Session 8.5: The Librarian's Errand

This session takes place outside the misty lands of Barovia, a prequel of sorts where we meet our two newest party members: Tavin and Horatio.

The city of Waterdeep does not sleep—it merely dims. The Librarium Arcanum, grand repository of arcane knowledge attached to the Mages' College, was supposed to be no different from any other afternoon: dusty, orderly, and aggressively unremarkable. It was not that kind of afternoon.

The Librarian's Problem

Marie Petola managed the restricted archive with the quiet authority of someone who had spent decades keeping unruly students away from things they should not touch. She was half-orc, methodical, and possessed of a faded patch on her left leg where she nervously wiped her thick, round glasses—a habit she seemed entirely unaware of.

She had summoned them because of Horace. A student. A frequent visitor to the restricted section who had, the previous evening, stolen two scrolls and teleported away before she could stop him.

"The guards, their hands are tied, you know," she said. "I need someone to find him and bring him back. The scrolls he took have very dangerous magic—magic I do not think he can control."

His name was in the library's logbook: Horace Altarim. His address, unfortunately, was locked inside the building now cordoned off as a crime scene.

She offered two hundred gold pieces. They accepted.

The Break-In

Gaining access to the logbook without credentials required a certain kind of creativity.

Boom Boom—known more formally as Horatio Ignis, fire-specialist wizard and current student of the very institution now swarming with guards—knew a back entrance. A janitor's door, tucked into an alcove on the building's far side, forgotten by everyone except students who regularly avoided the front. He went in first.

Meanwhile, Lae'zel and Nigeo took up positions in the crowd at the front of the building, where a solution presented itself: Lae'zel accused Nigeo of stepping on her foot. Nigeo accused Lae'zel of existing in his space. A bystander weighed in. Within moments, several guards had abandoned the entrance to manage what appeared to be a serious public disturbance and was, in fact, two acquaintances staging a theatrical argument with considerable conviction.

Inside, a guard on the upper landing spotted Boom Boom crossing the stacks and called down expecting answers. Boom Boom explained, without breaking stride, that he had a test tomorrow and simply needed a reference book. The guard, distracted by the commotion outside, told him to grab what he needed and leave. Boom Boom grabbed the nearest book. It was The History of Watermarsh. He had never heard of Watermarsh.

While he was being escorted toward the front, Tavin Underleaf slipped through the now-unguarded stacks. He found the logbook at the reception desk, found what they needed, and slipped back out the way he'd come.

They regrouped around a corner and assessed the information: Horace Altarim. Address: near the cherub-topped fountain.

The Cherub

Waterdeep's back streets have a way of folding in on themselves. After several wrong turns, one near-encounter with a vagrant, and a sustained philosophical debate about how many fountains the city actually had, they emerged onto a quieter square.

There was indeed a cherub fountain.

Beside it sat an elderly man with wiry white eyebrows and fluffy white hair, reading peacefully in the afternoon light. His name was Sebastian "Stee" Taggiasca. He looked up at the approaching party—at the tall ones first, and then at the small ones emerging from behind their legs.

He knew Horace. He was, he offered without particular emphasis, Horace's grandfather. He had been a little worried, he admitted, about how distant and obsessive his grandson had become lately. He pointed them toward the house, not far down the side street.

"Go easy on him," he said. "He is a good kid."

Riddles Three

Horace Altarim's home was modest and terraced, with its windows planked shut from the inside. What immediately caught the eye was the door knocker: a sphinx's face, golden and gleaming, utterly out of place on an otherwise unremarkable door.

As Boom Boom reached for it, it spoke.

"If the interior you wish to see, you must answer me—my riddles three."

The Sphinx Speaks
The first riddle: "I follow you. You can't touch me or catch me." Boom Boom took a step back and answered: "A shadow."

The second riddle: "My big cities have no people. My winding rivers have no water. My mountains have no snow, and my luscious fields have no grass. What am I?" Boom Boom answered: "A map."

The third riddle described something that always begins and never starts, always ends and never finishes—the party puzzled over it until Boom Boom, for the third time, simply answered: "An echo."

