With his darkvision, Cerin can see that the corridor heads south for thirty feet and ends at a stone door. A passage in the left wall leads east about ten feet from the end of the corridor. Cautiously walking down the corridor, Cerin sees that the side passage is short, and also ends at a stone door.
Cerin does not hear anything beyond the door to the east.
Halvor draws his sword, illuminating the passage as Cerin opens the portal.
Cerin lifts the latch on the stone door and pushes it open. Unlike the other stone doors you've encountered in this complex so far, this one sticks a bit, but you are able to force it open.
Beyond the door is a passage that leads to a spiral staircase that descends around a central pillar. You follow the stairs down about one-and-a-half times around the central pillar. As you descend the stairs, the gloom of the passage seems to increase; your light sources don't seem to dim at all, but the shadows almost seem deepen and the air becomes noticeably colder. The stairs end abruptly at a point where the wall has collapsed, filling the stairs with rocks and rubble.
Finding a dead end, you return to the corridor and check out the door to the south. This stone door is marked with another of those seven-pointed star runes. This one, however, has a single other rune etched in its center.
Cerin presses his ear to the door and does not hear anything. Looking back at the rest of the group, he raises an eyebrow, and everyone else nods. He lifts the latch and opens the door.
The room beyond is unlike anything you've seen before. The first think you notice is the stench: it reeks of death. The door opens into the side of a sphere carved from the bedrock, 15 feet in diameter. Several objects float in the air in this room, lazily drifting or spinning—a ragged book, a scroll case, a bottle of wine, a twisted metal rod with a forked tip, and a dead raven surrounded by a halo of floating maggots. Yet, the most unnerving aspect of this room is the walls: They are painted in sheets of of strange reddish metal that ripple every once in a while with bursts of strange black energy. Some of the bursts briefly form into strange spiky runes, or even clusters of runes... like words in a strange alphabet.
"I don't like that, do you think this is recently activated? It seems strange that the dead bird and maggots would just be floating around?"
Krissina looks around for a suitable pebble and loads her sling...
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Cerin looks with wonder at the contents of the room while holding his nose at the almost painful stench. As the strange energy forms into runes, his eyes dart about trying to catch sight of one long enough to see if it is similar to any other language he has encountered.
After a few attempts, he calls on his god to show him the energies contained in the room to try to determine the cause of this effect.
After coming to a dead end down the stairs, Halvor huffs and puffs his way back up. When Cerin opens the door to the weird floaty room, the warrior looks on the scene with dismay. He steps back, more than willing to let Krissina and Cerin figure things out.
Krissina winds up and lets fly a slingstone somewhat gently toward the floating wine bottle. The stone clips the bottle, cracking the glass and sending it spinning in a straight line. It collides with a wall, cracking open. The pieces of glass then bounce off the walls heading in separate directions. Globules of red wine float through the air. When they hit the round walls of the room, much of the wine spreads out over the metal plating, while a few grape-sized globules bounce back off and float lazily backward. The slingstone ricochets around the room, bouncing off the metal plating. With each ricochet, its velocity lowers. Each ricochet sends the stone in a straight line. After seven or eight bounces, it happens to head toward the door where you're standing; by now it's only moving at about a walking pace. As it passes through the threshold, the stone falls to the floor at your feet normally.
Meanwhile, Cerin examines the black energy that occasionally crackles on the walls. On those brief moments when the energy forms runes or groups of runes, they appear to be Thassilonian symbols. However, translation eludes him.
Cerin then calls for the wisdom of the Wind and the Waves to help discern magical auras. The entire room appears to be under a strong transformation effect, emanating from the red metal plating. This effect seems to be similar to, but not the same as reverse gravity. He also picks up a faint evocation effect from the crackling black energy. However, none appear to be spell effects that he's ever seen before.
"Now that is weird!"
Cerin: I forgot to mention two other magical auras: both both the metal rod and something within the scroll case each radiate faint auras of evocation magic.
Lynnda takes Shadow off her shoulder, cradling the cat in her arms. The two lock eyes.
--Bad idea--
In a quiet voice, Lynnda says, "Probably, but I'm doing it anyway."
She sets the cat on the floor, and walks to the doorway next to Cerin. She looks back at the rest and smiles, then steps into the room.
Instead of landing on the floor, Lynnda floats through air, lazily gliding across the room. She knocks a few of the broken pieces of glass away from her as she approaches the book. She reaches out and grabs the book as she floats by. She then reaches out with her other hand as she approaches the far wall. Black energy crackles around where her hand touched the wall, forming another rune, but Lynnda seems unaffected. Absorbing the impact, she pushes herself in a different direction, this time toward the floating rod. Grabbing that, she uses it to knock away the rotting dead bird as she approaches it, sending a dozen maggots floating away in different directions.
"Eww. Hey, if it weren't for the dead bird and the maggots, this would be a lot of fun!"
