Research

The monitor quickly begins to display the same strange symbols as the monitor in the high-tech doll maintenance room back home. At this point there is something vaguely nostalgic about these symbols, which differ from the writing I've seen of the amazonian queedom.

The initial message that the screen displays is a simple one acknowledging me as the dollmaker's inheritor and welcoming me to the observatory. As soon as I am done reading it the screen blurs and then changes. What I suddenly see is quite interesting to me, as the new screen displays what must be real-time footage of the other rooms throughout the observatory!

Numerous feeds fill the lion's share of the screen in front of me and they reveal the empty rooms of the observatory. At a glance I see things like bedrooms, bathrooms, a kitchen, some smaller workshops, and storerooms, as well as a larger screen that is shrouded in darkness. My senses are keen enough that even on this projection I can still make out shapes that fill the dark room, and it takes me a second to recognize the shadowy outline of a gigantic telescope in the middle of this room.

One important thing I learn is that the undead only came to this room. That is intriguing to me, since it suggests that something or someone drove them here specifically rather than any of the other rooms on the first floor of the building. If I had to guess I'd wonder if they or whoever drove them here somehow knew about the dollmaker, or sensed Amy's arcane powers, because that would make sense to me. Still, the knowledge that the undead have been pushed out of the observatory is good knowledge to have.

The storerooms are of significant interest to me. I would love to snag some free supplies, and if there are any in the storerooms of this magical observatory it stands to reason that they might be magical themselves. Plus, even if they aren't that's still free stuff I can use to make new items, potentially even items that can get me MORE items themselves. Still, this is not the time to focus on potentially grabbing new things. I focus on the room that holds the actual telescope, which probably functions more like a shield meant to protect the telescope than a normal room.

"So that's the main room, huh? Okay, I'll have to investigate that at some point." I quietly state. I know better than to try and investigate it right now. I study the screens until I find the one showing me a live feed of the room my dolls, animal friends, and I are in. I click on that screen, and watch as the feed widens and takes up the majority of the screen.

"Is there a way for me to… rewind this?" I wonder aloud, studying the thing curiously. My psychometry doesn't directly teach me how to operate the thing, to my slight annoyance, and so I begin to mentally review the perks I possess, looking for something that could allow me to figure out how precisely to operate the machinery here.

I could awaken it but that'd take a lot of magic, due to the complexity of the object and it's fairly remarkable size, and by myself I just don't have the sheer amount of… points of arcane energy needed for a feat of this magnitude. Awakening the golems, as large as they were, was nothing, energy wise, compared to the energy awakening a machine spanning an entire wall would take. I just don't have the juice needed to do this by myself, but rewinding the footage could be essential to both discovering where Amy's planned to go and also figuring out why undead were waiting for a chance to bust into an arcane study.

I wrack my brain for several seconds, examining the robust perks I've acquired over the course of my adventure before finding something that lets me be a bit creative. I glance at the dolls on the screen in front of me. They are both deftly working to gather all of the scattered remains of our fallen foes in one place, all for the sake of allowing me to be a supernatural detective and do some unnatural forensic work, along with the animals who skillfully aid them in gathering bones, bits of flesh, weapons, and anything else that belonged to the enemies we felled.

I close my eyes and picture a spell matrix related to efficiency and speed, and I fully capture it in my mind's eye before I reach into my inventory and pull out my enchanter's pen. I begin to dart across the length of the wall, gently drawing the matrix onto the machine. Doing so takes several minutes, but when it's done the wall begins to faintly glow in much the same way as the hole was doing earlier. I admire the subtle tinge for a second before I turn and call out to my allies.

"Hey, Raquel and Beth… Come over here for a second, would you?" I ask. The two dolls stop manhandling corpses and bones and turn and smile in my direction before beginning to walk towards me. They notice the wall shining and curiosity fills their eyes, causing me to grin at them.

"Interested in this? Don't worry, I'm gonna need your help with it." I remark as they reach me.

"How can we help, we can't read the writing on the… screens?" Raquel asks, and I continue to grin.

"Well, Raquel, I'm going to ask the two of you to… join me in a covenant." I reply, somewhat enigmatically. This confuses both dolls and I laugh lightly before beginning to explain what I'm talking about.

