Pink Floyd

August 6 to 11, Albanus 1.

The day after the fairs, Severus received a sending from a cleric of Count Dignus Harrans which said, "Letters arrived from Catarina Corresanti.  Give an address to which they may be sent safely."  Severus responded, "Don't know her.  Send them here [giving the address of their villa in Viridistan].  Send to me again, I have news."  Knowing that Harrans could contact Count Durus of Invictus, Severus asked him to send a message warning him that the Order's former Grand Master Theodosius was undead and wandering through Invictus with black dragons, and that there was an assassin in Invictus.

Before they headed out to Hakarim, the band wanted to find out what -- if anything -- remained in the hidden vaults of the Order of St. Cavallius.  Ancilla confirmed that two of them were in the basement of the Archives, one on the third floor (formerly the Grand Master's bedroom, now the main reading room of the upper levels).  She had opened one of the lower vaults 60 years ago and found it empty (to her wielder's surprise).  

Marius and Lucellus wandered the basements a bit and found that the "empty" vault was easy to access.  And was, indeed, empty.  The second lower vault was impossible to reach because a wall had been built -- exactly where a person would need to stand to open it.  The upper vault was in a normally crowded room.  To avoid spectators, they decided to return early in the morning, first thing, and open the vault while all the deletors (lawyers) were in the stacks finding their reading materials.  Severus forged a bunch of passes so that the rest of the family could join them.  Everyone came except Leyna, who wanted to take a flute lesson.

Hurrying in to the reading room ahead of the crowd, they shut the door and moved the room's table.  Then Lucellus drew Ancilla and a pale, glowing doorway appeared.  The paladin pushed it open to reveal a ten by ten room... with a ten by ten spidery demon sitting in it.  The retriever promptly grabbed Lucellus, pinning his arms so he couldn't attack, as the party drew their weapons.  Beams of grey light kept shooting out of one of its eye-stalks;  those hit by them felt their skin harden, as if it had nearly turned to stone.  The party's first attacks did little to it, and the creature began to hum and fade away (planning, apparantly, to drag Lucellus and Ancilla off into another plane).  Severus, however, managed to poke it sharply with chill touch and disrupted its concentration.  As a reward for this, the demon began focusing its eye-beams on the rogue.  It tried to shift planes once more.  This time everyone was ready for it and stabbed it visciously when it began to fade.  Blood and ichor spattered everywhere, and the creature tottered.  A final eye-beam hit Severus squarely, turning him into a statue, then one last shout from Gaius dropped the demon.  On top of Lucellus, who was hideously embarassed to be rescued.  "This is all backwards," he grumbled to Corvina.  "I'm supposed to be rescuing you."

They cleaned up as best they could, shoving the body back into the vault, and then Corvina cast an invisibility spell on her brother.  Lucellus, with his belt of giant strength, hefted him up and tottered downstairs while others distracted the archivist.  Outside they found a drayman who was willing to give them a lift back to the villa.  Though after they clearly loaded an invisible "something" into his cart, he got nervous and doubled his fee (to four pennies from two;  when they arrived Titus gave him a shilling, which left the man delighted).  Severus became a decorative garden ornament for the afternoon, until Sir Regulus could cast break enchantment on him in the morning.  Once freed from the stone, Severus remembered nothing about his time as a statue.

The band (and the other paladins, when they heard) were disturbed by how close they'd come to losing Lucellus and Ancilla.  So for the remaining basement vault, they decided that everyone should come.  Marius went to Captain Cassius and asked for permits for all of the senior paladins to enter the lower Archives.  There were records from the Order that needed to be translated.  After conferring with the Praetor, Cassius handed over a bunch of permits -- with conditions attached.  Pontifex Maximus Orosius, Arch-Magister Donari, and Magister Justus of the Collegium would be assisting them.  And the paladins couldn't go into the basement without one of these chaparones.

Annoyed, the party quickly brainstormed several simple ways of sneaking past their watchers.  Until they ran into a hurdle:  the paladins were becoming uneasy about this operation.  Well, some of them.  Lucellus thought it was all very straight-forward.  Emperor Darius stole their stuff and they had a right to sneak in and recover it.  Nothing wrong with using a ruse in "battle."  The others worried about trespassing, and treachery, and duplicity.  Their dithering annoyed Gaius to the point that he snapped it was all foolish quibbling since the passes themselves were irregular.  It took the party a couple minutes to assure Regulus and the others that their passes were legitimate.  No one explicitly mentioned Severus' forged passes, but the importance of that wording wasn't lost on Regulus and the others.

In the end, they hit on a solution that satisfied everyone.  The paladins would make sure that the passes weren't a ruse:  they would honestly do research for the next month.  (A proposition that sent Balthasar into rapture, and Lucellus into agonies of horror and despair.)  The three chaparones were all very important men -- they'd simply wait until they got tired and returned to their own duties.  Marius, meanwhile, would keep an eye open for an opportunity to slip past them (since Lucellus had no qualms about tricking the Praetor's minions).

When they met the next morning, their opinions about the chaparones were confirmed.  Justus was pleasant (and had a faintly good aura).  Donari snarled that his time was very valuable and reminded the paladins that the Empire couldn't claim more than one week of his time.  (He, they noticed, had a faintly evil aura.)  Orosius gushed about the honor and gratitude he felt at being included in such important research.  He had no discernable aura... and proceeded to evince an unnatural and disturbing interest in Marius and Balthasar, continually standing too close to them, patting them on the head, and squeezing their shoulders.  Clearly, Marius thought, the man was an evil pederast who needed to die.

The mages settled down in one of the upstairs reading rooms, where the light was good, and began to do serious research.  Orosius kept following the young boys up and down stairs, "helping" them, until he got tired.  Once the pontifex was a bit winded, Marius summoned the rest of the party and got them to assemble downstairs.  Then he asked a reluctant Balthasar to keep Orosius occupied with questions on theology.  Once Orosius was distracted, he and Lucellus joined the Surrexi in the basement.

The third vault proved disappointing.  Using a passwall scroll they stepped through the wall into the vault and found just a plain black book (bound, it appeared, in human skin).  The tome radiated an intense evil.  Ancilla didn't know what it was, though she knew that there were a succubus, a vrock, and a marilith bound within it.  Corvina suggested asking the other blades and Puella (the blade under the dragon Metropolex) did indeed recall it.  It was The Book of Summonings, which instructed its readers in the manner of summoning demons.  Puella recalled it being placed in the vault when its bindings began to crack.  Since this vault was difficult to get into, the party scooped the book into a bag and moved it to the "empty" vault nearby.

Having opened all three vaults, the band ended up with more questions than answers.  Who looted the vaults, and when?  It required a Council Blade to open a vault.  Ancilla, Puella, and Latona hadn't done this.  That left only Camilla (the missing blade) and Severillia (Theodosius' blade).  Theodosius was the likely candidate, since everything that could help the Order was gone, and only a book that could hurt them was left.  Yet a Council Blade would not allow a corrupted person to draw her -- so could Theodosius even access the vaults after he fell?

Why was The Book of Summonings left behind?  If it was dangerous, why not destroy it?  What earthly good could this thing do... and if it could do some good, why did the vault looter leave it?  How did the book's vault come to be walled up?