Hit the Books - 15/06/2022 - A Kavel Perspective

The Dawnlands Library Book Club

I had heard from a good comrade of mine that the Runaway Library had reappeared in Port Ffirst. Comrade Celina is a regular library visitor like me. But, unfortunately, she would not be joining me on a trip to visit the library, and say hello to our good friend, the library’s caretaker, Chonk. Celina, sadly, was preoccupied with shop business. I was grateful for her pointing out the Runaway library was back though, since I had an idea concerning the upcoming gith invasion.

Along for the library visit, I did have my human sister and sneaky combat expert, Sorrel. Sorrel had not been back to the library since the time she and comrade Kelné figured out how to enter the place. Speaking of tricksy and divinely blessed halflings, Kelne also agreed to come to the library too, which was not surprising given how fond they are of Chonk, who entrusted his little mimic brother, Chomp to them. Chomp takes the form of a backpack, and as long as he keeps his tentacle limbs inside the opening, he looks unmistakably like an actual backpack.

Comrade Derthaad was equally happy to come visit the library, he is also a regular visitor. My dragonborn sorcerer/investigator friend was interested in my idea of seeing if Chonk could explain to us the Library’s impenetrable properties, so that we might apply them to the dwellings of the Dawnlands. I did also mention to him how despite our four previous visits, we never visited the Archives to see the objects inside. And the Sentry tower? It sounded awesome to me!

We picked up two new library visitors - comrades Sparks and Tayz, my kenku, magic shooting friend, and my aarakocra mage-medic friend. Comrade Tayz was especially delighted with the news of visiting a magical library. They were both in for a surprise.


Runaway Library - New Feature… A Queue

There it was, the giant, one hundred foot cubed sandstone building with its mosaic blue and white archways with two golden terrasques above it. But, what the hell was that extremely long line of people queuing up at the entrance? This wasn’t the usual scholarly or adventurer types in the queue; it was mainly common folk.

Kelné took the initiative and asked someone what the queue was about, and it appeared that Joon - the memory thieving, giant cube, piece-of-shit had been busy. Fortunately, this was a more pleasant form of ‘busy’. Joon had taken up comrade Celina on her business idea to offer the service of removing peoples unpleasant memories for them. This meant he could still get his sustenance through his preferred method, but without stealing the memories.

Comrade Tayz gave me some prompts, and I agreed with what he suggested I do. We walked alongside the queue, to the middle and then I stepped back from the queue and yelled:

“Excuse me!” And then I looked back at comrade Tayz, who kindly reminded me that I needed to say more.

“Excuse me! Who is here for Joon?! Can I please have a raise of hands?!”
In response to my shouted question, nearly everyone in the queue’s hand was raised. In some cases both hands. In a couple of cases, two scholars looked at each other, stepped out of the queue and proceeded to the entrance.

“Thank you!” I said, and then we followed the scholars into the library.


Chonky Greetings in the Main Hall

Our friend, the caretaker of the library, Chonk must have heard my shouting. Chonk was ready in the Main Hall with massive, slimy tentacle hugs for all of us that he remembered; Derthaad, Kelne, me and Sorrel.

Sorrel hadn’t been to the library in ages, she was unaware that she wouldn’t need to bring a book for the library to enter. But, she thoughtfully brought one, which Chonk gratefully accepted, and then expertly hurled onto the right shelf from where we stood.

Chonk and Chomp greeted each other, pleased to see how the other was getting on.

Chonk then greeted our two new library visitors; Tayz and Sparks. Tays also produced a book for Chonk, following Sorrel’s actions, of which Chonk was also appreciative. Chonk then shook both my bird-people comrades' hands. Sparks was a little hesitant, as if he’d never met a friendly mimic before. Both Tayz and Sparks then had slime all over their arm feathers… must be a little harder to wash that off than from bareskin or cloth, I’m guessing.


