Merrick walks in the library and notices the interesting lights and books. He starts wandering off, already bored and curious, looking around.

(Perception: 16)

"I'll catch up" DK calls to his companions as their walking. He stops in the street and watches the others go, unsure if any will opt to split off with him. He sees a very odd beast watching them as they travel. He keeps an eye on it as he moves off to look through the stalls.

He searches for a shop dealing in antiques, gold, or currency. He'll test the waters with these coins. At one shop he goes to buy a proper dagger, fairly simple, but unique enough to be sold at such a place. He offers a sun coin as payment as though it were normal currency. Placing it on the counter when the shop keeper states the items cost. (Which DK would estimate at two gold)

Meanwhile he tries to keep an eye on that gog that was watching earlier.

Inside the library, the lighting is a lot better than it was in the night, though yes there are still floating balls of light. You see a few of them hovering over the older folk inside the building.

Muireach and Luthok (Vivi accompanies Luthok unless told otherwise):

The feline librarian looks up and spots the notes in Muireach's hands. Her jaw drops as she extends her paws and takes the notes from him. "W-Why do you have these?" She looks over the notes to ensure they are all there, then she scrunches up her nose. "Did Ashe lend these to you? She knows I'm working on my book..." The cat sighs and shakes her head in disbelief. She is about the size of an average, human woman, but fuzzier of course. Her fur is short and of a sandy color, and she has long, dark brown hair. Of course, she is wearing round glasses too and a plain, brown dress. Her tail flicks side to side as she takes the collection of stories from Muireach as well. Her eyes dart from the three of you present here and she says, "Thank you for returning these items. What did you need help finding?"

Merrick:

You wander down the stacks randomly, bored out of your mind. You sort of people watch as you do so and sometimes glance at the shelf, in case something fun to pull out, but most of these books have the dullest book jackets. You think about your nana's collection of books at home. She has a few that you rather enjoyed as a younger kid, though of course she read them to you. For a brief moment, you feel like several eyes are watching you, but when you look, there is no one there. This feeling persists, and you might even fake out whatever is watching you, but there is still nothing. On the umpteenth time you look, because you are bored so this is now like a game you are playing with yourself, there is nothing, but by the time you look back there is a purple-skinned woman about your height smiling at you. Her bangs hang low on her face and she is wearing a full body cloak.

"Oh, another newcomer. Do you need any help?"

Outside the library, Dyoken sees a few stalls and stores dealing in antiques. The few he browses, of course to get a better price for his sun coins, give the coins a rudimentary glance and over to buy 5 suns for 1 gold. It isn't until the 6th shop he visits where an old elvish man, with a long beard and eyebrow hair that gives his beard a run for it's money, examines the suns more thoroughly. He weighs them, looks at them through his loupe equipped eyeglasses, and seems to run his thumb along the curved bits of the sun. He looks at Dyoken with a serious face.

"I can do about 1 gold per sun."

The shopkeeper happens to have a dagger, though he appears to want to haggle you, "I'll take 4 suns for that dagger, kiddo."

"Ohai! Yes, I definitely need help! Let's see, I've never been able to eat more than five eggs in one sitting, I still can't beat Artin at the memory game, I can't remember what I got as a present for my eleventh birthday, and there's a really pretty elvish tune I heard that I want to learn how to play on the bagpipes! 
"Oh, I'm being random again aren't I? You probably mean here, right? I'm kind of just bored and looking around. Are you a librarian? Or are you a customer? I guess you're a librarian otherwise you wouldn't be asking about help. But then again, you can't be a librarian, because librarians always say 'Stop running in around in the stacks and no you can't climb on the books and WHY ARE YOU REARRANGING EVERYTHING GET OUT NOW!' So you can't be either. Hm, is it a trick question? Do YOU need help?"

Merrick looks at the newcomer with interest.

