He swims forward, looks around the room, and then starts swimming back to the surface. We go the other way next.
Various lockers are filled with tattered clothing and other ancient remains. It's a bit worrying to take the time to search through this stuff here, but it's all easily moved to the dry hallway if you decide to do that.
You are able to retrieve the ring off the creature's finger, however. It's made of solid gold and bears an eight-pointed star symbol. It's quite heavy.
Percival surfaces last again, breathing heavily for a moment. We killed a few things, but I think that's the last of them. Thanks for the light. He leans against the wall, legs still in the water. There are some odd looking spigots, like at the shower in the other room, and a large central pillar. He tosses a large, heavy gold ring up towards the dry area, found this on a strange creature. It didn't put up much of a fight. And then he's underwater again.
Looks to me, he begins, breathing heavily, like some sort of storage space for personal belongings. He bends down, hands on knees, some old clothing and stuff, I don't see anything of value.
As the undead lunges at her, Pythia's eyes roll up into her head. She dodges, even as images of the future bombard her senses. By the time her eyes return to normal, Kael has defeated the undead, as she envisioned he would.
Nice job!
Pythia pats him on the back and smiles.
Then she returns to her underwater search.
Pythia lifts up and examines everything she can, bringing things that the others even think are useless to the surface, including old wet clothes and interesting stones.
Through time and concerted effort, the hallway gets filled with more and more soggy junk as Pythia and the others start piling up the things they find. They also manage to drag up a corpse wearing soggy and torn red leather armor bearing an eight-pointed star.
After spending some time sifting through the various ancient clothing and the seeker's pack you come up with a few things. The leather armor is barely functional, but if repaired, it would be very good quality . He also carries a very fine short sword that is in excellent condition. In his pack, you find an Elaborate Lantern of copper inset with red glass panes.
Scattered amidst the clothes and junk gathered in the hallway, you turn up ancient, but still usable coins in the amounts of 55 silver pieces, 38 gold pieces and 2 platinum pieces.
Soaking wet and still in her undergarments, Pythia examines the loot with detect magic.
---
After examining the short sword, Pythia smiles widely and picks up the lantern. "Oooh! We found the red lantern! Wonderful! I'm so glad we went for a swim!"
After giving the sword a few swings Pythia wanders over to Percival and Kael and hands them the sword. "It's a magical blade. Not for me, I'm afraid." She smiles, then returns to the pile of loot.
Once she's gone through everything, Pythia wanders over to her gear. She wrings out her hair, shaking and squeezing the messy tangle dry as best as she can. Afterwards, She pulls her simple dress on over her wet undergarments, slips on her shoes, puts her belt and weapons back on, then puts on her backpack and straps on her shield.
"Ready!" she announces. "Shall we head back up?"
Yeah, I'm ready, Percival says without looking, instead gazing deeply at the dead body. I wonder how he died...
They're so flippant! It's like they've all had so much death in their lives that this poor fellow means nothing to them. But they seem normal, he looks down at himself, maybe it's just me being too sensitive? He shakes his head quickly, following Pythia out. Are we going to bury him? He asks softly.
Chaetris helps Pythia dry off. "There are five of them. Or there were. We should do something for them." With a gulp she continues, "We just survived where five trained treasure hunters failed. I think we can feel pretty good about that."
"Why don't you guys bring him up so we can give them a proper last rights. We can also check to see what might have killed him."
"Oh!" Pythia remarks, suddenly remembering the dead bodies. "Yes, of course! What a lovely idea you two."
"What might have killed him?" Pythia asks. "Oh, I'm no doctor! Well, I do have a lot of experience with bodies, but only when they're alive." She nods, matter of factly.
Kael studiously avoids watching Pythia dress, and collects his belongings. At the discovery that the short sword is magical, he happily takes it for himself after first checking with Percival that it's allright. "A magic weapon from a watery grave? It deserves a name. I think I'll call it Dirge" He fastens his newfound blade to his belt, and offers his somewhat dingy shortsword it replaces out. "Need this in case you need to fight underwater and somehow can't really stab with your longsword?"
Pythia brings the two bodies up to the dry hall, one recently a ghoul, now with a hole through its limp form, and the other a man long-dead whose bones look to have been gnawed on. A lot.
There's not much flesh left on any of the five corpses.
A deadly dirge, eh? Percival continues to look at the corpse, There'll be a dearth of dire foes by the time you're done, I'm sure, he says without turning away.
When they get back to the central room, Percival takes the red lantern and brings it to the last empty alcove, hanging it from the chain. I think it belongs there. He walks back to the central sarcophagus, I think we can push this a bit farther, eh?
Pythia claps her hands as Kael names his blade. "Oh, yes! That sounds right."
Pythia does her best to examine the bodies. "Kael killed this one." she concludes helpfully, pointing at the ghoul corpse with a hole through it.