Chat and Favours Over Pastries and Tea

To get to the seating area we had to go back out to the main corridor and walk through Joon’s ‘therapy’ queue.

In the seating area adjacent to the Main Hall, Chonk treated us to some delicious, fluffy pastries and tea. I asked him about the library’s impenetrable defences. But, he said he wouldn’t be able to help install similar protection to the Dawnlands, since it was his mother who set up the library’s magical defences.

Before Chonk’s mother got into genetics (which is how Chonk and his siblings came about) she experimented with automatons to guard the library, but there was a maintenance issue with this. In particular, the sentry in the Sentry tower has an instructional punch card that is stuck in its back, leaving it on a permanent attack protocol. Chonk said the sentry is very strong, and locked up in the Tower for everyone’s safety. We were welcome to borrow the sentry, if we could remove the punch card and replace it with a more ‘receptive’ one that Chonk gave us.

Chonk also offered us the baby kraken in one of the rooms we hadn’t visited before, and in addition told us about a very large book on githyankis in the Reading Hall in the Astral Plane section. If we went to get this book, we would have to be ‘super quiet’ as Chonk put it, otherwise the librarians would be mad. Plus, it was the only book Chonk was willing to let us break the first rule of the Runaway Library - don’t take any books out.

Chonk had one more thing for us, which was that we were free to take some of the objects in the Archives which Chonk’s mother’s friends brought back from all over the place.

The team voted, we chose to veto the kraken and retrieve the sentry first. If we had time, we’d go to the Reading Hall and Archive afterward. On a personal note, I also wanted to go by the Armoury to say hello to my Stonehand Fighting instructors, the Metal Bros. But, Chonk reminded us that the library would teleport after the third bell rings. We knew we were on a time limit.

Sorrel, ever the sneaky person asked about the sentry’s vision. Chonk unfortunately said the sentry had amazing perception, so invisibility magic didn’t seem like it would be effective.

Comrade Tayz suggested his god, Horus, might be able to help through some divine intervention. Tayz began the small ritual to contact his god, but unfortunately Tayz was not able to make contact.

Comrade Kelné, following our other divinely blessed comrade, decided to try and contact their god, Tymora. I turned round to Sorrel, Sparks and Derthaad as Kelné performed the small ritual with Tayz looking on, and said, with hands on hips:

“My god is better than your god. Ha, ha.”

Unfortunately comrade Kelné also didn’t manage to contact Tymora for a divine intervention. However, my joke did get some laughs.


Recruiting a Sentry (... Hellfire Engine)

On the way through the Kitchen to the Sentry tower, we were all feeling invigorated from the pastries, and Chonk revealed there was envitalising magic in the pastries, because he was concerned we might need it whilst trying to recruit the sentry. Heh…

Sorrel casted the Pass Without a Trace spell, so that we could move undetected. Very clever.

As we slowly entered through the door to the tower and crept in…

“INTRUDERS DETECTED! INITIATE DESTRUCTION!”

Across the circular tower room from us, some eighty feet away was a gargantuan construction with a fiery face, with weapons for limbs, fire blowing out of chambers on its body and what seemed like wheels for a base, and it was not happy to see visitors.

Sorrel disappeared, turning invisible whilst running forward at the sentry. Tayz casted some protective magic on Derthaad and attempted an attack spell on the sentry, whilst Kelne ran forward and casted Spirit Guardians, and was soon surrounded by radiant, smaller versions of themself flying in a protective dome.

No distance spell to my name, I ran forward, stopped in front of the machine and delivered a left hook followed by a right cross to the centre of the machine under its mouth. I wasn’t certain I had hurt the construct, but I had delivered two solid punches to a metal machine. Who else does that? “We should have gone to the Armoury first and invited the Metal Bros to spectate!” I lamented out loud at the missed opportunity for my instructors to see me fight live.

I soon found myself joined by Tac, Derthaad’s summoned metal golem, who also delivered a solid punch on the sentry, but seemed to do less damage. Looks like I’ll have to teach Tac some Stonehand Fighting Technique.

