[PQ] Home Is Where the Books Are

The gourds were repulsed by the collective efforts of the Loreseekers and their friends, leaving the group to contend with the dust of ages in their chosen rooms – and sometimes worse than dust. Ronin, Loren, and Rance were able to bring out their piles of books without any problems. Jigano collected them as they were deposited on the broad wooden walkway that encircled the second floor and carried them downstairs, managing to do so without further damaging even the delicate scrolls and older tomes that were being rehomed to the tables and shelves in the impromptu lecture area

Loren was able to save roughly half the books in room one The Ladybug Room before the rest began to crumble too badly at a touch. His goose-feather arms served as perfectly functional featherdusters, sweeping the dirt from the shelves successfully, but stirring it into the air and clinging unpleasantly to the Launceleyn’s vanes. With the shelves and table unearthed from their grimy prison, however, it just left the dirty floor and the impressively-filthy window with its generations of dead beetles to tackle.

Rance ’s room two The Farmer’s Room had no answer for him, but he was able to open the windows with a bit of elbow grease, and they swung wide with a creak of unoiled hinges without breaking. He was able to remove 90% of the books and 70% of the remaining scrolls without mishap, but when he begins to wash down the shelving he will find a nest of mice in one of the pigeonholes, hidden behind one of the scrolls. Seven small, grey-furred mouse pups were wriggling about and just starting to open their eyes as their mother crouched over the nest, fur bristled in defiance of this intrusion to her home.

Room three The Mystic Room, chosen by Quanil , was lit only by the light that filtered in from the door. The shadows were especially oppressive and played tricks on their sight. Though the chair moved easily, the table was far harder to drag, as though it was made of very dense, dark wood. It scraped noisily across the floor, leaving scratches behind in the softer floorboards. As Quanil turned their attention to sweeping there were other things moving in the dark beyond the arc of light provided by the open door… a door that didn’t remain open much longer as a gust of wind from newly-opened windows up and down the hall caught it and slammed it shut, leaving the young Loreseeker in total darkness – not even a crack of light beneath the sturdy door providing direction as a susurrus of insectile wings and a soft chittering filled the air, closing in on Quanil from all directions.

The Stargazer’s Room Room four held beauty, but it was a delicate beauty. At Amalia ’s touch one of the planets of the orrery breaks off, taking its moons with it and the small spheres shatter when they hit the floor, rolling off in different directions. The planet and one moon end up beneath the bookshelf while the other moon becomes lost in the remains of the rotted pallet. The books are sturdier, at least, and though no harm comes to them from being picked up the writing is as foreign as it is beautiful, and utterly unreadable. Some pages are more colorful, however, revealing pictures drawn in faded inks detailing the movement of heavenly bodies, some of which will look familiar to the Natural while others are utterly alien.

Samuel , sometimes you just can’t win. Room Five The Broken Room did not seem to like having an intruder mucking about within. Three of the chairs that he tried to move broke apart as he tried to shift them; the back snapped off of one, the legs buckled under the second when he set it down, and the third disintegrated to splinters when he closed his hands around it. The table had been pressed up against one of the bookshelves, and when Sam went to move it the shelf was jostled and tipped, spilling the rest of its books on the Ascended and covering him in moldy clumps of cardboard and paper in his hair, clothes, and smeared on his exposed skin. At least he didn’t need to breathe, for there was no telling what spores had been stirred up by the jostling. Attempts to sweep up the leaves were only slightly more successful, as the breeze from the broken window joined in his sweeping and broke apart his pile more than once before he was finally able to corral the leaves more or less out of the way. Indeed, the revealed stains were mostly black against the wood, but his sharpened senses would pick out the faintest remnants of red at their centers. One was smaller, perhaps the size of a large plate, while the other stain a short distance away spread out in roughly rectangular area. Closer inspection would reveal a handprint left on the edges of it, the wood beneath scratched with shallow furrows as if from blunt claws.

At least room six The Genealogy Room seemed to behave itself for Ronin. The shelves were dusted and the books were stacked without too much trouble. Though the earliest records crumbled when he went to move them, the Dark Star would be able to safely move around 70% of the records outside. Two windows opened easily for his projection, and could be cleaned with little fuss. The central window, however, resisted his initial efforts; the hinges appeared to have rusted in place. And no sooner does he go to wash one of the open windows than an enterprising crow flies in the other and lands on a bookshelf, watching him with an inquisitive black eye for a moment before diving for the mummified robin and beginning to tear it apart in a gleeful mess of feathers and small bones.

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Some of you are almost done with the initial cleaning while others still have quite a bit of work to do to clean these rooms out! And a few are having some unfortunate luck all around >.> Don’t give up!

No Post Order this round!