Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Banzo finds no secret doors but as he passes the book shelves again he notes a particular slim volume and opens it finding a single facing page followed by a dozen or so blank pages.
On the facing page is https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/911644-arcane-healing .
"Works for me." Brocc says. "Let's go and check out the other door." He heads out of the medical room and across to the other door.
For one of the first times in the complex Brocc discovered a door that was securely locked.
"interesting, this door is locked..." Brocc says as he pulls out his thieve's tools. "Anyone want to give me a hand with this?" He asks, glancing to the others.
Assuming he has help...
Brocc thieve's tools: 17 Guideance: 2
Garet moves to assist Brocc helping where he can but conscious not to appear to professional in the criminal arts.
Brocc with a little assistance from Garet manages to get a resounding 'click' out of the lock and the door swings slowly inwards, the room within is pitch black.
As usual, Brocc casts detect magic as a ritual prior to entering.
Does pitch black mean those with darkvision cannot see in it either?
Zeltheris wanders inside after the others and tries to help the others look around.
Those with darkvision can see within, noting a large number of broken and shattered crystals littering the floor. There are a large number of glass cabinets set around the room containing immobile figures and massive illustrations fill every part of the walls...
The glass cabinets all radiate magical abjuration energy to those who can detect it. Looking at the cases arrayed around the room from the far left they contain: six baboons, a giant black beetle, a grey-black wildcat, a strange beast over four metres long and almost two metres tall at the shoulder ( it has the head of a great lion, the body and legs of a goat, and the tail of an enormous serpent), a golden furred weasel, a flock of six woodgulls, a pair of lionesses, a puma, a pair of razorbeak hawks and a huge zebra striped spider with large eyes. All of the occupants of the cabinets are utterly motionless and show no outward signs of life.
There are piles of pelts each tagged with a metal disc, a huge wooden case of drawers against the far wall, one of the drawers is busted open....
Another two bookcases lie to the left and right and looking upwards the entire ceiling seems to be covered by a thick network of black tar-like strands.......a chittering sound seems to echo along the strands and bounce off the walls...
( Large room: about 120' wide, 80' deep and 60' high.)
Garet lights his hand Lantern and draws his rapier soundlessly from its scabbard. "Sounds like some sort of spider." He remarks and maintaining a state of high alert goes to see if he can make any sense of the illustrations that cover the wall.
Brocc moves around, on his spider-mount. He is looking for anything magical, that is not one of the glass cases. He eyes the black strands overhead nervously as he moves, the chittering sound a little worrisome.
Zeltheris moves to check out the busted drawer, curious why just that one was broken into, "Perhaps not a good idea to start a large fire underground and burn up all the air we need to breath."
The illustrations seem mostly to be attempts at describing the evolutionary development of various species, families and orders of animals however the artists or researchers seem to have largely given up at various points and started over again and again. At semi random points on the evolutionary trees someone has put red boxes containing such words as: " Chaos?" " Wizard War?" " Gods?" " Bloody Chaos Again!" " ******* Wizards...." " Demons? Who knows....."
Try as he might Brocc discovers nothing else magical in here other than the cabinets.
The books appear to anatomical studies, field guides and zoology texts covering everything from insects to mammals and everything in between. He doesn't locate anything of particular interest.
Zeltheris checks the drawer and determines that it contains pinned and preserved specimens of many different kinds of insects and arthropods......the drawer appears not to have been broken into but rather broken out of.
A rather large preserved Fire Beetle within seems to have ruptured at some point in the past.....
"Well this appears to be a zoo of some sort." Brocc points out. "My vote is to leave it as is and move onward. Only the cabinets in here are magical, and my guess is that they are just meant to preserve the trophies in them." He shrugs, constantly glancing up at the webs overhead. "I'd like to just get out of here before whatever is up there decides we look like its next meal."
Garet nods in assent to the comments of his colleagues. "Yes, somebody seems to put in an awful lot of time and effort, researching the origins, of the species", and thinking about some of the terms used."And Doesn't often find solace in their own conclusions."
Garet eyes to the ceiling makes his way to Banzo to see if he can help with the search to try and speed up their exit from this room.
OOC Assist with Banzos search.
Zeltheris nods, "History tells us many things, not all of which are things we want to know. Where to next?"
( 21 )
Brock leads the way back into the hall and down towards the next doors.
Nothing of any immediate use is found on the shelves though there are many volumes of Natural History here.
As the group leaves the room the chittering subsides.
Heading back into the corridor the group finds no other doors for almost ten minutes, though the corridor is lined with reading nooks and study desks.
The corridor then comes to a T-Junction.
Signs in Dwarvish on the wall read ( Left ) The Crucible and ( Right ) Administration.