Kaldalis was surprised to admit that Bangen couldn’t have oversold the library. Knowing about her passion for knowledge, research, and books, he tempered his expectations as she described the place in glowing terms. He wasn’t let down when the exterior of the building looked much the same as the rest of the city. It was a squat stone rectangle with stone arches carved into the front.

The interior, though, lived up to Bangen’s hype.

The entrance led to a brief stairway downwards, and right to the left of the foot of the stairs there was an information desk. But what dominated his attention was laid out before him.

The stairwell down from the entrance opened onto a balcony, and over the railing Kaldalis could see that the squat building continued down into the hillside for four floors. The stairwell down meant that there was one floor above as well. From the edge of the balcony he could see down into the cross-section of the library’s other floors, where there were shelves and shelves of books. At the bottom instead of shelves there were a group of tables, where Kaldalis could see a handful of researchers busily engaged in exactly what he’d seen Bangen doing just a few minutes ago - poring over piles of tomes and making copious notes.

“I’m going to get started now,” Bangen said, interrupting Kaldalis’s awe at the scale of the library.

“Right, so you’re going to be dead to the world for like three days,” Kaldalis said, leaning over the balcony and looking up at the floor above, which appeared to be still more books.

“You’re here to stop me from doing that,” Bangen said. She touched his arm to draw him away from the balcony and lead him towards the stairs. “Because this is the central research library for the whole country, it doesn’t close. So I need you to come and get me around sunset.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do to fill all that time here,” Kaldalis said with a grimace. “I only have a couple of things to research, and I doubt I’ll have the patience to devote that much time to it.”

“As long as you know I’m here and remember to come get me,” Bangen said.

They headed down the stairs together, and Kaldalis was surprised to see that each of the floors between the top and the bottom were sealed off. The floor they’d been on had been open, but the floor below had a velvet rope blocking the door. The floor below that was a locked metal grate, like a cell. The fourth floor was open, but the shelves outside of the study area were blocked off with more velvet ropes.

“What’s up with the barricades?” Kaldalis asked, keeping his voice low now that they were surrounded by visibly studying people.

“Many of the books in this library are restricted,” Bangen explained. She picked a seat to study at and started to empty her notes and notebooks out of her inventory and onto the table. “They’re accessible to appropriately-ranked researchers only. It’s mostly the more valuable books so that adventurers don’t wander off with them. But the sealed floor above us holds all the truly restricted information. The stuff that only respected researchers might need, but could be harmful in the wrong hands.”

“That’s disappointing.” Kaldalis grumbled. “I guess I’m not going to find anything about the Jormongumo here without getting through that door.”

“No, no.” Bangen dug through the mass of papers she’d arrayed around the desk and made a list of books on a separate page. “The sealed section is more like kingdom financial records, international trade agreements, and incidence reports for heresies. Information that could cause real harm, not any harmless knowledge that just happens to be rare.”

Kaldalis assumed that reports about heresies were probably of interest to him - it was the most likely place for information about anything similar to the Lataxinan tablets - but it was encouraging that he might find something about the Jormongumo.

“Of course,” Bangen said, “most of the more valuable books are going to be restricted for you, anyway, since you’re not a researcher at all.”

“Right,” Kaldalis said, “but I’m here with you. You can get me the books I need, right?”

“What?” Bangen hissed, clearly aghast at the suggestion. “I couldn’t- I wouldn’t-” She stopped for a moment and took a breath to gather herself. “What makes you think I would do something like that?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I just thought you’d help me out.”

“It’s against the rules,” Bangen said, trying to calm down even though the irritation was still plain on her face. “And I’ve got enough strikes against me already. I could lose access to the whole library if I break the rules on purpose.”

“I had no idea.”

“It’s my fault,” Bangen said. “I trust you too much, I think. I sometimes forget that you’re…” Bangen paused, clearing her throat. “The way you are. I expect you to understand things that you have no way of knowing.”

“It’s not your fault,” Kaldalis said, grimacing at the reminder that for whatever reason, the setting was hostile to PCs. “Just point me where I can find what I need, and I guess I’ll take care of myself.”

