Expedition 15: Your Book is Overdue

*Or, "Oops, All golems!" or "Friends before books!"*

### Summary

We attempt to further explore the mage's sanctum, but run into multiple golems, including one made of books.

### Detailed Writeup

The shortest possible party set out from the Nestle early in the morning, reentering the Badlands once more to bring scholars to the late mage’s lair. On the way, at Calliope’s suggestion, Tolyr attempted to make a map of where the holes in the Badlands are in order to see whether they formed a pattern. They also noticed a bronze bowl worth 45gp hidden in the sand.

Knowing they had left behind a book golem, the party was prepared for trouble. Calliope was warned away by a voice speaking Stonetongue so Tolyr manipulated the statue puzzle to open the door, which had closed on its own, and then offered a 1st level burning hands to the spell-activated door. No golem appeared behind the door, so they made their way in toward the library by the left passage, remembering the pit on the right. Marzipan listened at the door of the library for golem sounds, but instead heard dripping.

Calliope opens the door and steps in, seeing the library has books on the shelves again. As Lahont follows her in, he hears a loud voice in Stonetongue saying “Your book is overdue!” Calliope, not knowing what it’s saying, raises her shield to protect Lahont. He pulls the book out of his bag and sets it on the table, apologizing profusely but the doors slam shut and the golem begins to reform. Calliope, hoping Lahont can fix the problem, readies an action to punch a book if it gets too close. After detecting magic, Uzmir attempts to open the slammed door and is promptly attacked by a mimic. The golem continues to complain, having changed its cry slightly: “Your book was overdue!” Wondering what the fine was, Lahont grabs the colorful ancient money out of his bag and slams it on the table. This seems to pacify the golem, at least temporarily, and the whole party steps into the room.

They search the library for posted rules about lending but find nothing besides a locked and trapped drawer in the desk and an open necromancy wizard’s book on the table. Surmising that only one book can be out at a time, they manage to figure out where it goes in the sorting system and return it, also noticing a nice atlas. Unfortunately, on trying to pull a book out again, they still feel the resistance and the voice cries out, “What is the password?” Not knowing the password, they party consider using speak with dead on the necromancer’s head, but realize that he would likely not want to give up the password.

They decide to investigate the passage into the underground railroad next so that Lahont or Uzmir can read the road signs. Not considering that this might involve entering a different zone, Calliope opens the door to see another golem, made of stone and over 7 feet tall which charges at her. Though Tolyr’s ray of frost heals it and it is immune to Uzmir’s psychic damage, Calliope successfully takes its focus, while Marzipan defends her from the golem’s attempt to slow her and Lahont lands devastating sneak attacks on it. After yelling “You will not destroy the emperor’s property,” the golem lands a well-placed fireball in the center of the library which severely injures all but Calliope. Only because he made his save, Uzmir is not immediately slain. Tolyr cures his wounds and drags him into the bedroom for safety. Uzmir, realizing he has few options in this situation, holds his action to dash.

Marzipan lands a max damage crit on the golem with his spiritual spatula (Noah then fakes him out by saying “Marzipan…. (pregnant pause) that was a whole lot of damage. The golem is now \*bloodied\**.*” The golem having been bloodied, it cracks like an egg to show its molten core and begins to do fire damage every time it takes damage, which makes Calliope quickly reconsider the ‘running’ option, but the golem steps over her to swing at Marzipan and he falls. The golem picks up the fallen Marzipan and slings him over his shoulder, where he will take fire damage whenever the golem is damaged. Calliope can’t reach Marzipan to heal him, so she disengages and runs. Tolyr heals Marzipan with a healing word then, asking Calliope’s advice in order to do exactly what she says not to do, he pulls a book from the shelf to awaken the book golem and yells at Lahont to direct it at the stone golem. Marzipan successfully struggles out of the stone golem’s grip but that doesn’t leave him time to disengage so an opportunity blow by the golem takes him down again.

Meanwhile, the book golem is re-forming and yelling at Lahont, “You did not say the passcode!” Lahont yells back, “The LIBRARY is on FIRE. Fight \*that thing\* instead!” The book golem seems confused, but Lahont’s speaking Stonetongue provides enough cognitive dissonance to make it hesitate. Having taken Marzipan down, the stone golem sends another fireball into the library taking out Tolyr and bloodying the as-yet-unhurt book golem, then walks back down the hallway. Calliope heals Tolyr while the book golem stands around confused, then Tolyr heals Marzipan, who runs into the kitchen. Uzmir holds his action to witchbolt the book golem if it attacks, which it decides to do. Lahont closes the door to the underground railroad, then moves past the book golem to shoot at it. Calliope gets two huge hits on the book golem, which is vulnerable to the thunder damage from her gauntlets, but its hypnotic floating words stun everyone but Uzmir and Marzipan. It turns to slam into Calliope and takes her down and though Uzmir looses his witchbolt in response, it misses. He attempts another witchbolt, which also misses, and takes cover inside the bedroom again. Marzipan walks up to the golem, puts his hand on his arcanium orb, and casts spirit guardians at 6th level. The golem’s hypnotic words float before Marzipan’s eyes, but he is unaffected, being illiterate. Celestial book-eating bugs swarm from the floor and devour the books (psychically), killing the book golem. Tolyr heals Calliope, then starts trying to put out the smoldering books with ray of frost: “Friends before books… but books right after!” He gathers Calliope and Marzipan into a shaking, tearful hug.

The party salvages what books they can and takes an eight hour short rest since it is still before noon. Through the combined efforts of Calliope and Lahont, the locked drawer of the desk is opened without discharging its traps, but it is empty. Suspicious, Marzipan checks the ethereal plane and notices that the drawer has a false bottom. Lahont and Calliope remove the false bottom, disarming further traps. Marzipan notices that the false bottom blocks his ethereal plane sight. In the drawer, Lahont and Calliope find magical scrawlings in multiple languages, including what Tolyr recognizes as a recipe for lichdom in elvish (but keeps that fact to himself) and a confusing document in stonetongue and celestial seemingly discussing a competition at the end of the last age between Ova, Mae’ra, Nerulla, Bahamut, and Torreson to ascend as the new sun. They decide not to push it by trying to take the necromancer’s skull this time, especially since Tolyr has noticed the lich notes.

Luckily for our injured heroes, the trip back across the badlands is uneventful. They return to the Nestle with the bronze bowl, the lich and heliocension notes, books worth 500gp, a small panel of anti-magic wood, and plans to build a library. Not being prepared to create an outpost there for fear of stone golems and because the statue puzzle seemed only to work a limited number of times, their expedition was deemed unsuccessful.