The Library of Ancients

"The Library of Ancients" is episode 67 of SuperQuest Saga. *Victory's Ascent* descends on the tower of the Library of Ancients, but they aren't getting in without a fight.

## Synopsis

### Introduction

* Will Stark shall be your studied dungeon master for this evening.
* Josh Freeland is playing Sebastian Crenshaw, The Forsaken fighter level 10.
* Your Special Guest Jake is playing Persephone Goldpetal the firbolg druid.
* Brian is playing SuperQuest Saga for the 69th recording. He plays Echo, a regular elf who is level 11 wizard/level 2 rogue.

### Recap

Last time a lot of stuff happened. The party set down the smuggler’s path towards Arvandor, following an intricate and detailed roadmap. Along the way they ran into a Draconic Star Sovereignty ship that was in trouble, captained by Lieutenant Vermilion. The party decided to help him out but did not speak to him. He doesn’t know who they are but he saw their cool dragon ship. The *Victory’s Ascent* arrived in the Arvandor system and had to traverse an enormous battle-scape. The ship got pretty bruised up but they managed to descend onto the planet, over the capital city of Corell, and found the Library of Ancients up in the mountains. The Library is an enormous tower on the precipice of a cascading waterfall system. The *Victory’s Ascent* landed atop of the tower and a group of elven mage guards came pouring out of the entrance, all aiming their weapons at the ship, waiting for the party to emerge.

### Photon Phase These Fools

The ten mages are in beige robes with red undershirts and their scepters have glowing turquoise spheres at the ends; they look like high level minions. The tower top is made of a polished gray stone with blue-green energy lines forming geometric shapes on its surface. *Victory’s Ascent* has landed on a 200 ft.. wide area. There are two large windmills that loom above this area, atop two narrow, adjoining towers. The elves came up a large stairwell.

Echo disguises himself as a teenage baggage clerk and grabs the P.A. to speak with the elves. “Hey, is this cool? If we’re here?” The elves shout back “In the name of the Holy Emperor, kill them all!” The party lifts their ship up so they are hovering, and the elves retreat back into the stairwell. As soon as *Victory’s Ascent* lands again the elves come back up, aimed and ready. Watt and Primina will stay in the ship and fire from range while Echo, Persephone, and Sebastian will engage on the ground. Echo casts Invisibility on himself, Persephone, and Sebastian before they exit the ship. The mages on the ground are ready to go when the ship’s ramp opens up, but they do not see anyone.

### On-Yons

Echo dashes over to the left side of the enemy line and readies a force grenade to throw when the fight starts popping off. Primina and Watt maneuver the ship to open fire on the mage in the middle of the line, destroying him. Echo throws the grenade to catch three mages in its blast; two of the mages avoid the blast but one elf gets blasted up high and flies over the edge of the tower. Echo’s location is revealed and the remaining eight mages turn to attack him. Echo casts Shield so none of the attacks hit him. Sebastian moves closer to the elves and uses the Needler attachment of his cybernetic arm and fires Magic Missile, taking out three of the mages. Persephone casts Tidal Wave at 3rd level and directs the wave towards three of the elves, knocking down and drowning two of them.

Echo moves towards the closest of the remaining elves and downs him with a rapier attack before turning to fire his gun through the stabbed mage at the others, but the gun misfires. Primina fires the ship’s weapon and downs one of the last two elves. The last elf standing looks at Echo and fires a shot at him, but misses. Sebastian fires on the last elf with his BFG, missing the first shot but successfully downing him with his second attack.

### That's Not the Door I Built

Primina lands *Victory’s Ascent* and joins Echo, Persephone, and Sebastian on the tower. Echo loots the bodies and Sebastian looks for security clearance. There are no keycards, this looks like a cardless facility. Echo looks for the least bloody body, casts Prestidigitation to clean the blood, strips the mage of his uniform, and throws birdseed on his body. Echo puts on the uniform and disguises himself to look like the mage. Sebastian stows the looted scepters onto their ship.

The curved stairwell the elves emerged from appears to be the only way into the tower. Persephone casts Pass without Trace so they can be more stealthy as they investigate the library. Sebastian moves to go first, but Echo steps in to suggest he should lead since he’s disguised as a mage.

The stairwell seems to hug the exterior wall of the tower, it is dimly lit by the energy lines. About 600 ft. down the stairs end at a metal door that appears to be made of an intricate gear-interlocking system covered with a semi-transparent grating. There is no apparent lock or handle.

