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Sometime during the night, Guiness wakes up and relieves himself, coughing up some remaining gunk from Tentamort poison out of his lungs. Feeling somewhat better, he heads back to rest, though his dreams are troubled still (down to 1 point Con damage).
That morning, Guiness hears Kargas’ comments and responds, ”You too? I dreamt of demon dog madness as well, but I just figured it was due to nearly dying yesterday—twice. That’s a new record for me, by the way.”
Guiness continues, ”So, perhaps a new plan for me today in combat...more standing and protecting, rather than rushing in and dying.”
Kellek puts down his newly acquired spell book at mention of the dreams. "Fascinating. Tell me more." He grabs up his journal and a pen to take notes.
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Considering a moment, Guiness waxes uncharacteristically poetic, "My dreams were strange, turbulent visions of darkness, wetness and warmth; of blood, bile, pooling phlegm and other fluids; and of my body being twisted and changed, growing limbs and fur and eyes and all manner of putrid extremities."
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Colvyn feeds the animal and prays for his spells. He then eats some of his own rations while he listen to the conversation between Guiness and Kellek. While he is starting to warm up to the dwarf, he still doesn't know about the wizard. The man is still a mystery to him and he seems to be a hard book to read. Once he feels the everyone should be ready, he stands to get his bow ready and then turns toward the group. "Everyone ready to go back in there?"
Rig shrugs. "I slept fine." He hates to have to say that, but he can't help that he's a good sleeper. "Ready when you are."
Colvyn feeds the animal and prays for his spells. He then eats some of his own rations while he listen to the conversation between Guiness and Kellek. While he is starting to warm up to the dwarf, he still doesn't know about the wizard. The man is still a mystery to him and he seems to be a hard book to read. Once he feels the everyone should be ready, he stands to get his bow ready and then turns toward the group. "Everyone ready to go back in there?"
"It would probably be better if I had time to prepare more scrolls." Kellek says pointedly. He sighs and rises to his feet. "But, I suppose...."
Pushing himself to his feet with a grunt, Kargas checks his weapons and gives a satisfied nod. "Let's go.
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You prepare your spells, complete your prayers, and do your best to put any strange nightmares behind you. Your descent back into the ancient halls inside Thistletop is uneventful. Once you get to the lowest floor, you hop over the disabled trap, avoid stepping on Nualia's beheaded body, and file down the southern hallway.
The short hallway emerges into an L-shaped room. To the room's southern end, a pair of stone doors have been carved with the depictions of two skeletons reaching out to clutch a skull between them. These doors don't appear to be locked, but the handles to open them are carved to look like the femurs of some large creature.
To the east the room narrows down to a pillar that appears to be made of tens of thousands of big and chunky gold coins stacked atop of each other. The coins glitter in the light from whatever lantern or light spell you're using, and you notice that their edges are carved with tiny, spiky runes.
Desna, grant me more spring in my step as we descend again into this evil place. "I'm ready as well!"
"Kellek, would you give those coins a once over for magic? If not, we might have hit a little lottery here..." Flo says as she checks the other end of the hallway for traps. "How thematic," she comments dryly at the femur handles.
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Kellek inspects the coins first with magic and then by more mundane means.
Kellek also recognizes the tiny spiked runes as Thassilonian symbology. He looks over the coin stack and realizes that the same runes appear over and over. After a moment to recall his knowledge of Thassilonian, he realizes that the edges of the coins all say 'Prosperity Beyond Death'.
Colvyn first studies the big door for any signs of a trap. If he doesn't find anything, he moves to the pile of gold coins. He looks for traps there too, not trusting such obvious pile of treasure. "Whatever you do, don't touch that gold. I find it hard to believe that no one claimed it before we got here."
Peering curiously over the shoulders of the others, Kargas frowns at the runic writing on the coins. "So what's it do? Blast us with magic? Turn us to stone? Oo! Maybe gold just sticks to it..."
Reaching into his belt pouch, Kargas fishes out a coin and rests in on his thumb. Aiming carefully, he flicks the coin through the air to touch the pillar.
