Firavel waves to the others, once he had disabled the trap. "Some kind of alarm. Not that there are many folks around to answer it, it seems. Took a skilled mage to make though, so keep your eyes and ears open."
He then continues along the bridge, searching for any other traps, signalling the others should no others appear.
"Good job Firavel." Said Jean, turning to the others. "Right, well just because there is nothing obvious around doesn't mean there isn't something. Let's not do the alarms job for it. Everybody move quietly."
The rope bridge is sturdy enough, and the group is quickly across to the building with stained-glass windows. The doors leading into the structure are open, and peering through reveals a room crammed with cabinets full of weird, alchemically-preserved oddities, including a pair of ice mephit wings, several large spiders, parts of a dissected giant slug, and the digestive tracts and proboscises of three stirges.
Leon curls his lip a little. "Well that's unpleasant. Mithias, you alchemists sure have weird hobbies."
Firavel examines the open doors and the passage within.
Mithias shrugs, "How are you supposed to know how something works if you don't take it apart?"
Mithias shrugs, "How are you supposed to know how something works if you don't take it apart?"
"Don't know. I usually figure things out by repeatedly screwing up."
Leon follows Firavel into the room, looking around while the doors are checked.
"I've heard of these, but never seen one before. Landsharks. I hear they are hell on farmland."
Southern Room
The skeleton of a sea cow dominates this room, hung from the ceiling on a set of iron rungs and held together by a steel frames. Numerous jars sit on shelves within the room, containing alchemically preserved octopuses, tubeworms, the head of a skum, a curiously repellent eel-like creature with fangs, and a strange, mermaid-like creature with the upper body of a monkey and the tail of a fish.
"There are some strange creatures in the ocean..." Leon muses carefully moving through the room toward the next door.
"This stuff is... interesting. And by that, I mean I'd rather not see it again except in a circus side show..."
He moves over to the corner of the room and presses against part of the wall, opening it to reveal a staircase. "This, however, is far more interesting. A more appropriate, 'wonder what's up there' type."
Jean was a little too overwhelmed with the strange collection to notice what was happening around him. "Hmm, what?"
Leon's hand went to The Lopper's axe as the hidden staircase revealed itself. He looked down at the axe as he realized what he'd done. He'd always been partial to swords, but for some reason ever since finding the axe his first instinct was always to draw it first. Something about that thought troubled him, but he dismissed it and moved closer to Firavel to tale a look up the stairs.
"Looks like the best lead we've found so far." Leon nodded. Looking back over his shoulder to Son he said "Did you know this was here? Any idea where it leads?"
Son shakes his shaggy head. "Not remember this place. Not think been here - would remember strange things in cages and jars."
The group investigates the secret stairway, which opens into a small room. Three dissected, preserved harpies sit in huge bell jars in this room, along with jars containing four stuffed bats, the skeletal front legs and head of a griffon, and the preserved wing of a roc which is slowly losing its feathers. A ladder leads up to a trapdoor in the ceiling. There is also a door in the northern wall.
"Looks like someone's been here recently." Leon said gesturing to some drying mud on the ladder.
"Jean, can you make out if they were going up or down?"
Jean was still fascinated by the sheer collection of items the owner had at his disposal, but as he saw the mud tracks, his training kicked in and he was brought back to their current situation. He took a moment to carefully examine the marks.
"... Yes... there were, I'd guess, a dozen of them. Human. Here about a week ago. Heading down the ladder. I think we'll find what we're looking for if we follow them."
"Good enough for me." Leon said starting down the ladder.
The room above is a twenty foot square space with a door in the northern wall. The floor around the trap door is scorched black, apparently from some kind of recent fire. Given the location of the scorch marks, it is likely the trap door covering the ladder used to be trapped.
The door opens on a narrow ledge on the cliffside towering over the museum. The ledge meanders upward, leading you along the edge of the cliff. Luckily, the pathway never gets narrow enough to cause you any problems. Still, as the ledge leads along the waterfall, then continues along the wall of the deep valley, there are more than a few moments of trepidation.
