Over the next hour or so the situation in the library labyrinth reached something resembling calm. Healing was provided for the wounded and food was produced as the exploration expanded into lunchtime. Eventually they were able to confirm that there were no other beast men in the library, and that the creatures our heroes previously laid low had entered the library's hidden basement through a cave that had likewise been sealed up by magically molded stone. This cave ran for some distance and based on its angle and the relative freshness of the air, likely connected with the cliff face caves on Emirikol's northeast shore. Having been properly fortified Hiram, Cybele and Dietrich volunteered to explore these while the librarians awaited the arrival of the town police and the paladins. This offer was naturally accepted at once.
The trio lamented at length their not being properly armored - who thought they would need such at a library? - but at least Hiram had been able to secure the lead boar-man's crossbow and supply of bolts. The long, winding cave eventually terminated at a sinkhole down to another cave. The group's cautious and quiet approach gave them hope that they might be able to surprise anyone who might be in the chamber below. Cyble approached cautiously and using her keen elvish vision in the dim light both from below and behind her in the form of a blocked torch she was able to make out at least one boar man along with the snuffling form of another creature, a dog, or perhaps an actual boar. There was also a pair of ropes attached safely outside the sinkhole that the boar men must have used to ascend.
Working her way back to her companions, the three ran through several plans of how to best surprise the guards below, but in the end settled on the most direct: Hiram slid down the rope while Deitrich relied on his training to fall the 15 feet unharmed, with Cybele providing cover from above. The boar man apparently *had* heard Cybele's previous approach as he had moved to a position with cover from where he might fire his crossbow on anyone climbing down the ropes, but the creature was entirely unprepared for the suddenness of Dietrich's approach - the lord Von Eisenwald fell gracefully, dispersed his moment with a roll, bounded off the back of the boar onto the outcropping the boar man was using for cover and dispatched the creature with a single thrust. The heavily muscled and ferocious boar proved more difficult, but eventually the three laid the beast low.
An exploration of the cave reveals yet another occupant - a panicky gnome hiding behind one of the twisted chamber's stalagmites. Once assured of his safety the bedraggled gnome emerges, almost pathetically grateful for his salvation. He gives his name as Johann and spins a tale of woe worthy of any melodrama: he and his brother had been passengers on at ship bound for points east of Emirikol that was captured by pirates; he is a chef, his brother a designer of clockworks, and the pirates took them both to work for them as slaves. Worse, once they were ferried under the cover of darkness to these caves, both were taken by the pirate's master, a blond man named Reme, to this chamber to cook for the beast men. His brother was taken away to perform task after task, and eventually just did not return. The beast men took to tormenting him, and continually sending him down the tunnel to the southeast that held their supplies of weapons and foul foods - a location the beast men now avoided due to the appearance of a ghostly dog that would leap from the shadows and rend them limb from limb. The ghost hound hasn't attacked Johann yet, but the gnome lived in terror of the day when a snap of those jaws would end his life. He knew his life would end in these caves in any case, as Reme discussed parts of his plan in front of the gnome, and Johann, with all that entails.
With a little prompting the gnome lays out what he knows of Reme's plan - something about disguising himself as some priest, and how that will gain him access to the temple. These beast men were to be used as muscle for this plan, while the pirates remained in the shadows to ferry people and goods, as well as to draw out the priest. Not being a native to the area Johann didn’t recognize or remember any names he might have heard, but it matters little.
"So that's what's going on," Deitrich mutters.
"What?" Asks Hiram.
"Audacious," admits the lady Floriane.
"What?" says Hiram, obviously so adept at being a character in the play that he cannot see it from the outside.
Dietrich directs the gnome to climb the rope to the tunnels overhead and follow the cave to the library. Mention their names, he tells the small man, and let the lady d'Ferrantino and any Paladins present know that an actor and pirate named Reme is engaged in a plot to discredit her son, the Cardinal of the East in the church of the endless ocean, Sebastian d'Ferrantino, by assuming his likeness while performing foul deeds in Scornbul, deeds that would be difficult to discredit as the parties that would investigate such a claim - the Loremasters, the Cardinals and the Paladins - would all be tainted by a lack of apparent objectivity concerning their son, their brethren and their friend.