She stows the book and rod in her satchel as she pushes off another wall toward the scroll case. This time, she misses, clipping a large piece of the broken wine bottle, and sending it spinning toward the door. The bottle crosses the threshold of the doorway just three inches above the floor, and it clinks on the floor. The label of the wine bottle is still visible.
Lynnda then manages to grab the scroll case, and then pushes back toward the door. As she approaches the open doorway, she grabs the door frame before she crosses the threshold. She then pulls herself slowly toward the hallway, stepping out with one foot. Her foot firmly on the ground, she steps back into the hallway.
With a big smile, she quips, "Actually, that was a lot of fun!"
Shadow sits stiffly at the edge of the door, her unblinking amber eyes following Lynnda as she floats through the strange spherical room. The cat steps aside when her master steps back through the doorway into the hallway. She then winds around her master's ankles, purring loudly.
"Maow!"
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As he puts away the hook and line, Cerin gently scolds Lynnda. "That was very dangerous! You didn't know what kind of effect that energy could have had on you! You may have some skill with magic, but remember it is nothing with which to play. I would miss you if anything happened to you and I'm sure Shadow would be devastated."
"Well, what's done is done. We should check out what you have found and then head back to that passage we have not yet explored."
"Why, Cerin, I didn't know you cared! ...uh, actually I did know. That you cared. Um...kidding aside, you're probably right."
Halvor just gulps audibly as Lynnda enters the room, following her movements with concern as she floats around. He holds out his hand for her to grab onto as she reaches the door, but finds she doesn't need it. "That might be fun...at some other time. Let's get going."
Krissina tries to call forth her power to pull the objects from the room (the book, scroll case and rod - the Raven can stay where it is and I've pretty much trashed the wine).
Lynnda shows you all the three objects that she retrieved from the room and sets them on the floor for closer examination: a tattered leather-bound book, a scroll case, and a twisted iron rod with a forked tip. The rod is about eighteen inches long and weighs about a pound.
As she sets the rod down, she glances at the section of broken wine bottle that floated out of the room. "Huh. That's weird."
The wine label is printed in modern Taldane. The bottle is from Jeggare Estate Vinyards in northwestern Cheliax. Vintage 4699.
Lynnda casts a spell, causing her eyes to glow blue. She examines the three items she retrieved from the strange gravity-free room, picking up each item in turn.
"Well, the rod appears to be a magic wand. Activating the wand causes the forked tip to charge with magical electricity, which would cause a nasty shock if you touched it to something."
"There seems to be a magical scroll in the scroll case." She opens the case and retrieves a rolled parchment. She casts another spell and the color that her eyes glowed changes from blue to amber. She unrolls the scroll and examines it for a moment. "This is a spell scroll that will evoke a fan of searing flames." She looks at Krissina and remarks, "Very much like the spell you cast at those ranseur-wielding creeps with the little arms on their chins."
"The book isn't magical."
Halvor shuffles his feet. He realizes this is probably good stuff to have, but it wasn't something to stab with or to prevent being stabbed, so his interest level was minimal. He just waits patiently like a good fellow while the magicky sorts figure out what to do with the stuff.
"I don't know my wine much, more of a beer and ale girl, but it's relatively recent, compared to the halls. Do you think Tsuto explored this far underground?"
Krissina reaches for the book, "Lets see if this enlightens us any"
Thumbing through the book, it is apparent that the tome is very, very old. The text is written in a language Cerin does not understand. However he can tell that the script is not Thassilonian. The cover is made of dark brown leather with a stylized sigil in the form of a doglike head with three eyes.
The book is written in a reddish brown ink. It appears to have three sections. The first and shortest part is mostly text, with occasional woodcut illustrations of what appear to be summoning sigils. The second part appears to include poetry or verse, along with obscene woodcut illustrations of profane rites that include unspeakable degrading sexual acts and human sacrifice. The third section appears to be a bestiary of horrific creatures, complete with detailed and lurid woodcut illustrations of these monstrosities.
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Cerin closes the book with a thump and a look of disgust. He is torn between destroying this unholy tome immediately or trying to decipher it first to see if there is anything useful that could be used against the spawn of Lamashtu. His curiosity wins out and he packs the book away.
"I should have known. When monsters and demons are around, it figures that Lamashtu is somehow involved." He spins on his heel and heads back to the unexplored passage.
Halvor looks curiously at Cerin, wondering what could have caused his reaction. The warrior makes a mental note to ask the gnome later, walking with him to the unexplored portion of the labyrinth along with the rest of his dungeon-delving companions.
Looking over Cerin's shoulder as he thumbs through the book, Lynnda's expression turns from curiosity to horror.
"Lamashtu! It's all going back to her! Tsuto's journal said that Nualia has become a priestess of Lamashtu and wants to become a demon herself!"
Still holding the metal wand, she asks, "Does anyone mind if I keep this? I'm pretty sure that I know how to use it."
