It is possible that the ashes have some intrinsic value, but it is difficult to say without further research. When you cast detect magic and examine the items left behind on the floor, the cloak emits a magical aura... ...of Abjuration... ...but you aren't sure what the enchantment might be.
There are no chairs or easy places to sit in this room besides the floor, but the keycard that Oleg used earlier can also close the door if you would like to hide inside here.
There is a metal mesh in a couple corners of the ceiling, each is only a foot across.
Oleg painfully moves to the door and looks to find another lock on this side to close it. "This place looks safe, if anything crazy happens maybe we can break that strange looking set of windows to get out. It's not comfortable, but that's adventuring isn't it?"
Oleg votes to rest here for now, and then deciding in the morning whether to go on or go back. "We're all burned, bruised, cut and bumped to exhaustion as is, we may not have the strength to deal with anything else, and we shouldn't assume the way back will be safe"
If we are resting here, Oleg will spend an hour or more carefully looking the room over (Take 20 Perception) for anything dangerous or unusual. "I encourage everyone to look around, last thing we need is to lean back onto any strange red buttons by accident!"
Scarlet nods and begins her own slow, methodical searching of the room. Buttons hold no awe or mystery to her but she definitely refrains from touching anything.
Cinder has enough rations for everyone, if they do not have their own. She will try to close/lock the door as soon as she makes sure that there is ventilation. "The 'windows' won't lead into the cavern Oleg. Think of them as... a scrying pool, I guess? They don't directly lead there, they just look at it. I have enough food for us all, and I really want to look around here..."
"Hey guys, the cloak the creature was wearing it has magical properties" He picks up the pouch of coins and the cloak.
"Let me help you check that Oleg" He'll help inspect the swords.
"I don't know what enchanment it has but if someone want to wear it, go ahead." He tells the others and later joins them to inspect the room.
You thoroughly scour the room, find anything that looks like a button or lever and avoid it carefully. There aren't many, and their exact purpose is unknowable without context or experimentation.
"These are some expensive sword, Oleg. Might want to keep them" Bosh gives the swords to Oleg after inspecting them.
"Should we press some button? Or wait until we are rested?" He asks the others, Bosh looks for a place to sit down and puts out his books to prepare some of his spells.
Scarlet helps clean up the mess left by the monster turning to dust. Then at making the space within the room some what more comfortable for an evening stay.
Thanking Cinder for offering to share rations Scarlet is happy to share around her reserves of water. As to Bosh's question, she frowns a little.
"Maybe wait till we're rested... and' ready to run out the doors?" She offers in response, though with a slight smile to show she's joking... a little.
"We've enough food for a nights stay, and I can conjure some water as needed. Rest, poke about, then see if we want to press forward or return to the surface." Cinder smiles and offers to refill Scarlet's water in turn.
"Thanks Bosh" Oleg accepts the two swords and places them carefully in his backpack, sheathed. Then, Oleg turns to studying what he can of the room and the technology within, seeing if he can figure out what the room's few buttons and controls are for, and what pressing them might accomplish. He also sees if there are labels that might help. If nothing interesting comes up, Oleg will wish everyone a good night, and prop himself up against the door to sleep. He figures that if anything opens the door while everyone's resting, the loud thud of Oleg suddenly falling over will likely wake him up, and the noise might wake up the rest of the group.
1 - Bosh Watch
2 - Bosh Watch
3 - Cinder Watch
4 - Cinder Watch
5 - Scarlet Watch
6 - Scarlet Watch
7 - Scarlet Watch
8 - Oleg Watch
9 - Oleg Watch
0 - Oleg Watch
8 - Oleg Watch
9 - Oleg Watch
The night passes quietly, the four of you taking long watches so that everyone gets a full night's rest over the course of 12 hours.
After you wake, Oleg begins fiddling with the buttons and dials on the panel, and after some trial experimentation (including tornado-strength winds at one point), he appears to have learned how to manipulate not only weather effects, but the appearance of sun, stars, and moon.
