Session notes 15-10-2020

13th day in the feywild - continued
 
With our pretty crystal tiara's on, we followed the skipping golden kobold through the giant doors of the pyramid. Wary of what we might meet inside, we were surprised to be met by about 40 sets of curious kobold eyes looking at us right after we entered. We nearly lost Xal in the group, but we quickly gave him a piece of red cloth to bind around his tail, so that we could recognise him in the crowd. The room we stood in was gold. All the walls, the floor all. A staircase let to the next floor, of which we could only see a bit of black wall. As we made our way to the stairs, we saw a relatively young lady walk down towards us. She greeted us, stating that she was very happy to see 'some new apprentices' and introduced herself as Gazille. We must have looked confused, as she simply said that 'things will be clearer in an hour or so'. We simply decided to play along and followed her over the second floor. More people walked around here, all dressed in light brown robes like Gazille. While walking we chat with her a bit. Thus, we learned that the people in brown are the apprentices. As she pointed at two figures with triangle helmets who are guarding the next set of stairs, she explains that they are the librarians, and above them, there is Joltyr, or, as we know him, the Elemental Prince.
 
After a short tour, we were given a set of robes, and we pointed to the sleeping quarters. While Liya simply added the robe to her regular outfit, I decided to just cast disguise self to look like I was wearing it, while inspecting the rooms. There stood about 15-20 beds in the chambers we were in. It all looked quite sober.
 
Not much later, we were picked up by one of the librarians, and with a small nod of Gazille, we followed the figure with the large helmet up the next set of stairs. He is not very talkative. On this next level, there were only librarians and a lot of books. the walls were covered with them. A spiral staircase in the middle seemed to lead up to yet another level. Along the shelves and the stairs, small blobs of light hovered, giving the librarians light to work with. Looking through detect magic was quite overwhelming here. The sensation was familiar to the library in Apéles, where I also felt a lot of illusion magic. Ferrum got one of the books while walking up the spiralling staircase, but the book was blank. An odd thing to keep on a shelf. I did not take the time to study the librarians much, but they seemed to just move the books. They were odd figures.
 
On the final dark-walled floor, we saw more books and just a kind of hologram. It did not interact with us but started somehow walking up an invisible staircase, which led to a platform a bit higher up in the room. Walking up the stairs was the weirdest sensation. You only felt the step once you placed nearly all your weight on it, looking down just made you dizzy, seeing the black and gold tiling below you. While walking up the stairs, there was just a sort of dark void and more and more books. Until finally, we heard some mumbling from above us, and we were met with a curious creature.
 
We stood before a sort of round creature with a lot of stalk eyes and one large closed eye on its body. The body itself seemed to have a sort of metal-like appearance. The eyes on the stalks followed us around, and we quickly counted ten eyestalks. One of which seemed to be a milky white.
 
We wisely let William do most of the talking.
 
Joltyr, this Beholder, is the keeper of this mountain. Which he keeps afloat. It floats above the Eye of Tyr, if it were to fall, it would pierce the eye and open up a portal to the nine hells. Which is why Joltyrs name is fitting, as it means Torturer of Tyr. Additionally, he keeps a vast collection of books. People generally walk in here and they are asked to write down anything that they know that he does not already know, thus growing his collection of knowledge. These apprentices are free to leave whenever they like, but often they stick around quite some time, writing a book takes quite some time. I would know hahah.
 
As we explained our business, he started looking at us curiously. As he was certainly not planning on giving us the scrolls. However, we learned that he also could not use them, for when he tried to read one, he lost sight in one eye. It seemed to be some kind of protection which was placed on the elemental scrolls, preventing regular joe from reading them and accidentally summoning a Zarathan, destroyer of worlds, on his doorstep.
 
With a bit of clever thinking, we suggest that we, read and copy the maps for him. Giving him the information he craves, and allowing us to have a copy of the map. This seemed to please him, as he got the case with the scrolls and carefully handed it to us. As directly looking at the scrolls would blind us, we decide to use the spell clairvoyance to look at the scroll, thus preventing direct eyesight. This, along with the helmet of comprehend languages to read the elemental tongue parts of the scroll is written in. Using this technique, we copy the first scroll: Elemental Earth. Showing Joltyr the result, he seemed very pleased with us and gave us some space and time to do the other three.
 
With Ferrums calligraphy techniques, we ended up with two sets of very neatly copied scrolls. We handed the originals and one set of copies back to Joltyr and packed our own. However, as we folded them into the bag, he stated that, if he ever learns that we share the information that is on these scrolls or maps, he will find us, and kill us. However alarming that might be, we nodded and agreed, thankful that he had not already killed us.
 
 
And that is how we are now on the ship with the information we need, travelling towards the heart of a titan, element three. Without showing Baradox the information, Ferrum explained the route towards our next challenge, the Zarathan, elemental earth. Baradox seems utterly curious to know what we have learned, but we feel we must be careful, as we do not want to have an angry beholder with the power to open a portal to the nine hells following us. So we are now quite quickly flying off towards our next destination! We want to get some travelling done before we settle down to sleep, even though we have been going for quite long today. But the strange time and the long travels make everything a bit hazy.
 
Oh, by the way, we have Xal onboard! As we left the mountain and explained to Gazille that it just was not the place for us, Xal was sent out again to get some new people to enter apprenticeship at Joltyr's pyramid. Pitying him, we decided to ask him to come along with us. He seems to be enjoying himself, watching the feywild from above.
 
On to the third part of our grocery list.