---
"Should we lay these dead to rest in the cairn we found down here? The one that made us sleepy? There's enough room."
Unless someone stops her, Pythia moves the bodies into place.
"Sorry your dead." she remarks once she's done. "But, that's fate. Thanks for playing your part."
Apparently she considers this a lovely eulogy.
---
After the bodies are put to rest, Pythia follows Percival back up to the lantern room. She claps in excitement as he hangs the red lantern.
"Oh, wonderful!"
She nods when he approaches the sarcophagus to turn it. "It does, indeed!"
Pythia moves to help Percival turn the sarcophagus one spot.
With a silent prayer Chaetris helps to lay out the fallen Seekers. No offense, but better you than us. May Wee Jas see you to your better place. After a careful climb back up and a quick hanging of the red lantern, she offers her thoughts. "Let's see if there are any other secrets to be revealed before we starts trying out the lanterns."
The group of you climb up the pitted shaft using the rope you left tied to the quarterstaff, back to the room with seven hallways and hang the last lantern. Even in the relative darkness, it feels better somehow, right. But before exploring the, you decide to turn the sarcophagus some more. Hopefully nothing else collapses this time.
With a concerted shove, the sarcophagus clicks over and now points at the hallway with the blue lantern. Nothing happens.
After mulling over it for a few seconds, decide to try one more.
When the sarcophagus points toward the indigo lantern, you feel the familiar deep rumble below before you hear it. A moment later, a cylinder rises up from the floor.
Upon closer inspection, the floor of the cylinder, unlike the previous one which was empty, contains many crushed bones and pieces of moldy clothing lying flat on the bottom.
Pythia cocks her head to find nothing appear in the blue lantern's alcove. She wanders over and stomps on the floor a few times where the transport tube should be.
"Nope! Nothing!" she exclaims.
---
Returning to help push the sarcophagus again, this time over to indigo, Pythia seems very excited to hear the familiar rumbling of a transport tube arriving. She rushes over to see what's inside.
"Hmmm..." she remarks at the sight of the crushed bones. "Ominous!"
"Excuse me," she tells the bones, stepping over them into the transport tube. "Does anyone want to join me on the first ride down?" she asks her companions. "We can squish in together."
---
With a cursory check of the blue hallway Chaetris declares, "Either this one is broken and not working at all, or it's just a decoy."
Toeing the debris in the indigo chamber she holds up a hand to the others. "I don't like the looks of this one. Give me a few minutes to make sure it isn't a trap."
"If you say so, Chaetris." Pythia replies, letting Chaetris have her way with the tube before hopping inside.
Chaetris looks over the indigo elevator and then backs away dusting off her hands. "Yeah, i wouldn't go in there. If you look carefully you can see the grooves in the sides. That's where the floor slides up to meet the ceiling. Probably as the thing sinks into the floor. I'm guessing there's not even a chamber down there."
She walks back to the sarcophagus. "Shall we see if we can reset this thing and go deal with the mold?"
We've got to turn it through the other lanterns before we can get back to the mold, we've still got a couple more to go. Percival looks at the powdered bones, I wonder if there is anything down there. Maybe we can figure out some way to jam it shut and investigate?
Pythia nods along with Percival. "Oh, yes. I hope that's true. What do you think, Chaetris?"
"Deal with the mold? There's more to see before, then, Chaetris! No need to skip ahead."
Cerise was both appalled and impressed by Pythia's total disregard for proper decorum. Once the initial shock had worn off of seeing Pythia brazenly running around in her underwear, Cerise could not help but smile in amusement.
She gestured toward one waterlogged friend after another, taking about thirty seconds each to dry out their clothes.
"Fighting a ghoul is dangerous at the best of times. Underwater even more so. Well done."
Just like when the lantern is was pointed at the blue lantern, nothing happens when you turn it toward the violet lantern. Further investigation makes it clear that just like the blue tunnel, nothing is meant to happen with the sarcophagus pointed this way. With another push, the platform slides right past the entrance and clicks into place facing red. And here is more of the same. Nothing.
With another couple pushes, you get the sarcophagus pointing toward the yellow tunnel again, and the elevator returns. Below is the mostly explored level with the workshop, part of which was blocked off by some abnormally cold fungus.
Across from the basin is a wide chamber that must once have been the living quarters of an important figure. A large stone slab that suggests the shape of a bed rests against the east wall, under a huge bas-relief of a robust, long-nosed bald humanoid figure with outstretched hands. The figure wears a carefully sculpted wind-tossed robe that gives him the appearance of a triumphant god. A glyph that looks like a stylized arrow marks an amulet worn around the figure’s neck. Wardrobes and dressers seemingly carved from the stone walls look to have been ransacked a long time ago.
