Cold Case

Acting Police Sergant Master Shanil pulled the harpy corpses aside until she found the body of Police Constuable Pocket. It was alive and undamaged, but the smell of copper and cooked flesh hinted that it'd be out of commission for 24 hours. She retrieved its police issue crossbow and placed it and Pocket in a special sling she wore for precisely this purpose.

Bringing law to these dark places was never easy, and sacrifices had to be made. The reward for this path was great, offering both fame and a quiet dignity. Across from her, one of her squadmates was busy tearing talons from a harpie and gluing them to himself. Nearby, another was going through a nest of twigs and bone, pocketing anything shiny that they found. Yet one more was carefully scraping up piles of varpy dust, and (when they thought no one was looking) vigorously inhaling it before bursting into a coughing fit. Dignity it seemed was in short supply.

It would all be worth it. "A hero of the Tsuen reclamation" would look great on her resume. Soon she would be actually employed by an actual watch, and be a proper policerat again. "Detective Sergeant Master Shanil of the Tsuen Watch" had an awesome ring to it. It would bring Pocket all it ever wanted, namely mounds of paperwork and forms to fill out. The little thing went through ink at a rate that was probably unhealthy.

Still, being a hero who wasn't afraid of dragons or paperwork wasn't enough. To be a great policeman, you needed to solve great crimes. All you needed was a Clue. Carefully, making sure none of the other members of the Fist could see her, she pulled a scrap of paper from its lead case. The paper was burned almost to a crisp, and only the most delicate of magics hard been able to restore it to partial legibility.

In a beautiful, flowing elven script, a header read "From the desk of the chief librarian of House D'Larariel, Tsuen"

Below it, in a much more hurried hand were the words. "Reports we are under attack. Moving to protecting the most irreplaceable books. 243 books sent for emergency storage, 244 arrived. Extra tome titled "Liber Tenebrarius" [lit. Book of the Unknow]. Flyleaf reads "To Whom it may concern. Regards, The Evermage". Rest of book is in code, do not have time to translate. Book turned up within moments of attack being reported, events linked? Book placed in repository 10567.4, and will-"

There, the note descended into illegibility. The only other reference that she'd manage to dig up about an "Evermage" was from an dalish oracle of Mitra, who'd been present when Lothrain fell. Her reports on what the disaster were mostly gibberish, but in one section, she'd reffered to the attacking clone army as "the miscalculation of the evermage". It was nothing. It was almost certainly nothing. But if there was some link between Tsuen and Lothrain, and she was the one to find it...

She carefully replaced the note, and made a show of inspecting a pile of varpy dust. It would not be long now...