"Hoh hoh," Ashe's grin widens, "I would think you are asking the tricky questions! Of course, you shouldn't run in the stacks. Who knows what might happen if you were to slip and fall. Oh dearie, your brains might ruin the carpet." The librarian speaks in earnest and doesn't seem threatening at all. Her voice is lighthearted, yet seems mockingly concerned. "Rearrange the stack though? Of course, you wouldn't do something like that, oh no, you wouldn't would you? That would be shameful, and such shameful behavior would have to be punished. We wouldn't like that, would we? Hoh hoh~" She giggles into the back of her hand. 

"Well now that you mention it, these books seem like they could use a new arrangement. I see they are arranged alphabetically. But look, there's a much better way! You could put the blue ones together, and the red ones together, and the brown ones together, and arrange them first by color and then by height! Then it would look like a xylophone

See, isn't that better? That way when someone wants to find a book, they know that they were looking for the blue one that was medium height, they can find it right away. Hm, I wonder if there any any books on xylophones?"

(And now Merrick makes a dex saving throw.)

“Yeah... sure, no problem... We need to find something on necromancy and the shadowfell if you’ve got anything like that... or not, I guess that works too...”

Muireach says as he leans forward on the counter with his hand under his chin. He casts a glance to Luthok, “Anything you need?”

Lightning fast, Merrick feels strings pulling all around him and suddenly he is spinning and spinning in place. Not on purpose, of course. Ashe was, quite literally, weaving a spell onto him with six arms. Yes, six, separate arms. He seems completely restrained, but it seems Ashe was kind enough to leave his head free. She chuckles a bit as Merrick feels nice and snug in his little web cocoon. 

Ashe turns to the shelf and, with all six hands, places the books back into their alphabetical order. By last name, of course, because she wasn't a barbarian. She puts a hand onto her chin and rubs it with a grin, while the rest of her hands rest on her sides. "Hoh, what should I do with you? What punishment fits? You were quite earnest, and yet, you didn't heed my warning. Maybe I should gobble you up?" At this point, you aren't sure if she is kidding or not. Merrick realizes they are alone in a corner of this library. "What should I do with you, my dear friend? Ask a favor? Maybe I will let you go... and not fine you quite handsomely for being so handsomely mischievous."

The librarian handling Muireach and Luthok starts looking through the card catalog. "Necromancy, well, that will be hard. We only have a few materials... and they are... overdue." When she says 'overdue,' her face scrunches up almost in disgust. "I was thinking of asking one of our couriers to go bother that patron, but it seems he freaks our young ladies out." She seems to grunt a bit as she opens several more drawers in her search on the Shadowfell. "Erm, Shadowfell... it doesn't sound familiar. Sounds like a place. What do you know about it?"

“Yes, a place. From what I know, it’s a plane. We’re looking into things like that right now.”

"Ahh, another plane, right," The cat looks into a few different drawers. "Well, I have some material about planes in general. Mostly theoretical stuff. Not sure what you were hoping to find out."

Luthok looks to Muireach with the first amount of respect he has ever felt for the elf. "Aye, respecting your elders I see. You're the most polite of the amateurs elfie, you get that." He looks towards the librarian.  "You wouldn't have books on local history? Maybe something on the emerald forest too?"  He taps his mask with a knuckle. "Also, sorry 'bout the mask. You wouldn't like whats underneath." 

Dyoken tries to be 'persuasive' "4 gold coins? It's a fine blade, but less reliable than my favored weapons." Fah'lin curls his fist around the knife with one elbow on the counter like he's in an arm wrestling match. (Intimidation: 24) "These coins were a gift from a god. They are priceless. I can't part with them lightly... I'll trade you one for the dagger and second priceless asset, I'll tell you the tale of my daring heroics that earned me this prize." 

