Feeling in over his head, Baergar lays a hand on his mammoth's flank and it dwindles until naught but a small ivory statuette remains. He places the figurine in his pocket and wait to see what comes.
The stairs, btw, are square instead of being a round circle down.
"I have no idea what that is! Rose?"
Lorelei's magic cestus ponders if she knows anything about the symbols.
If it took several gods to put the wards up. Why did they send mortals to fix the wards? Anyone else get the feeling something got left out of the briefing?
"These stairs form a holy symbol. Don't know which one exactly," Star says mentally to the rest of the group.
"Quite strange,"Lorelei remarks to herself as she moves closer to the door.
Once she knows that everything is safe, Lorelei will try to open it.
The door is definitely trapped. Multiple magical auras on it. Thanks to arcane sight, you can recognize abjuration, abjuration, evocation, conjuration, abjuration, necromancy, illusion, and divination spells, which would trigger in that specific order. With your bonus to know (arcana), you can tell that some of the spells are designed to go off inside, and some of them are designed to go off outside. Exceptional though you are at disable device, you're not sure if you could remove the traps on this door easily. The simple lock on the door, by comparison, would be child's play for a rogue of low experience, much less you.
"We're the best chance they have against murdering the cranky old skeleton. After what he'd done to a couple of deities, they ain't gonna risk their own necks to deal with him," Hiram says, it was the closest to sound bitter he had been the entire mission.
"There's a door. Filled with magic traps. Going to disable them. If I don't mention success, I'm dead; be sure to get my corpse!"
Besides, a 47 Disable Device is pretty good. Only Lefty with a Nat 20 could get to 50 plus.
This spell functions like antimagic field, but it suppresses only spells of the chosen type and supernatural and spell-like class abilities from classes that grant spellcasting of the selected type. Magic items, other spell-like abilities, and other supernatural abilities are unaffected.
Unless these arcane spells came from a bunch of spell-like abilities or a deity (in which case, yicks!), SS should block this magic entirely.
Alright, let's just start from the top. I'll disable the first abjuration with my last DD roll.
That will get the first one. which one next?
"Sorry for delaying! Promised I would return soon, didn't I? This door... It's weird. Highly trapped with magical layers. Disabled one. Tar-Baphon or his... phylactery(?) might be here. All spells are arcane. I have protection against such magic. Any thoughts?"
She is going to inspect the properties of the walls around it, the ceiling, and the floor.
Specifically, she wants to know two things. What are they made of? Are they magical?
She doesn't want to disable the door, only to have missed something on the wall next to it.
After she makes sure that the room is safe, she will try to remove the second adjuration effect.
That will just fail to remove it. So you have now removed an Alarm spell, and have an idea that the second spell is more powerful than the 3rd abjuration effect. The walls themselves have no "trap" type effects on them, but they do radiate with the same aura that the wards have (More of the "yay! negative energy/Boo! positive energy" stuff.)
So are the walls made out of stone? What about the ceiling and floor?
Dire badgers reside in deep burrows and warrens dug with their monstrous claws—but unlike typical badgers, a dire badger's claws are capable of tunneling through solid rock. Dire badgers possess little patience for disturbances or interruptions. Utterly fearless creatures, when confronted they attack brutally, and if injured, they violently erupt into a killing frenzy.
Worth a shot.
If that fails, she will shift to a small earth elemental and test out earthgliding.
If that fails, she will take off Rose (who impedes her DD checks via being a cestus by a -2 penalty) and try to remove the second abjuration effect again.
Yeah, Star's a persistent little woman.
"Is it otherwise safe down there?" Hiram asked, curious. He was no mage but he had a few tricks up his sleeves.
"There's another ward. Saps life force. Like getting hit by Enervation. Bypasses Death Ward too. Happens no matter what. Other than that, I think it's safe. Then again, when invisible, I'm undetectable..."
It appears that the stone is harder than your badger claws can penetrate; you would guess that steel weapons would have a hard time penetrating it. You can earthglide through it as an earth elemental, but it's like (were you human) moving through quicksand.
You think that had you not been subject to the life-force drain, you would have removed the 2nd abjuration effect. You did not, however, trigger it.
"There were eight spells on the door. I removed the first, an Alarm spell. Each layer seems harder than the last."
Yeah, Nat 20! She also has Evasion.
As you begin to move into the room, your years of training and instinct stop you from moving any further then just enough to peek into the room. The room itself is 5' square, and almost the entirety of it is made of up an extremely large floating ball of....nothing.
While you're not completely sure, you think that this might be a Sphere of Annihilation. You've never actually heard of one this big, however, and you've certainly never seen one that...reacts to stimuli around it. Like this one is.
By whatever means of locomotion it has, the sphere begins turning towards you. As it does, you can see that it has a face. A horrible, massive mouth that runs across the hemisphere of the orb, and a pair of horrible, insane eyes that look into yours as it turns.
Assuming she survives, Star flees as fast as she can.
Retreat as fast as possible (via D-Door if necessary), assume normal humanoid form once back in the other room, turn Invisible again, PAO back to a gnome, and get back to the others ASAP.
Lorelei eventually stumbles back into the room where her allies wait. Once floating before the others, she tries to speak but finds herself giggling (albeit nervously). After composing herself, she starts to tell her story.
"Nothing's down there but a trap. A classic trap. Ward that drains life energy. Door blocked by layers of powerful magic. I only managed to break one. Bypassed door with earthglide. You'd think Tar-Baphon's lich thing would be there? No. Just a five foot square room. Inside the room? A sphere of annihilation! It had a face..."
"Well damn," Hiram mutters, "A lot of resources to waste on a trap, I guess up it is."
A second after Rose relates Hiram's words, Star nods.
"Be ready to fight. Mr. Lefty and I sensed something up there. Scared me worse than the dragon."
"I'm really starting to hate this place..."
Baergar hefts his sword, ready to move on.
It's possible, however, that the sphere you describe does guard something. Maybe not a phylactery, but the negative energy here would kill most all who dare confront it. This is unhallow ground times ten.
If Lefty were visible, you'd see a very concerned look on his face, right between his donkey ears.
He speaks to Baergar.
I hate it, too. This place must fall. It's a simple two step process.
The elf senses that Star is badly hurt. He'll wait for her to address the issue.
"Didn't see anything. Room was literally five feet. Granted, I was on the ceiling, but still..."
Star ponders what exactly she saw in that room.
Making your way back upstairs, you can see someone taking a look at the bodies of the dead gargoyles. He is a half-orc who is wearing a traveler's outfit, and he is kneeling beside one of the corpses, apparently taking mental notes. He does not appear to have noticed your scouts. What would you like to do?