"How convenient that it was already on my to-do list."

Library!

The Blackwing library is not in particularly good shape, having had Deskari's chasm damage the back half of the buildings foundation and of course a bunch of Baphomet cultists camp out there this morning trying to organize a book burning, but nobody seems to have considered any of the contents valuable enough to consider looting so the books are either on the shelves or scattered on the floor rather than missing entirely. For decoration, it mostly has a handful of statuary; off to the right side of the entrance is a statue of a wizard, while on the right side is one of a griffon; the former seems to have clearly had more attention given to it and its placement.

"Who runs this place, when it's running?" Ky asks, reshelving fallen books.

"I think it used to be one of Aroden's, back in the day; he was pretty popular with Mendev's upper classes, and could be relied on to support institutions like this. Nowadays the Iomedaeans have inherited it, and it's a much more awkward match for their priorities even if they're not willing to let it fall into ruin. I assume they've got some appointed librarian, but I can't imagine it's more than intermittently funded and probably has to rely on donations for some of the upkeep."

"That's terrible, this poor lovely library. Perhaps I'll adopt it, having left mine behind."

"I wouldn't be surprised if you could convince them to give it to you outright, Hulrun and Irabeth seem to like you and there'll be a lot of demand for adventurers in Kenabres until they can put together enough funds to have Terendelev resurrected.

"And I have relevant experience and everything!" Shelve shelve. She can perfectly smooth bent pages, has been able to do this for a long time.

Camellia will help with that for a bit, then set off to exploring the library. She finds a hidden door behind the wizard status with an enchanted staff and cloth armor, but remarks that unless Kybele thinks it would be useful for the attack on the garrison it'd probably be better to wait until the library is hers to take anything. Once she determines that there isn't enough missing space for another hidden room, she'll go pick up a demonic bestiary to refresh her memory on less common variants so she isn't caught off guard by what they can do.

"What do they do, can you tell?"

"The staff enhances some kinds of spellcasting, probably mind affecting, by a little bit, and of course hits harder. The armor is enchanted a bit to better resist attacks, though it's still not as good as steel except in weight; there might be another defensive effect but I can't figure out what it is."

"Mind affecting... Ember's sleep effect, might it work on that?"

"I would expect spells only because most item crafters don't consider witches or shamans when crafting, but I'm not sure since I don't have any mind affecting hexes of my own to test it with. Maybe I should try to get my spirit to give me evil eye; I could use something with a bit more range anyway."

"What does that do?"

"It weakens whoever you use it on. Their ability to dodge attacks, their ability to resist spells and hexes, their ability to hit things, their ability to succeed at difficult tasks; you pick one, and then they're worse at it for about half a minute if they fail to resist or a few seconds if they succeed."

"That's... so odd from my background, huh." Is there anything about it in the library - she isn't, here, scanning titles, but flinging out her domain sense, looking for impressions in the pages that correspond to the phrase, she's never been that good at this but she's more famous today than she was last time she tried.

There are a couple of mentions in books on witches, and one that seems to be talking about shamans.

She pulls the one about shamans to read more conventionally with one hand while shelving with the other.

According to the book, instead of praying to a god, shamans commune with the spirits of the world and the energy inside each and every living being. They have a symbiotic relationship with the spirit, where they take actions that empower it and in exchange it gives them access to more abilities. The book seems to consider them to be generally less capable clerics "owing to the lesser status of their patrons," which results in them having fewer spells and being unable to channel, but talks about how some of them seek to make up for their weakness by imitating the hexes of witches, allowing them do things like spread misfortune or curse people with an evil eye. The book is rather nonspecific on what if any limitations or precise effects these involve, or indeed anything other than considering them barbaric. It also compares shamans rather frequently to something called druids.

Then she will read a book on druids next!

Ky is a fast reader and a skilled skimmer; she can get through a fair few books familiarizing herself with the universe before dark. She does at some point ask Camellia if it would be obviously stupid in any way for her to crash in this library overnight.

Druids apparently have a bond with nature itself rather than with spirits, and almost always live away from civilization, but they get a lot more respect from at least this author from being able to help with plant growth “almost as much as a cleric of Erastil” and for being able to transform into animals like bears, which it seems to consider the upsides of to go without saying. They don’t tend to interact with society much, so they might be able to do all kinds of mysterious things that nobody knows about!

“Well, it’s probably less comfortable than getting a bed and we might be attacked during the night; we could sleep in the secret room, but it might be a tad cramped with three of us and if anyone needs to pee in the middle of the night it could be dangerous. I wouldn’t say any of this is prohibitive if you really want to though.”

"I think the needing to pee factor might be decisive. You can drag a bed and whatnot in here after you've adopted a place."

"Well, I guess we can go crash in the temple of Desna..."

"They might also have dinner! All kinds of amenities."

"It's just I'm so fond of libraries." She pats a book. "But you're right."