I step forwards with the key, jumping over the foul smelling sludge in the room in front. I kneel down in front of the chest and push the key into the lock. My axe is on my belt but my shield is still on my arm.
Daelric prepares himself for any eventuality, then bends down near the chest, doing his best to avoid the slop and refuse covering the floor. Carefully, he inserts the key and with the barest hesitation he twists the key to the right. With a slight "Snick", the clasp falls open.
Daelric removes the chains securing the chest, then opens the old sea chest to reveal the accumulate wealth of Chief Ripnugget and the Thistletop tribe. It seems to have been culled from junkyards, shipwrecks, ambushed merchants, and unfortunate rival goblin tribes over the past decade or so. This collection consists of an unorganized pile of 7,432 cp, 2,490 sp, 89 gp, 3 pp, a leather pouch of 34 badly fl awed malachites worth 1 gp each, a Medium chain shirt, a Medium masterwork scimitar, a pair of masterwork manacles, a gold holy symbol of Sarenrae worth 100 gp, a jade necklace worth 60 gp, and a fine blue silk gown with silver trim worth 150 gp.
"Wow! Dibs on the gown," says Kiera as the treasure is revealed.
"So um... I think we should finish exploring the bottom levels of this place," she says. "Make sure there are no other threats leftover from Nualia, the goblins, or the Runelords."
"Agree, with both the claim on the gown, and the return to the bottom levels," Volkar said. "Plus, blue silk just isn't my fabric and I don't think Andrezi would look good in that color."
Volkar chuckled as he winked at Kiera.
Andrezi looks at his blue cloak, then at Volkar, then back to his cloak.
"See if I heal you anymore." the priest says feigning offense.
Struggling to conceal a smirk, Kiera says, "I think Daelric could pull it off - the silver would be nice. But I'll take this as a share."
I look to Andrezi, "Isn't blue your goddess' colour?" I eye the gown up, abd look at myself, "I think it's too big for me."
After a few moments of jest, the team returns to the lowest level, winding their way through the hallways and ancient paths back to the lowest levels. You move back to the room with the golden statue, and the last of Kieras spell tingles at her spidey sense. After a few moments, she can see that the statue is indeed a doorway, and the coin sized niches in the wall have something to do with opening the doorway.
Kiera thinks for a moment, then says, "This is stupid." She rummages in her satchel and produces a gold piece, which she puts into the slot.
Andrezi shrugs and does the same, trusting the scholar's instincts.
"We give it gold? Really now, well that would keep most dwarves out of there." Volkar fished into his money pouch and pulled out a gold coin and relunctantly slipped it into the statue.
"Probably paying off a runelord who's extra-greedy."
As the team each places a gold piece into one of the empty coin sized slots to either side of the golden statue. Suddenly, the golden column of coins in the alcove slides into the floor with a deep basso rumble of grinding stone. A puff of long undisturbed dust belches from the newly revealed archway as a long room is revealed behind the statue. Walking into the room reveals three double doors; one before you and one each to either side, north and south.
"Well, we paid the admission, might as well head on in." Andrezi says, casting a protective spell on himself.
Kiera nods, and gestures for the group to accompany her.
"Which door?" she says, surveying the three sets of doors.
Volkar looked at the hidden chamber and its three double doors. "How about this one here,he said looking at the door to his left after he stepped into the chamber.
I follow everyone into the main chamber, looking at the doors carefully. To see if there any any signs of recent passage.
If I see nothing then I shall go and stand beside the left door, raise my shield and push the door open once everyone is ready and in position.
Volkar and Daelric move to the left hand door and
This barren room contains an upraised dais on which sits a marble throne. To either side stand statues of a man clutching a book and a glaive. A ghostly figure seems to be seated in the throne, an image of the same man who appears in the statues. He seems to be addressing an audience as he moves his hands about, fingers decorated with hooked rings, but the words issuing form his phantom mouth are difficult to make out and in a strange language.
While watching the ghostly image rant on, Kiera suddenly has an inspiration... leaning closer to the image, she realizes that she can kind of make out the words that the man is speaking by reading his lips. It is extremely hard as she has never heard the words spoken, but eventually she realizes that he is speaking ancient Thassalonian!
Kiera watches the image closely, then slowly says, "I think this is an image of an actual Runelord! A final message left behind before the fall of ancient Thassilon."
"Really, that is what they looked like? I thought they were giants, god-like, they look rather human," Volkar said as he looked back to the image. "What is he trying to tell us?"
"Runelords are the ones that built this place, right? It is quite something to see the long since passed so clearly." I don't move until Kiera says that it is safe to do so, at which time I walk into the room and look around.
"That's certainly not something you see everyday." Andrezi says watching the image.
Brow furrowed, Kiera says, "As best I can tell, it's a programmed illusion left exhorting his followers to remain and telling them that he's about to unleash a devastating strike against their foes. I guess he was a little overconfident."
"So this guy started a war against others?" Volkar asked as he continued to look at the talking statute next to him. He tried to see if the statutes were of the same man talking and what might be on the books.
The team moves into the room, discussing the silent image and the startling confirmation of this fortresses origins. Moving about the room, it is obvious that this chamber was something important but nothing remains barring the image and the two matching statues.
