The light fades as Erudisia crumples. Her mind sees flashes of her home, her youth. Her eldest brother is a child, her youngest brother a babe in swaddling. Her father smiles at her, and her mother in a summer aspect is as warm as love can be. 

Something isn’t right. 

Death roll: 3

Bell -- First Death Save Roll:  14     [success]

The gnome from the House of the Binder produces a small multi-tool from his pocket and begins to work on the silver music box in the spine of the book. After a few moments, he leans into the project, using the tool to bend out the dent in the device. Meredith sees him smile in delight as a soft ‘click’ punctuates the concentrated silence in the Temple.

“That should do it,” his little voice pipes. “Let’s see what else this thing has to say.” He winds the music box and releases it. The contraption plays and the pop-up scenes display as they had before. The mechanized scenes featuring cutout figurines of members of a family dying in a series of grisly ways play out while a shadowy figure looks on. But rather than sticking and clicking at the end, the little mechanical voice sings another verse, so far unheard, and another pop-up displays. The newly revealed scene depicts the daughter of the family, watching in grateful triumph as the shadow is destroyed under an enormous, heavy millstone.

See a daughter grinding grain

Wish the spirit’s time was through

Trap set for the shadow bane

Her millstone killed it true

Erudisia and Bell, you both awaken one round later, Little One’s huge face staring at you. He has fed each of you a potion of healing (2d4+2 HP healing each).

“Keeper of Emerald Door give me healing potions for you!,” he grunts, eyes flicking in horror to the door to Crinkle’s room then back to you. “She send me down. She fighting Shemshime shadow now! Must help her! Come, come! Stairs too narrow for me to carry you up!”

You are both conscious. In the near distance, you hear crackling electricity and in your minds, the echo of Shemshime’s insane laughter.

[8 hp healing]

Erudisia stands groggily. She blinks blearily at Little One and Bell, then smiles in delight and hugs his tree trunk like arm, then rushes to help Bell stand also. 

“Little One, this monster. She cannot be killed, we are missing something. Some key fact. We need to approach this like scholars, not brutes.”

She swallows nervously, and her legs are shaky, but still she says, “we must help the Keeper, but we must keep our eyes peeled. This cannot be as simple as brute force, the spirit itself has told us!” 

*Yoink*

" Thanks!", said Meredith as she grabbed the book from the gnome and began running back toward the cellar with it trying to think if she had seen any handy millstones around anywhere......not that she had any idea how she'd lift one, but first things first......

Perception- 11

Meredith rushes back to the Firefly Cellar, descends the spiral staircase down to the Lower Floor. She arrives there at the eastern end of the Lower Floor at the same moment that Erudisia and Bell arrive at the western end of the same level after climbing, with shaky legs, the staircase up from the basement living area with Little One bringing up the rear.

As all three of you approached, you heard the sounds of mystical battle, grunts of effort and pain from Valna Oxylanthrinn, and felt the goosebump-chilling sense of dread that marks the presence of Shemshime, the feeling that something terrible is about to happen.

When you arrive at opposite ends of the room, you all see Valna, Crinkle, Ebder and Gailby huddled together on the floor to one side of the room. Gailby is crying, Ebder wrapping his arm around her though plainly terrified, and Crinkle shivers in fear. In the center of the room, the Keeper of the Emerald Door floats above the study table, just under the huge carved-stone book statue hanging from rusted chains from the center of the ceiling thirty feet above.

Valna’s gonfalon-staff crackles with lightning and a pair of bolts streak out from it, twisting in an instant around the shadow’s arms and legs, restraining it and threatening to pull it apart. But you hear, in your minds, the sound of Shemshime laughing grotesquely. His form makes strange angles in the corners of the stacks, his eyes leering and enormous, and your heads throb as he launches a psychic attack at the Keeper! Valna suddenly drops to the ground, her staff clattering to one side. She grasps her head in pain, reeling and dazed.

A map:

You three may now act.

5 healed

Bell rolls on her side and spasms for a moment before groaning and sitting up.   "I do not know what just happened but I hope to never have it happen again."    

Listening to Little One, she gets herself up and aids Erudisia as they go staggering toward the stairs.

Meredith held the book up winding the mechanism and letting the rhyme play out loud......her eyes lit on the suspended stone....but she doubted the Quill was enough to break the chain.....

Bell watches as Valna falls, clutching her head.  Bell knew what that felt like first hand and it was not good.

Staggering forward, Bell grabbed up Valna's fallen staff and tried to stand tall, using her body to shield the downed Keeper of the Emerald Door as Bell leaned heavily on the staff to stay standing at all.

Going through all the steps for generating a swarm of Magic Missile , she waited until Shemshime was closing in to release her force darts 'point blank' into the dark form.

MM dmg:  3+5+5 = 13 pts of force

 With a gasp, Bell slowly slid to her knees as that last effort pushed her near her limit.

