While we wait for rats to mess with lets go and look around the town and see if there's a library, and if there is one lets check its newspaper catalog and see if there's any info about the facility in the local papers.
+1 to this, be sure to be back at the inn by nightfall.
+1
You head out and check around, but it becomes rapidly obvious that this town is not of the size- or inclination - to have a library. At least not a proper one. There's a single school to handle the relatively small population of children and teach them the basic skills needed to survive in the modern world. That school has a library of a few hundred books and no archive of newspapers. The local newspaper is nothing but a weekly publication mostly devoted to things like weather forecasts, news of distant places, and the big events in the country. It has no real archive, just a collection of scattered papers which deal with important events to the community or the country. A highlights reel as it were. You check through it, just in case, but find little of interest. There are a few stories about it being built, one or two reprints of articles like the one Piecewise originally showed you, and an opinion piece about how great it is to have a military base close by in these dangerous times. Nothing new, or at least nothing new and useful.
The other place you check is at the local church, which you are told keeps records of its own. Indeed it does keep its own records related to the town, giant leather bound ledgers filled with numbers and names, records of births and deaths and almanacs of the years. Its a perfect collection to track something like a family tree or the progress of construction of a new dock or harbor, but it seems entirely dedicated to the town. The best you can find is some transitory information about a handful of workers who were apparently conscripted from the village to help in the construction of the base. Its not much, but it might be the best lead you have. You jot down the names and cross reference them with the deaths and departures, marking off those who are no longer around to question. You're left with only 3 names.
You leave the church around sunset and return to the inn where Piecewise and Birdwise are already waiting. Birdwise is perched on Piecewise's shoulder in an almost comical fashion, and they are both staring out the window. When you enter, they turn and present a sack of 11 dead rats.