"Really?!" Titaani turns to Pud excitedly. "Oh my goodness, thank you so much! I can't wait to see what this thing can do."

Titaani is too distracted by the staff to think about the unicorn horn. Instead, she pours over her new item, eager to discern its purpose. Arcana: 6

Titaani picks up and carefully inspects the staff. (It'll take some time to properly study how it works, but check your inventory for details.)

The horn is indeed very similar to the one Lamorna had, at the Wayward Pool in Thither. (Who takes it?)

Elkhorn is beaming at Skylla's demise. He raises his sword in triumph. "One down! Or two, is it? Anyway, excellent work! Now the rest of the odious League of Malevolence will taste our steel, next! I would like to slay that coward Kelek, myself. If only Strongheart were here to see this..." He pokes at the ashen remains with the tip of his longsword.

(Most of the party is on Tower Level 1, in the Orrery. Ben may still be upstairs wrapping up in Endelyn’s Room on Tower Level 2. Not shown: Stage Level, and Understage level, where you entered Motherhorn from.)

Where to?

Ben:

Taking one more good look around the hag’s room, Ben positions himself in the center and senses for divine and devilish presences.  If he finds nothing, he will head down to join the others.

Perception:  12

Divine Sense

Seeing the horn, Ben is overjoyed and celebrates with the others.  “Yes, we should go to the library and try to find that invisible parchment.  Isn’t there also supposed to be some hidden room around here that can transport us to the palace?”

Horatio looks to Elkhorn with a warm smile, "You're a Knight trying to do real good. When we restore the ruler I'm sure she will give you proper soldiers to enforce the law. Not a gaggle of kids like us. I'm glad we met you, and the few others who were willing to help us fight."

Matilda shows the play to Ben, " Could this be it?"

Ben senses nothing celestial, fiend, or undead in Endelyn's room, and joins the others in the Orrery. Examining the play Matilda found, it is titled “The Agonies of Alagarthas: A Three-Act Tragedy by Endelyn Moongrave” in Elvish, but the rest of the rolled-up sheets of parchment are blank. It had been found clutched in the shriveled elven hand.

(Lower two levels of Motherhorn:)

Ben:

”That’s possible, Matilda, but I think we are looking for a single piece of invisible parchment with a secret on it.  I may have misheard, and there could be invisible writing on the seemingly blank play—I have heard of such things, but I wouldn’t know how to reveal it,” responds Ben.

”Let’s go to the library and check for the invisible parchment, then head to the northern tower to look for the boarded up belfry,” Ben suggests, heading first towards the library.

"Ya, we should dig around the library and see what we can find. I'm not so scared to wander around this place now that Chaaaarmaaay is toast."

Once we get on our way, Pud walks next to Titaani and tries to get a peek at the staff. He tries to hide it, but Pud is a little envious of this clearly magical item. Perhaps the idea that this was once wielded by someone in the League of Malevolence is too hard to get past. 

"Hey, uh...Titaani. What's with the staff? Any idea what it can do? It looks pretty neat."

Unless you have further business in the Orrery, the party descends the circular staircase to the stage level, exiting into the Library.

This magnificent hall is lined with stone bookshelves housing a library of hundreds of leather-bound tomes, the highest shelves only reachable only by ladders.

Three elderly, bespectacled goblin librarians stand anxiously behind three large, cloaked darklings who watch you skeptically from behind the overstuffed armchairs. "Are you the visitors?" rasps one in Sylvan. "Where is Bitter End? What's happening?"

Ben:

Responding in Sylvan, Ben says, "We are indeed the visitors.  Bitter End attempted to destroy us and ended up herself being destroyed.  Creeping Lyn is no more, electrocuted by her own device.  You now have a choice of your own--to seek your own way, writing and performing your life's play as you see fit, or seek to oppose us and meet your own bitter end."

"If you wish to gain favor with us and those who suffered at Creeping Lyn's hand, I ask you to transform those who were changed into masks back into their own forms.  Beings deserve to choose their own paths, and we would return your freedom to you all," he adds.  "Indeed, there should be an invisible document somewhere in this library--an additional way to gain our favor would be to direct us to it," he concludes.