The door swung open.

What Was Found Inside

The ground floor of Horace's apartment had the character of a student who had stopped caring about appearances sometime around midterm. Sparse furniture. A half-finished pint, long stale. Papers everywhere.

Boom Boom sent his Mage Hand ghosting through the room ahead of them and felt it immediately—tripwires, strung at ankle height, connected to glyphs carved along the walls. He kept the Hand moving forward, plucking each wire in turn, and the glyphs detonated one after another in cascades of purple light, filling the room with harmless flashes before going dark. The path was clear.

They found a book in the study: Aberration Transmutation and You, authored by one Che Glüm. Boom Boom recognized the name. A cruel wizard. A scholar of things that should probably remain unscholared. Horace had been reading it carefully.

They found, scattered throughout the apartment, four small lilac crystals and a modest pouch of coin beneath the bedroom mattress.

They found two suits of animated armor standing guard at the top of the stairs, flanking a set of double doors.

The Landing

The armor moved the moment the party crested the stairs.

The Battle on the Landing
Tavin's opening shot—loosed in the first breath of the fight before the armor had taken a single step—punched through the helmet of the nearest suit with enough force to leave it reeling. Boom Boom fired from range, scoring a telling hit even through his misaimed bolt. Nigeo raged and held ground while Lae'zel cut through the first suit with a surge of concentrated fury, then drove into the second. Boom Boom's crossbow found its mark once more. Tavin's final arrow drove through what remained and dropped it in pieces.

The landing was cleared.

The double doors were locked. Tavin's tools slipped on the reinforced bolt. Boom Boom solved the problem with a firebolt that melted the lock entirely.

The doors swung open onto Horace Altarim's study.

What Horace Did

He was inside, but he was not waiting—he was simply too absorbed to care who had broken through his armor and his doors. He sat at his desk surrounded by scattered papers, a scroll open before him, his eyes moving line by line.

Colors moved across his skin. His bones shifted in ways that bones should not shift.

"Almost done," he said, without looking up.

Boom Boom attempted to snatch the scroll away with his Mage Hand. Horace twitched aside without losing his place.

He finished reading.

The Transformation
It happened fast, and then very slowly.

Horace screamed. The scroll dropped. His ribcage buckled outward through his robes as though something beneath wanted out. He looked up at them—one eye expanding, almost pleadingly—before it exploded outward in a burst of light and viscera that coated the room in a fine, luminous spray.

He kept growing. He kept expanding. Until what had been a rogue student wizard was a grotesque, massive creature filling the study wall to wall, and there was nothing left to do but fight it.

What followed was ugly and desperate. The creature grappled Lae'zel and slammed her to the floor, biting deep; she lost consciousness before the second round was over. Nigeo raged and held his ground, absorbing blow after crushing blow while the others worked from range. Boom Boom's Caustic Brew coated the creature in acid that kept eating into it with each passing moment. Tavin's arrows found purchase.

In the end, four magic missiles from Boom Boom brought it down: two to pin it, two through its skull, fizzling out the other side.

The room was very quiet. Lae'zel was breathing. Barely.

Tavin knelt and stabilized her.

What the Scrolls Contained

They recovered both stolen scrolls from the wreckage of the study. Boom Boom examined them carefully: both were spell scrolls of True Polymorph—a ninth-level incantation capable of reshaping any creature or object into another. Horace, apparently, had believed he could handle it.

Boom Boom spent the short rest transcribing both scrolls into his spellbook with patient, methodical care. Somewhere during this process, Tavin covertly lifted the original scrolls from his pocket.

After a moment of consideration, Tavin handed them back.

They also found two statuettes of Che Glüm, finely detailed and clearly valuable. No one examined them too closely.

The Reward

Marie Petola received the news with quiet devastation.

"He is no longer a student, I assume," she said, when they had finished.

She paid them anyway. Two hundred gold, evenly divided—fifty each. Enough to feel like an accomplishment, not quite enough to feel like it had been worth it. Ah, well. This adventuring party had dealt with worse for less.