While Colvyn doesn't find any traps, his careful inspection of the pillar made of golden coins does turn up two interesting points that Kellek missed. First, the coins of the pillar appear to be fused to one another rather than just stacked on top of each other. It wouldn't be easy to extract all this gold without breaking them apart. Second, at about chest height for a human there are two small and well disguised slots in the pillar or coins, one on the left and another on the right. Each slot is about half an inch wide and one and a half inches tall. Peering into the slots, your darkvision helps you make out that they run about half a foot into the pillar.
Kargas' coins tumbles through the air and strikes the pillar, clinking loudly before dropping down to the ground. No gold-based magnetism going on here :>
"This is odd. The coins seem to be fused together. It would take quite a lot of time and effort to extract those." Colvyn continues his inspection for a few more seconds. "Ah! look here, there is a small opening... and there's a second one. Did we find anything that could fit in there? If not, maybe we missed something."
"Or a coin," Rig says pointing at the stack of coins. "Prosperity beyond death?"
After careful inspection, Colvyn concludes that the slots are slanted ever so slightly downward, just enough to overcome the overall tilt of this floor towards the west.
Kargas take a few steps back.
Colvyn takes the coins from Guiness. He looks at then for a second, then at the slots. "Sure, why not." He moves toward the pillar and place one coins in each slot. He hols his breath as he is half expecting something bad to happen.
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Colvyn slips coins into both slots. You hear them rolling down into the pillar and then drop... and then suddenly silence. You don't hear them moving anymore. If they fell, there wasn't any sound of them hitting anything.
For a few seconds, you think this was all a huge waste of time. But then the pillar begins emitting a grinding sound as ancient mechanisms begin to turn. The whole pillar shakes and then slowly lowers itself into the floor. As it moves, you see that the gold coins were just a facade and the rest of the pillar was stone.
The chamber beyond is cold, dark and dusty. Stone walls arch up to a ceiling inscribed with ornate imagery of coins, gems, and other treasures. This t-shaped chamber has three sets of doors. The ones to the north and east are simple stone affairs with carved stone handles. The ones to the south are also made of stone, but bear no handles. Instead, an indentation in the shape of a seven-pointed star lies at the spot where a handle should be. The indentation is filled with a seemingly random array of hollows and narrow slits.
I'll make sure it's safe," With the scrape of leather against steel Kargas draws his falchion and steps into the room.
While he waits for the screaming to begin, Kellek turns and looks to the doors around the corner to the south.
With none of his allies protesting his choice of door, Guiness opens up the way north. The stone door is as heavy as it looks, and it takes plenty of strength from Guiness to get it open. Inside, you see a cold and barren stone room with a cavernous ceiling. At its northern end sits an imposing marble throne upon an upraised dais. To either side of the throne are statues of a man clutching a book and a glaive.
A spectral figure sits on the throne, his appearance matching that of the statues. As you watch, he moves with hazy stutters. He seems to be addressing an audience as he moves his hands about, his fingers decorated with hooked rings. At the same time, barely audible words issue forth from him, though their sounds don't quite match up to the movements of his mouth.
"-is upon us, but I command you to remain. Witness my power, how Alaznist's petty wrath is but a flash compared to my strength. Take my final work to your graves, and let its memory by the last thing you-"
Kellek doesn't see anything changing with the doors to the south in the L-shaped chamber.
"Ghosts?" Rig asks he tries to peer around the others to look into the room. "What's it saying?" Thinking that ghosts might also try some sort of scare tactic, and having had his fill, Rig starts humming a little ditty to bolster his allies courage, and his own. (Starting a rallying cry, so that even if I stop, it will linger for a bit)
Kargas also comes up behind Guiness, staring at the flickering image on the throne with mouth agape. "Is it dangerous? It seems...broken, can it even see us?" The half-orc waves an arm to see if the figure reacts. If it doesn't, he leans carefully forward to check left and right of the doorway without actually entering the chamber.
