Blayne keeps the injured kobold from bleeding out, while nothing further is heard from the fleeing one. As they move around in the hall, both Blayne and Torriki step on the pressure plates on the floor, without anything appearing to happen.
With a quick look, Torriki can see that the dragon’s face carved into the wall used to be a functional trap that fired crossbow bolts at anyone stepping on any of the pressure plates in the hallway, but it clearly no longer works.
The trap is merely disabled, not broken. It could be repaired and rearmed in a few minutes with some spare parts and crossbow bolts.
In a sack next to the double door, there are twelve narrow strips of leather. Near the double door, there is also a large bucket containing dozens of small light crossbow bolts.
The strips are blindfolds for Small creatures, but it is possible to tie two blindfolds together to make a blindfold suitable for a Medium creature.
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"Hey guys, looks like I could get this bad boy up and running again. If you don't mind, I'd like to. It can't hurt if we know there's a trap and others don't. Kennit?"
to get the thing up and running.
"Sooooooo why is there a bag with a bunch of blindfolds in it? they're sized for the kobolds. It's that a little weird?"
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"Definitely reset the trap. That way if the Aspis follow us in we may have a nice surprise for them. Let's take some blindfolds - there may be some reason for them further on." Blayne says as he grabs a blindfold from the basket and checks to see if it would fit him.
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Blayne and Torriki leave the unconscious kobold on the floor and pick out the nicest blindfolds. As Torriki is tying his two pieces together, he recalls the room that Bastion was about to enter before the bolts started flying, and he darts off to take a look.
As he enters the room, he notices that the door on the south wall is bent slightly inward, and he recalls there was a large mass of rubble piled against it from the other side. It’s clear that opening the door would cause the pile of debris to pour through the door, doing some real harm to anyone nearby.
Turning his attention to the smaller pile of rocks in the corner of the room, he begins to disassemble it and soon finds a worn leather satchel. Looking inside, he discovers a journal and a stash of wands and potions! The journal clearly belonged to Nieford Sharrowsmith, and contains his writings on setting out on his quest as well as his final entry before hiding the satchel.
The satchel also contains a wand of cure light wounds (12 charges), a wand of lesser restoration (5 charges), two potions of cure moderate wounds, a wand of bear’s endurance (14 charges) and two potions of spider climb.
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"WOW!" Torriki's eyes go wide. He looks at the spider climb. "ummmm hey guys, would you mind if I take one of those? I have an idea."
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Instrument frowns and collects a pair of blind-folds for himself as well. Almost as an afterthought, he fishes out a pair of goggles with smoked glass and perches them atop his sandy mop.
"Aroden graces me with this wisdom as well," he concurs with Bastion, after reading the note. "Perhaps taken while he was resting." He stuffs the wands of bear's endurance and cure light wounds into his waistband and hands out some of the other items.
"Let us be on, then."
With Sharrowsmith's stash suitably admired and appropriately distributed, the Pathfinders head back to the hallway with the elaborate dragon carving on the wall. Aside from the inactive pressure plates on the floor, all that awaits them there is a set of double doors and a lightly seared, unconscious kobold.
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"Believe it or not, we're not here to pillage your dens or make off with your eggs. We came here looking for an ally of ours - an older man. We believe he's ventured deeper underground looking for a hidden temple. Tell us what you know and help us get to that temple and we'd be happy to get in and out without hurting anymore of your kin."
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Blayne will heal the kobold as Bastion suggests. "Maybe it would be a good idea to re-close all the doors we've opened since its likely that those Aspis mercenaries are following us. "
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The kobold comes to groggily, but his eyes snap open in alarm when he realizes he’s surrounded by enormous figures, looming over him like giants! He tries to skitter away, realizes he’s trapped, and his body droops in defeat. ”You’re looking for a human?” he replies, both angry and dejected, “A human came here not long ago, collapsed one of the corridors, that bastard! But I don’t know where he went. The boss, Naktok, might know.”
He considers whether to say more, eyeing Bastion’s enormous form standing above him, then casting a nervous eye at the sidearm glinting on Wayne’s hip, and continues, ”What I know about the place? Our homes are to the west, and the temple is north from there. You can’t go to the southern part of this place anymore of the collapsed corridor.”
"He might talk to you, yeah," the frightened kobold replies. With a glance at the blindfold in Torriki's hand, he adds, "Those? Naktok makes us wear 'em some of the time when we go through these doors here, on the way to the temple."
"What?" the kobold says angrily to Instrument. "It's a bigger god! The Golden God is as big as a dozen kobolds!"
"Take you to Naktok?" the kobold cries out, trying to wriggle away and failing, then staring at the double doors in obvious terror. "No way, I'm not going through that door! Stinkeye might be out! That monster eats anyone who looks at it!"
"I don't know what kind it is, I've never looked at it," the kobold says, giving Wayne a withering glare to make clear just how stupid it thinks his question was. "If I looked at it, it would eat me, and then I wouldn't be here for you to shoot at!"
Piling on to this rigorous application of logic, he adds, "That's why we wear the blindfolds. Stinkeye only eats you if you look at it, so we don't look at it, and it doesn't eat us. That's all I know, so you can let me go now."
"Because others got eaten by it, that's how I know!" the kobold replies testily. "And I'm not going through that door for it to eat me! Just let me go!"
The kobold visibly relaxes when he realizes he’s not going to be killed or forced through the doors ahead. ”Clear directions? To the temple? You just go through the double doors and, you, uh, keep going…straight, yeah straight, until you hit a pile of- I mean a corner, and then you just, well, go right, and then you’re at the temple…right?”
His lie is so bad, so obviously false, even to him, as the Pathfinders begin to lift eyebrows and cast skeptical glances at each other, that he shakes his head and says, "No, no, don't go that way! That's where the cave-in is. Go straight – you’ll pass a couple of doors – and turn right. You’ll come to a fountain – turn left. When that hall ends, turn right, and you’ll come to the temple doors. But I don’t know where Stinkeye might be! Now let me go, would you?”
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"Will there be any other guardians or traps along the way to the temple? And is stink eye confined to any specific area?"
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"No, only Stinkeye's in there, nobody else. And I don't know where he goes or doesn't go."
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Blayne will put the goggles over his head but leave a gap so he can see the floor in front of him. He'll keep a readied action to pull the goggles down, but otherwise will lead on.
"Let's move on."
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Through the door.... after using the potion and going by way of the ceiling.... and quietly at that.
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After untying the grateful kobold and watching him squeeze through a crack in the wall and run and scamper off toward the main entrance, the party opens the double doors. Stepping through, with Torriki creeping along on the ceiling, they see two hallways, running north and west. The western hall seems to end in a pile of rubble, and the closest door on that hall stands open. Just five feet from the double doors, a granite statue of a human woman stands in a running pose, as if fleeing toward the very doors the Pathfinders have just come through. The head of the statue is turned to look over her shoulder, her face locked in a silent scream.
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Torriki gives the kobold a comical farewell wave before turning to the business at hand.
"Hey check this out.... Why would a place like this have Aspis agent statues? That's a little weird. That's a weird pose too. Not flattering." Torriki climbs up the wall like a spider and stays with the party, but from the ceiling.
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"I've got a bad feeling about this! That statue is too lifelike. Let's get through here fast. "
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A wash of sadness flits across the Taldan's face as he inspects the statue through his dim goggles. His expression soon returns to its usual pompousness.
"Not a statue, Torriki. Some creatures can petrify their victims on sight. Best get those blindfolds ready."
"The kobold said to go this way," he adds, pointing in the direction of the rubble.