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	[u]Weather[/u]: With all of the fun and adventure happening indoors and underground at the moment, why are we so concerned with the weather? Well, I suppose we must. Partly sunny, quite brisk, with temperatures hovering around freezing. No snow is falling, but there's a touch of grey in the far sky that hints at more precipitation to come. The snow remains upon the ground much as it has been all day, but with a touch of crunch to its surface, as the wavering temperatures of midday thawed and refroze the topmost of the formerly puffy, frozen white stuff. Now is the time for icicles, and they do grow aplenty - though places commonly walked become partially frozen areas of not-quite-slush.    

   	[u]Time[/u]: Afternoon! Mid-afternoon now; an excellent time for tea, were one to have the proclivity for that. The sun drifts westward; notable of angle but still fairly high. 

	[u]Ambience[/u]: The stable coolness of the cellar extends into the hidden study, if one might still be able to refer to this place as a study with a clear conscience. The (alleged) magic circle still glows a curious red color, which might sprinkle the room in sanguinous, barely illuminating light. The door leading into this place stands apart from its frame, leaning almost casually upon the hallway door nearby. Beyond this, the secret/shelf door stands open about halfway, the prybar attached to the further hidden lock mechanism on the cellar side.  

	The room - simply furnished, practically screaming of questionable acts performed for questionable purposes - remains as it has been for an unknown period of time. The magic circle glows faintly red, not unlike that of the crystal recovered by everyone's favorite wine heiress. The desk looks amazingly desk-like except for the sudden addition of four interesting, even arcane seeming sticks in recent addition to its open and obvious contents. The table, sinister assumptions which may be made of it aside, remains the least complicated thing about this room. Yes, it has shackles attached, but otherwise is unadorned. The crates are stacked just in front of the hidden cache, as yet untouched and not quite neatly stacked. The cells, on the other hand, were a touch more interesting. The bottom most cell contained the one, hopefully dead fellow, sitting in a fetal position and otherwise unmoving. At the top of the room, the bookcase contained a grand series of personal notations in moderately well penned journals as well as a few items put to binding elsewhere, bearing lettering not native to the region of Avonshire.  
  
[center][color=darkgray][h2]*****[/h2][/color][/center] 
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	Everyone seemed like they were in agreement about not taking money from Lizbeth. Or at the very least, not robbing her outright. But there wasn't much in the way of doublespeak about the girl, so far as she seemed to feel to the casual observer. Either way, reward for service or not, the fact that they were eager to help out put her at a greater sense of ease. And really, how much is that worth? They'd figure something out, and from the eventual look of what was being found within the small room, there seemed to be enough things for many to sample. Not to mention a lot of glaring, particularly unflattering questions about her grandfather. 

	Lizbeth smiled politely at Kathryn's continued reassurance that whatever act of wild magic that traveled from the Lady Knight to herself didn't do something unfortunate to her, or to her budding abilities to manipulate the flows of magic. Whatever it was that sparked into her didn't manifest in any way that was negative as of yet. Or at all, she figured upon reflection. Hopefully, whatever it was had passed without incident, or merely didn't apply to her. 

	As it was, her mind was a bit fuzzy concerning her surroundings. The shaft of hollow crystal made into a pendant which she held in her hand, a find from the small trove in the wall, had glowed with crimson liquid the same color of the magic circle on the floor - until she took it from Victoria. The redness turned to grey ash and disappeared, but the now empty crystal, with its brassy fittings and hard, sharp edges, took up the vast majority of her interest. Eyes locked on it in an almost hypnotic state, broken only by Baronfjord's announcement about the wands. Her head turned in the direction of the desk, again alive with interest in this new haul that the elder L'Rose was able to acquire for himself. More questions, of course, starting with the origin of these things when he rarely even left the property anymore, let alone went gallivanting of in search of adventure and treasure. 

	Lizbeth turned back to Victoria. She hadn't announced anything she had uncovered in the wall nook, and it looked like she wasn't delving too deeply into what they had found just yet, except to open what looked like a scroll case. She saw the papers inside, but something else, too. Slow, careful fingers dipped past the Bard's arm to reach inside of the open case and pull out a what appered to be a long, slender shard of irregular black glass, tapering to a point with jagged, crystalline edges and silvery wire wrapped around a portion of it like a handle, or grip of sorts. Her hand retracted quickly as a drop of blood was cleft from her finger, a casualty of her own curiosity, which caused her to drop the glassy shard to the floor. It clanged upon the unyielding surface but did not break in the way glass might. Lizbeth quickly recovered the item and put it back into Victoria's keeping, at least for the time being. [color=darkgray]"I think you're right, Mademoiselle Belmont. We should find out what these are and what they have to do with my grandfather. This is too strange."[/color] Still, her eyes went back to the hollow crystal in her own hand. Something about this was drawing. 

	Meanwhile, two of the group were running their own experiment in the room, admittedly far less nefarious than previous management's experimentation, most likely. Daxos was keen enough to spot something, [i]maybe[/i], and Kosara had an extra bit of magical oomph, enough to give a cursory examination of the cell overall to rule out unseen difficulties. The good news was that, as the Tiefling's spectral hand moved and flitted about in the cell, it contacted nothing which might have been solid but invisible. However, when the hand began to make contact with the loose straw bedding, a thing which it might have had no problem moving about due to the low weight of straw, even older, damp straw, it made connection with something a bit heaver. More solid. Still within the ability to be moved, it clapped and clunked against a pile of whatever it might have been, shifting the straw around. 

	It was bone. Dry, old bone clattering under straw - which had just shifted to reveal what looked like the toe of a rather well constructed boot. 

	Simultaneously, a resounding series of knocks issued from the front door of the Taproom, audible because of the open doors and unoccupied space upstairs. A gruff voice barked on the other side of the door, muffled beyond easy hope of clarity. In the common tongue, one might barely make out the words [i]"early"[/i] and [i]"preserve."[/i] The knocks began again.