Persuasion:  21

"I don't really know," Titaani replies to Pud, and attempts to spin the staff around in her hands in the fancy way she had seen sword masters do, only to drop it. Sheepishly picking it back up, she continues: "It is pretty neat though, isn't it? Do you wanna have a look at it? You're pretty smart with this kind of stuff."

She passes the staff over to the party artificer. "How did you come to know so much about magic anyway, Pud?"

Pud bites as lip as he considers the offer. "Elkhorn said Skylla was a warlock. I dunno much about warlocks. But my magic is kinda different." He reaches and takes the staff. "I'm curious about this thing, but it doesn't feel right for me to take it. I can study it and try to help you harness its power."

He pauses for a moment and inspects the staff before continuing.

"I've kinda learned and picked up things here and there. My grampy was a smart old man. He said he apprenticed under some gnomish tinkerers when he was a boy. Then he said he went to study with some old coot of an alchemist and learned all kindsa stuff from her.

As he got older he settled down and opened a little tinker shop and make all sorts neat things for our village. Grampy started getting sick and he wanted someone to carry on the shop, so he so gave me this." Pud reaches in his satchel and digs out a beat up old leather bound journal. "This is his journal he kept with his tinker diagrams, alchemical recipes and spells. He taught me a lot, but then he got too sick and he couldn't teach me anymore.

After grampy...well, after while I tried to learn on my own. I was okay but it was hard at first. Some of grampy's old friends came to pay their respects and they helped me a bit. They gave me more books and some tools and stuff.

Eventually, I got pretty good at making things using magic. Rizzo was my first project. She wasn't all that great in the beginning, but after some tinkering and messin' around she turned out pretty good.

I wasn't learnin' much anymore and that's when the carnival came to town. I thought maybe there I could find someone to teach me some new stuff. But I'm sure you know how that turned out.

Anyway, I'm gonna study this thing and see what I can come up with. I'll give it back. Trust me."

Pud will cast identify on the staff to learn how it works. 

The darklings glower back, with looks of fear, confusion, curiosity, and opportunity flickering across their faces. They are taller than the darklings from the audience. Murmurs of light occasionally pulse from tattoos on their shrouded limbs. "Endelyn foreshadowed her own doom quite often in these books, noting that it will occur during an eclipse. I see no eclipse here," replies one to Ben. "This library, these books, they are the accounts of every terrible future that Endelyn has glimpsed using the Orrery of Tragedies. She acknowledges that not every future she glimpses comes to pass, for any possible future can be negated by another. But we know of no invisible books or papers."

Pud learns more of what Titaani had begun to sense about Skylla's arcane weapon. It's an Eldritch Staff. It will require some time to attune to it.

Ben:

”The sun and the moon together took part in the battle that destroyed Bitter End, but they have since departed,” says Ben.  “We will look for this item ourselves.  Have any of you the skill to reverse the mask’s transformation?”

"We don't involve ourselves in Endelyn's punishments. We don't know how to reverse even if we dared to," the darkling replies.

"Do you know of anyone who did assist her?" Horatio asks. 

Matilda comes over to Titaani and slips the ring off of her own finger and onto Titaanis, " I think you should have this."

" Lets just go break the pillars....theres nothing here.....maybe the people will get their shadows back amd turn back from masks when all the Hags are dead?"

"That staff is pretty neat. Wow! Quite powerful and very rare." Pud reaches out to hand the staff back to Titaani. "You can whack someone really good with that. And zap 'em with lightning too. You gotta take some time to attune to it though. Maybe later when we rest somewhere safe."

Pud steps up beside Ben, he leans in close and whispers "If you guys wanna look, I'll try to due a ritual to detect magic in the room. Maybe that'd help find what we're lookin' for. Just watch my back while I perform the ritual."

Pud walks over to a corner, far away from the darklings an goblins and begins to cast detect magic as a ritual.