<br/><br/><strong>Location: Redhurst Library of the Arcane, Midnight</strong><br/><strong>Tagged: Closed</strong><br/><br/>A retinue of guards, weapons drawn, surrounded the charred remains of a humanoid body.  It was but a few feet from the doorway separating the library proper from the massive sealed doors of the Vault, kept in place by the mighty runic spear of a woman clad in plate mail.  Every so often the body twitched under the pressure of the spear, but with a quick shove she stopped its movement.  Even in death, the thing appeared animated, if pathetic.  Christopha had no intention of taking any chances when it came to the undead.<br/><br/>"Dammit, when is the Headmaster going to get here?!"<br/><br/>The guards parted their circle when Headmaster Andarlin came forth, with a middle-aged teacher in tow.  With nary a word he shot forth a bright green beam out of his hand and onto the corpse, halting its movements.  "Dispelling was no easy task," he remarked.  "You did a fine job, Christopha, but there were many contingency spells propping up the entity's animation.  We're fortunate that the vault traps took care all but that last bit."<br/><br/>"It seems quite odd," she remarked.  "There was a spell on that man to turn him into a wight upon death.  There are far more common forms of undead more suited to theft."<br/><br/>"Then we might not be dealing with a thief," the woman accompanying Andarlin said.  "Crawling hands in the Gauntlet, a contingent undead entity, these point more towards acts of sabotage."<br/><br/>Christopha eyed the woman carefully.  "I take it that none of these are yours, Headmaster Karnakia?  There's too many undead in the catacombs for even a necromancer like you to monitor at once."<br/><br/>"If you're implying that this arrived due to incompetence," Karnakia said coldly, "you are dearly wrong.  There are teachers in the Mordant aside from me, and any excess undead are destroyed and dispelled are programmed with strict, non-offensive parameters.  This creature, which I remind you, was alive before falling to the vault security, so we're definitely dealing with an outside threat."<br/><br/>"Christopha, do not cast such suspicions without proof," Andarlin said.  "I trust it that none of the students were in here?"<br/><br/>"No, Headmaster.  And the ones who were attacked by the crawling hands are finishing up their Transmutation class.  They're surprisingly unaffected by the ordeal, but we're still keeping an eye on them just in case."<br/><br/>"It's been over a century since Redhurst was last attacked.  I for all of our sake that these incidents are not the results of a greater conspiracy."