Adotiln grunts his approval and moves to flank it, raising his shield in one arm, and hefting his warhammer in the other he eyes it suspiciously and waits...
Byden's vicious attack smites the stone egg, causing a large crack to form in it and drawing a roar of rage and pain to rise from it. It begins to writhe and shift slowly taking on the shape of a small humanoid.
Adotiln sees the small humanoid screaming and roaring and immediately takes a swing at it with his warhammer. Even though it has been many a year since he has manned a forge his aim still strikes true with a heavy blow.
Senna wasn't sure what she was expecting from the egg - but screaming and transmogrification wasn't it. She lets out an eep and practically jumps out of her skin. "Gorum's iron balls!"
Adotiln's smash put an end to the screaming and the small figure shatters, spilling fragments of stone across the floor.
"Ha, nice work Adotiln. Now let's take a look at this altar thing," Byden stomps forward over chunks of the shattered egg monster and gives the red metal altar an experimental kick. If nothing worrying happens he sheathes his swords and tries to ascertain how heavy it is - thinking to haul it down to Diamond Lake later to see what they might get for it.
"Well tha' was anticlimactic." Ratcht said with a grin. "Sad. Ah kinda liked havin' a little glow-rock."
"I'm fine with anticlimactic, beats the hells out of getting bust up," Byden grunts as he struggles with the strange red altar.
"I'll drink t' that." Ratchet says twisting the top off his flask and taking a swig while he watched Byden manhandle the alter.
Senna picks up a couple of pieces of the elemental and pockets them. "Shame he was evil. He might have made an interesting companion."
Sweeping around to the other side of the orignal room, you find that the east side of the room is a near mirror of the west side, with a wide arch in the eastern wall leading to another side chamber. On the pillar where the vomitous fountain was on the other side, a smaller column appears to be nested within the larger pillar. More bizzarre is that protruding from the base of this smaller stone pillar are a pair of desiccated legs.
"Uhhh... are those legs?" Senna says, stating the obvious. She looks carefully at the pillar and legs trying to decipher if the pillar crushed someone or a set of detached legs wound up there.
Byden detects evil on the legs, feeling a little silly as he does so. If he detects nothing he advances and examines the legs curiously,
"You think he got squished?"
They are definitely legs, of the non-evil ordinary kind. It appears that poor fellow got caught in a trap of sorts.
Byden moves forward cautiously and searches the legs pockets,
"If this was a trap... there was probably some kind of bait right?" He says, beginning a slow search of the area, careful not to touch anything, and to keep out of Ratchet's way.
"An' that's why we do things my way, at my speed." Ratchet says with a pointed look at Byden.
Ratchet's slow investigation finds an odd irregularity in the stonework. On closer investigation he finds a catch that raises the stone trap revealing the crushed body beneath. The desiccated flesh and crushed bones are still encased in a brilliant suit of chainmail and at its side you find a leather sack that crumbles at a touch. It is mostly filled with shattered stone fragments, but there are 3 small, exquisitely carved stone statuettes that remain unbroken. They are of a grand palace, a slim spire with eight connected smaller towers of different heights and what looks like a grand stadium.
Scattered about the corpse among the other refuse you find 2 wands and a pair of fine googles.
"Well now... poor fellow don't need none o' that stuff anymore. Sure 'e wouldn't mind if'n we used it. Any o' it 'nchanted?"
Senna looks over the goods, "Well, I can tell you which are magical but I don't have an idea what they do. We'll have to use the old 'trial and error' method." She grabs the goggles and puts them on and looks around in areas of darkness and light to see if they do anything.
Byden glances about and seeing no immediate danger begins stripping off his own chainmail,
"I don't think this rust sieve would stand up half as well to being squashed so I'll wear it for the time being if there are no objections? I've a fair guess that I'm better suited for it than any of ye, and I'm likely to be taking the most lumps, we just might need any edge we can get in here."
Senna pulls the goggles off and hands them back to Rollibard. "These make everything a bit bigger - might come in handy. The armor, goggles, and wands are all magical."
"Magic and good steel to. You could wear mine Adotiln, its better than that heavy scale though nothing special. At least there's some point to these sadist's murderous tomb - they had something worth guarding it seems." Byden says, pulling on the new magical chainmail with practiced speed,
"Someone mind giving me a hand at the back here? You have to get this stuff nice and tight or it'll rub you raw ever over the leathers."
Ratchet nods, taking the goggles. "Thanks."
Putting them around his head and adjusting, the pulled them over his eyes to see the effects.
The sorcerer nudges the cleric with a shoulder and a smile, "Hey, Adotiln, wanna take a look at these wands and see if you can figure out what they do? I'm drawing a blank."
Adotiln looks mournfully at the legs, hating to see a life ended so brutally. 'I'm more'n happy to let you do things at your pace Ratchet' he states.
He accepts Bydens suggestion of changing armor and lends him a hand doing up his new set.
Adotiln shakes his head at Senna, 'Sorry lass, me'n magic aren't so good t'gether, I canna help you with those wands'.
