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As you are taking a tour of the Azlant Ridge, the surviving Aspis Consortium agents (and several horses with empty saddles) arrive at the gate and scream loudly to be let in. The camp looks to Dias to make the decision, but she leaves it to you. “It’s your call. We could use extra swords against those things, but they’ve been chasing you and trying to kill you so I will back your decision.”
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B1. Fortified Gate
The fortified gate of the palisade wall is constructed from thick logs, lashed tightly together and sealed with pitch. A sturdy log stands above the gate, serving as both a lookout post and a brace to lash the gate to when it’s closed. To open the gate, the guards have to untie the ropes holding the gate in place, and then push it aside on two sets of enormous wooden wheels. The gate is covered in dents, scrapes, chips, and blood.
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B3. The Ivory Sphere
A precise and professional terraced dig site surrounds a half-sphere of a smooth, almost mirror-like white material. While it looks almost exactly like polished ivory, it’s slightly warm to the touch and glows with a soft, white light. As the charau-ka get closer to the camp, the sphere begins to glow brighter.
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B4. Excavation Camp
In the middle of the camp rests two large, but dirty and sagging tents—one is used for cooking, and the other as a mess hall. Between them are 10 canvas tents lined up in two neat rows, but suffering from rips and tears that seem to have been made by claws. Inside several of the tents
rest camp workers, all tired, hungry, and sick.
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B6. The Metal Door.
At fifteen feet high and ten feet wide, this door is an impressive structure. Carved from a dull yet shimmering metal, every inch of its surface is covered in runes, glyphs, pictographs, and intricate patterns. A single rift, about an inch deep, splits the door in half from top to bottom, giving you the impression that it might open were it only to have handles. The door sits recessed several feet into the jagged rock of the ridge’s impressive cliff face, which stretches a hundred feet or more above the camp.
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Frustrated by the polite tour, Balthazar looks about for a scholarly type, with whom he can discuss the expeditions findings. Whether he finds one or not, he will end up in front of the metal door, and try to make sense of its writings.
Regarding the Aspis, he waves his hand dismissively. "If you let them in, make sure you kill the leader."
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Marshala bites her tongue regarding the sphere (a rare bit of tact from the pirate) and turns to the door.
If the runes on the door look magical, she will cast read magic and attempt to decipher
If there's no indication from the above checks or from party members that doing so is dangerous, she'll pull the key from her haversack and look for a way to open the door.
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As soon as you even remotely mention to Dias that you have a key that kinda maybe looks like the runes on the door, she asks for it. Let me see it! It may be the answer!
Once you give it to her, she'll tell you to step back. She descends the terraced excavation to the door and spends several minutes tracing her hands along various pictographs and symbols, constantly looking to the key and then back to door. Without warning, she slaps the key into a space that just moments before wouldn’t have fit it, and the door slowly, silently, opens outward to reveal a set of wide stairs descending into darkness.
She turns back to you with a huge grin on her face, but as she's about to speak the horn sounds from the tower over the palisade gate and the camp suddenly leaps into action. She runs back up the terraced dig and says, “Explore the complex, find out what might be in there, and hope to the gods it’s something that will help us. I have to organize our defense. Go! GO!”
As she sprints off toward the camp’s defenses, a familiar roar thunders in the air, and a cacophony of screeching and screaming sounds echoes from all around the palisade wall.
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You find no traps. As you enter, a wide set of stairs descends into an enormous room, measuring thirty-five feet wide by forty feet long, and more than thirty feet tall. The entire room smells sickly sweet, but the floors, wall, and ceiling are all smooth and clean—rather similar to the sphere in the ground outside. Four enormous monoliths, fifteen-foot-tall human-shaped metal statues, rest in the four corners of the room. They’re made of white metal, almost like a suit of full plate sized quite large, but without anything discernible as a face.
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"Hrmph. Seems like we're merely Zey's delivery monkeys." Balthazar crossed his arms as Dias performed the ritual to open the door.
He shouted after Dias as she hurried away to organize the camps defenses.
"Rushed archeology gleans a mere fraction of... Oh, forget it." he trailed off, muttering. He looked back at the yawning maw of the opened door and smiled to his compatriots.
"Shall we?" he asked, pulling out his trusty dagger and tapping himself with his wand.
Once inside, he admired the craftsmanship of the giant statues as he tried to place the smell.
"Amazing. Do you realize this chamber has been sealed for nearly 10,000 years?" he seemed to be thinking aloud, rather than asking a question.
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If we haven't uncovered anything of further importance with our search of this room and the various knowledge checks, then Wilhimina will impatiently wait for the rogue to proceed her as she starts shining the light into the next area.
"In my experience, old temples and ruins that have been this well sealed are usually trapped. You're good at finding those, right?" She asks Whisper.
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The light red ghoul comes up and triggers Marshala's readied action.
As it can't attack around a hard corner, it tries to continue on to a double move which will provoke an attack from Whisper.
Dark red also comes to attack Whisper, and will attack him with its and if it hits will deal plus disease and paralysis
Pink will move up to Balthazar and attack with its and if it hits will deal plus disease and paralysis
Blue will move through Balthazar and Marshala it will at Balthazar and if it hits will deal plus disease and paralysis
Orange will double move through Balthazar and Marshala
Grey will also double move through Balthazar and Marshala
Balthazar to finish Round 1, then start Round 2.
Whisper
Wilhimina
Marshala
Lt Red 1 dmg
Dk Red _ dmg
Pink 1 dmg
Blue 1 dmg
Orange _ dmg
Grey _ dmg
Balthazar