Persephone asks Echo if they need to say something in Elven to make the door open. Echo says “Something in Elven” in Elven, but the door does not open. Persephone investigates the door and determines that it is a complicated machine. Echo and Sebastian look as well and they observe that the door is both magical and technological; there is a magic password that will open the door, but if they do not have it they will need to try to manually trip the mechanism in the door.

Sebastian pops the grate off and Echo uses his new thieves gloves to pick the lock. He finds the correct lever to trip and all the gears on the door start interlocking and turning, revealing the sound of rushing water from the room beyond.

### The Logician's Puzzles

On the other side of the door is a hallway that hugs the perimeter of the tower, and they can see that it continues to the other side of the tower. The interior of the walkway is open air extending 170 ft. to the other side of the tower. Their view is obstructed by water cascading upwards, an inverted waterfall. The air is cool.

As the group walks forward they look over the edge of the walkway into the open space and cannot see how far it goes down. When they are about 30 ft. into the room, a voice echoes throughout the tower.

“Welcome. It would seem your inevitable arrival to The Library of Ancients has finally come to fruition. I am The Logician. In anticipation of this advent, I have machinated a gauntlet of trials sufficient to confound your limited cognitive abilities. This entire library, if you will, has been retrofitted to this purpose. But do not be concerned; the map you seek still resides in its designated location. If you defeat me by surmounting my challenge, it will be yours. Though, I have calculated your chance of success, and I’m afraid your journey ends here.”

Persephone replies, “Nerd!” She notes that they knew this day would come eventually. She suggests that they should just progress forward and kill The Logician like they killed the other Freelancers.

From their vantage point, Persephone and Echo notice there is a slightly glowing pulse of light directly across from them on the other side of the tower. Persephone asks if the others can see the ominous glow and points it out. They approach the light to check it out and find a glowing glyph on the floor underneath a stone pedestal. The pedestal is topped with a spherical white crystal, which is giving off the pulsing glow.

Echo casts Mage Hand and touches the pedestal: nothing happens. Percy casts Detect Magic and moves closer to inspect the glyph, the crystal, and the pedestal; she observes that they are of the Conjuration School of magic and thinks they could be a teleporter. While the party discusses whether to touch the teleporter or not, Echo sends Jhank to investigate the rest of the area. Jhank does not find anything.

Echo touches the teleportation device and recognizes that it needs some juice to turn it on; he needs to focus on filling it with some arcana energy. He tells Percy, Primina, and Sebastian to gather around and start chanting. The other three are very confused and ask what they’re chanting as Echo’s eyes roll into the back of his head. In a flash of light they are teleported to a near identical area. The walkway is the same, the water is still flowing up from a hole in the center, but the pedestal is different. There is still a glowing white crystal on the top, but there are two additional slots which look like they hold other stones that are not there. Echo compliments on everyone’s chanting as the party takes a look around.

Sebastian sees that there are doors on the east and west sides of the room. Persephone suggests that perhaps since there are two orbs missing from the pedestal there might be one behind each of the two doors. Echo throws Jhank towards the center of the hole in the room, but a barrier appears and Jhank bumps into it before returning to Echo. The group decides to head west.

### Once More for the Wiki

The party approaches the western door and sees a 10 ft. tall, gray, stone monolith with Elven text. The epigraph reads:

*Dark and light strike each other*
*Vividly etching wild colors.*
*Crimson bleeds to hooded blue*
'*Til all that’s left are faded hues.*

Echo snaps a picture and walks past the monolith to the door. When he reaches out to touch the door, another magic barrier with a large glowing glyph appears. When he takes his hand away, the glyph disappears.

They decide to check out the eastern door instead. This side also has a monolith with an Elven epigraph, this one reads:

*Veil after veil I lift away, and by degrees the forms and colors revitalize.*
*The trembling time between vertical light and darkest night.*

Echo determines that these doors are both magically sealed with a password; if they can guess the right word the doors will open, otherwise they will need to cast Dispel Magic to get through. Echo says “Twilight” in Elven. Nothing happens. Persephone says the riddles remind her of sunrise and sunset. Echo says both those words in Elven but nothing happens. Echo says “Dawn” in Elven, and with a shimmer, the eastern door opens.

### What Does the Hedge Wall Say?

The door opens to a 10 ft. wide dark hallway that extends 50 ft. to an open archway; bright light can be seen on the other side. Echo sends Jhank out to investigate first. Jhank enters a room in the shape of a semicircle with a grassy floor. There are three ornate gates on the outer walls with maze-like hedges that climb up to the ceiling. Everything is brightly lit, but there doesn’t seem to be a light source. Each gate has an Elven numeral glowing on its center frame; behind each gate are paths to other openings.

