Mysterious binder

SUMMARY Rona receives a package from a stranger, which contains a mostly destroyed Artificer's Binder. She has no idea why. Aya, Morgan, and Dax weigh in on the mystery.

Yelrona has been talking to a tall pale-skinned man in a corner booth for some time. Now he gets up, hands her a small wrapped package the size of a large book, and walks out of the pub. Rona takes the package uncertainly and walks over to the bar with it in her hand, unwrapped, staring at it.

Morgan looks over to Rona "If that book a privare one?"

Dax is at a table and sleeping on it. Her face is curled up on an arm as she rests. She is making some noise while she sleeps, and her hand is wrapped on the handle of the mug of ale that she had here last night. That's a skill right there, she can sleep using a bar table as a pillow and not even loose grip on the mug of ale she purchased.

Yelrona looks up, startled, then nods distractedly to Morgan. "Oh, hey Morgan. I didn't see you there. Book?" She looks at the package in her hands, as though seeing it for the first time. "Oh. Right, yes, I suppose it is a book, you're right." She stares at it for a long while before answering "As for private.. well, I don't know? I'm not sure what it is, to be honest." She orders some tea and looks around for a table, chuckling as she notice Dax. "If she'd done this in Tarien's temple," Rona observes, "someone would take advantage of the opportunity to paint embarrassing slogan on her forehead."

After a moment's thought, she sits at Dax's table and starts rummaging through her bag, coming out with a small pot of paint and a brush.

Morgan says a bit concerned "May I check the book out while you have fun with paint and face."

Dax stays asleep, she's just zonked out and she's not an elf. So meditating isn't the thing for her, she's pretty much drunk herself into unconsciousness and now she's going to pay for it. That hand doesn't leave the mug though, and her face is on her arm, so the right side of her face and much of the front is quite visible.

Aya enters from the street and via the door, rather than alternate directions or means. She makes note of several familiar faces among the patrons, conscious and otherwise.

Yelrona thinks about Morgan's offer as she paints delicately on Dax's face: "Dangerously unaware" in Yrch-speak.

"Well," she finally says to Morgan, "I suppose I will need to look at it, sooner or later, for good or ill. We might as well do so together," she decides.

She puts the package down on the table, clearly reluctant. The wrapper it's in turns out to be a large fabric envelope with a complicated clasp, and she has to work at the clasp with her tools for a bit before it opens.

Inside the wrapper is, as Morgan surmised, a book. Or rather, the remains of one... it has clearly seen better days, is heavily burned and water-damaged and bears the marks of acid damage and maybe some other things. Rona dumps it out on the table and stares at it, rather as one might a sleeping snake.

Morgan looks over the remas and says "I can fix some of this with some spells but it wont replace the lost words from the dammage it gotten."

Yelrona thinks about that offer, as well. "Thank you, but I think it's better to study it a bit before altering it." She regards what words are visible on the top page. "That's Kulthian, right?"

Aya arches a brow at the face-writing, then at the revealed slightly-used book. "From the wear, I'd guess it was in the possession of gobbers."

Morgan nods and says "I am also a book binder if you want me to do normal restoring?"

Yelrona looks up at Aya's voice, again startled... she really is distracted right now. "Oh... hi, Aya. For all I know, it was... though I _think_ it comes from Charn. Most recently, anyway. Are there a lot of gobbers in Charn?"

To Morgan she adds "Again, thank you... as I say, I'm going to hold off on making any changes to it for the moment. But I will keep your offer in mind."

Aya rolls one shoulder. "As many as are in most nations, I imagine. They seem to be everywhere." She glances to the book. "The symbols remind me of Fazahd's materials, though I can't read them. Kulthian is a common notation for artifice, as they originated it."

Dax snorts a few times, and her free hand comes up to swat at the place where the brushes were painting her face, and then she's smacking her lips some, and slowly rising up. Her eyes are barely open and she takes the ale that's in her hand, and tips it up to gulp down some of it. Right where she left it. With a bit of a smile she wonders, "When ya get 'ere?" Looking around a bit, with a wobbly head, "Why's it so bright right now? Someone got all ta lamps on?"

Yelrona nods. "I can read the language, but... it doesn't make a lot of sense." She delicately flips through some pages, which turns out to be a lot more robust than it might seem... whatever damaged it was apparently considerable. "It's kind of like magical notation, a little, but... not at all really." She closes it again, pinching the bridge of her nose. "They turned up the sun," she explains straight-faced to Dax. "It's all part of a trick to convince you that you've slept through the night, and it's now afternoon. I wouldn't fall for it, were I you."

Dax blinks a bit more as Yelrona tells her a story about turning up the sun. Dax hrms a bit, and squints at the other woman, "Ya jus' makin' things up." She stares around, and squints even more when her eyes make it to the door and the surrounding light that comes in. Along with whatever windows they open up in here, and then she is grumbling. "Fer fucks sake, why we got all these windows open. Cover'em up wit' somethin'! Some of us are tryin' ta see!" And then she focuses back on Yelrona, "Wha' ya got there? Some kind of diary?"

Yelrona shrugs to Dax. "Suit yourself. And, no... I don't think it's a diary. It seems more like an engineer's lab notebook, or a technical manual... or as Aya said, an artificer's, er, well I suppose they aren't spellbooks, but I'm not sure what the artificer equivalent is."

"I was always under the impression that light was required for you to see..." Aya offers to Dax, with mild bemusement. "Binders, I believe is the term," for Yelrona.

Yelrona chuckles in Aya's direction. "Well, some of us more so than others. And, right, Binders." She regards the document skeptically. "Maybe Fazahd can make sense of it... even _reading_ the language it just gives me a headache."

There's a squint over in the direction of Aya, "Light required fer ya. I need eyes." She states simply and then drinks down more of her ale, not fully aware of any Yrch Speak painted on the side of her face. "Yer sayin' ya get a book, an' tha' book be called somethin' else, but it filled wit' writings an' ain't a diary?" Dax is certainly confused, but she just drinks down more of her ale.

Aya nods to Yelrona. "I expect that he could translate it and provide context. If not, he woud certainly know others who could. Would you like me to deliver it to him," a hand gestures to the wrapping, "or send him to see you?"

Yelrona nods to Dax. "Yes, that's right. It's something... what did you call them before, city witches, or some such thing? It's a thing they use in their... well, let's say their witchcraft." She slides the Binder back into the envelope, which she notices is lined with a thin sheet of lead. "Huh. To prevent divination, I suppose?" She shakes her head, uncertainly. "I should probably hold on to it, whatever it is... but yes, if you run into Fazahd, I could use his insight here."

Dax stands up from the table, and swings her ale mug in the direction of Yelrona, before gulping down much more of it. "Ya shouldn't mess wit' city witches an' their things. They find ya, they turn ya in ta a chicken, or one of those flyin' metal things." And she starts walking away from the table, setting the mug on someone else's table. "Got ta go ta the river an' get me a bath..." And she wobbles only slightly as she's moving along.

Yelrona waves to Dax as she leaves, and regards the envelope, which she reseals. "I suppose the Artificer's Guild is my next stop," she muses before leaving the pub.