Alset ponders T's words and opens the wardrobe to get the key that will unlock her cage. He and wonders at her motives. But is inclined (as always) to believe her and, indeed, to show the mercy of Iomedae to her. Although surprised to hear that his newly acquired robe formerly belonged to the very priest they were looking for. He knows that this makes all kinds of sense. He feels some remorse at the loss of the priest.
"I will release you, but before we enter the sawmill to bring justice on the evil Wymackie and her husband, we'll need a bit more information. First, I'm curious about the Priest of Erastil, why was he taken by Wymackie? Do you know what happened to the temple?"
Alset pauses to allow her to answer, while he unlocks her cage.
"Second, what are these experiments? What are they trying to do? Is this related to the attacks by the lizardfolk and the troll? How many others have they experimented on? We ran across three on the way here, a blindheim, a boalist, and a barrow wight. We dispatched the all."
Alset again pauses to allow her to respond and hands her some water and food to replenish her strength.
"And, what is the 'first creation' you speak of? What do we have to worry about? Does he have your eyes?"
Alset pauses for her again, and lays his hands on her to heal her (if needed) -- any damage, curse, poison, disease, or fatigue is removed.
Typhlothrix says, "The priest was taken because he discovered the secret tunnel they used to smuggle illegal goods and their grotesque projects in and out of the city. He had been captured for nine months before I was imprisoned here. He had been made to turn the wheel, and when I was chained to it as well, we could exchange words under the noise of the grinding gears. He was a kind soul, but had little heart for the hard life on the edge of civilization. He was gullible too, and for years before his capture (so I surmised) thought Wymackie Lumber had simply brought in large offerings of lumber and unmarked boxes to his temple that they forgot to actually offer to Erastil. His church never received the new wood and soon fell into disrepair. He never supposed they were bypassing the taxes at the city gates through the secret hole under the altar.
"But as his will was weak, so too were his arms, even after many months at the wheel. We hardly turned faster when he was at the wheel with me, and Balik (the husband) saw how slow their progress had been these past months. So Anglosa Wymackie (the wife) saw an opportunity to practice her necromancy and turned him into a wight. He turned the wheel much faster after that."
She stumbles out of the cage as Alset unlocks it and stretches, able to finally stand up straight of her own free will.
She shudders as Alset mentions the experiments. "Anglosa is insane, so I know not her reasons, but she has attempted to create a creature with every magical gaze known to her. She smuggled in two giants, I believe they are called ettins, a month ago. She placed one of my eyes and an eye from the priest, the boalisk, and the blindheim in one of the ettins. The ettin did not survive the encounter, but that ws of no consequence to her. She raised him as a skeleton and now is locked away upstairs. I call him...." she pauses for dramatic emphasis. "The Skelettin."
She knows nothing of the lizardfolk or the troll.
"That Skelettin is her first creation. Well, the first that I know of. The second was the other ettin; and he survived the process. She is out with that monster who has my eye, roaming the jungles, testing its new power. She completed that creature's eye transplants not a week ago. I do not know when she will return, but perhaps it is best if you eliminate the first experiment before the second comes back. While ettins are not bright creatures, the second experiment is still smarter than any mindless skeleton."
"Ok, I'll go out first, the rest of you follow the trail of bodies I leave on my way to this Skeleton!"
Odie turns and heads for the door to the lumber yard.
Right, let’s get to it.
Stonewall hefts his shield and follows Odie.
Alset nocks an arrow and prepares to assault the creature beyond the door.
"Odie, what do you hear on the other side of the door?"
The steps ascend for thirty feet, a long, wide stairwell of wooden steps. This part of the cavern complex was added on to the stone structure below. The wood is not nearly as old as the stones below and has been well maintained.
At the top of the stairs is a trap door in the ceiling, shut but not bolted.
Odie listens at the trap door for a moment, grumbling something about paladins with too much caution.
"Sorry to be a pain just before we going charging into battle, but did anyone ask the Medusa about Odie's secret door?"
"Hindsight, eh? I think we could have used some more information out of her. Does anything know about fighting the Ettins or SkelEttins?"
Odie hears the sounds of a lumbermill: lumber clattering, planers and chisels cutting, saws sawing, and the odd command shouted above the din. The noises sound like the come from a large workfloor above you, though not directly above the trapdoor.
"Lets go check out that secret door before we start anything upstairs. I don't see why we should check with Typhlothrix about that."
