When confronted with the ruins of the house
Clint focuses on "asking a new friend" for advice.
With a little advice from a distant dragon and the intuition of a gamer the symbols are clearly ruins.
Clint is also inspired to check the body under the dead fall. With a little effort five keys, on a ring, are recovered from underneath the rocks. Each bears a ruin, two are similar to the ones on the house and barn, what are the other three keys to?
Where once a distinct “about to be struck by lightning” feeling now nothing is felt as
Clint tries the first key to the house. While a little bent it fits and the door opens. A little later the barn is opened similarly, it seems once you are invited in by the key holder you can come and go as you please. Still the bones serve as testament to the danger this sanctuary could pose, hopefully only to unwanted visitors.
Menhit’s form is not made for the house. While she can make ungainly progress through the house her demands for a more suitable, and easily navigated, space require some convincing that immediate remodeling by plasma gun may not be the desired course of action. She agrees to explore this “barn” you speak of.
Once in the house the wood framed structure reminds you of a home from the early twentieth century. Furnishings while dusty seem to be in excellent condition. The curious glow lights so prevalent elsewhere are placed and functional in wall, ceiling and lamps thoughtfully placed throughout the house.
Exploring the house reveals a master bedroom on the ground floor, a bathroom with a claw foot tub, a kitchen that for the most part is familiar, a dinning room and a parlor with a door made of dark hardwood with the "house" ruin upon the door. The same rules of entry seem to apply and with the house key you explore further.
Behind the door is the stairs to the upper floor. At the top of the landing two doors opposite one another reveal small, functional bedrooms with simple single beds. A third further down the hall leads to a larger bedroom, furnished with a desk and larger bed. Across the hall from the larger bedroom is another bathroom. The door at the far end of the hall is the most intriguing.
A more ornate door of similar dark hardwood to the wood of the upper floor bears a golden ruin at its center. A third key holds a matching ruin.
Upon opening the door you discover a study. A large roll top desk is open dominates the wall to the left. The familiar dark wood of the trim of the house is used in floor to ceiling bookshelves covering the entire wall to the right. A window with a Victorian easy chair and ottoman beneath is flanked by a book stand and small table with a lamp occupy the far wall from the door.
The built in bookshelves are filled with books from the mundane to tomes you are very hesitant to touch, bearing similar ruins to those on the door but with no matching keys. Robin’s collar translates the scripts on many of the books but not the books covered in ruins.
With a little practice the more mundane texts read in an older form of English with a markedly different alphabet. Some use the more familiar characters of a twenty four letter alphabet. A few are in Latin, which Robin can read but others cannot. Once courage is garnered the books with ruins stay fast in their shelves, unmoving. More persistence draws a minor shock. No key matches any of the books.
Exploring the desk reveals a series of letters tucked into one of the desk's cubbies clearly part of the correspondence which ended with the letter in the pocket of the man beneath the deadfall. Upon examination it is clear the man was beneath the social standing of the woman he courted. Both had met serving as warrior mages, both members of the “High Guild of Dragon Mages.”
While it seems the man and the woman were very much “in love” the woman was clearly the object of potential arranged marriages of potential political or economic import. Only her continued active service to the Guild and “the State” kept her from being obliged to enter one of them.
The letters also talk about the political circumstances that must have predated the war that you know to have ended some three decades earlier. Consolation to the man for refused request to return to service and what seems to be optimistic encouragement for the potential life and fortune the man was building respond to the letters sent frequently by the man now resting under the dead fall.
The last letters in the pile bears somewhat desperate pleas to “approach mother” with his proposal, least she be forced to marry, service or not. The letter with the man’s response was the one found in his pocket. Also in the desk are the deed to the property, evidently a squatters claim to occupy and rehabilitate a residence described as within a days’ travel of the “wilderlands”.
A silver box, about the same size as the letters rests on the right side of the desk. You note the ruins faintly scribed into the boxes décor. When opened three more letters are found. First a final plea, then a last letter before she married and then a goodbye letter from the woman.
The barn proves to be far less melodramatic. The barn is split by a wall into a workshop (laboratory?) and stable that has a pen large enough for Klootz. The bedding hay is long rotted but the structure and woodwork is in remarkably good shape. Menhit “finds it most suitable.”