With that the three nobles eschew the cave with the 'ghost hound', heading instead north, deeper into to the caves and, based on the salt tang to the air and the increased moisture, into the pirate camp discussing how they were fortunate to find Johann - after all, Dietrich needs a cook.
Facing the usual problems of traveling through sea caves, the trio find a few others, including a series of razor-edged clockwork driven traps apparently set to kill the small lizards that skitter through the moss and mushrooms that proliferate in the damp rock. Finding another branch and correctly deducing that the one to the right will lead them to the pirates they opt for the one to the left in an attempt to make sure that they will not be surprised by some other unforeseen threat when they do engage the aquatic scoundrels in combat. The selected passage shows some sign of occasional passage, ending in a chamber that contained, in order of discovery, a mass of natural pillars, stalagmites and stalactites, a hinged box holding a collection of dead lizards, a sinkhole obscured by a film of salt doubtless left behind by the last seasonal flooding, some piles of detritus that Cybele identifies as the waste of a serpent and said serpents - a pair of sea vipers whose length was half again the height of a man, but whose sense of self-preservation caused them to retreat in the face of eldritch bursts and a solid whack from Hiram's wooden sword. It was clear that someone had been using the trapped lizards as food for the serpents, but whether the serpents were just pets, a way to dispose of enemies or guardians of something our heroes could not locate in their brief search was not clear.
Their safety from behind apparently assured our heroes return to the passage that must, by process of elimination, lead to the pirates. With well practiced strides our heroes traverse down the tunnel, once again with Hiram taking the lead, Dietrich backs him up and Cybele making all the noise. Still, even with her feet unerringly hitting some stones that skitter down the slope, their approach goes unnoticed, but the trio is halted by an ominous, looming shadow at the point where the passage branched out into the cave that opened to the sea - a giant crab!
Freezing in position are heroes are able to discern that the crab is likewise immobile. A closer look reveals that the lower half of the crab was made of wood, while the upper half is metal, rusted to appear the crustacean’s usual reddish brown. The joints are lovingly articulated, and the legs flair outward, ending with broad, oarlike bases.
"The Pirates have a mecha crab?" Dietrich whispers.
"Johann's brother must have been really skilled." Cybele replies.
Hiram cranes his neck to look over the clockwork crustacean, locating a quartet of pirates engaged in some sort of discussion by a pair of rowboats pulled into the cave. The noble threesome wait as they learn to filter out the background sounds of the sea to make out snatches of the pirates words. Their focus, it appears, is on their boredom, and how they must wait for high tide before the sea is high enough to reach the cave; at that time the pirates pretending to be fishermen in the city will return, letting the two swap guard duty of the treasure cache while slowly working the stolen goods into the local black market. The group argues at length as to which of them will have to claim which of the items they had stolen through blood and threats from their rightful owners, and eventually it is clear that random listening will yield no additional information.
Unwilling to listen to their boastful, brainless blather any longer, Dietrich offers up a quick prayer to the overseeing spirit of the emperor and inches forward. Caution tempers with audacity in his plan as he silently undoes the catches to the driver's compartment of the clockwork crab and, with surprising rapidity, teases out the likely uses for the controls. Slipping in and locking himself into the beast he activates the primary spring, driving the mechanical monster towards the unsuspecting pirates! For all of their apparent ineptness the pirates had been diligent in their oiling of the mechanism to protect it from the briny spray, and it moved forward greased silence, taking all save one of the pirates by complete surprise!
The most aware of the pirates started to yell a warning, only to be struck square in the forehead by a bolt from Hiram's crossbow. Inside the beast Dietrich engaged the right claw, which shot forward and, with an understated snap, split one of the pirate's torsos clear in twain. A third pirate was felled by a blast of eldritch power that snaked across the room and stopped his heart mid beat. The fourth, so totally overwhelmed, barely had time to surrender as the leftward claw moved to engulf him. Within a score of heartbeats, the forces of the republic stood triumphant!