(Where is Sheshime stood? Are they under the suspended book, are we thinking, to drop it on him? I think even if it’s not the right artefact, might as well drop something heavy on a boss. Erudisia has gust, which has a bit of push back, and presumably will stand somewhere to blow that way unless they’re already there in which case I don’t want to blow them out from under it.). 

Quote from Damian_May >>

Meredith held the book up winding the mechanism and letting the rhyme play out loud......her eyes lit on the suspended stone....but she doubted the Quill was enough to break the chain.....

Everyone hears the rhyme playing from the book… the entire rhyme, including the tantalizing final verse. Everyone, including Shemshime, which laughs evilly. “You brought it back. Good. I was just about to go out looking for it. That is mine.”

Quote from Kol_Drake >>

Bell watches as Valna falls, clutching her head.  Bell knew what that felt like first hand and it was not good.

Staggering forward, Bell grabbed up Valna's fallen staff and tried to stand tall, using her body to shield the downed Keeper of the Emerald Door as Bell leaned heavily on the staff to stay standing at all.

Going through all the steps for generating a swarm of Magic Missile , she waited until Shemshime was closing in to release her force darts 'point blank' into the dark form.

MM dmg:  3+5+5 = 13 pts of force

 With a gasp, Bell slowly slid to her knees as that last effort pushed her near her limit.

Bell’s force bolts slam into the lanky shadow, blasting its various pieces into the separate corners of the room. But in an instant, the shadow pieces, an arm here, a hip there, slip back across the floor and walls to reassemble. (Rather than being reduced to 0 HP, Shemshime only goes down to 1HP, the same effect Bell saw downstairs in Crinkle’s room.)

 When she moves next to Valna, Bell notes the shape of a vial in the pocket of the Keeper of the Emerald Door.

Quote from NycrolB >>

(Where is Sheshime stood? Are they under the suspended book, are we thinking, to drop it on him? I think even if it’s not the right artefact, might as well drop something heavy on a boss. Erudisia has gust, which has a bit of push back, and presumably will stand somewhere to blow that way unless they’re already there in which case I don’t want to blow them out from under it.). 

Valna had been in the center of the room, floating (a Fly spell) above the study table, just under the huge carved-stone book statue hanging from rusted chains from the center of the ceiling thirty feet above. When Bell moves protectively to her side, Bell moves to the center of the room, next to the study table at its western edge.

Shemshim, which had been floating between bookshelves due north of the study table, moved closer to Valna, and had seemed about to pounce on her before Bell intervened. At that moment, Valna, Bell and Shemshime were all under the book statue.

But in response to Meredith playing the music box, Shemshime changes its mind, focusing on a new target. It floats through the intervening bookshelves, going transparent for a moment to do so, and now floats in front of the bard in the corridor between the western shelves. Meredith is next to the spiral staircase at the right edge of the map. 

“Give it to me!,” the shadow demands, striking at Meredith with its Maddening Touch. 

(22 to hit, for 19 psychic damage.)

Meredith is about to throw the book to Erudisia when the shadow claws sink into her and everything goes black.

Death Save #1- 2

"Mere !" Bell screams as she sees her friend crumble on the spot.  "To the Goddess with you, Shemshime.  Curse you and curse your stupid song."  

Sacred Flame     3 pts radiant dmg  {Dex 13 save}

Erudisia moves to have a sightline on the book as Meredith falls and Bell screams. As the flare of sacred flame brightens the darkness between the bookshelves, tongues of flames coiling inward to avoid the books, in a place so beloved to Oghma, she flings out her hand and casts Gust to fling the book toward her hand. 

Meredith drops.

Erudisia is able to aim her Gust in such a way that its magical wind is diverted downward and then back at her by a lectern and a reading chair, and the book whisks across the floor under the large central reading table, stopping 10’ away from her on the floor. (N.B., Gust can normally only blow an object away, not closer. But just this once we’re gonna go with it!)

Shemshime does not even try to dodge Bell’s Sacred Flame, which incinerates the shadowy form. Only its laughing mouth remains. It leers as its body reassembles from floating dust mites of darkness. (Rather than being reduced to 0 HP, Shemshime only goes down to 1HP, the same effect Bell saw downstairs in Crinkle’s room.)

Little One throws himself at the creature, pummeling it with fists like anvils. Alas, with the same result. It cackles gleefully

“No!,” Valna croaks to Bell, standing slowly. “It is useless to attack the creature. I sent enough lightning into it to sunder a small hill. It must be defeated some other way!”

The Keeper extends her hand and a spectral hand pulls a vial from her pocket then administers it to Meredith. “My last healing potion!,” she says. 

(Meredith, regain 7HP)

“There it is,” says Shemshime, now floating into the western aisle and standing over Shemshime’s Bedtime Rhyme, 10’ from Erudisia. The dark spirit attacks Little One with its Maddening Touch. 

(17 to hit, for 13 psychic damage.)

Little One groans in pain but remains standing.