[2] The Library & The Lighthouse

@Khulod,@MaJunior - I believe I've found a third. Do you want to keep waiting until they're fully onboard, or do you want me to move ahead?

I'm good either way -- whatever is easiest for you.

Fallowcrest nods to the boat driver. "We're okay here. Go back and wait for the other one. She's running late." Fallowcrest lets everyone get a brief look around. There's not much on this island other than the old lighthouse cum library, and even it looks too small for a library that would need much work. But then he strides over to the doors - not the ones that lead up into the lighthouse, but to the storm cellar doors, angled into the ground. They're made, not of the normal wood or iron, but of some sort of dark stone. He produces a key from his pocket and holds it up in front of the doors and utters a strange growling phrase.

"បើកទ្វារដោយពាក្យគន្លឹះនៃព្រលឹងអ្នក។"

A magical seal shines bright white above the door and begins to move, pieces sliding and twisting past one another, lifting out of place one at a time until there are only three left. Fallowcrest studies them for a moment, looks up at the sky with narrowed eyes, and then presses one of them. The magical puzzle pieces vanish and the doors open, revealing a staircase that leads down underground. It's about fifty feet long, placing the bottom end well below the waves, and you realize that at that point the island is probably much wider, giving room for a far bigger library.

"Many of the older scrolls predate even the original founding of Stormreach. My grandfather never would tell me how he got ahold of them. Or why he refused to part with them. Some would have made a pretty penny. I'd like to figure out which ones I should keep and which ones could be sent to other scholars who they would benefit more."

He strikes a flint against the wall next to a torch and it flares to life, revealing a large room filled with shelves that holding an innumerable - for now - number of books, tomes, parchments, scrolls and tapestries, all sort of stacked in what seems to be more or less the order of acquisition. There's certainly no discernable categorization happening here.

Astrid deftly slips a book off the shelves. Big Religion - Ancient Giant Practices and Rituals: Volume I. The other books on the shelf are the other volumes. Easily dealt with.

Verin's enthusiasm gets the better of her and she accidentally knocks an cylinder sealed with wax off the shelf. It hits the ground and the seal breaks. What happens next, she can't really say, although everyone else gets a good look at it. The ground shakes violently and all the other books fall off of that shelf.

The shelf Turchuk checks is full of geographical maps and a few explorer's journals. Nothing too major, but probably historically significant.

S'sylin, that's a bookshelf. You use it for books. It holds them. Hope this helps.

Fallowcrest is heading back up the stairs at this point, but as Turchuk tries to sort out the books, one hits the floor and that's the second loud thump he's heard. He calls back down the steps. "I have a lunch appointment, but I need those books IN-TACT. Please be careful with them!"

... and turned just in time to feel the icy fingers of death upon his neck. At least S'sylin doesn't panic and has time to dodge the attack before it becomes fully realized.

The shadow seems to be the shape of a man, simply one who isn't there, or at least, one you can see through. There's really not time to make a full-fledged assessment of the situation if you don't want it to start murdering your fellow students.

S'sylin was only half right, one of those attacks wasn't going to do much against the shadow. The other one did hit, kind of. He could feel a sort of faint pull against his sword as he swung, like ripping through muslin with a good pair of shears.

Turchuk is right behind him, and he too feels that strange pull when his quarterstaff swings through what would have been an impact on something with a real body.

The others aren't so lucky in their attacks.

The shadow, for its part, sways through the attacks and tries again to close it's claws around the neck of the dragonborn in front of it.

While Verin's sword itself might not do much on its own, the magic that infuses it is another story. Her attack hits firmly, as if she were simply attacking a training dummy, and the feedback that reverberates along her rapier is audible. It looks as if it's doubled over, but any visible sign of the effect is gone a moment later - though Verin is sure she hurt it, in that weird way that such things as this can be hurt. It's not enough though. It doesn't really even seem to care about getting hit by Turchuk, although he knows he made contact. As S'sylin attempts to command it, you get the first sense that this thing used to be alive.

It laughs.

"Halt yourself, lizard. I will stop when I wish." The voice is like an icy fingernail dragging down the chalkboard of your spine. "I will stop when you are mine." And with that, the entity releases a burst of dark energy at everyone around it, though it fades before it reaches Astrid. When it clears, the shadow is gone, but it must be here somewhere still.

Do you get back to packing books, or go in search of it? Not really technically your job to hunt monsters right now, but leaving it alone might be more dangerous than hunting it.

Astrid scans the whole room while everyone else waits, on edge in case the shade comes back. She sees nothing. On a closer pass of the side rooms, however, there's a very solid aura coming from one of the walls. It's illusion magic of some sort, and the spot that's emanating the magic is about the size you'd expect a door to be.

It's impossible to tell what, if anything, is behind the wall. Maybe you should just forget about it and finish moving the books. Or maybe you should make sure the library is absolutely 100% safe first.

It doesn't take long at all for S'sylin to find the secret door. He walks along the area in question, pushing firmly on various sections of the book shelves to see which ones feel like they might have been designed to move. But the answer is even simpler than that. When he tries to push on on particular section of bookshelf, his hand simply goes through it as if it's not really there. A quick check reveals that the entire set of shelves is simply not really there. It will be a simple matter to walk through the illusion. Turchuk is right behind him, but it seems that if they go through, they'll be going alone.

Turchuk and Verin each carefully pack a box without incident. Astrid, on the other hand, doesn'tg realize that her shelf is wobbly. Only thoat one stack of books on the end midway up is keeping it balanced, so when she grabs those, the whole shelf topples down over her.

