"He's...up there," Lusilla says, waving towards the door from the museum's ground level. It's true enough, as long as you only mean his body, and not his soul, which is currently on its way to Pharasma. "Who are you, though?"

He straightens up. "I am Telmer, the scribe and senior aide to Lord Xanthir the Plagued One, assigned to catalogue the artifacts to be transported out of the city for Lord Xanthir's use." Sigh. "At least, in theory. The local thieves proved quicker off the mark than we anticipated, and had already made off with most of it before we got here."

"Ha! Finest thieves in Mendev! Turn your back and everything that isn't nailed to the floor will be gone when you turn around again. The demons have no chance against 'em--masters of our trade, we are!"

"There you go bragging again, dummy. Thieving has never led to anything but harm, trust me. If you fought the way you thieve, now that might be useful..."

"No thanks, every person has their calling, and this is mine! But imagine if you fought as well as we thieve."

Well, that does it. "You weren't sent by Faxon at all!" he shrieks, clutching his bag of papers closer. "I won't let you take the papers that have been entrusted to me!" 

And he leaps back, pulls a sheaf of papers out of his bag, balls them up, and shoves the whole wad in his mouth. 

Uh. 

They should probably...stop...him? Can Mending make illegible papers clear again, or only repair the paper itself...? Better not to test it. 

"Want some salt or pepper with that? Now, I've never tried eating paper myself, but a little seasoning goes a long way, whatever the meal."

"Confiture. The perfect accompaniament for paper is apricot confiture. How do I know this? An excellent question. As a child I once ate a piece of my exercise book in front of my horrid music teacher. To spite her."

"And you had time to go for the condiments first?" Lusilla asks, delighted, as she crouches to fish the paper out of the mouth of the now-choking cultist. 

"Oh, yes. The grudge was quite long-standing." 

Telmer coughs violently, once his airway is cleared, then looks up at the group of crusaders again, lunges backwards, crab-scuttles a few feet further away, leaps to his feet, and runs around the group and out the door to the outside, tears streaming down his cheeks the whole time. 

"Y'think he noticed I grabbed this off him while he was choking?" Woljif asks idly, swinging the satchel with the rest of the papers in it by one finger. 

"Probably not," Lusilla says absently. Thank the spirits in general and one spirit in particular that she can cast Prestidigitation now, getting the spit and other slime off her hands and the wadded-up papers. She smooths them out and tucks them into the bag. "There might be more than he had on him at that particular moment, though, so we should still search the rest of this place." 

"Couldn't agree more, Chief."

There are a lot of empty plinths, labeled with the names and descriptions of absent artifacts. A lot of non-magical things that belonged to famous crusaders, the presumably-now-useless bonded wand of a wizard named Zacharias...

Lusilla stops at the pedestal that once held a claw of Terendelev's that was cut off by demons. It's a little macabre, in her opinion, like putting someone's finger bone on display, but--could have been useful to show the Storyteller. And, you know, obviously she could have brought it back afterwards. 

Her attention is drawn when she hears an unfamiliar voice cry, "Stay back! Which are you, robber or demon?" 

Woljif has entered one of the side rooms, and encountered an old man who is now pointing a wand at him. Woljif's hands are raised and he's trying to give the old guy a reassuring smile. 

That seems like a situation Lusilla should get involved in!

"We're neither," she says, approaching slowly and at an angle. This doesn't prevent the guy from pointing his wand at her instead, but--that means it isn't pointed at Woljif, so that's okay. "We're crusaders, here to help." 

He glares at her mistrustfully for another few moments, then startles at a rustling sound behind him (rats, none of them Dànpiàn), pointing his wand in that direction, before slowly lowering it and turning back to Lusilla. 

"You...I'm sorry, I was distracted...what were we talking about?"

Huh?

Lusilla's first thought is to check this guy for some kind of enchantment--it would certainly be to the cultists' benefit if he couldn't keep track of a thread of attention for very long--but, firstly, there isn't really room to turn into her other shape in here and she doesn't have Detect Magic as a regular spell, and secondly, using a spell to confuse someone is more expensive than just slitting their throat, which various cultists have proven more than willing to do over the past few days. 

"Are you okay?"

He smiles sadly. "Old age, my young friend...old age and the poison of fear seeping into my mind. Both have turned me from a crusader and battle mage into the sorry specimen you see before you. This museum is all I have. Whenever I forget who and where I am, I just read the exhibit labels. They are of the past, just like me. And now some ruffians have ransacked this place...I'm frightened, my young friend, I'm very frightened." 

"I'm so sorry," Lusilla murmurs. What a terrible way to be, with so many of the exhibits gone...at least the labels are still there. For now. 

"Don't be afraid. There's nothing to be afraid of. All the scary things have already happened. They're in the past."

He sighs mournfully. "But the past is all I have..."

"Maybe you should come back to the Defender's Heart with us. It's safer there."