Terrill hears nothing at the door.
Opening the door, he finds another massive storeroom. Bare wooden shelves, empty except for some extra writing supplies (sheets of parchment, bottles of ink, and quills), line the eastern wall, and three desks with high stools stand in the center of the room between six columns. A small sign on the southern door reads “Archives—Private.”
A body lies slumped in the southwestern corner, still clutching a club. Its legs have been eaten away by something, and the corpse is already showing signs of putrefaction, with patches of mold on the skin. A broken lantern lies next to the body, its oil spilled on the floor.
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Terrill approaches the body, raising a hand to keep the rest of the party from steping too close to it. With his new sword in one hand, he squats down and studies the corpse and the items around it, looking for any signs of what did this and where it might have gone. He looks for oily footprints, marks on the body, anything that might provide information on what happened, and how long ago.
Terrill can't make any sense of the debris in the room and there's no discernible tracks.
The body is showing signs of contact with a deadly yellow musk creeper - a type of unintelligent plant. Although almost immobile, a creeper is very strong, has long reach with its tendrils, and can spray pheromones to lure prey closer.
No signs of the plant but there is some interesting paperwork on the desks.
Amid a handful of pages there are assorted research notes. Underlined passages and marginalia refer to the “the Dark Tapestry” and the “Dominions of the Black,” as well as something called the “Gate of Beyond,” a long-lost portal to these otherworldly realms. There’s also references to an ancient aberrant sorcerer named Kubburum Ishmedagan and the mad wizard Ralzeros the Overwatched is highlighted. Lastly, there are sketches and diagrams of some kind of ancient gate and an exotic cylinder simply labeled, ‘brain canister’. There’s some notes explaining that the canister is the key to ‘opening the gate’ and gives mention to a process needed to attach the cylinder to the gate.
Strangely enough the handwriting composing the notes is initially that of a delicate feminine hand but changes as the notes go on.
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"Well, the 'brain canister' seems like it must be the cylinder we were sent to find. And it's the key to opening this 'Gate of Beyond.' I can't help but wonder if that's where our missing Blakros went. And if we'll have to go after her through the gate to get her back."
Looking through the documents, Terrill collects those that have the most information related to the gate and the cylinder, saying, "These might be useful in identifying these things if we run across them, and the Society would likely be interested in them as well. Unless you think there's something else we should look at in here, I say we head into the Archives."
This chamber contains several tall wooden bookshelves reaching to the ceiling, almost bursting with the weight of books and scrolls filling the shelves. The shelves and their contents are encrusted with thick growths of brightly colored fungus and glistening mold. Many tomes have fallen from the shelves, their open pages forming a base for more fungi and large mushrooms which carpet the floor. The air here is damp and close, and several of the fungal growths pulse with an eerie purple light that dimly lights the room.
Corwin recognizes what looks like a mat of brown mold growing out of a trapdoor on the southern side of the room.
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Linark will tear a piece of his shirt and tie it in his mouth, in a crude attempt to avoid breathing anything the fungus could expel.
A fire here could burn the whole museum down. Not a good idea. Hey, gimme a minute.
He walks around the room, passing through the bookshelves to make sure the place is empty before they proceed into the trapdoor.
Besides a number of shelves lined with books, Linark finds nothing of interest or value.
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Terrill looks in some horror at the room before them, then asks Corwin, "Do you know anything about that brown mold stuff by the trap door? It seems likely we need to go down that way, but I don't want to get close to it. Maybe we could see if there's any oil left in that dead guard's lantern, and use it to burn the mold? Unless burning one of those things just makes whatever they do to you worse?"
Studying the room a bit more, he goes on, "We could also go back the way we came and try the other door off the stairs, see if there's another way down. Though it probably leads back around this way."
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Anyone happen to have a cold / item spell up your sleeve do you? If not i suggest looking around for something cold to kill it. Don't get near it with a torch, it will just become larger.
Go through the door next to the creeper? no no we aren't going near it until we have something cold. We should go back through one of the other doors
The doors open with a grinding creak, revealing a large room filled with monsters of all shapes and sizes. Giant skeletons and stuffed taxidermic monstrosities are frozen in poses of snarling ferocity, while mummified corpses lie in sedate repose in ornately carved sarcophagi. As silent as a tomb, the air in the hall is stale and musty.
And with that the stuffed owlbear midway across the room comes to life and shambles towards the party. Its eyes have been replaced with glass beads but its claws are still deadly sharp!
The party withdraws and shuts the doors behind them. The sounds of displays being toppled and smashed can be heard from behind the closed doors.
This musty storeroom is filled with boxes and crates stacked in disorganized piles, some only a few boxes high and others reaching all the way to the ceiling. Small puddles stand on the floor, and the occasional drip of water echoes in the darkness.
Linark detects no evil.
As the group makes their way through the room, a mass of completely not-evil yellow fungus-creature comes into view.
Sensing food, it moves forward to attack!
It creeps forward and raises a tendril that sprays a slimy fluid towards the party.
It hits Terrill. In addition to being generally foul, the fluid seems to be compelling Terrill to approach the creature but he fights it off.
As Linark approaches, a tendril lashes out at him.
And just like that, Terrill splits the smelly plant creature in two, killing it.
There seems to be little else of interest or value in this room.
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"It's pretty clear to me we need to go down through that trapdoor. If the owlbear hasn't made it out of that room by now, I don't think he will. Let's leave him where he is and spend some time figuring out how to get that brown mold out of the way."
Looking to Corwin he says, "I don't have any kind of cold attack to make on the thing. How about you, Bo'alo?"
Corwin determines he can pry up and push aside enough of the mold for the party to squeeze past it without any ill effects. Once past the hazard, the group is able to descend.
The hidden shaft deposits you in an alcove at the far end of an antechamber, free of the riotous growths of fungi and mold that choke the shaft and archives above. The simple, clean lines of the basement’s basalt walls give way here to a disturbing, organic style of architecture that makes it seem like you are walking through the gullet of some monstrous behemoth. At the far end of the hall, a large, ornate arch that looks disconcertingly like the beast’s toothed maw stands in the wall, covered by a heavy black curtain with sickly green light from the chamber beyond shining around the edges.
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Terrill is briefly glad to be past the strange mold, but his relief fades quickly as they appear to be travelling through the digestive tract of some massive beast. "Well, if we're in some giant thing's gut, and that's the mouth, at least it means we're heading out of its gut, not into it. Let's see what's on the other side."
He raises his sword and uses it to gently push the curtain to one side, peering into the space beyond.