Episode 06: Library

The mural in the library

## Episode summary

Picking up slightly before the end of the previous episode, Temple 1 shows the party the hidden door leading from the temple of Ytaru into the subterranean research facility of Ginaron. Unlike the spotless temple, the tunnel into the facility is incredibly dusty, but a path of thinner of dust in the middle implies that somebody walked down the tunnel several weeks prior.

Fearing becoming trapped in the facility, the party have Temple 1 show them how to open the door from the other side. Realising that this means that he can leave the temple, they decide to bring him along as a guide. He doesn't know much about the facility, but *is* able to sketch a map for them. Looking at the map, Draven is immediately drawn to a certain sexy sexy room ... the library.

Arriving at the library, they find a mural depicting Warforged and Ytarrans (page image). This is in fact the first time the party have seen a depiction of Ytarrans and they are struck by how similar they appear to Gnomes. the library proper is filled with bookcases (unsurprisingly), but all of the books have been reduced to dust by the centuries of disuse. Angel finds that touching a shelf above Ytarran shoulder height causes the bookcase to slide down into the floor, so that the higher shelves can be reached. However, a pair of bookcases opposite the entrance slide all the way down into the floor, revealing a secret second room to the library!

The piles of dust in this room are slightly less decayed, to the point that it's possible to tell that they were once books even without the context of them being on bookshelves, but they're still far beyond recovery. However, two of the books are fully intact, as they are in fact magic items. One is a martial tome filled with diagrams of Warforged fighting the undead. It provides a permanent +1 competence bonus to damage rolls against the undead to anyone who studies it for a few weeks, so long as the reader already has a base attack of at least +5. The other book is a garish bright orange tome that is in fact a shield with a base bonus of zero, but provides a +1 deflection bonus, a +1 competence bonus to saves and +2 on all sense motive checks.

Continuing to search, Angel finds that one of the bookcases has a secret compartment that has been hermetically sealed, preventing the five books inside from decaying. It remains unclear why so many books had to be hidden in a library that was already contained within a secure government facility.

Regardless, the party continue on to the next room on the map: the fey lab. The door contains a hole, roughly 1 cm in diameter, which appears to have been punched outwards from the inside, and Daggerface detects that the metal of the wall has been mixed with cold iron. The door is locked, but Angel picks it and it begins to slide up, only to jam when the deformation around the hole reaches the point where it should slide into the ceiling. Crawling under the door, they find that all of the lights in the lab are broken, as are the crystalline tubes that presumably served as cages for the fey creatures upon which the Ytarrans were experimenting. The party pockets some cold iron disection tools and moves on to the fel lab. This door has a hole in it too, but it's slightly larger than 1 cm, covering the entire bottom half of the door. The lights are still working, though, so it's easy to see that this lab is very similar to the fey lab, except the tubular cages aren't crystalline, but instead made of metal, and are much wider. Furthermore, the disection tools are not cold iron but Yttronium, and thus not worth taking.

Continuing on to supplies/water purification, the party see a dog-sized construct skitter across the corridor. Temple 1 explains that they maintain the facility under the direction of the Controller, but does not actually explain what a Controller is. The supplies/water area has three rooms, one of which contains supplies (or 3k worth of Ytarran antiques, depending on how you look at it) and one of which contains water. The third room is blocked by a series of hastilly-welded metal plates bristling with worker constructs. Not wanting an unnecessary fight, the paty move on to mechanical, but while Angel is crossing a bridge she's sneak attacked with a crossbow by a hooded Kua Toa, who is standing on a higher bridge along with a couple of Triton slaves. The Tritons summon an earth elemental and an air elemental, but they're only medium, so Little One oneshots the earth elemental. Following this disappointing performance, Demonac retcons Tritons to be able to summon large elementals, so these two were either intentionally underperforming as a form of passive resistance, or just straight-up sucked at their jobs.

Draven casts fly on Black and he carries Angel up to the bridge where the KT assassin is standing, so she can get an aerial attack on him. He flees into the water, but when Angel follows she discoveres that the water is electrified, dealing 4D6 damage per round, fortitude save for half.