The pathway runs around a large rock and turns to the left, revealing four large iron towers. The towers are almost identical, and they are arranged in a geometric square pattern. The towers appear to be 30 feet in diameter, and 40 feet high. Several walkways 30 feet off the ground connect the towers together.
In the center of two towers, the pathway ends at a small staircase leading down. At the base of the stairs, a large iron door rests behind a stone frame. From your vantage point, you see no other entrances or exits into the towers.
The iron door resists your initial efforts, and only after the forced application of strength does it yield with a tortured shriek. The reason for the resistance is quickly apparent. Water, until now contained behind the door rushes out to flood the small staircase you descended - luckily, it's only a few feet deep. Unfortunately, it seems that this entire facility has been similarly flooded.
Inside the door is a hallway running east and west. Another hallway lies directly across from the door, but some kind of accident has caused that area to collapse.
The east-west hallway continues for forty feet away from the iron door each direction, then both of them turn north.
Leon makes an exasperated noise as the fetid water rushes over his boots.
"Why can't we ever go investigate somewhere nice? Maybe a beach somewhere? I hear those are nice. How come there aren't any haunted beaches?"
"Ugh. You have no idea. This water is teeming with unwholesome vermin. Cinch your bootstraps and we'll have to check of leeches once we're done. Hopefully nobody catches anything too vile from this filth."
"Wonderful. I wish I could say I was surprised."
Jean grunts his agreement and tucks his leggings into his boots before he cinches up his boot straps.
"Great. Let's just get through this, everyone stick to the right wall. Leon take the lead." Jean said, pulling out his Longbow. "Firavel, you're next. Make sure we don't get caught by any surprises in the water. Alright, let's move."
Leon nods and moves forward drawing his rapier.
The group proceeds east. At the corner turning north, several human bodies float in the water. All wear uniforms bearing colors you have seen elsewhere around the manor - apparently they were household guards. To the north are two double doors. Moving through, you notice that the water in the center of the room is much deeper than in the hallways.
There are two more double doors across the room from where you entered, and high on the walls, nearly 30 feet up, are two more doors - one to the north, and one to the east.
"Aw hells. The bridge is in the water. Getting over there is going to be tricky."
Jean couldn't quite see past Firavel and Leon but he shared his cousins dismay. "We'll deal with the problem when we get there. Stick to the outsides of the room, deeper water has a way of causing trouble." He moved along cautiously, watching to see if anything would emerge from the depths to attack them.
"Is that a bridge to the door across the way, or do you mean there was a bridge between those two upper doors? If so, no big deal. I can climb up there without too much difficulty. And drop a line for the rest of you."
"Good thinking, Firavel. You get to that, we'll cover you."
The pathway running west leads into an opening where you spot a grand stone bridge arching over the gorge to a stack of rock on which perches a high tower topped with a lightning rod. Several rooms and platforms make up the different levels of the tower.
"A lightning rod? With all this water, that's not good. Hope the skies stay clear. Son, you know this place, right? What's the best way to go from here?"
Son looks around, then gestures to the tower. "Father worked there. That is where Son was born."
"Then that's going to be our next destination." Said Jean, nodding that direction.
"Well yeah, but how do we get there? Can anyone see Firavel? How are we supposed to get across?"
Firavel finishes his scan of the bridge and nearby rooms. Finding a sturdy anchor-point near one of the walls, he ties a rope tighly to it and lets it down to the others.
"Here we go. Thanks!" Leon calls up and begins to climb.
Mithias climbs up the rope to join the others.
Once at the top, Jean helped Firavel get everyone else to the top of the rope, even going so far as to have the second to last person at the bottom tie Son in before getting everyone ready to heave him up the rope.
Once done, he turned their attention to the far tower with the lightning rod on top.