(GM Note: Tom spent an Honor Point to get a temporary +10 on his Move Silently to pull off stealing the mecha crab. I let him make another roll at -20 to sneak up on them in the giant clockwork automaton. He rolled a natural 20, easily surprising the pirates! He was even able to add his Sneak Attack bonus to the crab strike. This is EXACTLY why I put Honor Points in the game.)
Quickly disarming their stunned prisoner, the group makes a quick essay of the items in the room: crates of the finest cotton clothing, a crystal decanter and table set, a bejeweled bracelet, some sacks of coinage and a quartet of paintings by the lesser master Dechau - a Halfling native to the lands around Emirikol centuries ago. Hiram is able to identify the artist (Dave: Another 20!) and even provide a brief history of his work, starting with the lighter landscapes of the Rheel valley and, in his middle age, moving to darker, more ominous paintings of the seawall swamps to the west. On his 40th birthday he invited his friends to join him for a feast in the swamp, at which he got drunk, declaimed that this was his kingdom and then was unexpected eaten by a crocodile. "Fitting, really" Hiram adds.
Knowing that the other pirates can't return until at least high tide they escort their prisoner back up the passage towards the library, stopping at the chamber where they rescued Johann and killed the guard-boar. Down the remaining passage of the sea caves, according to the rescued gnome, lay not just the implements of destruction and supplies for survival of his boar men captors, but also a ghostly hound that had been materializing from the shadows to kill the boar men but leave the timid gnome unharmed.
If timidity is the protection against such a beast then our heroes are ill-armored indeed, for the lady Floriane placed her safety instead in her magical education and her endlessly courageous heart - suspecting she knows a possible origin of the beast she leads her companions forward, lending her sinews to the task of pulling aside the boar men's supplies and the makeshift wall they had erected in their futile quest for protection to explore the area beyond. That dank and dismal cave held not just the stench fetid air but the subconscious scent of hunter and prey, the pheromonal warning that alerted the doe to flee from the unseen wolf. Refusing to show any trace of fear the sorceress drive the darkness to bay via her mystical might and did not leap when the hound - golden of hue with a gray diamond on its chest - appeared before them in an instant.
The creature growled at them, but then lowered its head in the face of their obvious nobility and sureness of purpose. "It's a blink dog," Cybele informs her companions, "They're the spectral hounds who hunt with our ancestors in the afterlife. Sometimes a mage will convince one to share souls, taking it on as a familiar." The dog, obviously able to understand her speech, nodded, and then with some urgency led them to a far corner of the room where some excavation revealed the skeletal remains of the last Loremaster, the librarian who sealed up the lost volumes and then attempted escape down the tunnels to the sea. Alas, instead, according to the great man's journal, which was buried with his body along with his spellbook, both damaged by the elements and the centuries, the caves had been taken and had suffered a dolorous wound before falling back to this location. There he spent the years unheralded, surviving on the energy his necromantic spells could drain from the lizards and other denizens of the cave before his infirmities did him in, unwilling to affect a more violent escape lest his reappearance galvanize the beast men to further explore these caves and thus locate the sealed chamber above.
Cybele pieced this together from his water-stained journal while her companions directed Honesto Merin and the city guards to the locations of the pirates and helped oversee the removal of the stolen merchandise. The Loremaster Farin's touching final days, the scratched-out poetry he left behind, and his obvious dedication to the city and the library brought tears to the young woman's eyes as the blink dog lay its amber-maned head on her knee in sympathy. As she stood to leave the dog extended its muzzle down to the sand beside Farin's remains, extricated a slender wand and extended it to her. As she took it, the beast vanished as if it had never been, leaving behind only the echo of the name 'Slate' in her mind and the confidence that she would see him again, when needed.
That transition, from the old empire to the new republic, from the gentle librarian to the daring swordswoman completed, Cybele oversaw the removal of Farin's remains, ensuring that they reach Loremistress d'Ferrantino with as much dignity as possible. Portia accepted them gratefully but pressed the spellbook back into Cybele's hands . . . with the tacit understanding that the library would want to make a copy of any marginalia or unique enchantments it contained when time permitted.