The librarian squints her eye at Luthok, "Of course, that is fine. We usually see strange characters in these walls." She gives him a small smile. "We do have some materials on local history. There is a whole section just upstairs. The Emerald Forest is a bit mysterious, but I know Master Nieven left us a journal he kept of his time spent there. We are currently transcribing it to another document in common. I think it might be a few weeks before our scribes are finished. My apologies it is not available sooner." She seems genuinely sorry. "Would you like me to escort you to the section on local history, then sirs?"

"F-From a god, you say...?" The old elf shudders as Dyoken towers over him, the human's shadow darkening the old man's face. "O-Of course, sure, take the dagger, free of charge, young man. J-Just don't hurt me or my wife!"

"This is nice and cozy! Where did those arms come from? Did you just grow them? Hey I can't move! It's also kind of hard to breathe."

Merrick then gets very serious and earnest.

"You know, I don't think you stopped to really consider the xylophone system of sorting the books. It seems like you were so convinced of the alphabet system that you just dismissed the other idea out of hand. But look, who is the library for? The librarians or for the public? The librarians are the ones that are going to like the alphabetical system, because it lends itself to easy retrieval and organization. If you know thousands of books, then of course that makes sense. But now think about it from the perspective of a commoner. Someone who has seen maybe a dozen books or less in her lifetime. She remembers a book from her childhood that her Da read to her, and she knows that it was big and had a blue cover. Or an old man that remembers the small red book on cooking that his late wife loved. Do you think those people remember the author or the title? Most people remember visually, and size and color are what they remember most easily for a kind of thing they rarely see."

"So is the library for the librarians, or is it for the people? Either way, you didn't give it much thought. Sorting by color and size would benefit the people of this town. It might be more work for the librarians, but isn't the goal of the library to make the books accessible for the people?"

Bound up as he is, Merrick is still very earnest and makes a good point.

Persuasion: 11

"BOLLOCKS. Just when I think things are going my way the book i want has to be in .... What language is it in?" He gestures for the lass to show him the way towards the local history section. 

When he gets there he will look for any mention of epidemics or sickness, unusual disappearances (young girls specifically) and a certain, druidic circle. 

Muireach follows along in his winter-like manner.

Ashe ponders over what Merrick said for a moment. She places a hand where his shoulder should be, though it is now covered in layered webs. "I understand what you are trying to say," She smiles at him sweetly, a small fang peeks out. "The system is confusing, mostly, for you commoners do not bother to ask how it works. If we sorted by color, then similar copies of the same story would be lost... because at times their covers differ." As an example, Ashe pulls two very different looking books from the shelf. One red, one blue. "Some of these books are the original, some are copies. Some are copies made by other libraries. We would lose information, if we sorted by color. However, I see you mean well. Please, do not resort the bookshelves. However, maybe we will re-examine a way to make the shelves more... user friendly?"

Ashe snaps a finger, and the webbing loosens enough for Merrick to feel at ease and climb out. "Oh dearie, you made a mess!" She giggles, still not explaining how it is she has so many arms!

The cat librarian leads Luthok, Muireach, and Vivi to the local history section. "The language of the title in question, sir, is in elvish. However... We cannot lend it out. It is the original from Master Nieven himself. I'm sorry for that." Her ears flatten, hoping not to be yelled at. "If you need further assistance, please let me know."

The bookshelves she led you to seem to contain a lot of what we like to call "self-published" works. Many diaries from people you've never heard of can be found here along with properly published books. After a moment, you realize they are organized by year, these diaries, as they all sit in the same section. If you take twenty minutes to look, you might find something of interest...

When it comes to the 'real' books on the shelves, you are able to find mostly books that detail the construction of the city, several tales about Mariona Shepherd and her band of adventurers, and, of course, copies of births, deaths, and marriages. Luthok does manage to find at least one book related to what he was hoping for, as it jogs his memory to see the name: "The Great Plague of 1150."

The librarian is still hovering for a few seconds more, in case you need her help more immediately.

“May I read it? I don’t need to take it or anything, just want to take some notes. If you can’t, that’s fine too. We’re trying to research some stuff about the forest, planes, and some other stuff...”