UTL S1E5: Keys in the Fist

In this episode of Under the Library: 

As we begin, Philip is "off with the ponies" (i.e. Rick lost power and will join later).

It's late in the evening and Harold decides to head home and run some experiments on his lomava sample. Beau and Quentin decide they would feel safer sleeping on the floor of Potter's Place than staying at The Lighthouse. Jaker joins Florence/Beau/Quentin briefly to do research before heading home. Back at Potter's Place, Florence examines a book called Chemical Elements of the Natural World. Although there's no mention of lomava, it lists properties of mercury as well as other elements that can't be classified as solids or liquids.   A scrap of paper fell from the pages, covered with cramped handwriting. It discusses an unnamed element with strange metaphysical properties, wine-like, and seemingly melted. The writer consumed it and had visions of a strange entity, which he described by its smell (citrus) and sound (heavenly frequency) rather than its form. He took detailed notes about the timeline and quantities of consumption, and the handwriting becomes harder to read over time.   Thinking about mercury and the man's gradual descent into madness, Florence shares information about her sister, a former jewelry maker, who is now institutionalized in nearby Deadwood. Florence always assumed it was the mercury that Rosemund worked with in her craft that drove her to madness, but the others suggest that she might have instead worked with lomava.   Next, Jaker and Florence examine a Latin book called Terra Arcana. Although the language is very complex and hard to translate, there are many illustrations of tiny humans by large obelisks. One of the stones has an arrow pointing to some handwritten marginalia in an exotic text of letters and symbols.    Both Jaker and Florence recognize this strange language. Jaker once saw it tattooed on a corpse that passed through his funeral home. The woman was named Yolene Everburg, and he recalled that Philomena refused to bury her near the church. Florence remembered an evening 3 years ago when a young boy came to her door after hours, nervous, and offered to sell her books. He said he needed to buy supplies for his sick mother. She purchased the aforementioned Chemical Elements of the Natural World from him as well as a leatherbound journal filled with this strange text.   Beau and Quentin examine a geology book with detailed plates of each rock. Quentin hopes to find information about the weirdly heavy rock he stole from the mine overseer's shack. They discover that the rock has cylindrical structures and rounded edges as if it had been melted. Beau makes a connection to a piece of a fallen meteor he keeps in his pocket, and the book confirms this.   At the same time, Harold has been running some tests on his lomava sample. He had previously prepared an extreme protection contraption with an enclosure and a heat source to pull fumes outside through a vent. He ran three tests.   1) He mixed a drop of lomava with water and poured it on a small plant. He'll check on the plant later (with an Int roll extreme success and a Nat World fail).   2) Heating the lomava in a test tube was mesmerizing. It crawled up the sides of the tube and the glass turned the color of lomava. Then the bottom of the tube dissolved and lomava dripped into the lantern he used for heat. Purple, iridescent fumes were released outside through the vent.   3) As Harold applied pressure to the lomava with pliers, it came out the sides but refused to drip, instead hanging onto the sides of the pliers.   Harold thinks this is a very odd substance, and even wonders if it might be an organic life form?   While the rest of the party researched, Philip waited outside of Bawdy Bill's to speak to Marisa. He made a small fire (in the middle of the square?!) and ate some beans. When she left work at 1:30am he approached her and was rejected: "Stay away or your stain will be on me too!"   Philip goes to the barn to retrieve his boots and decides to sleep there. As he sits, thinking and absentmindedly twirling a scalpel, he catches a glimpse of his reflection. There's a strange black circle on his lips and tongue, outlining the area where a certain gun barrel pressed against him. He tries to clean it to no avail, and then scrapes at it with the scalpel. He even excises a small piece of flesh and cauterizes the wound, only to see the circle continue, unbroken, over the cauterized area. (He stored the piece of flesh in a vial of banshee bitch to check on it later.)

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