With some hesitation you cross the dark pit over the first flight of stairs. They are the perfect place for an ambush, but nothing happens. Hey, this whole mission seems to be much easier than you though at first. After descending twelve levels, you get your sunrod back; it bounced next to some of these doors that lead to side chambers.
The chambers contain more or less what you found in the first ones; collections of items of little value, mostly broken pottery (apparently, when a civilization is about to fall, they gather all the pottery and thoroughly smash it) and stone, with a few pieces of bronze or masses of rust that once were iron trinkets, and a few libraries with rolls of parchment and books ranging from myths and legends to laws from far away lands, none of it particularly valuable and nothing like the records you're looking for -though it's true that an exhaustive search of the place would take some time.
You reach the lowest balcony. Your light reveals the pit continues down, though there are no means to descend; you'd hve to use a rope or something, and you can smell something foul coming from there. This last balcony also has two doors; one leads to a wide corridor and a much larger, dark room; the other is made of iron and had a robust lock; however, the lock is broken and the door is ajar.