"Sounds like we have a plan, then..."

So Elana writes a letter, explaining she is a scholar of the Elder Scrolls and would like to speak with colleagues among the Dwemer and, if possible, examine their Scrolls. As a surety, she offers scraps of the visions, mostly dealing with the heart. She dances coyly around the conclusions she and Lace have drawn, offering just enough to be tantalizing without giving anything away outright.

The Dwemeri Council responds the next day, inviting them to visit.

"...Surprisingly prompt response."

"...Your default government is so inefficient."

"It's possible they're screening for keywords. Or they're planning something. Or there's internal divisions and someone jumped the gun to get ahead of everyone else."

"We'll see." Time to go underground.

No one immediately stabs them in the elevator, at least.

The halls of the Dwemer are grand, lit by heatless lamps with no visible power source, rich with architectural detail in a mix of stone and metal. Lace seems fascinated, though she stays alert for threats.

They have an escort, two guards, who lead them through the complex winding hallways to a quiet district apparently given over to research. They're instructed to wait in the lobby of a massive library for someone to come talk to them.

"How do you like the architecture?" she asks while they wait. "Everything you dreamt of?"

"It's interesting! Not really similar to anything I've seen before, and clever for what they're working with."

"They put their insularity to good use, focusing their efforts."

"Honestly they'd probably manage better things with trade - technology picks up when you've got everyone bouncing ideas around."

"Perhaps you can suggest that to them."

"Dangle a bit of fancy communications technology in front of them."

"I am sure they will leap."

Giggle. "I have all the most tempting things."

"That you do." Quick kiss.

Kiss!

And, soon enough, they're called back. The dwemeri possibly a librarian looks similar to the other dwemer, but is plausibly female, and mostly seems interested in prying into the details of their vision. Not rudely, though, and she lets some information slip on her own behalf whenever she feels like she's gotten a bit of ground from Lace and Elana. (She seems to believe - or be pretending to believe - the vision was largely metaphorical. Still, she clearly recognizes a few things from it.)

('How did they come by this vision' is another thing she's subtly probing them for.)

Elana keeps away from the parts that were more specific to their ritual, but elaborates on other aspects. She does press for corroboration, and tries to determine how many scrolls they might have locked away.

She claims to be from High Rock, and studied a scroll at the Adamantine Tower. Not that she personally read it, but she's collected several accounts.

Scroll visions are notoriously unreliable; an interesting artifact of simply reading them is that each reading - and each reader - reveals a different, sometimes contradictory, set of visions. The dwemer accurately guesses that her accounts were at a minimum from the Blood scroll - "Which tends to wander around, some, and involve itself in wars," - and speculates some on the modernity of the visions - "After all, the visions also shift as events become locked in our time stream - the Scrolls rarely show what was not once we have mostly agreed upon a mutual reality."

(There's no real hint as to how many scrolls the dwemer - or just Mzinchaleft - have, just that this particular scholar has ever observed one being read.)

While all this is interesting, it is not exactly what they came for. Elana catches the librarian's eyes with her own and begins to exert her will.

The woman frowns a bit, getting distracted from one of her points, then shaking her head and picking it back up.

Still, she seems - wavering, to Elana's point almost.

Hm. Resistant.

Elana smiles pleasantly and exerts more pressure.

She loses her train of thought a few more times, before failing to pick it back up, pausing mid point, expression dazed.

"Tell me about the Elder Scroll you have," she commands. "Where is it kept?"