You make your way back through the complex, past rooms that still hold corpses of the monsters you've slain. You pass the red marble statue of the angry woman that had held Halvor's mithril ranseur, and turn onto the passage you bypassed earlier.
The passage widens into what appears to be a small shrine. To the northeast, steps lead up to a platform of gray stone, about five feet above the floor. Sitting atop the platform is a stone altar, little more that a block of dull black rock with a shallow concave depression on the top. The basin it forms is filled with what appears to be gray, cloudy water.
Closed stone double doors stand to the southeast. Both doors are carved with that same seven-pointed star rune, with another spiky rune in the center of each star.
Standing before the altar, you all get a vague uneasy feeling of foreboding.
"Is all the water in this foul place cursed?" The warrior laments, looking on the altar with trepidation. "Is this something to do with Mashtoo?"
Cerin invokes the wisdom of Gozreh to show him what things have been unnaturally altered with magic.
The water itself radiates faint transmutation magic.
Nothing else in the room has a magical aura.
"I wouldn't touch that water with a six foot stave, never mind with bare skin. Let's be onwards." Krissina feels distinctly uncomfortable in the place of dark worship.
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Cerin turns around to face the group, his face pale.
"This is where all these monstrosities are coming from. That unholy altar is dedicated to Lamashtu and the waters created within are empowered by her profane magic. Those who drink are given her blessing and twisted into the things we have seen here. We must find some way to destroy it!"
He draws his sword and turns back, starting slowly up the stairs and looking for the best way to ruin it. He wishes he had thought to bring some holy water.
Halvor doesn't really understand all of that, but he understands Cerin's intent. He follows him up the stairs to the altar, ready to help destroy it in the best way the gnome sees fit.
Cerin: It's obvious that a sledgehammer or pickaxe would be a more appropriate tool to destroy the black stone altar. Alternatively, either holy divine magic or powerful abjuration magic might sever its connection to the Demon Queen.
Now that Cerin and Halvor are standing on the platform, you can clearly see that a rune is carved in the wall behind the altar.
Examining the rune:
Pondering physical destruction of the altar:
Pondering magical destruction of the altar:
"Cerin, I don't know much about unholy altars, but messing with it might be dangerous. Maybe Father Zantus would have some ideas about what to do with it?"
Turning toward the double doors to the southeast, she casts detect magic and examines them. "I don't sense anything magical about the doors."
The doors are locked.
Halvor leaves the altar, sensing the urgency of Lynnda's voice. As Cerin attempts to open the doors and they don't budge, he prepares to put his shoulder into the door, then remembers there is one among them who can open the door with a bit more style. He steps to the side to allow Kyrian forward.
Kyrian cracks his knuckles and takes out his lockpicks. "Well, let's see what we got here..." Kneeling before the doors, he works on the lock for several minutes. As he works, his expression changes from confidence, to curiosity, to confusion, to frustration, to anger. He suddenly stands and throws a lockpick at the floor in frustration. "Damnit! That thing's impossible!"
"Or we could try this handy keyring I found." Krissina steps forwards twirling the keys around her finger in an uncharacteristically girlish way, before picking a key at random and trying it in the lock.
Krissina steps past Kyrian and tries one of the keys on the keyring. The key fits into the lock perfectly. She turns the key and there's an audible click! as the doors unlock.
The doors open to reveal a huge room beyond. It looks like nothing more than an immense underground cathedral, with a vaulted ceiling 30 feet above your heads. Smaller stone doors stand to either side of the main entrance, but beyond this, the smooth stone walls are carved with strange, spiky runes. Suspended from the ceiling on chains hang four glass spheres that glow with an unearthly reddish light, illuminating the whole room. In the center of the room is a large pool, with a ring of polished human skulls balanced on iron spikes arranged in a circle in the deeper midsection. At the far end of the room, a pair of stone stairways lead up to a pulpit, on which sits a second pool. This pool is triangular in shape, and filled with churning, bubbling, metallic liquid that looks almost like translucent molten gold. Yet, while wisps of what seems like steam rise from the strange golden liquid, the room itself is deathly cold.
As the doors swing open, their hinges creak loudly. As you take in the room, you notice a strangely small figure standing on the pulpit next to the golden pool, its back to the door. It turns to you at the sound of the doors opening. Roughly humanoid in shape, the creature stands perhaps two feet tall, is obviously female, and wears a tiny green dress. It shouts, "How dare you violate the Mother's sanctum!"
Round 1
Spitting curses at you all, the creature spreads her batlike wings and launches into the air, swooping back over the triangular pool, where she hovers about five feet above it. While she flies, she draws a tiny dagger from its sheath, and cuts herself with it. Drops of blood fall into the bubbling pool, causing it to bubble even more furiously.
At the same time, the larger pool also starts to bubble violently.
Halvor moves into the room warily, his eyes on both of the bubbling pools as he starts to ascend the stairs to the pulpit, sword and shield leading.
Krissina heads up the stairs murmuring something, and her morningstar gains an odd cast, as if reflecting flame from all around it.