRRRAAAAAAGGGGEEEEEEEETH
4) Charge Thine Bladeth, Smiteth Thine Foesse
5) Didst Thou Falle? Rise Frome The Ashesse To Smite Thine Goodde Phoes