As I had that thought, the sentry machine’s eyes narrowed and with alarming acceleration charged into us knocking me and Tac prone in the eastern part of the tower while moving north towards Kelne and bashing into them. Kelné’s Spirit Guardian spell disappeared. The sentry attacked with lightning magic, which Derthaad seemed to absorb, restricting the damage. I for my part, though prone, wasn’t affected as much from the impact of being run over.

“Kavel! Can you hold it down?!” Sparks yelled from the entrance on the west side of the tower.

“No… comrade it’s too big even for me,” I reluctantly, but honestly replied.

“Okay then,” I heard Sparks respond, as Mac flew over towards me, landing his feet on my shoulder and I felt myself get taller. I’d experienced this before from the little comrade I call, ‘Red’ - it was the Enlarge spell.

“Gains comrade Kavel! Gains!” Comrade Sparks yelled after witnessing his spell successfully casted.

With an immediate response that we’ve all come to enjoy from comrade Tayz, he casted some healing magic into our trampled halfling comrade. The sentry, next to Kelne in the northern part of the tower was then joined by Sorrel appearing in a puff of smoke from the Misty Step spell on the sentry’s back with lockpick tools in hand. Glued to the sentry, Sorrel seemed to remove some debris that may have been lodging the punch card in place.

Witnessing Sorrel’s activities, I got up from the floor, and in my new giant form ran over to the sentry’s back, gripped the punch card with my giant hand, and braced against the sentry’s back with my other hand and pulled hard. The plywood punch card came loose to my mighty grip and the fiery eyes of the sentry dulled immediately afterwards. Relieved, I asked for the new punch card Chonk gave Sorrel, and then punched it into the sentry’s back.

The sentry’s eyes lit up anew as its head swillved in a 360 degree rotation.

“PEOPLE DETECTED. PROTECTION PROTOCOL ACTIVATED,” announced the sentry, followed by, “No enemy detected. Leaving to search for the enemy.

The sentry machine then rolled out the tower entrance and clunked its way down the tower steps.

Chonk’s entered the room, “you managed to take it out then. It’s left through the front door - probably to find a threat.”

Chonk asked for the old card. Tayz made a print of the card before we handed it back. Chonk alarmed us by informing us that the ‘defence card’ as he called it, had the instruction for the sentry to operate at 10% capacity only. It took me a while to consider that, but at 10% it steamrolled more than half of us and appeared to suffer very little damage at our hands. At 100%, it could probably headbutt a red dragon to death - assuming it could reach it, it didn’t seem to be able to fly. I mentioned this out loud and Chonk told us it had range capabilities.


Reading Hall - For a Special Book on Githyanki

“I remind you that the library doesn’t normally allow books to be removed from the building, but we are making an exception here… also - please do not kill the librarians!”

These were the words Chonk left us with as we travelled the central corridor to the Reading Hall to find in front of the Reading Hall’s door a message in many languages that read, “silence in the library”.

The door to the Reading Hall opened by itself - silently. We peered in. There were a couple of scholars reading, but also a pair of floating aberrations (all the staff here were aberrations, so that was nothing new). These aberrations were like huge, green meatballs with a cyclops eye, but also eyeballs on the end of their four tentacles. The scholars didn’t seem to mind the aberrations, they were just very silent like the entire room… even the fireplace in the northeast of the room didn’t make a single crackle. Strange.

Sorrel casted the Pass Without A Trace spell again. Chonk said we should be silent, so silent we shall be.

Comrade Tayz then entered the room and broke the silence casting the Banishment spell on both the aberrations. One of them disappeared while the other one remained and looked over at comrade Tayz with disdain, as he flew into the room and landed on a sofa in the southeast corner.