Persephone enters the room and casts Speak with Plants. “Excuse me, nice hedge-plants, we would like to proceed through this wonderful maze you have here. Can you tell us which way to go, please?” A thousand small voices respond, like each leaf is talking to her, “You can proceed through any door. The sequence is what is important… the golden numbers rule the day.” It giggles. Percy thanks the hedge and tells it to stay beautiful. She returns to Echo and Sebastian to tell them what she learned.

Echo is able to read the numerals on the doors; they are numbered I, II, and III. Percy asks if any of those numbers are considered “golden.” Echo can’t think of anything significant, people seem to like 3 and 1 is cool because it is the first whole number. As they puzzle out the clue, they hear The Logician’s voice from the ether.

“Welcome to The Dawn Garden. Here, the music of the spheres builds harmony into atoms, molecules, stars, and galaxies, making the universe sing.”

Echo is annoyed by the vagueness of the statement. Based on the hedge’s clue, Echo deduces that the correct door is probably the start of some sort of important mathematical sequence. Echo opens gate III and enters with Percy and Sebastian following. They each disappear in a flash of light and reappear in the same room where they started, taking some psychic damage. Next they try gate I, and they successfully pass through.

The second room is a perfectly square room featuring a fountain with two bronze statues of elven figures bathing. There are two gates in the room, one has the numeral II and the other has the numeral IV. Echo is wary of the statues since the last statues they encountered blasted Sebastian. These statues are quite beautiful. Persephone picks gate II and the party passes through successfully.

The third room is a tri-radial room with a bronze statue of a satyr playing on a spiked fiddle. There are two more gates; one is numeral III and one is numeral V. Echo takes a minute to go back to the second room to check it out since they passed through it quite quickly. He doesn’t see anything of note, the statues seem to be purely decorative.

### Phone a Smart Friend

Persephone uses her bracer jack to phone Watt. She gives him an update and asks if he knows anything about golden numbers ruling the day. He asks for her to explain the situation a bit more, golden numbers could mean quite a few things. Percy tells him The Logician’s clue and that they’re following a number sequence; they’ve already passed through gates with numerals I and II. Watt is about to tell her what he thinks the obvious answer is, but the call gets cut off.

“Uh-Uh-Uh. No cheating now!” The voice of The Logician tells them. “I built this puzzle with the four of you in mind.” Echo asks if The Logician is saying that Watt is smarter than him. He has a flashback to the mind chess game they played earlier. Persephone suggests they go through gate III and they pass through safely.

The next room is a large square room with a gazebo in the center; tables and chairs surround it. There are three gates: numerals IV, V, and VI. Jhank crawls around the gazebo. Persephone pauses and thinks very hard for a minute. Due to her experience in nature, she believes this is the Fibonacci Sequence, which is pervasive through many natural things. Echo, Sebastian, and Primina follow her lead as she heads through gate V. They pass through safely to the next room.

This room is an enormous circle with marble flooring completely covered in a painting of a compass rose. There are three more gates, numerals VI, VII, and VII. Persephone leads them through gate VIII and once again they pass safely.

They find a long corridor running north to south. There is a bronze statue of a Servitor playing a pipe with little bronze birds on its antler. There are two gates, X and XIII; Persephone leads them to gate XIII.

The next room is a large, semi-octagonal room featuring a long eastern wall covered in a mural of a beautiful Elven woman with outstretched hands. Above her hands are circles or spheres representing the phases of moons, and above her head is a planet that looks like Arvandor. There are four gates in this room, numerals XX, XXI, XXIII, and XXV. Persephone heads towards gate XXI, opens the gate, and successfully passes into the next room

### Wait A Minute... I Don't Actually Know Mage Hand

Here is a 60 ft. diameter circular room with bushes trimmed in the shape of various animals. At the center of the room is a bronze minotaur statue holding a bowl, above which floats a glowing orange sphere. Echo checks for traps, both physical and magical, and does not find anything. Echo throws Jhank towards the statue; Jhank glides to the statue and crawls into the bowl. He hops up and licks the sphere. Persephone thinks that this is what they need; the pedestal in the other room had two indentations and this sphere should fit.

Echo tries to have Jhank grab the sphere to bring it over; Jhank latches on and slowly spins with the orb as it spins in place because he is not actually strong enough to yank it free. Persephone walks up and grabs the stone. It glows with a light and, as a druid, she knows that it is actual captured sunlight. It does feel warm like a little miniature sun. As she walks back to the party, Echo and Sebastian watch the bronze minotaur drop the bowl, pull a giant greataxe from its back, and lunge towards the party.