While Rig hums, Kargas peeks cautiously around the corner. Both sides of the room appear to be bare, if dusty. While you're waiting for Flo, Kellek and Colvyn to come over from their inspection of the L-shaped room, the rest of you notice that the spectral figure is going through an identical set of motions and words on about a one-minute cycle.
His performance always ends with him extending his hand out towards you while an imperious expression builds on his face, before suddenly snapping back to his initial vaguely irritated cast.
With one door opened, Colvyn inspect the other two. He is a bit unnerved by the talking image of the man in the north room and tries not to stare at it.
Colvyn checks the eastern door and doesn't find any kind of trap associated with it, leaving Guiness free to open the way onward.
The eastern room is a far more humbly decorated location than the northern chamber. It contains three low tables, their tops covered with a strange and chilling selection of tools: saws, long-bladed knives, corkscrew-like devices, multi-pronged probes, and other objects whose purpose is even less apparent. A strange collection of ancient bones lies near the southern table - with too many bones to be a single human skeleton, but too few to be two.
As you come close to inspect it, the errant breeze of your movement is enough to disrupt the skeleton and it crumbles to dust.
Colvyn also takes a look at the southern door. It appears to be secured closed in some kind of fashion (perhaps by magic), but it doesn't appear to have any traps on it.
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Looking through the room with the others, Guiness remarks, "Hey, that seven pointed star device looks like it could fit in that indentation on the southern door. A key, perhaps, or is that too obvious?"
When they are done with the room, Guiness offers to be the one to try the star in the southern door (once everyone is ready). First, though, he wants to make sure the northern door is closed, because that apparition gives him the creeps...
Stepping cautiously into the eastern room, Kargas briefly examines the various instruments. When the bizarre skeleton does move he slowly inches closer and nudges it with the tip of his blade, grunting in surprised satisfaction when it crumbles to dust instead of leaping up to attack him.
After a few moments he steps back into the central hall to rejoin the others. Guiness' speculation about a key draws a shrug from the half-orc. "I don't have a better idea."
"Well? What are you all doing in there?"
Kellek comes in and inspects the situation. He inspects the spook.
"'-is upon us, but I command you to remain. Witness my power, how Alaznist's petty wrath is but a flash compared to my strength. Take my final work to your graves, and let its memory by the last thing you-'" says the wizard repeating the ghost's muddled message in the Common tongue. "Interesting."
Kellek recognizes Alaznist's name from his studies as that of one of the ancient 'Runelords', the rulers of ancient Thassilon. Her domain was that of evocation, which back in those old times was referred to as "wrath magic" for is great destructive power and the way the wizards of the time fed powerful evocation spells using the sin of wrath.
It's clear that this room and the apparition that sits within it are relics of that age. It's also quite likely that the apparition is an image of some great ruler or general from that time - maybe even one of the other Runelords!
Guiness heads over to the southern door with the star-shaped tool and holds it up to the socket. It looks like it'd be a perfect fit.
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When Guiness suggests the star-thing may be a key, Rig holds up a hand. "Whoa there. Let's not be too hasty. I seem to recall the scary lady trying to free something locked up. On the off-hand chance that she didn't recognize that as a key, let's take a beat and think." He looks over to Colvyn. "Does that door look like it's been opened recently?"
"I don't think anyone made it in here for a long time, but I will take a closer look." Colvyn heads back to the locked door and tries to find any clues that someone might have passed here recently or even used the door.
Colvyn and Guiness carefully check the southern door. From the trails in the dust on the floor, Colvyn deduces that his party are the only people who have been in these rooms in an incredibly long time. If Nualia had gotten in here, she's done a fantastic job at hiding her tracks. He follows the party's trail back out into the L-shaped hall and notices that this area is much more trafficked. Very likely Nualia and her allies had never made it past the pillar of gold.
Meanwhile Guiness puts his ear up against the heavy stone door. He hears absolutely nothing beyond as his ear presses against the cold stone.
"Let's remember that Nualia may have only just gotten past us." Kellek says, recalling the carefully concealed door down to this level of the dungeon.