"From a time of legends it seems, makes sense. The green ears could never have built what we have seen. Does make you wonder how they took over such a fortress though, and from whom." Volkar asked as he turned back towards the double doors.
Volkar moves towards the next door off of the hidden antechamber and opens it. This room contains three low tables, their tops covered with a strange and chilling selection of tools, saws, long bladed knives, and objects whose purpose is not readily apparent. A strange collection of bones lies near the southern table—too many to be one skeleton, but too few to be two.
Kiera translates: "…is upon us, but I command you 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 be the last thing you…”
She pauses, then says, "I think he was attacked first - or the doom of Thassilon fell and he thought it was an attack - and he ordered his followers to stand their ground in preparation for a retaliatory strike. Given what we know of the history of Thassilon, of course, that probably never happened."
Kiera looks at the statues curiously, then casts detect magic on them.
Looking at the table of instrument and the remains in the room, Andrezi comments, "Nothing good could have happened here."
"Mistress Kiera, you said this guy was a Runelord, um, what was he the lord of again," Volkar asked over his shoulder as he nodded in agreement with Andrezi.
"Not sure which one..." says Kiera.
"Information about the Runelords is sketchy. It was a long time ago and their whole empire was destroyed! From what I've read they were powerful magicians - very powerful - who tapped into some kind of runic magic connected to particular taboos. They let magical principles shape their behavior, which in turn amplified their magical power."
She holds up a finger and with a single syllable it slightly glows. She waves her finger back and forth in the air and the glow rises or dims as she traces various nonsense patterns. "You see? When magicians wiggle their fingers it makes magic happen - that's a very, very simple form of using a particular action to make magic. The Runelords, though, shaped their lives around it. They'd behave, talk, dress, and act in ways that helped to project, um, specific archetypes, which in turn made them more powerful. So a Runelord might venerate greed, or wrath, or lust... and those could determine the kind of person they were."
"All of them, though," she continues, "were arrogant and powerful, with slaves and outposts and apprentices and... you get the idea. But none of it could save them from the fall of ancient Thassilon."
Kiera casts a spell on the statues, and is relieved when they do not respond to her magic. The group follows Volkar to the next room, where Andrezi gets a serious case of the heebie jeebies.
Volkar stepped into the room and stopped on the top landing. He looked down at the tables and then back at his colleagues. "Gotta say, why would you have such a room next to your throne room?"
Andrezi peers into the room and can tell that although old, the surgical tools were well fashioned and are of exquisite quality with little evidence of their great age. Looking over the pile of bones, it seems to have belonged to a two-headed man with what looks to be an additional partial skeleton of a smaller man growing from the small of his back! With a shudder, the cleric begins to turn away before an odd star shaped item on the desk catches his eye. It glints in the light as if shiny or made from a polished metal.
"What do we have here?" Andrezi semi-rhetorically asks, approaching the object that had caught his attention.
Volkar looked about as Andrezi walked past him. The bones in the room brought a look of disgust to the dwarf's face. He stepped further into the room following the cleric as the human made a quick pass by the tables. Volkar stood a bit longer staring at the strange skeltal creature. The thing had three heads. Two actual heads and a smaller body coming out of the creature's back.
When he heard Andrezi ask what they had there in the room, he answered over his shoulder, "um the bones of one of the strangest men I have ever seen."
He realized that Andrezi was looking at the desk and not the bones, so he turned to where he could watch the cleric and also the bones. The bones caused him a great deal of concern.
Andrezi picks up the odd item and examines it. It appears to be a silver and gold seven-pointed star, one surface studded with nodules and blades, and the other featuring a thin curved handle.
Kiera looks at the surgical tools and pokes one very hesitantly but refuses to pick them up. "I can only imagine someone carried out horrible experiments here," she said.
"I feel like... there's something we're missing."
Orik looks to Kiera, his eyes wide. "That's seriously messed up!!" the man says in shock at the wizard's words. "By the gods, I hope they were dead when that was done to them!" he finishes with a shudder.
"What do you mean, missing something? I'm not sure I want to see what may be hidden if this is what's in plain view!"
-Posted with Wayfinder
"Call it a hunch, I guess," Kiera says to Orik. "This is an impressive facility, but this lab is... just not... not quite everything that a mighty wizard would have, I feel. Maybe I'm overselling the Runelords, but I feel like... this is not as impressive as I was expecting. Like a Runelord should have a huge treasure horde, or a room for hiding in stasis when the world ends, or a fantastic foundry for making magical weapons for his or her minions."
"It does have more of the feel of an outpost rather than a stronghold, doesn't it." Andrezi says in agreement with Kiera. "One set of doors left, shall we see what horrors lie beyond?"
Kiera nods. "Yes. Let's see what's left."
"I agree Orik, nothing here is natural and I too pray these things were dead before anyone tried to recreate those," Volkar said as he pointed at the skeltons. He shivered and turned back towards the doors.
When Andrezi and Kiera talked about the other set of doors, Volkar headed to those and took a look at them to see if they were different from the other two.
I step into the room with the skeleton and look around.