Finishing donning his new armor Byden lends Adotiln a hand in turn, cinching the straps as tight as he can and rolling back the sleeves for the smaller dwarf,
"There, it'll serve as long as you weren't planning to attend no balls or fancy dinners. Now we're some of us wounded, I'm thinking we should consider finding somewhere to rest up and tend our wounds for a while. Maybe we could barricade ourselves in that lab using the marble or some such? Its late any road. Perhaps we just finish exploring this section and look for somewhere to hold up?"
Adotilm grunts a thanks for the armor, giving his hammer a few test swings to get used to the feel of it.
After Byden has suggested making camp he seconds the idea, 'Aye, that'd be an idea, who knows wha' lurks further in this place, rested would be good. I ken tend tah peoples wounds, 't wouldn't be tha first time and won't be the last.
Byden drags the red metal altar over into the doorway and piles marble atop it,
"Think we ought to mount watches? I do. It seems a bit pointless, but then ninety nine times out of a hundred watches are - the hundredth they save yer life."
Aye. You an' me take middle watches with an extra hour apiece. Tha' aught t' give our casters enough rest to refuel."
Breaking out a mess kit and a couple big pots, he says "Someone start up two fires for me. Keep 'em small. We don' wanna smoke ourselves out."
Ratchet procedes to rig a series of triplines attached to bells in the nearby corridors and doorways outside the room, and sets a line rigged to a crossbow in the main door to the room.
The sorceress shrugs, "Camping out sounds fine with me." She drops her gear, and makes herself comfortable propped against a wall in sight of the exits. She looks to Byden. "Hey, watcha gonna do with that stick? I can put it to good use until you mount it on your wall or sell it."
"Sure, no good te me, wake me next," Byden says passing it to Senna as he lays out his bedroll. "Best let her hold the glowstone to don't you think Ratchet?"
'I'll be up'n down ova tha course o'tha night tending yer wounds, so if'n ye dun mind I might grab some shut-eye between" Adotilns says, as he starts to rummage through his pack for some bandages and salves.
Between Ratchet's clever traps and setting a watch, you feel safe enough to spend the night the cairn. While undoubtedly creepy, you rest is uninterrupted.
A search of the final door reveals 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 lovingly sculpted wind-tossed robe that gives him the appearance of a triumphant go. 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.
"Right! Where to next?"
Byden wakes with a groan and stretches his stiff back, cracking several joints and his neck before he guzzles down some rations and clambers into his new armor,
"Back up I reckon, looks like we've exhausted things down here - right?" He then begins the laborious process of removing the marble and altar from their makeshift barricade.
"Unless there's something hidden in the walls... and good luck finding it."
Byden grunts in agreement and with a grunt of effort lifts the weird red metal altar,
"Right, I'll carry this towards the elevator, might as well take them up now rather than have to do it if we get dinged up by this hell hole."
Ratchet carefully winds his trip line back onto a spool, leaving the bells on the line in anticipation of needing to use that type of trap again.
Following Byden back out the way they came, he held the glowing rock, hefting it in his hand and contemplating it's uses.
Byden hauls the red altar, and then the lumps of marble up to the elevator, leaving them off to the side so they can be retrieved later. That done he climbs in and travel upwards, sword drawn. If there are no issues he waits for his comrades to join him and then heads back to the domed room with its rainbow lantern corridors.
Scowling in puzzlement, at the glowing green lantern he heads over to it and examines it carefully, then he cautiously attempts to remove the torch inside.
You easily remove the torch, it was only loosely wedged in the lantern. The torch burns brightly, but the flames produce no heat.
"Ha, clinkitty clink!" Byden says shaking an imaginary money purse and tossing the everburning torch to Senna,
"Everyone else can see in the dark, so you might as well carry it for the moment, though I reckon its a seller."
He then moves over to the sarcophagus again and after Ratchet has checked it for traps again, taking his time, Byden heaves it around so the arrow faces the green lantern and steps back to wait looking towards the green lantern passage,
"Let's see what we get hey?"
You turn the arrow towards the green passage and an unhealthy rumbling begins. The elevator starts to rise slowly, reluctantly. It painfully makes it halfway out before grinding to a halt with a tearing groan from something deep within the bowels of the tomb. With a loud crack, the elevator drops from sight and lands with a crash somewhere below, billowing out a puff of dust from the gaping hole where the elevator once stood.
"I'm going to go out on a limb and say it was not meant to do that. Now I guess the question is do we try climbing down or just move on to the next lantern? Anyone have any rope?" Byden asks, surveying the hole.
"Clear this level first. Ah c'n rig somethin' t' git us down there, but Ah don't wan' anythin' up 'ere tha' might sabotage somethin' while we're comin' up or down."
"Aye, sounds sensible, so I should move it round to the next lantern?"
Adotiln coughs as the green one crashes down, 'I may ha' already raised tha green one, looks like it were for tha best then, probably would'a bought us down with it. I did find ha elevator with tha indigo one though tha' looked a wee bit safer.'