### Fight!

Sebastian moves 30 ft. forward and uses his BFG to take some shots at the minotaur. The first shot misses but the second hits; the damage does less than expected. Percy turns around and says “Oh no!” She Wild Shapes into the Stone Drake and uses her bite and claws to attack. The bite misses but she makes a critical hit with her claws. The minotaur raises its greataxe above its head, but instead of bringing the ax down, it begins to snort flames from its nose, opens its mouth and breathes fire directly on Percy. Percy manages to dodge some of the flames, but still takes fire damage. Echo shoots a Firebolt from his gun, but the shot misses. He follows this up with another shot from his gun and a red, fiery pellet fires towards the minotaur. Before the fire can hit the minotaur, the creature inhales and sniffs it up, absorbing the fire and healing some of the damage it took. Echo tells everyone to avoid using fire. Primina nods in acknowledgement since she was about to use her fire breath. Instead, she concentrates for a moment, and her hands become claws, her teeth become sharper, her horns protrude more, and her wings sprout from her back as she swoops in for a multi-attack on the minotaur. Her bite hits but she misses with her claws and horns.

Sebastian runs up to the minotaur and uses his unholy Orc club; he successfully bludgeons the minotaur twice and then marks it to draw its attention. Persephone hits the minotaur with both her bite and claw attacks, bringing the creature down to bloodied. Jhank pops out of Echo’s armor and lets out a little battle cry. The minotaur turns to catch Persephone, Primina, and Sebastian in its fire breath attack; hitting them all directly and bringing them all to bloodied or nearly down. Echo casts Bigby’s Hand and punches the minotaur with force damage. Primina goes in with another set of bite, claw, and horn attacks. She hits with her bite and claws. Sebastian takes his two attacks with his Orc club, as well as an extra attack since the minotaur harmed others while marked. All three attacks make contact, and Sebastian brings it down with his final smash, caving in the skull of the statue.

### I'm Gonna Pretend I Didn't See Your Screen

Echo sits on his Bigby’s Hand and flies around on it, putting out fires, until the spell ends. Persephone shifts back into her Firbolg form. Sebastian checks out the minotaur statue and grabs its bronze greataxe. There’s no more pathways leading forward so they need to backtrack to where they began. Echo takes the sphere, touches Jhank with it. It is warm in Jhank’s hand, and Jhank does not evolve.

They journey all the way back to the western door and Echo says “Dusk” in Elven. There’s a shimmer, the barrier fades, and the door opens. They see a very large stone chamber with bare walls and a high ceiling. The only feature is a 5 ft. tall circular pedestal, atop which blazes a fire, 100 ft. away from them.

Persephone asks if there is anything else, do they think the “bear” walls will attack them? They decide to just go forward. Echo throws Jhank like a paper airplane into the room; it is empty and there are no bears. Echo notices that amidst the flames is a small, glowing, blue light. As they enter the room, the doors close behind them and the fire flares up. Percy steps towards the pedestal to inspect it. She feels something pierce her chest, no one can see what it is but they see Percy interacting with something, and she takes piercing and necrotic damage as something invisible and quite large bites her. Echo and Percy turn around and realize that looming on the wall behind them is the enormous shadow of a dragon. The shadow is dripping with blood, although Percy does not see blood from her wound. They prepare for a fight.

## Characters

### The Party

* Sebastian Crenshaw: a half-orc Cavalier fighter. Real good at smashing.
* Persephone Goldpetal: an albino firbolg druid. She's that math lady meme.
* Codename: Echo: an elf wizard/rogue. Doesn't actually know Mage Hand.

### NPCS

* Primina: a genetically engineered young woman. The MacGuffin. She's stronk now.
* Watt Wainwright: an elderly gnome. He's too smart for the Logician's puzzles.
* The Logician: a warforged Freelancer. Just a big old nerd.

## Trivia

### Mechanics

* To cast Invisibility, Echo puts a finger on the target's lips and says "Shh."
* Will used 4E minion rules during the mage fight, ignoring half damage on saves.
* Echo does not actually have the cantrip Mage Hand.

### Out of Character

* The birdseed is a reference to another actual-play podcast DM-ed by Brian, Flashbang and The Surgeon.

### World Building

* The glyphs on the floor look like the Knights Radiant Glyphs from *The Stormlight Archive* series by Brandon Sanderson.

### Dice Breakdown

#### Nat 20's (3 total)

* Freeland (Perception)
* Special Guest Jake (Claw attack)
* Brian (Initiative for Jhank)