Meredith inspects the leathery bag with Laiashi, and together they realize that it's actually a sort of chew toy that has been used to teach a creature how fetch items for its master. Whatever creature lives in here, it appears that it may be somewhat tame.
Meredith and Denair also inspect the rubble in the corner and find that the pile of crumbly cement pebbles is actually dung.
Willem opens the door to the next room. Animal hides and furs have been laid out on the six dwarf-sized stone beds in this room. A crude set of dice lies scattered on the floor and a number of weapons have been stashed in a pile to the north.
Denair quietly opens the door and peers inside the room. The smell of incense is almost overpowering in this house, where shelves full of jars and vases of different sizes line the walls. Three kobolds lie motionless in stone beds.
Meredith takes a look and puts out a fist, slowly raising one finger at a time.
One...
Two...
Three!
Meredith readies her spear. "Are they asleep? Dead?"
Ser Willem can see that some of the beds have been used recently, though how many or how recently is unclear . He finds something much more interesting among the weapons piled in the corner, however. While most of the weapons are of poor quality and virtually worthless, Willem finds a finely crafted longsword thrown haphazardly onto the pile. Engraved on the blade's cross guard are the initials "N.S."
In the next building over, Meredith and Laiashi quietly enter the room and approach the three motionless kobolds laying on the stone beds. Meredith thinks she sees one of the kobolds' chests rise and fall with breath, but Laiashi has seen enough sleeping humanoids to know the difference between sleep and death. These ones are dead.
As Laiashi cautiously entered the room, she also noticed the jars along the walls, some of which had lizard-like heads crudely painted on their sides.
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Laiashi relaxes somewhat upon realizing that her knives won't be needed here. "Well let's see..."
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On the way to joining the larger part of the group, Dolomite pops into the room Willem inspected, which appears to have been some kind of barracks. He scans the room for magic, and detects a magical aura emanating from the pile of weapons Ser Willem is sifting through.
Meredith, Dolomite, and Saritirnen each examine one of the bodies, and all three of them confirm the same cause of death. These kobolds were killed by some form of blunt force trauma, probably being crushed to death by something very heavy. The kobolds have been dead for a few weeks, they determine, but it seems that the bodies have been treated with some sort of alchemical substance to preserve their remains. Dolomite checks for magic in the room, but finds nothing magical.
Across the room, Laiashi examines the jars' contents. Inside two of the five jars, she finds a mixture of dried herbs and various other reagents, while in the other three jars, she finds a rusty red gel. As she examines the gel-whether simply by sight, by smell, or by some other, more scientific means- she discovers that the gel is basilisk extract, basilisk blood treated with alchemical preservatives. When applied to a creature that has been petrified by a basilisk’s gaze for no more than 1 hour, the creature is restored to flesh as though it had been coated with fresh basilisk blood.
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Dolomite points out the magical aura to Willem, making sure he retrieves the item. When he learns of the rusty red gel he admits I am sure that agent we found at the entrance has been stone for longer than an hour. We should divide the three jars up. It would be bad if the person holding all three were turned to stone.
What's a basilisk? Sounds meaty. Denair's leafy tongue sticks out as she thinks about that glowing fruit she held a few days ago.
Moving up to the next door, she quietly open the door takes a peek inside.
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"Hm. So the deaths of these kobolds is unrelated to these reagents-- or at least wasn't caused by them." Laiashi is pleased, however, that her side hobby proved useful.
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Ser Willem takes the weapon as Dolomite scans it. He puts it away in his sword belt. "These initials. They must belong to our guy. He's been here." He looks around at the beds. "I think our so called Golden Guardian is definitely someone's pet. These beds are made for dwarves and I haven't seen any dwarf statues."
Averting Eyes: The opponent avoids looking at the creature's face, instead looking at its body, watching its shadow, tracking it in a reflective surface, etc. Each round, the opponent has a 50% chance to avoid having to make a saving throw against the gaze attack. The creature with the gaze attack, however, gains concealment against that opponent.
Wearing a Blindfold: The foe cannot see the creature at all (also possible to achieve by turning one's back on the creature or shutting one's eyes). The creature with the gaze attack gains total concealment against the opponent.
As the group pieces together their guess about what turned the woman at the entrance to stone, Denair and Jann both get a creeping feeling that something is out there, somewhere in the cavern...
Meredith and Denair move on to the next building, and they pass a large fountain in the center of the the courtyard created by the ring of houses. At the center of the fountain, a white marble statue of a dwarf in scholarly robes faces east in a defiant posture. In one hand, the dwarf holds a staff, and in the other an open book. While most of the statue’s elaborate details are still intact, its face has crumbled away, and water pours down from two holes where the statue’s eyes had once been.
The duo prepares to open the door into the next house, but as Meredith sets herself against the wall, she hears a low hissing sound from the corridor to the south. Does Meredith look down the hall to see what made the sound?
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Laiashi is not so wise as some, but she can add two and two. "That's probably the creature. Whatever you do, don't look directly at it."
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Jann nods. "Definitely. They turn you to stone. Well, your outside. If your inner heart turns to stone, that's generally because you've suffered at the hands of a callous world. Or because you're part elemental."
Jann looks up suddenly. "Wait. Do you think the toy was for the basilisk? Was it a pet?"
Meredith looks down the hallway for just a moment, catches a brief glimpse of scales, and quickly closes her eyes. She pulls the stuffed leather bag from behind her back, and the creature lets out an odd sound almost like a purr. With her eyes closed, Meredith hears the soft clicking of many claws on the hard stone floors of the cavern, then feels a gentle nudging at the bag.
What will the rest of you do? Is Denair looking at the basilisk? Where is everyone else while all of this is happening?
The basilisk continues to gently nudge the bag and make odd chirping and purring noises.
"Hmm, hey boss? I think it's trying to tell you something. It sounds cute!"
Out of the corner of her eye, Denair watches as the basilisk pokes at the bag with its snout and realizes that this behavior is unusually docile for its species. It seems that, just by having the bag, Meredith has gained the basilisk's trust, and perhaps could even earn its affection.
"Hey boss, it really likes the bag. And... it likes you too! I bet you could tame it like how you humans keep taming horses." A short pause. "You'd better not forget about me, though!"
Meredith nods. "I guess we found that thing that turned everyone to stone...I'll stay around the corner while you investigate that room." Meredith feels her way around the wall. She slides down and waves the bag to and fro to get the basilisk to follow her.
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"Uh... We... Make sure you... Hmm." Laiashi is taken quite aback by this turn of events. Who ever heard of taming one of these things? "I'd suggest playing fetch, but maybe it only likes you while you're holding its toy..."
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"Which house? I can't really look right now. Anyway, you guys explore, I'll be fine here. Denair should be okay as long as she's about 100 feet from me, so you can ask her to follow you. She can track you by sound pretty easily."
Denair follows Dolamite's voice, stares at the floor and opens her eyes. "Uh, what the Boss said. So which room are we looking at?"
The basilisk happily follows Meredith as she leads it down the corridor. As Willem draws near, however, it hisses nervously. The clay talisman seems to have no effect on the beast, perhaps this isn't the Golden Guardian after all?
Meanwhile, Dolomite opens the door to the final house in the northeastern corner of the large cavern. Many bits and pieces of metal lie on stone shelves carved into the walls. Several ornaments made from animal bones hang from the ceiling. A crude, one-foot-tall statue of a horned and winged creature stands on a stone table set next to a wall.