"There's some new faces since the bishop's visit, but none newer than a few weeks and -" she tugs at her collar "Even if they're expecting new people we'll stand out."

You could disguise the collars but it'd be a bit of a stretch. "Then I'm inclined to go into the fort first, because once we start rescuing people from the dungeons they'll be on high alert, and poke around and see if we can get the records; then we can rescue people from the dungeons on our way out. What do you think?"

"I think that sounds as good as any plan. Have you got a rope?"

"Yes." When you take extremely unlikely long shot efforts to overthrow the Order and save the world you should at least go into them fully equipped, even if this involved putting a lot of people at risk for smuggling.

"Tonight, then? Unless...maybe the daytime would be better, so we don't need lights to read the records. Hm."

They can steal them (and in fact she's planning to) but they still have to know what to steal. 

"Very early morning, maybe."

"Agreed. Just before dawn."

Sourcery isn't evil, or at least wasn't before it started summoning hungry Void creatures. Sourcerers themselves probably don't tend more evil than most people. There are - or there were - plenty of Sourcerers who just lived quiet lives unless trouble came for them. Farmers, merchants, priests, only pulling out their extraordinary powers in the most terrible of need.

Famous sourcerers, though -

Most of those are evil.

It's not just true the way that it's true that most famous conquerors are evil. Most famous conquerers are evil in the opinion of Imene, who has high standards and a disgust for war and a deep suspicion of glory. But most famous conquerers do not turn the people who mildly annoy them into pigs, and also light them on unextinguishable fire, and also make them immortal so they can be a pig on fire eternally.

Braccus Rex did that. 

This understates his creativity! Thousands of people annoyed him and he only did that once!

He really wasn't even that creative! Admittedly sometimes he instead turned people into immortal slugs which were eternally on fire, and sometimes he turned people into immortal fish which were eternally suffocating, and sometimes he turned people into twisted statuary, but Imene would not characterize creativity as a particular quality of Braccus Rex. He was cruel, and petty, and possessed with the secret of immortality, and all he did with it was conquer his way across the human lands and inflict various atrocities on the lizards despite having no way to hold Ancient Empire territory and alienate everyone he couldn't enslave.

Eventually, they figured out how to cut him off from Source, hauled him away from his Fort Joy stronghold, held a trial, and put him to death. His would be the forgettable story of a thousand petty tyrants, except for the part where Fort Joy remained, the island around it full of miserably cursed victims and trapped towers, tempting people over and over again to go digging for the secret of immortality. 

So not at all like a thousand petty tyrants, then. Also there was that one time -

Also there was that one time a thousand years ago that an absolute idiot of an evil necromancer raised Braccus Rex from the dead in the hopes of learning his terrible secrets directly from his lips. Braccus Rex murdered the man and went on a rampage of reconquest, only to be defeated, again, and killed, again. Which really just goes to show that the first time wasn't a fluke.

If Imene could make all her allies immortal and bend the world beneath her hand and drink in Source like it was water, she wouldn't lose.

Lucian had of course wanted to know Braccus Rex's secrets, like ten thousand men before him, and after he'd unified Rivellon - and before the true stakes of the war with the Black Ring became clear - he'd sent some people to scout out Fort Joy and the surrounding island, to report on what kind of effort it'd take to clear the lands and learn their secrets.

He sent cautious, capable men. Some of them even came back. They confirmed the rumors about pigs that were on fire and capable of pawing at pictograms to convey that, yes, they are people. They said also that rotting skeletons stalked the land, and poisonous gases, and deadly creatures, and traps and terrors. Lucian was an ambitious man. He put it on the to-do list.

Then the war intensified, and then he ended it with deathfog, and then he died. And then Alexandar decided to put the Sourcerers he was rounding up on Fort Joy, where the Order had found a 'cure' for them. So it wasn't really a question of whether they'd dug up some ancient evil on the island of 'as many ancient evils as you can possibly fit onto one island'. It is mostly a question of which ones, and what they're planning to do with them.

"Found - something." She begins to read aloud, hurriedly - "...The monks do listen, but they are so listless and dull. They respond, but they do not engage... the last batch of sourcerers were nearly catatonic... we'll need far more..."

"Take it with us." The records Imene is flipping through are much less likely to be useful, all ship cargos. "From who to who?"

"Orivand to Dallis, and one to Orivand from 'the front' - war with the Ancient Empire, apparently -

- Here's a mention of a breakthrough by 'Kniles' but no mention of what it was, if you see anything else about that person -"

"- war with the Ancient Empire? We're not at war with the Ancient Empire. Or we weren't two weeks ago!" If they're at war with the Ancient Empire everything is probably irretrievable....she sets that thought aside. Not a problem for right this minute.

She glanced through some personnel files a while ago - she goes back to them, looking for a 'Kniles'.

"War with a large 'organized and effective' group of - a rude word for lizards - It could be some smaller faction -" she clarifies.

"...More of the same with regards to sourcerers but nothing new so far. Orivand had a lot of correspondence."

The Ancient Empire claims to rule all lizards but then the Divine Order claims to rule all men. Things are always more complicated up close. She can't think of any large organized groups of lizards that they have any business fighting, regardless. They have no business fighting anyone but the Void invaders, right now. And of course in that fight there is not precisely a front, as the Void creatures appear near wherever Source was used...

Kniles is a Magister, assigned to Fort Joy when it started taking prisoners, paid rather poorly, reports to Orivand. That's a dead end. Orivand himself as the commander of the fort does not have a personnel file here. Braccus Rex does not have a personnel file here, though she does think to check and then in fact check. The post-cure Sourcerers also do not get personnel files, though they're accounted for in rations and on patrol schedules - not in parts of the fort where they'll come into contact with uncured Sourcerers - they are not named, on those patrol schedules, just Monk 52 and Monk 213 and so on - she pockets that. It might be evidence.

They don't find anything else immediately damning in the records here.

"The dungeons, then?"

"Can't think of anywhere I'd rather be."

She can't think of anywhere she'd rather be but only because a couple of years ago she decided that the part of her which was constantly longing to be in the Hall of Echoes with everyone she loves so she can go demand answers from Lucian was not serving her, and excised it; now she only wants to be wherever she might save the world. And right now that's here, in a narrow underground cavern that connects up with the dungeons under Fort Joy. Caving is an unpleasant activity and the teleportation gloves, far from making it more pleasant, just make it an acceptable risk to squeeze oneself into ever more miserable predicaments.

But as promised, the cavern opens up on an empty cell in which a skeleton is grimly chained to the wall, and the cell door is not designed to block teleportation, and so they're in.