You consume the remains of your trail rations for the night and feel set for the day.
Cinder looks around the hall, wondering at the amount of metal just laying around in the walls. "You know, thinking on it, the veiwports were looking into the desert, so there's probably nothing there." she points further up the hall. "Shall we continue on?"
"I'm up to going a bit further in, though it wasn't much of a night and I feel almost as sore as I did before the rest. Let's call this a scouting run and then let's return to town, to let them know we're still alive, and to prepare for whatever we run into."
Oleg packs up his gear and begins getting ready to move forward with Cinder.
Scarlet watches Oleg poking things, wincing slightly at the hurricane he produces momentarily, even as she works the kinks out of herself after a night sleeping on the floor.
At people's decision to continue on for a bit she nods and assists them.
A large metal table is surrounded by odd-looking chairs in this room. To the west, what appears to be a transparent wall looks out over a strange desert valley. Four pillars support the fifteen-foot-high ceiling, while dozens of crude images of a pickaxe made of a skull and bones have been painted onto the walls with some sort of ivory pigment along with several phrases in an unrecognizable language.
You recall the pickaxe of skull and bones from the silver holy symbol you retrieved off the frog with bright eyes, and that the priest in town called it a symbol to Zyphus.
"Do you think the frog we killed back there did this?" He ask the others as he inspects the writtings next to the symbols.
You do not recall the frog having the requisite opposable thumbs to craft such scrawlings. Scrawlings that you cannot comprehend, though you know that certain spells can help decipher languages that you do not know.
"Well, I haven't seen a language like this. There are spells to help us understand languages we don't speak, maybe back in town someone should have a scroll. I'll try to get one when we get back."
Scarlet straightens up, then seems to notice the walls.
"Here. We're lookin' fer things like this, hey?" She asks absently, the weird scrawling taking her attention for the moment.
"Geeze... That smokin' critter got bored, huh..."
She holds up a small card, about the size of the brown-striped ones you have already found. This card instead has a black band across it.
There is nothing else of note that you discover in the room, and without magical means to discern the scrawlings, it is unlikely that you will learn more.
When you go back out to the hallway and try the door leading further east, it opens with a whoosh, revealing a long, dark corridor. It bends around to the right, perfectly crafted, disappears into the darkness.
Directly across from this entrance is another door, heading further east. It has a black stripe across it, and a small panel to the right side of the doorway.
The hallway appears to be empty.
"Should we try one of those card in this door?" Enev asks the others,
"Or should we try the dark corridor?" He summons some lights dancing around his hand to light up the corridor.
The corridor continues to curve to the right, as though large enough to encircle the whole cavern. You direct your light as far as possible before the curvature prevents you from seeing more.
To the north, the corridor is much shorter, ending in collapsed rubble.
Cinder looks at the rubble in the corridor, then back to the darkened hall and worries on her lip. "The desert dome... D'you think this goes around it, or is meant to go around it, considering? We found what could have been partners to this passage filled in with rubble on the way in on the other side, yeah?"
Scarlet holds her x-bow loose but ready and moves towards the closest door. Edging around the corner of the doors into the curved great hall she glances North.
"Looks like we've more doors over there." She indicates towards the North East.
"It sounds like it, Cinder. Maybe the desert dome is where they made their experiments and they where just watching from here. And there are too many doors...Should I try drawing a map to remember what we already saw?" Bosh asks to the others, they have been here for a while and haven't found much about the other expeditions other than the few corpses, he is starting to worry about finding the others.
"For what it's worth, I'm curious to see what's on the other side of that door by the rubble, too" Oleg mentions as he follows everyone around.
You follow the tunnel around to the right until you reach its rubble-strewn end. There are no other doors or outlets, but you are fairly sure that you are most of the way back around the cavern.
