Khayal will quickly gather the bodies and look them over for anything of worth.
Paige, oozing her way back into human form as her wild shape spell ends, snores deeply. It feels so good to be so unconscious after the last few day's in the House of the Beast.
A cursory glance as you gather the bodies comes up with:
12 nice scimitars
12 nice longbows
12 studded leather armors
12 quivers with 14-16 arrows each, no poison on them that you can tell
8 leather pouches
2 common brass earrings (worth 5 copper each)
Hajar gathers his party before venturing forth, and heals them
If you need more healing, go ahead and roll your own and I'll mark off the charges from our plethora of wands.
Rest for a few minutes, we must venture down and destroy the Gnoll Rokova soon.
Khayal stashes the nice weapons in a pile for Bartan to quickly observe for magical effects. If these are not magical we can pick them back up on the way out.
How would we carry so much through the deserts and badlands of Katapesh? Better to leave such refuse here...
Our cart, which is now low on food.
"We should take all we can with us, but after we have rid this place of all its furry vermin. Are you feeling alright now, Ms. Paige?"
Bartan requests just one wand charge to get a few precious hit points back.
Let us head down the stairs. Khayal says before beginning his decent.
Everyone went down the granite-hewn stairs spiraling lower into the darkness. Halfway down, the stairs veer off to the east and the air grows both humid and strangely full of the smells of decaying vegetation.
At the bottom of the stairs, after traveling what seemed like more than two hundred steps, you emerge into an unexpected sight - an elaborate underground garden lit by softly glowing crystals in the ceiling twenty feet above. Gravel walkways wind between verdant trees and shrubs that rustle softly in a gentle breeze that seems to come from nowhere. As the garden’s centerpiece, cracked granite benches surround a cobblestone fountain filled with crystal-clear water. To the south, a gently flowing creek runs across a pebbly streambed that passes through a rock garden and into an iron grill drain along a passageway to the south. To the north, a lone almond tree stands in alcove, while to the west, a double arch leads to a small circular room. Four sandstone sculptures chiseled into the forms of huge angry faces stand throughout the room.
The first thing you see, however, are several dead gnolls around the garden!
Vardishal stirs within you, and the dead janni templar whispers, I feel powerful magics here. Genie-level magics; wishcraft was used in this chamber. The magics do not affect me, now, but I can tell they were cast to keep something out - or something in. Be careful, young paladin. Genie-kin would not like this place.
Five of the gnolls to the east wear female clothing, while the others are males. Their weapons are still in their scabbards, for the most part, but something has ripped them apart, ruining the armor. Several of them...have unusual looks of terror on their faces.
Also, the five females are grouped together, while the males are spread farther apart in groups of twos.
If you examine the bodies you learn that something with large teeth that stood very tall bit or raked these gnolls. Very few gnolls have wounds on their arms or legs, mostly around the head, neck, and main body areas.
A few have large chunks of flesh and body cavity organs missing, but not enough for a normal predator's meal. They were attacked from all sides - front and back.
The female gnolls' wounds are almost a day old, but the males' wounds are fresh, within the last hour or so.
There are no flies in this garden. No ants or other critters have disturbed the bodies.
What is this place?
Khayal looks around in amazement he did not expect this below.
"I have no idea. It looks dreadful, though."
Nasty. A very large creature did this. Paige compares the tooth marks to the length of her index finger and counts how many "fingers" long One...Two...Three...
There was genie wishcraft made in this room...this is the work of something very powerful. Hajar says, as he begins using his second sight to find whatever evil beast caused such a massacre Hajar moves forward slowly, Tempest lighting the way
Your detect evil detects no evil auras.
Paige takes a deep breath. Accept for the dead bodies, dare we call this place peaceful? She walks to the small bridge, bends down, and peers into the stream, placing her fingers in the cool water. MAP UPDATED
Hajar says I sense no evil here... and he moves across the Garden to the hidden alcove.
"Peaceful indeed, Lady Paige. Peaceful as the dead. A graveyard without burials is no place for such as us."
Hajar finds an empty room with a tall ceiling, rising up thirty feet to a dome thick with cobwebs. The stonework is surprisingly clean.
Something is not right here, why would the Carrion King have a secret garden hidden beneath the earth...and filled with the forgotten magic of Geniecraft. Stay on your guard... Hajar says, still alert and moving across the room once more to head up the stairs.
You move past the dead gnolls, to the passageway to the east in the room. Going down a set of stone stairs that turn South, you end up looking at a set of double doors. The doors are ajar, and from within you hear someone speaking loudly:
Not aware of of Hajar hearing voices Paige just flicks her hair and answers Bartan.
