The Keys of Telku / The Book with No End pt. 2 / Eire the 7th, 3592 CE / 10-7-19

The Adventurers recover find themselves in a basement storage room, having escaped the gas-filled dining hall moments earlier by way of a chute hidden underneath the chair of the tower's mysterious master. The party quickly busies themselves with the tools and blankets in the storage room in order to block of the chute and prevent the poisonous gas from seeping into the basement, while Alejandra the Oracle discovers among the linens a banner with more mysterious messages for the party regarding the nature of the powerful artifact which they seek. The Adventurers use a dumb waiter to return to ground level, making their way through another storage room, a kitchen, and meat locker. In the next room they discover a well, where a still drunk Adrienne decides to investigate, plunging down to a depth of 100 feet. At the bottom she recovers several gold coins of Ancient make and a sealed metal box, after the party is able to break it open, is revealed to contain a piece of ivory with more mysterious clues, indicating that the object of power which they seek may in fact be an arcane tome. After discovering stairs leading to an upper level, the party decides to bypass the rest of the ground floor and ascend, hopefully towards their goal of the nameless artifact they have come seeking, perhaps the book mentioned in the clues they had already received. In the hallway at the stop of the stairs is a caryatid column, a magical stone construct in the shape of a woman wielding a sword. Though unmoving for the moment, Nari advises caution, and the group instead explores the first door off the second story hallway, which leads to what appears to be an old menagerie full of empty cages of varying sizes. Spotting a hidden door at the far end of the room, Adrienne attempts to squeeze past the largest of the empty cages, at which point the object becomes animated, attacking the party. Meanwhile, the caryatid column has begun speaking in a man's voice in the Ancient language. As the party fights with the animated cage using spell and steel, Adrienne succeeds in her goal of slipping past it and into the next room, which has shelves lined with old spell components, and, oddly enough, the frozen form of a tiny winged monkey. As the animated cage is finally laid low, Henry has been translating the words of the statue, which seem to come from the tower's master, an archmage named Xavian. Though suspicious of their presence in his domain, he is convinced to help them in their endeavor at the mention of the Baalites who may also be seeking the object of power. Xavian, through the caryatid column, directs them to seek aid from his assistant, Xiao, "the last of his kind." He tells the party that Xiao can be awakened by the speaking his name, and then the statue falls silent. Acting on a hunch, the party speaks the name Xiao to the tiny winged monkey, which springs to life, chittering away in Ancient, so that Henry and Alejandra are forced to translate. Once it calms down, Xiao explains that his master left four guardians, aspects of his own moral failings, which he named Power, Hatred, Pain, and Ambition. Xiao states that "Power" can be found in the library, as knowledge was the source of his master's power, and ultimately, his downfall. Proceeding to the library, which lies just at the end of the same hallway, the party inspects the large room full of tomes after lighting the ancient chandeliers, but find no evidence of an enemy. That is until something black and slick begins oozing from between the books, manifesting as a large oily monster which attacks the party. Unfortunately, as Xiao relates, the method of defeating it may prove to be the Adventurers' own undoing, as they discover moments later when Roisyll throws a spark at the roilling oil, only to discover to her horror that the now flaming mass is fighting on in a cloud of fire and billowing smoke. Xiao urges the party to escape the library before the creatures' demise, and thankfully they stumble on a hidden room, with Alejandra and Moss distracting the beast long enough for the others to escape. As Alejandra stumbles into the secret staircase, badly burned from the monsters' attacks, the stone door is slammed shut behind her just in time as the party hears a booming explosion coming from the library, spelling doom for Xavian's guardian as well as his collection of ancient books.