"A covenant, in this context, is a metaphysical arcane nexus linking together different mages. It allows mages of different disciplines and who are separated, physically, to collaborate in spellcasting and achieve unusual and impressive feats of witchcraft. I've had the ability to create one for some time now, but seeing as we're always close to each other and the two of you, despite being magically gifted, do not seem to be hugely fond of magic. However, in order to find Amy I think I need your help." I begin, speaking gently to the two.

"A covenant is a serious thing, not something to be taken for granted, but the truth is that I need your help. I intend to awaken this machine, and in the future the other machines throughout the estate, and ones residing within any other spaces once controlled by the dollmaker. But I need to awaken this machine, right now, so that we can discover where your sister went. I do not have the stores of arcane energy needed to awaken the machine on my own. Even if I down potions I doubt that alone will help due to how quickly the process will sap my energy and the fact that this needs to be done in one go. But if we work together I think we can do it." I say to the dolls. I then put my hand forward.

"If you join me as the first members of my covenant, then we can share arcane energies and awaken this machine. Doing so will allow us to get its help in finding Amy. Please, help me find your sister." I ask, and mere moments later both of them put their hands in mine. None of us says another word as I will the "Covenant" perk to flare to life. I feel energy surge into me as I sense my companions join me in something approaching an arcane marriage, and my mind races as I gain knowledge of new, unique spells. The spells mix elements of my character with the regality of Raquel and the liveliness of Beth. I quietly feel our energies mixing and mingling inside of the three of us.

My lips twitch upward as I feel the strange magic possessed by the dolls intermingling with my own. The sensation of my magic mixing with the dolls remains in the back of my mind as I turn to face the machine and place a hand on it. I will the enchantment affecting the machine to soar in power, a natural consequence of awakening something, and I feel the process begin to drain me of my own potent eldritch energies.

I take a deep breath as my energy continues to deplete. The sensation is not a pleasant one, and in moments like this I am glad that I can refuel my own stores of arcane energy with ease. It takes a moment but eventually all of my arcane energy disappears, even the excessive energy that certain hedge mage perks allow me to store specifically for moments like this, right before Raquel begins to share hers with me.

The sensation of Raquel's regal energy filling my veins is a cool and refreshing one, which is a very pleasant contrast to the sensation of my energy pouring into the machine. It only takes a few seconds for all of her energy to be absorbed by the almost thirsty machine. Beth begins to share her fiery and energetic arcane power with me as well. I sigh pleasantly as I feel it pour into my veins, and then grimace when it begins to get siphoned by the machine. It is sometime after Beth's energy begins to enter my veins that I receive a notification telling me to design the personality of the machine. I quickly devise a devoted and fairly passive personality for the machine and feel the last of Beth's energy seep into the machine.

I fall to my knees, exhausted by the flurry of activity, but I can faintly hear the machine calling out to me. The voice sounds distant and unfocused but I consciously know how close the machine actually is. I'm suffering from arcane exhaustion, a somewhat severe case of it due to the speed at which I lost my mana. I also know the cure for this unfun condition: arcane energy. I close my eyes for a second, before reaching into my inventory and swiftly retrieving and then downing a potion I brewed for the sake of restoring my stores of mystical energy.

As the blue liquid in the tiny glass bottle disappears down my throat I feel my mystical energy being speedily restored. I let out a relieved sigh and glance at the machine.

"Master… Are you okay?" The thing asks, it's voice sounding subtly synthetic. I study the closest monitor and I notice that the screen has changed, showing me the words written out in the bizarre looking letters that the dollmaker must have once recognized as the alphabet of his first language.

"I'm fine, machine. Awakening you was simply… a touch draining." I explain, mostly honestly. The machine falls silent in response to my statement and so I walk up to it and decide to ask it something.

"As an awakened object, you can manipulate yourself right?" I ask, mostly rhetorically. I am relieved when the letters on the monitor change to answer my question in one affirmative word.

"Excellent! Can you show us a sped up version of the footage of this room over the last… I wanna say a month and a half?" I ask, and the machine doesn't utter its answer but instead decides to demonstrate its abilities by pulling up the feed showing the footage of the room. Beth and Raquel move next to me, and I hand them each a potion that looks identical to the one I downed moments ago. They down the beverages without question, even though as dolls they are unaffected by mana exhaustion.