Bangen pointed him to the information desk on this floor, though she warned that the information desk at the entrance was likely going to be more helpful since they were in closer proximity to the stacks he had access to.

Trying to search for books was a challenge. He found himself desperately missing modern tools like search functions. The books were organized by a system that was reminiscent - but not the same as - the Dewey Decimal system, but most of the sections he wanted to check out were behind velvet ropes. There were books on biology of humanoids in those sections that were labeled as “other” which he was very curious about, but without the ability to reach them, he would never know what they were actually about. Was the information he sought about the Jormongumo and Lataxinans there, or could the races of this world interbreed in ways he hadn’t seen yet? Or was it information about

It seemed he’d never know, as there was no way for him to access those areas of the library.

Despite his lack of access, the information desk was surprisingly helpful. The clerks there guided him through decoding their organization system, and didn’t seem judgy or irritated when he admitted he wasn’t affiliated with a research organization, and so wasn’t allowed into the restricted sections. Even with their help, it was over an hour before he got anything about anything that he’d wanted to research.

In the end, there was only one book they could find that was anywhere close to what he was asking for, and even then, he wasn’t optimistic about what it would offer. It was a slim tome that looked like a children’s book at a glance, but the art on the front cover depicted three grotesque faces, one of which was an eight-eyed woman with fangs. It was the best they could find with what little information he had to go on. The title triggered a strange sense of deja vu in Kaldalis. Terrifying Tales to Share at Night. The author’s name didn’t look like anything Kaldalis had seen in the game, instead resembling a normal human earth name. He suspected one of the PCs had pursued a career as an author in this world instead of adventuring, publishing under their real name.

Either that or Monsoon had just slapped the book into the game as a reference to something from the real world.

True to the title, when Kaldalis sat down with the book he found it was a collection of eerie stories that made his skin crawl. Despite the large print and simple vocabulary - indicating that it was for a younger audience - they were scary enough to make him uncomfortable. They were accompanied by more of those gruesome illustrations like those on the cover. Tales of supernatural creatures and magical curses were mixed in with incredibly eerie mundane stories of all-too-realistic murderers and animal attacks. Considering this was a world with actual monsters roaming around, he wasn’t sure which were supposed to be scarier.

Near the back of the book - after a story about an awakened scarecrow, but before the one about the cleaver-wielding killer whose victim was caught in a beartrap - was the story he sought. The title was the only example of the word “Jormongumo” in any book he had the clearance to put his hands on.

The story was across four pages, though two of them were those sketchy illustrations. The first illustration was a beautiful woman in a long dress. The story was about a young man who got lost in the forest late at night. While trying to find his way in the moon-dappled darkness, he met a beautiful woman who he fell instantly in love with. When she offered to take him in for the night eyeing the handsome lad hungrily, he said he would follow her anywhere. Instead of bringing him to safety, though, The woman lured him deeper and deeper into the darkness. When he was afraid, she promised him a kiss if he would just go a little farther.

Despite knowing exactly what was coming, he still flinched when he turned the page. The illustration of the Jormongumo was a close-up on her face, exactly like Ara had looked when she’d transformed on top of him. Her raven-black hair a scribbly frame around her eight-eyed face. Fangs protruding from her lips, grinning widely. The close-up triggered a visceral fear in his chest that almost made him shout and fling the book away.

The end of the tale was exactly what he expected. Eventually he demanded the kiss or he would have to go his own way. She happily obliged, paralyzing him before turning into a horrible nightmare monster whose description was longer and more detailed than it absolutely had to be. Some of the details were slightly off. The eyes and the fangs were right, but this monster had a full forest of arms, and there was no mention of the snakelike lower body. The story left unsaid what she did to him after revealing her true form, for which Kaldalis was grateful.

All this confirmed was that a vague campfire tale to warn children away from following a pretty face into danger could be based on a factual story. The only other thing it told him was that he wasn’t the first person to encounter one. Somewhere in this library there had to be notes about those encounters.

Unfortunately he couldn’t access them. Whether they were in biology papers about humanoids, or research papers on past expeditions onto the islands, they were out of his reach.