@Laurel That seems to be the gist of the information that you discern from a quick read; if you were looking for specific things you could probably learn more, though.
Foley keeps poking at the blue book with the eye sigil on the cover, experimentally.
You crack it open, and discover the title, which was too worn to read on the spine but is written on the crumbling front page, is: A Study of the Shian-Zhou Methods of Illusory Magic. The eye sigil is reproduced in elegant silver and blue ink under the title.
@Laurel You recall that the Shian-Zhou Academy of Thaumaturgy is a very secretive, prestigious magical school that was founded by Archmage Iolatos Huang about two centuries ago. It has strong connections to illusion magic and the Elemental Plane of Air, and most wizards who trained there conceal the fact that they did so; it’s sort of a “if you know, you know” kind of school.
According to rumor, Iolatos found some secret to eternal life that has permitted him to run the school for centuries, and you’ve read many of his writings.
This book appears to be a semi-truthful account of the history of the school and some of its methods, as well as discussing the personal history of Huang himself. It has enough scraps and sigils to learn the spell illusory pattern if desired.
The spell is a variant of hypnotic pattern, but instead of a 30-foot cube it manifests as a 60-foot line of glowing sigils.
“Flumphs feed off the residual magic of wizardly folks, you know,” the old dwarf woman calls creakily from her chair. “No wonder it follows you around.”
Hopford points at the vacuum, and says in his most scholarly voice "The Vacuumus Detritophage, is a common, but benevolent abberation, often found in homes..."
You don't quite catch it, but Hopford and Adrian, you suddenly notice that in the pile of three or four scrolls that were pointed out by the spellbook earlier, there is some slight movement - a tiny shifting of paper. It's as if one of the scrolls themselves actually moved.
A second later, it moves again, the paper crinkling.
@AncientSwordRage The scroll that appeared to move seems to have almost no dust on it, as if it moves around frequently or has been read several times lately. Furthermore, it has very slight creases and bend marks on the paper, as if it was folded up and then unfolded at one point. You also discern very faint fingerprints on the corners that would otherwise have required a microscope to notice.
Some writing is visible on the struggling scroll as it tries to get free: -nimation of simple objects, especially those made from paper, cotton or wool, is-
"Oh, that old thing." The woman's eyes crinkle up as she chortles. "One of those wizard folks says it's got a spell on it to make things alive. Must have tried to practice."
I bring it over to a table and let it down carefully, keeping the thumb of my hand on the corner to prevent it from escaping. "Now, you'll cooperate, right?"
The writing contained within is a fragment of the spell animate objects - it gets you halfway to learning it, but there are pieces missing that require intellectual lifting on your part to piece together. Notes are scribbled in the margins in several different hands, as if multiple wizards have studied this scroll before you; in particular, one of the notes, written in a careful and elegant but unfamiliar hand, questions whether it's possible to modify the enchantment for a stuffed animal.
There's also some discussion in a different set of handwriting about whether the spell could be used to animate paper and origami, and you surmise that some experimentation may have gone awry, judging from the fact that this scroll is repeatedly attempting to escape from you.
"I'm sorry. You'll get the magic cocoa soon, I'm sure."
I go back to the books
"There's no harm in letting the little one go free is there? It looks like it's just the product of a half-baked spell." I lift up my thumb. "Now, don't cause trouble."
The first scroll, upon unrolling it, appears to be covered in random scribbles. However, Hopford, you look at it and immediately pinpoint it as a form of Abyssal.
It seems to be a long diatribe of odd, ritual-style but seemingly gibberish words - the equivalent of writing a bunch of lorem ipsum Latin text that doesn’t actually mean anything.
The second scroll, upon unfurling it, reveals itself to be written in a combination of Sylvan, the language of the fey, and Common.
From what you can tell, it’s a slightly strange discussion of a place that has no name - or rather, everything in the text is deliberately left nameless, described instead with long verses like “the place of pale flowers” or “the place where King Olynssios fell onto his sword.” It seems to be describing a place in the Feywild, but it’s hard to pinpoint where or why the author is so evasive.
The style of it comes across like what you would write if you were trying not to get into legal trouble.