The machine begins to speedily rewind the footage and I audibly cheer as I watch a reversed replay of the battle we had with the undead that, minutes ago, had been invading the study. The footage is sped up tremendously and in minutes I am watching footage from over a week ago. It takes another few minutes, close to fifteen minutes, before my companions and I get to see footage of Amy but she moves way too fast for us to make out what she's doing, even with my enhanced senses.

I allow the machine to reverse the footage even more, and when it comes to a stop I ask the machine to fast forward the footage so that my companions and I can watch it quickly. The obedient machine does as we ask, and I get to see the same footage I watched in reverse, this time in chronological order.

I am silent until we get to the moment Amy opened the door and stepped into the strangely information-centric room. I quietly ask the machine to slow the speed up so that I can study Amy.

Amy enters the room, darts towards one of the book shelves, and grabs a grimoire. The moment she touches it the thing flashes brightly, she drops it and then begins to glare at it.

"Huh, Amy triggered our master's anti-theft protections. Weird!" Beth states, sounding oblivious to the implications of that.

She spends what must be several minutes angrily saying something but the machine's feed doesn't seem to have any ability to capture audio which is weird and is something I didn't notice before but I also know that the machine shouldn't be able to lie to me. This is an annoying development that I can only hope can be fixed with me using my food, since I have the ability to improve people, places, and things I feed.

I watch Amy kick the book underneath one of the book shelves, which is interesting to me as I don't think any of us have gone to the trouble of looking underneath the book shelves yet. As she kicks it that also causes the thing to begin to emanate a curious green light, but not one like I'm familiar with. The green light of the book is a sickly green, not a vibrant one that fills me with joy. Somehow the sight of that curious green light brings a smile to my face even though it is downright revolting to actually look at.

I get to watch Amy vanish. She doesn't exit the room right before she enters another one, she flatly disappears despite being nowhere near the only exits that the room is home to. The doll has clearly cast a spell of teleportation, and I order the machine to pause the video and show us the other feeds throughout the observatory. It does as I say, and I get to keep my eye on every room in the place at once. I study them, waiting and hoping that Amy will appear in one of them. It doesn't take me long to come to the conclusion that the doll has just vanished, which is deeply frustrating. Still, there is a treasure to be found here…

"Hey, keep an eye on the footage. I'm going to go and begin to investigate the other treasures we have here." I tell the dolls. They nod at me, and I begin to walk over to one of the walls which define the room's dimensions. I am specifically heading in the direction of the assembled lot of bones and other things left behind by my foes.

The animals I tamed some days ago have been diligently collecting the remains of our shattered and defeated foes. I approach the pile and thank the furry and feathered fellows before I begin to grab the collected debris. I touch it for a few moments, allow its memories to fill me, and then I cause the object I am holding to vanish into thin air.

I diligently sort through the pile, collecting memories as easily as I collect loot. I allow the back of my mind to do the work of sorting through the new memories, all of which begin with the undead creatures enduring long, monotonous days toiling under a necromancer in a darkened world, a series of alien and fantastical caverns beneath the continent.

As I touch more bones and weapons left behind by the dead soldiers I have slain, more and more memories become clear to me. Some of the memories I see are of the source of my troubles: a strange creature that I can tell is a necromancer delights in enslaving orcs, reanimating them to serve him even in death. As far as I can gather, some days ago the necromancer detected curious levels of arcane energy from the general area of the observatory, undoubtedly because of the grimoire that Amy kicked into underneath one of the bookshelf walls, and he sent troops here to figure out what was going on. When the monsters arrived they found a place as close to both the spellbook and their home at the same time so they stayed, not needing anything in terms of things such as food, a bed, a place to rest. The defenses the dollmaker had in place kept them out, until I unlocked the place, which gave them what they needed to ungracefully enter the observatory.

"Huh… Well, that's not good." I quietly remark, as I shove the last set of bones into my vault. For now, anyway. My companions are still hard at work giving me more things to grab and take the memories from. I glance in the direction of the grimoire and walk over to where I saw Amy kick it. Reaching it forces me to get on my knees and use a bit of wind magic to pull it towards me but after a few moments of me fighting to have the book I feel its solid spine touch my hand and I pull the thin thing out from underneath the bookshelf. I grin at the book and shout to the dolls that I have the grimoire from the footage.

