S14: Oops

Kiya artfully ties Ellison up, then prestidublibitates herself and the party clean. We search Ellison – he is carrying a pouch of gold on his belt. +62 GP (+20 GP Kiya). Rythnax is wearing a backpack containing a roll of papers tied with a ribbon. They are from various books.

We found the missing section on Pools of Radiance section from Weave the Liminal, as well as a narrative of Ren’s encounter with a Pool of Radiance. He came across an event where magic was behaving strangely, magic items not doing what they should. There is another page from a later section, a short paragraph describing his battle and defeat of a bronze dragon possessed by Tyranophraxus. When the dragon was near death, the entity disappeared into a Pool of Radiance.

Rythnax’s backpack also contains a Scroll of Hold Person, which Kiya takes to learn later. He is also wearing an amulet. We surmise that it is probably a symbol of the Cult of the Dragon, and take that.

We scout the area and Vistra finds a small cave in the ground. Kiya scouts it with her dancing lights. We find a nest containing a suit of splint armor, a magnifying glass, and 300 GP (+100 GP to Kiya).

Ellison remains unconscious, so we take a short rest and Tyener cooks dinner. He finds some edible berries, a weird-looking fish that he totally thinks is edible, and makes us a stew for dinner. Ellison wakes, and we question him.

• Hired to steal info about Pools of Radiance from the library, where he worked as a scribe.
• Seemed easy at first, but then had to track down books checked out and stole them.
• Garda got suspicious and was going to report him so he tied him up. The cult said he couldn’t live.
• His contact was a halfling, no name. They would leave him notes at the library front desk or in his room. They found him. Can’t describe the halfling but did have the same amulet as Rithnax.

Kiya takes first watch, fails a perception check, and notices nothing. She then goes to sleep. Vistra, on the same watch, notices nothing either. Tyener notices nothing on his watch either.

The next day, Kiya checks on Ellison. In the night, someone cut his throat! We search for tracks and clues. Vistra notices that his throat was slit by someone right-handed who knelt by him and then walked away. The footprints are halfing-sized. We follow the tracks back towards the river that is 40-50 ft away from our original landing site. They end at the river.

We return to our boat, which is still there. We put Ellison’s body into the boat and push it off. We make it back to the city and tie it off at the original dock we set out from. We notice that the dock is empty – the halfling Zeram is gone, along with all his boats.

We take Ellison’s body back through the sewers so no one will ask questions and re-enter the lower archives via the rope and hole in the wall we chased Ellison through. We leave Tyener with the body at the foot of the stairs to the archives and walk to Cassra’s office on the second floor. We find her there, writing memos.

We show her Ellison, describe his confession and part in what happened, and tell her the real killers are on the loose. We also hand over the pages that were taken from the books and Cassra offers to keep them very safe in their vault of forbidden knowledge.

We go to the Lord Sage’s office. He pays us +102 GP (+34 GP to Kiya) and a probationary membership: access for 6 mos. If we can uncover and stop those responsible for the scheme, we could have a permanent membership.
We leave Mantor’s Library and Kiya visits Teljas at the Pond Prawn. The dwarf listens to her story of her fight and gives Kiya info to find a shady merchant so she can sell the phase spider venom and mandibles from the phase spider in the Harpel mansion.

When we return to the the Beached Leviathan, the bartender waves us over. He gives us a message from Oleida, telling us to return to the Pious Chapterhouse.