The remaining aberration then turned its attention south towards the open door, and saw both me and my sister. The aberration’s gaze was powerful to say the least. It managed to freeze my zippy sister in place. I too felt a little paralysed with fear, but could still move. The aberration turned back towards Tayz, pointed a tentacle out at him and comrade Tayz was flung from the sofa he perched on into the wall behind him making a crashing noise as his back hit the wall.

A little scared, I nevertheless had to find the gith book, so I crept into the room. I could see bookshelves on the left. On the right, in the southeastern corner was my feathered friend on the floor. I shushed him with a finger against my lip, admonishing him for crashing into the wall, and as such making noise in the Reading Hall. I then started browsing the shelves. Derthaad followed me in and tried to browse the shelves from afar.

From the doorway, Sparks casted some utility magic spell on Kelné, who walked into the room hugging the wall, and appeared to have a spell readied. Kelné then said something in Deep Speech (... I had no idea they spoke that) and casted something at the aberration. The aberration blinked, looked at Kelné, and ignored her… strange.

Sorrel then appeared through the Misty Step spell ahead of me by the bookshelves, looked at the shelves in the northwest of the room, and then looked my way and pointed at the bottom shelf. At the same time, a rather large Guiding Bolt hit the aberration in the face.

Tayz then flew over to the crocodile rug in front of the fireplace in the northeast corner. Derthaad was yelling at him about how we could have just entered the room quietly without the need for combat, especially when we were told not to kill anyone.

“Well one less enemy, mate!” Comrade Tayz said back to comrade Derthaad, in reference to his Banishment spell earlier, and also drawing the remaining aberration’s ire. The aberration pointed one of its tentacles at the fireplace behind Tayz, and a bolt of fire shot him in the back. Another tentacle focused on comrade Derthaad, and another on comrade Kelné, causing degrees of pain. Luckily me and Sorrel appeared to be successfully book hunting in stealth mode and didn’t garner the aberrations’ attention. Speaking of which, I tiptoed to where my human sister was, and picked up a rather large book - it was about three and a half feet tall it seemed, a bit taller than Kelné. I put it under my arm, like I was carrying a small door, and tiptoed back towards the door with Sorrel behind me.

“Yes!” A sound from the centre of the room. Comrade Kelné had followed Tayz’s example and used the Banishment spell on the remaining aberration - at that point, we had achieved an aberration free Reading Hall.

“Should we have attacked when we came in?” Kelné asked, to which Derthaad immediately shot back, “no!” And then the bickering between comrades Derthaad and Tayz recommenced.

Sorrel suggested the discussion should wait until we’ve left the room with the book. Tayz suggested we jam the door shut on the way out. The already spooked pair of scholars in the room while we fought were horrified at the idea. We decided to just leave.

Out the door, Derthaad casted Comprehend Languages to read the gith writing on the book. It was a compendium on gith hierarchy and the space pirate code.

Ding! Came the ring of the first bell, and we then knew we had half an hour left before the library would teleport away.


Stonehand Fighting Technique Demonstration

My comrades said I could go visit the Armoury to say hello to the Metal Bros while they explored the Archive to see what items we might take with us. This was great of them!

In the main corridor, as we split up, my comrades noted that there were a few upset people at the back of the Joon ‘therapy’ queue. With the ringing of the first bell, people were aware they were going to miss their opportunity to have unpleasant memories removed.

The Armoury is the room next to the Laboratory, which is where Joon resides. Passing by the Laboratory room, I noticed Joon’s stored red memory crystals had spread out of the lab. He had a massive collection of memories in the northeastern corner of the lab - where my Polearm Mastery memories now reside, if he hasn’t already consumed them. But now there were red crystal growths all along the corridor walls. I didn’t go into the lab, but I wondered how full the lab must be with memory crystals now?