There doesn't seem to be anything of particular value here.
"I suppose it's my turn then." Cerise said, getting into the elevator.
By the time the rest of the group had come down one-or-two at a time she'd cleared the mold away with rays of icy magic.
Knowing it's safe, Pythia hops into the elevator enthusiastically. She looks around for signs that anything has changed since we were last here. Returning to see Cerise blasting away at the mold, Pythia waits patiently, watching the encounter with interest.
"That mold is fascinating!" Pythia remarks once Cerise has destroyed it.
She wanders into the hallway now opened to them and looks around. Intrigued by the imagery in the bedroom, Pythia examines the bald humanoid figure, his clothing and the glpyh.
Percival peers closely at the amulet, then looks over at where it's pointing. Is it trying to direct us somewhere?
Percival examines the sludge, it's a bad idea to touch it, right? Looks a lot like the orange insect slime to me, He reaches out with his bare left hand, hesitating only a little...
Chaetris pulls down her goggles and stares at the orange ooze. Running a finger through it she ponders. "Gotta wonder about this stuff. All of the living things we've found down here have been near it."
"This rune," Pythia remarks, pointing it out. "It's an Auran name. Nadroc." she shrugs her shoulders. "I wonder who he was..."
She pulls out her papers and copies the rune and a drawing of the statue and painting into her notes. She flips back and forth for a while between papers, frantically referencing something. Eventually she packs up her papers, puts away her ink and shoves an ink pen into her curly mess of hair.
Chaetris licks the orange goo off of her finger. "I think they ate this stuff. Something is keeping it fresh and replenished, but that's probably why there's a basin of this next to each sleeping chamber." She looks around at the layout. "Y'know, come to think about it, I bet these lower chambers were for the builders. If this is an actual tomb the good stuff is gonna be up top, behind that face." Chaetris rubs her hands together in excitement. "Alright, let's go see what we can do with the lanterns."
Cerise's brows raised in surprise as Chaetris licked the strange goo off her finger. "You think the workers, the people who built this place, ate that... stuff? And it is still edible? Fascinating."
She dug through her small satchel and brought out a pair of sample jars. Using her dagger as a trowel, she filled the two jars with the sludge, sealed them up and tucked them away.
"Well that's good," Percival scoops some out and starts licking it, "because I'm out of food."
Kael looks with fascination at a name, another name, scribed in a strange glyph. One symbol was coincidence, a second a pattern. Was the strange tattoo on his arm a... name? And what was the connection with these clearly dead beings?
He looks up startled when Percival talks about eating the food. "I have some rations if that's a problem.."
When Pythia eventually finishes with her scribbling she rejoins the others. "Anything neat over here? Whoah! What's that orange stuff?!"
"You mean people eat it!? That's amazing! Does it taste good? Has anyone tried it yet?"
Pythia smiles widely at Chaetris and gives her a gentle 'punch' on the shoulder. "Nicely done!" She's clearly impressed.
Pythia sticks her finger in the goop and pops her finger into her mouth. "Hmmm... Tastes like...."
When you taste the sludge, you discover that it's rather mild, tasting somewhat like gravy. Not particularly exciting, but not unpleasant either.
Finding nothing more of terrible interest, you decide to head back upstairs and test out the lanterns.
----
You have a couple of ways to go about lighting the lanterns, but the simplest and surest is to use lantern oil. Splitting the vial that Chaetris has between them should get you about fifty minutes out of all of them together.
One by one, as you light the lanterns, color fills the room, each one deepening the impression of starlight and falling snow from the reflections off the high ceiling.
As you light the fourth, fifth and sixth lantern, the intensity of the reflected light grows and by the time you have the final lantern lit, it's difficult to concentrate in here. The color in the room washes out to white and the brightness makes it very difficult to focus. This seems much more intense than seven lanterns should produce.
Percival looks around, slightly worried that something bad will happen, but encouraged by the impressive light. Perhaps we should point the sarcophagus at the green lantern?
"Wow!" Pythia exclaims with excitement.
After a moment spent admiring the intense lights she says, "Let's go check out that wind tunnel! Maybe it's off now!"
She hurries off that direction.
That's a fine idea, something bad might happen if we spin to green. Percival walks over to the chain, ready to climb.
The light is a little less distracting down the tunnel, the lantern bathing the whole area with a blue hue. Up above, the dark alcove beckons.
Pythia climbs the chain.
When she gets to the top she smiles widely and calls down to the others. "This looks amazing! Was the face's mouth open before? It's mouth is open and there's a room through there!"
Foolishly, Pythia wanders closer to the mouth and peeks through the hole. A wide grin rests on her face.
Chaetris hurries up the chain after Pythia.
"Wait, Pythia, there's a pressure plate!" She stops and collects some rope then scrambles down the corridor after the madwoman.