Memories begin to fill me and due to the small size of the object I can see a lot farther in the past than I normally can. I can see Amy touching the grimoire in the past, beside a figure that I assume is the dollmaker, and nothing strange happening with the book. Eventually I stop seeing the figure who may or may not be the dollmaker whenever I see Amy, and she can still touch the book without setting off any strange defensive mechanism magically embedded into the text. This means that the defensive mechanism has degraded with time, something in Amy changed, or that the figure might not be Amy at all… This trip has raised a lot of questions.

It takes me a second to get into a position where I can glance at the book, but this gives it time to activate its defensive measures and I am relieved to learn firsthand that the book accepts me as its owner, or at least doesn't shock me when I hold it. When I sit down and look at its actual contents I'm a bit surprised at what I see.

The book is a potent instruction manual for scores of necromantic spells and rituals. It is filled with details on various spells, particularly spells that afflict those they hit with negative status conditions. The spells are remarkably easy looking to cast, which is odd. Some of the spells here are decently high level, like the art of turning a human corpse into a ghoul. Despite the presence of this challenging spell, the instructions I'm seeing here for turning a body into a ghoul are remarkably easy.

I continue to flip through it, pleasantly astounded at what I'm seeing, especially since something about the spells makes me wonder why they are so easy for me to cast. And the spells turn… weird, towards the end of the book. Weird in a decidedly not family-friend way, which feels particularly unclean since the spells are still very necromantic.

The unclean spells are spells that use things like poisons, curses, and other brutal status effects to torment foes in ways that are humiliating, even cruel sometimes, but not life-threatening. Though some of the incantations do allow a caster to inflict a range of sensations on the undead, which is not nothing but is still less effective than banishing or destroying the undead, or the living, unless the cruelty and humiliation are the point.

I eventually close the book and glance up at my surroundings. As I look up I am surprised to see that all of the books in the arcane study are faintly glowing, and I can feel something in them reaching out to me, calling out to me to go and collect them. I suppose I am their rightful owner now, but it's odd to see so many books subtly glowing. The chamber is now rainbow-tinted, and I sigh as I look around before getting up and getting to work placing the books in the vault.

For several minutes I occupy myself with grabbing each of the assorted tomes, grimoires, and other enchanted texts that fill three of the four walls which define the room. There are hundreds of them, enough that my dolls are able to finish watching the footage the machine has found for us to view and that my creature companions have finished gathering the bones and other spoils of war left behind by our foes by the time I've collected every glowing book. When I'm done I get a curious notification.

[Alert: Study Materials Collected

The books you have found and added to your vault are an 'Item'. Specifically they are 'Study Materials'. 'Study Materials' are a potent 'Magic-User' item that consists of a vast collection of scholarly resources for clever mystical scholars.

This collection of academic works, grimoires, ritual books and more are up to date scholarly texts concerning a broad range of mystical disciplines. They are perfect for research, for memorization, and more, and they contain a few secrets within their many pages.

The first secrets are that the books are self-updating and will always be up-to-date with all of the greatest arcane knowledge. The second secret is that the spells, rituals, hexes, and more that are outlined in the pages of the books are cheaper, more effective, and generally just perform better than the versions of the spells taught to and used by others. The third secret relates to the more… forbidden or taboo magic. Anyone who is not the owner of this item, you, who reads and researches the taboo spells and rituals will begin to become interested in them, ready and willing to work on such magic alone or under strict supervision. Of course it wouldn't do to let such fascinated scholars work such magic alone, as they'd surely be vulnerable to the knowledge written on your texts… Be sure to keep an eye on them, and maybe offer to lend a hand when they begin to personally research foul, pleasurable magic.]

"Huh… Was the dollmaker a bit of a freak or was he just a scholar pursuing all sides of every situation?" I wonder very softly. I'll have to investigate some of the man's other possessions to come to a true decision regarding that question one way or the other.

For now I glance up at the dolls, and walk over to them and the machine, happy to know that the source of the mystical energies which drew the undead here is now effectively gone, since it can't radiate magic from out in my vault. This means that the observatory should be clear, and if not I can use my clergy-based abilities to bless this place when my companions and I leave to further protect it from undead menaces. When I reach my more complex allies I wait for them to tell me what they've seen and learned while I was getting my hands on some of the dollmaker's things.