While the other three get back to work on the shelves, S'sylin slips through the illusory bookshelf...

The one with the bronze plating really shouldn't have been stacked on the top shelf. An decent librarian knows the heavy books go on the bottom. But maybe the person who put those there wasn'ta decent librarian, which begs the question, then, why are there so many books here?

Astrid gets about two feet away from the stairs and then stops. Something doesn't feel right.

The steps themselves are fine, but your magehand is suddenly blown away by a deeply-resounding roar of subsonic force that sets your teeth on edge. It seems your instincts are at least partially right, but was it Fallowcrest or S'sylin? Where is he, anyway?

It happens again, so it seems to be something that's permanent - or at least quasi-permanent. You can't help but notice that it wasn't like this before you found the secret door.

The secret door is easy enough to find again. The question is, do you go through?

As S'sylin prepares to go down the passage, he hears the trap activate from the main room.

When Turchuk, Astrid and Verin step through, they have just enough time to see dank and musty stone walls with moss growing in the cracks and water seeping in gradually through the stone ceiling. Every ten feet or so, a bookshelf sits, full of tomes that are not only chained to the shelf, but also locked in the same way the front door was. One book that seems grander than the rest, sits open in the middle of the room on a pedestal. Gold fillagree and illumination cover the pages, but the finery is faked.

Then the air is filled with a mind-ripping cacophony.

After the trap quiets itself and there is a bit of calm, you're confronted with a small-to-middling sized room here with books all around, carefully placed on pedestals, and a long hallway leading off to the right. As S'sylin could tell you, it finally dead ends after about a hundred and a half feet or so at a T junction. From one branch of the junction comes the clunk of heavy machinery and from the other, the sparking of something electrical.

It's impossible, however, to take a step - unless you walk in S'sylin's already prepared footsteps - without disturbing the dust on the floor. Whatever is down here, it was clearly set up far in advance of your arrival.

There's not much here in this first room. The book that at first glance looked like an ornate ancient relic was just a mock-up of one, probably designed to make people come closer to look at, and almost certainly the trigger for the trap that's now behind you. Smaller, less important books line the walls, although each of these are undoubtedly worth more all the books up above. They're all locked though, behind the same type of arcane lock that Fallowcrest had to open to let you into the library at first.

The only way to go is the hallway that S'sylin had been going down when the rest arrived - a long narrow hallway that ends in a 'T' after a couple hundred feet or so. From one end of the T comes mechanical clunking; from the other, the sizzle of electricity. You'll have to go one way or the other.

The hallway here is narrower than before, but soon turns a corner. As you go around the corner, a flagstone in the floor shifts ever so slightly, and the clanking stops.

You can see into the room ahead of you now. The room is shaped like a hexagon, with your entrance on one side (let's call this side Side 1). On the opposite side of the hexagon, there's a small inset (let's call this side 4). There, in the inset, is a huge lever. Above it is a huge iron "X" in a fine serif font.

On each other wall of the square (sides A, B, C, and D), there's an enclosure. Inside each enclosure there is also a pile of dessicated corpses. In front of each enclosure is a smaller lever with an engraved iron plaque: I, II, III, and V, in the same font as the X. Whoever designed this place is clearly testing your intelligence. If only they'd been nice enough to tell you what the test was.

You can see easily into each enclosure, and nothing is rushing your exploration of the room, so you can take your time to look around. Here's the obvious things you see:
-- The enclosure on Side A has four corpses in it. A golden cross hangs from the ceiling on a heavy iron chain. The lever has an engraved plaque with a "V".
-- The enclosure on Side B has twelve corpses in it. An ancient halberd wit a darkwood handle hangs horizontally on the back wall on golden hooks. The lever has an engraved plaque with a "III".
-- The enclosure on Side C has five corpses in it. A silver cross hangs at an angle on the back wall after one of the bolts holding it broke long ago. The lever has an engraved plaque with a "II".
-- The enclosure on Side D has five corpses in it. A wooden cross eaten through with termites hangs on the back wall. The lever has an engraved plaque with a "IV".

There's corpses of all the major races here. The bodies are more or less intact, and it appears that they died in battle. There's no overt signs of battle here though, so perhaps they were transported here after?

Astrid pulls the lever surrounded by the crosses and halberd. Rethinking it, she realizes there must have been a meaning to those other levers, but it's too late now. The only other helpful thought that comes to mind is that these things she has at her feet are all supposed anti-undead weapons.

Every closed enclosure opens. The door behind you rattles shut with a bang.

Every zombie shuffles to their feet.

They're slow, so I'm giving initiative to you guys first.

Verin doesn't do any meaningful damage. Her sword slips right into the lead zombie and then right back out, but he doesn't seem to mind. However, on the positive side, she effectively blocks group 4 into their room, and only one of them can attack her.

@JoshuaMabry seems to be unavailable, so we'll go ahead and throw Turchuk at group 2, with the understanding that I will not kill him accidentally while he's gone. He manages to likewise block them into their room.

Zombie come slowly streaming out of the other rooms. They're not fast at all, so you have time to deal with them. Only one reaches someone, and the unlucky one is Verin, but the one that swings at her from behind falls apart as soon as it does. The other group is heading for Turchuk, the other two being unseen.

Verin strikes again, and this time, even though she feels as though the hit shouldn't have been that good, a zombie falls.

Let's go ahead and take a pause here. Once everyone is back, we'll kick it off again. @Khulod,@JoshuaMabry when you're back to good status, just let us know.