Dear one, you have nothing to fear from this. New things always follow chaos and death. The universe itself came into being this way, the stars and galaxies careening off eachother in cosmic destruction. And new life too...babies are born in agony and blood. But look at the universe and look at a baby! Nature orders all things toward her great balance.
At least these dead are peaceful. Khayal observers quietly.
Bartan follows Hajar.
Khayal stays near his brother. Kukris still in hand and still ready.
Paige also follows, shaking the stream water from her hands.
You see a large room that has a complex metal-and-stone frame. Eight stone bars arch down to encircle a fifteen-foot-wide section of the room—these bars are five feet apart where they connect to the floor, and around each bar’s foot rise strange rune-like projections and what seem to be screaming faces trying to emerge from the stone. The bars are rotating around the center, and the stone floor ripples and swells, almost like the surface of a wind-tossed lake. Various shapes like large letters rise up out of the floor, only to sink back down and rise again elsewhere.
In the center of the contraption is Rovoka, who, with a final shout, makes the writhing floor stop - and like sand blown across the desert, the floor reshapes into a set of circular stairs dropping down, the gnoll standing at the top of the spiral.
Rovoka notices you outside the door, and he says "Come, paladin! I have need of you again, it seems. The gnolls were too stupid to survive here. Fortunate that you came this far. Or should I say, Vardishal?" The beast-man's form shifts, the fur disappearing, the clothing changing to a red robe, his height lengthening until Father Fidyzia stands before you!
The taller human speaks, his tone mocking. "Thank you, Vardishal, for doing my work for me. Now, then, to the prize, which our former mistress so foolishly objected to!" His form continues to change, his bass voice going up a touch, but red hair spouting from his bald head, his robes changing to desert trousers, a chain shirt on top of a jacket with a robe, a scimitar at his side, and spiked gloves on his hands.
Vardishal within you, within Tempest, surges with a shout of alarm. Zayifid of the West Wind! Brother, what have you done?
But Rovoka, no, Father Fidyzia, no! Zayifid! Disappears from your sight as he turns to run down the stairs.
From further back in the hallway, you hear "Come, paladin! I have need of you again, it seems. The gnolls were too stupid to survive here. Fortunate that you came this far. Or should I say, Vardishal?"
Hajar at the double doors is seeing something you cannot.
When everyone else reaches the room with the double doors, you see a large area that has a complex metal-and-stone frame. Eight stone bars arch down to encircle a fifteen-foot-wide section of the room—these bars are five feet apart where they connect to the floor, and around each bar’s foot rise strange rune-like projections and what seem to be screaming faces trying to emerge from the stone.
A large stone staircase descends into the darkness of the center area.
There is trouble afoot, something..a relic of an Ancient age. The Templars.. I'm not certain but I believe another of the Templars have been led astray. Hajar raises Tempest We must follow...and understand what our enemies plot has been.
Come. Hajar beckons the others and follows downward into the darkness.
No Mistress Yazi.. Hajar says while carefully moving down the stairwell It was not Kardswaan, I do not know where my br..where the Genie is...this was someone else. Zayifid the West Wind...
Vardishal seems stunned as he whispers to you. For Templar Zayifid to have fallen, just like Kardswann. Oh Nefeshti! To have lost your favor after the battle with Jhavhul and Andrathi...
As you go down the stairs, Vardishal speaks again. Zayifid was our mistress' Nefeshti’s messenger and diplomat; her spy. I see now how we were deceived. For him to have turned, and he acts freely, without daemon influence, like Kardswann...he plays both sides. Immortality through service was not enough for him, after all. Beware, young paladin, for a janni acting on his own ambition will make him as evil as our original enemy, like Jhavhul. Zayifid carries a scimitar as powerful as Tempest, doubtless made to hurt his former friends the most...
The whispers of the former Templar fade as Vardishal dwells upon this new information.
The first step of the large staircase has the words "By your command shall the Pit of Screaming Ghosts be opened."
As you go down the stairs, Tempest's light reveals the stone steps curving down a pillar that opens up into a huge cavern a hundred feet across and fifty feet high. Going down further, light glitters back at you from the floor as a sea of gold coins, lush carpets and tapestries, statues, weapons, armor, and immense gemstones reveal a king's, no, a genie's ransom. Surely this is what the gnolls above had been after all this time!
The stone steps end at the piles of gold coins, with only stone platforms like pillars moving southward towards one end of the immense cavern.
The last step of the large staircase has the words "So shall you be devoured."
Bartan follows the two, listening but not commenting on things he does not understand.