Kara quickly realizes it will require a little more effort to open the door in its current state.
Even as she tugs on it, Huni can examine the buildings structure, and honestly is not sure if its going to be safe or not. He can't quite explain how this sort of damage could happen in the first place.
Whilst a titanic struggle, of nigh epic proportions, takes place on the east side of the room, as Kara fights with the disobedient ingress, Sangkip easily climbs up one of the nearby support beams up to what remains of the floor above.
There is not much left of it, the walls mostly gone, and those timbers still around, collapses down below, or blown out into the surrounding streets. He will not see any other means of access, to the floor below, despite all the damage, the explosion doing a good job of jamming pretty much all of them with various types of debris.
So far, none of you have seen any evidence of casualties, though you have yet to go through the ground floor rooms that are accessible yet.
Luckily for her, the other door is wide open, the barrier in question laying on the floor near her feet. The hallway beyond goes for about twenty feet, ending at a thick wooden door. Two more doors are on either side, at the far end. All of those are still intact, and closed... almost as if taunting her.
Alessio takes a moment to examine the door that confounded Kara's best efforts to open, and pushes aside a bit of hanging wood that was clearly blocking it, before pushing it open himself.
Beyond, is a room who's purpose is not immediately clear. A long bench, now broken in half from a large stone that appears to have fallen on it, once dominated the eastern wall, and two sturdy chairs stand next to a wooden table in the center. The chairs and the table are both surprisingly untouched by the destruction that hit the place, but the rest of the room did not fare nearly so well.
There was once a large bookshelf on the northern wall of the room, but it has toppled over. Now, books and scolls of all sorts lay scatted across the floor, and crushed under the fallen shelving.
Bits of wood and stone, are everywhere, and a layer of dust has already settled.
A door in the north wall bears a large crack down the middle, the entire frame out of alignment.
Strong victories have been achieved in the Battle district, and Egelsee appears to be doing well with only sporadic attacks on them. The Woundward and Confluence districts still have sustained demonic attacks in progress, and the Outer district is struggling to remain controlled.
The enemy is attempting to reinforce their positions and begin pushing the Pathfinders back...
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"I'm not picking up any thoughts in there"
Floria continues to concentrate while the others look around the first room, though she almost loses it when she's unable suppress a giggle as Kara struggles with the door.
When Alessio gets it open she cautiously steps into the room, sparing a glance around to make sure she steps safely. "Let's check out this room"
If possible she'll move through to the door in the north wall and concentrate her spell through that, and if she still doesn't pick anything up she'll let it drop and begin having a look at the scrolls to see if they can shed any information on the cause of the collapse
Floria will again detect no sign of nearby minds with her spell, beyond those coming in with her.
The books on the floor appear to cover a vast array of topics, most of which seem to be on the history of Mendev and the Wordlwound. Certainly nothing that would have perpetrated what happened here.
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Oh, is my dress dirty? Oh, dear! This won't do.
Kara casts Prestidigitation with a practiced flair, and the smudges on her dress magically disappear.
She follows Alessio into the hallway and encourages him.
My, how strong you are! I was sure there was forehead-high mound of bricks behind that door. What do you think we'll see here?
Unfortunately, for both of them, the door on the left does not open, something appears to have fallen against it on the other side. It might take a bit more effort to budge.
The door across from it does not appear to have the same problem, and the one at the end, though it won't open, at least that seems to be because it is locked, rather than the damage from the explosion.
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"Martella, the any-tool please"
Floria takes the travellers any-tool from her tall but quiet porter and configures it into a crowbar. She then passes it to Kara.
"Be a dear Kara and pass this down to our strong men handling the door situation."
She then busies herself sweeping the area they've already explored with detect magic and searching the partially crushed desk.
The little vanaran sets up in front of the lock, taking his time, but can't quite seem to get it to open.
With a frown, he digs in more seriously, and goes back to it...
As Sangkip fiddles with the lock at the end of the hallway, Huni puts a little muscle behind the door that was blocked by something on the other side. All it takes is one powerful heave, and you hear the sound of wood scrapping across stone, and a bit of crashing as something else, is knocked loose and falls on top of even more things... but in short order, he has the door open wide enough to see into the room beyond. Even then, he is only able to get it about half way open, before it will not move any more. Still, it is more than enough to gain access to the area beyond.
Peering through, you see what appears to be a storage room. The entire room is littered, floor to ceiling, with barrels, chests, and crates of all sizes. They may have been stacked in a more organized fashion once, but the recent upheaval appears to have knocked most of them out of whatever semblance of order they once had.
Boxes lay tipped over, barrels on end, crates leaning every which way. It looks like the room was just stocked full to the brim, with only enough room left to close the door once they were done.
There is no room for her to actually enter, without actually starting to remove the stuff already in there. A task that would likely take a considerable amount of time.
Still, she can look in with her divination spell going, though can not detect much of anything through all the clutter.
All of the items in the storage room have been boxed or crated, and you can't really learn much by looking without doing a more thorough inventory.
Eventually, Sangkip manages to get the tumbler on the lock to turn, though he didn't beat any time trials doing so. The door swings open easily, apparently not affected by the damage to the rest of the building.
Beyond is a what appears to be a library of some sort.
There is a second door, at the back of the room along the east wall, but all the other walls are lined with bookshelves, each filled with tomes, scrolls, and grimoires of varying sizes.
A few of those books have tumbled off the shelves, but otherwise, the room seems remarkably undisturbed by the explosion.
Once again, Kara detects nothing out of the ordinary at all, on her mystical radar.
The second door is locked as well, clearly someone was worried about random strangers walking in!
Sangkip doesn't feel so bad now, about how he did on the previous lock.
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Floria peruses the books, with an eye to seeing if anything might explain what went on here, particularly if there are books on topics that would seem unusual for a Pathfinder lodge, for example on Summoning or bargaining with demons. She will also pay particular attention to anything works in Abyssal or Infernal, or signs of particular books being used recently.
"This whole mess seems so strange. Whatever befell this place could have been the trigger for the attack, given what we heard. Either someone here was doing something they shouldn't ..."
She says this as her head is tilted to one side scanning the titles of books on the shelves.
"Or perhaps something was brought here that unbeknownst to the Pathfinder served some darker purpose. Did you find anything in the crates Eamon?"
"The one thing we do know is that the city is under attack and if we can't find anything useful here quickly I think we should return to defend it"
As Floria skims the books on the shelves, she will quickly realize that they seem to be almost entirely about demonic scripture. There are a number of gaps, and spaces, where tomes are obviously missing, but those that remain seem to detail specific rituals and rites for those devoted to demon lords. It is quite the collection.
Behind her, Eamon and Huni start to pull some of the crates out of the storeroom, hoping for a better idea of what is in there, but they don't get far, before Alessio manages to pick the lock on the second door.
Behind it, he finds a bedroom. A well-made bed sits against the far wall with a small table beside it, above which hangs a framed portrait of a howling bovine creature depicted floating above a labyrinth of pure ivory.
Like the previous room, this one too saw little damage, though some paper on the table has shifted enough that it almost slides off.
Back in the hall, Eamon and Huni open the first crate they find, and it will contain nothing but candles. Even that amount of work will make you realize that it will probably take over half an hour just to make a dent in the boxes there, considerably longer to look through them all.