Seclusion & Disillusion

**Synopsis:**

In Chapter 33: Seclusion & Disillusion, the party was forced to backtrack into the library maze – which we found in a state of disarray.  Most of the bookshelves had been toppled over, courtesy of our mutant friend, providing a clear view of the interior.  A doorway leading to another area seemed to be the likely escape route of the creature, but it was a display case on the far wall that caught our eye first.  It contained a series of cutouts – not unusual for this environment – but one of them was of a dwarven man that Orba and Erland recognized as none other than Rujeni Grahmari.

Without the time to delve into what this might mean, we briefly detoured to track the mutant's movement up a staircase to the second floor, though we abandoned that approach after Beezaura was hurled from the landing – the near-total darkness preventing her from anticipating her adversary's approach.

Plan B was returning to the hatch, and Orba's spatial awareness combined with Graven's brawn allowed us to uncover the opening and escape once more to the outer bailey.

It was time to take a different approach, and using the passphrase she had acquired at the joust – Beezaura was granted access to the main entrance hall where we came up against a pair of memory-based challenges before entering into a room referred to as "the gauntlet," which featured mostly physical trials that needed to be completed individually.  Facing flashbacks of our recent orb-shattering errors, we gritted through the tests and managed just enough successes to open up the next chamber.

A staircase led us to a rooftop garden where we found a gazebo with an arcane symbol that matched the ones we'd seen outside Josco's cabin – though it was hard to see a way to utilize or transport it out of here.  It was then that Erland discovered, after long last, the eclectic wizard himself – alone in a small living quarters and rewrapping his bandages.

Josco was not keen to have an in-depth discussion about the creature that had attacked him and was particularly resistant to any suggestions of teaming up or investigating the mutants further – believing that he was capable of dealing with it himself.  He had no problem, however, providing us with what we originally came for: a way to travel across the canyon for a small fee.

For some of us, this wasn't enough – and digging a little deeper Orba was able to glean some information about the person she was looking for up north, as well as his run-in with Grahmari and the life of an operative.  When it seemed we'd reached an impasse about his potential possession of a copy of Grahmari's Giant Grimoire, we had no choice but to take our leave and return to the cabin.

This was easier said than done, as the ground began to shift beneath our feet and the light went out overhead – possibly indicating some kind of trouble on the outside.  Josco whispered a message to Orba about an alternate exit, and we made a run for it while dodging the falling debris.  Leaping through the portal we returned to the cabin where the model castle and Jillian were nowhere to be found, replaced instead by a pair of Black Lion barbarian corpses riddled with arrows.

## Trivia

* Natural one count: seven natural ones were rolled in this Chapter. 1 each by John, Jordan, Riley, and Matt, and 3 by Anthony.