The Armoury door was open. My Metal Bro instructors were giving a demonstration on Stonehand Fighting Technique to a bunch of spectators. When they saw me they stopped to wave. I went over and shook all their hands and gave them all a hug. Though they are all (sentient) suits of full plate armour - they are heavy like a person is inside them. I explained to them how I’ve been using SFT on adventures, chiefly elbow dropping a red dragon from the sky, but also punching and subduing the sentry in the tower. My instructors were pleased, but they did not tell me this verbally, since only Chonks can talk to them that way. No, my instructors communicated their delight with high-fives, fist bumps and back slaps. They gestured for me to help with their demonstration and some light rolling (grappling) and I was delighted to join them. I pulled off a picture perfect seatbelt toss to some great applause before eventually saying goodbye and thanking the Metal Bros for their instruction.

I exited the Armoury and jogged down the corridor past the Laboratory’s open door, and as I passed it, I heard:

“You!”


Joon - The Ungrateful Oblex

I turned around, and standing by the door was the person the long line of people were queuing for, Joon. When last I saw this piece of shit he was a ten foot tall black oblex. Now, before me was a twenty foot oblex. Joon seemed to have way more eyes than before, and was oozing his slime all over the place with his immense size - someone has been feeding well with his queue of customers (something to tell comrade Celina when I next see her).

But, Joon was pissed off.

“You!” He continued, “this is your fault! You and your friends. I followed your business advice to feed on people’s unwanted memories. Now I have a never ending queue of people telling me their feelings and then thanking me! I hate people! And worst of all, they hug me at the end of the session!”

I would have hoped the endless line of sustenance without conflict was a good trade-off against Joon’s anti-social preferences, but clearly he disagrees. In fact, Joon made his disagreement more obvious to me by switching from shouting to trying to hit me. Joon reached for red crystal growths from the corridor ceiling near him with oozing limbs and then hurled crystal and ooze at me. How ungrateful! It’s not my fault he hasn’t improved his social skills. I had no time to engage him though. I had to check in with my comrades in the Archive, so I ran towards the end of the corridor where there was a sharp left turn to provide protection from Joon’s projectiles.

As I got past the corner, I was drenched in black ooze and the occasional red crystal stuck on me. I shook off the crystals - they are someone’s memories, I should leave those here. The pelting of crystals had stopped. Joon wasn’t following me. Looking at my black ooze drenched self, I was not pleased. So, I stuck my head out round the corner and said:

“Stop wasting your time throwing things at me!” And I pointed at his long line of customers, “you still have customers to see!” And I smiled and laughed. Joon responded by throwing more crystals at me. So, I decided it was time to actually leave, and headed for the Archive room. As I picked up my feet, the second bell rang.


Archive - Freebies!

“Kavel! Go get Tayz out of here!” I heard Derthaad shout at me, as I entered the Archive, while he summoned Tac to pick up a gold chain presented on a plinth.

Each of my comrades exited the Archive with an item they had taken. Each of them looked a little damaged - Tayz; holding a goggled helmet was completely rigid, Sorrel; looked like the black arrow she was holding had burnt her hand. Chonks greeted us and said he may have forgotten to mention each of the items had a magical security measure attached to it.

We said goodbye to Chonks and thanked him for all his help today and exited the library. Poor Tayz now had Chonk slime to work out of his feathers and Joon ooze too from where I carried him out of the Reading Hall.

The boys showed me the items they retrieved.

Sorrel was very happy with the Arrow of Dragon Slaying she obtained. The gold chain was a Circlet of Blasting that Kelné took. Tayz was delighted with the helmet he picked up, it was a Helm of Comprehend Languages. Derthaad had a potion of Fire Resistance. Sparks had an Eagle Whistle that would enable him to fly, which he was very keen on. I took the starfish shaped full-body suit, the Wingwear - also a flight enabling device. But, I knew my sister would be keen on this obvious stealth compatible infiltration suit, so I swapped her Seeker Dart for it.

We agreed to get the book to someone important like Jenna at Fort Ettin. I felt we did well and hoped the oncoming invasion would go better for our troubles today… speaking of troubles and the help we obtained from the library, my comrades and I agreed to keep our eyes out for the sentry’s whereabouts!