When you return to the door next to the rubble, it does indeed open to the card with the black stripe, and you see a short hallway that ends in a pair of doors that appear to be made of glass, or some other translucent material.
Through them, you see a large metal desk with blinking lights and strange glowing panels, sitting atop a raised area on the east side of this room near a circular table.
Two couches covered with black material sit to the south a pair of black metal pillars.
Splatters of dried blood stain the floor and walls near a pair of doors to the north, while here and there patches of rust-red mold and fungus cling to the southern wall.
The room itself is brightly lit by glowing panels on the ceiling.
"Okay, guns up!" Scarlet says at the sight of the stains, even as she does just that and gets ready to cover people against attack.
The mold appears black and brown, and while likely unpleasant to live near, it is not the same as what you encountered earlier.
Oleg appears to be almost mesmerized by the desk with the glowing lights and panels. He attempts to open the translucent doors in order to enter the room and better examine this marvel of technology.
"Windowed doors, doesn't seem private or secure, why would anyone want such a thing?" he muses aloud.
The doors open to your touch, and you enter the room to approach the desk. It has a few viewports, each flickering strange lights in no apparent pattern.
As you watch, occasionally you see string of Androffan text go by:
...roczny zgoda unieważnia trudną płytę ....
...przejście okrąża poradnik funkcjonalny...
...sole logiki w pochylony opticl...
Images also appear at times. Some are of sleek, four armed humanoids, like the skeletons that you fought earlier, but as they appeared before their raising as unquiet dead.
One is a hairless blue lion with twin tentacular tails. Dozens more thick tentacles quiver and twitch where its mane should be.
In another, a strange, vibrant plant slowly but dangerously whips about its trio of tendrils with spiked heads.
Here on the raised area, there is a door right next to the desk, and another on the east wall of the platform.
Scarlet moves to where she can cover as much of the room as possible.
"So... any ideas?" She asks. "Door with the smear..? Or door with out smear?"
Cinder checks over the blood, trying to see how old it is.
"This is all too likely from one of the expeditions. We should probably follow it." She looks at the others, "Find anything else interesting?"
The blood is, indeed, nearly a week old.
Your striped card opens the door to the north. Bloodstains mar the floor and walls of this hallway, while scorch marks and smears of ash on the walls evidence some sort of altercation having taken place in this area relatively recently. Four tangled mounds of metal and other materials lie further up the hall, surrounded by strangely colored stains.
Scarlet moves to cover the newly opened door.
"Hmmm... that's a lot of blood...." (How many pints are we talking about here?)
Bosh takes a look at what Oleg is doing, "Mmmmm, that seems like they were monitoring those things. Is this place a lab or a prison?" He comments to Oleg and tries to read the messages on the screen.
After hearing about the blood, Bosh readies his crossbow, "Now it's a tomb..."
...permission shall cancel the annual hard disc...
...crossing orbits functional guide...
...logic salts leaning optical...
"I'm not sure which, Bosh, maybe both?" Oleg responds. He points over to the side door next to the desk area and says "Let's come back to this later, looks like the ladies are on the trail of the missing councilman."
Oleg follows Scarlet and Cinder into the blood filled hallway.
Cinder will lead the group down the hall, following the bloodstains, but looking at the strange spots as well. Oil perhaps? Blood from a different sort of creature?
At the end of the hall, she looks at the obvious choice, and waves Oleg forward. "Before we enter, you look like you need a pick me up."
Scarlet slides forwards along the wall, being careful to keep scanning the floor, walls and ceiling...
Aside from the pervasive blood and dismantled constructs, nothing else moves or catches your eye. The level of light is glaringly bright after so many hours in the half-lit caverns. At the far end of the hallway, there are two doorways, and there is no noise from behind either.
"The blood trail seems to lead forward towards the door at the far end. We must be get close." Oleg goes forward and attempts to open the far doorway.
Moves up to cover the door Oleg is interested in, though being wary of anything approaching from behind....