"Ok, fine, we'll go check out the door. BUT THEN WE KILL PEOPLE! Got it?!"
Alset considers the skeletons.
"Typhlothrix, what do you know about this secret door and what's behind it? Also, did you want to take part in the destruction of the evil above us? You are welcome to join in the fray, if you're up for battle."
Ood follows to the door and listens.
Ood quietly communicates what he hears
"Wymackie has kept me awake for so many hours my spells are not prepared. However..." Typhlothrix says as she looks at the wardrobe. She scrounges around for a minute, fancy halfling clothes flying to the floor, before her hand emerges holding the curtain rod. "This should suffice."
Ood hears silence beyond the secret door.
"We need to use bludgeoning weapons on the skeletons for the best chance to kill them. Glad to have you with us Typholothrix. . . . Say, where there any fur coats in the back of the wardrobe?"
Alset keeps he bow out for the seccret door, but will exchange it for his morningstar when the trap door is breached.
Stonewall opens the door and rushes in.
"Fine, I'll just smash people instead of slicing them in half."
Odie swaps his greatsword for greatclub, then follows Stonewall through the door.
2nd through a door, I must be slipping.
Typhlothrix grabs an ermine coat from the floor. The spotted black and white is luxurious and well-cut... for a halfling. Thankfully, it was a full-length, floor-to-collar, long-sleeved coat, and would fit quite well on a human as a waist-length jacket. "Here's a stoat coat."
The secret stone door is not easy to open, but with a heave and a grunt the door swings back. The room is empty, the air stale, and the walls are decorated with images of mountains of gold, chests overflowing with treasure, all done in gold gilding and paint. The paints are vibrantly red, violet, azure, and ochre, highlighting gems, diamonds, goblets, crowns, and other precious artifacts. Their color quickly begins to fade, however, in the moist jungley air.
The ceiling is blank save for four 1-foot-wide, round steel medallions, one set into each corner. The floor is equally bare except for a pedestal in the center of the floor made of a single five-foot-square block of stone, about two feet high. The pedestal is filigreed in the same gold gilding. On the pedestal sits a metal-framed wooden chest, and to the side of the pedestal rests a shallow hole in the floor housing what looks like a brass door handle set into the stone. A stone tile lying loose nearby is clearly designed to fit over the hole, concealing the handle.
Ood walks around the secret room examining the structure.
Ood doesn't notice much, but notice what appears to be the lid and pulls on the brass handle.
SLAM! The entire ceiling crashes down as Ood pulls the handle, pinning the three of you beneath it. Stonewall is able to throw himself flat and avoid any damage, but Odie and Ood's skulls are cracked by the contraption. The ceiling is stopped from completely crushing you due to the 2 foot high plinth.
"Great! Ood has turned into an Odie acolyte."
I wonder if they can crawl out. Whatever is in chest has probably been crushed. Must be a decoy.
"Everyone still alive?," Alset yells to the group.
"I'm ok, let get out of here boys." Stonewall helps Odie and Ood crawl out of the trap. While Alset presumably heals Ood and Odie, Stonewall looks over the trap.
Stonewall looks for some way to disable the trap with the ceiling raised.
Odie uses his strength to bust his way out of the rubble!
"Ahhhgh!"
Alset heals Odie and Oody, but not Stony with the wand of CLW.
"I wonder what is so valuable to require a trap of that magnitude?"
"Typhlowthrix, watch the trap door in case we just rang the door bell! Shout, if it begins to open."
Stonewall knows he can take apart the chains or jam the drop lift and pulley combos, but that would likely take a lot of time.
Typhlothrix stands at the foot of the stairs and looks upward. "There'sss nothing up there. Only the sssound of the lumbermill. I don't know why you have to go banging around ssso loudly. Mammalsss...
As you stand the heal, the trap begins to slowly reset. The chest reveals itself from a hidden cavity in the plinth to keep it from being crushed.
Maybe I have been spending too much time with Odie...
"Well, that didn't go well."
"Ood, go grab that chest and then duck down right away. With your quick reflexes and knowledge of what the trap will do, it should be fairly easy for you to grab it."
"sounds like a plan!"
As the rest leave the room Ood centers himself.
Ood then grabs the chest and ducks to avoid being hit by the ceiling.
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"We might want to wait until after we knock off the baddies upstairs. I don't think they'll ignore the loud, crunching bang a second time. I will say that Oody has the best luck of the group at these kinds of things, so if he's willing to try it. . ."
As Ood touches the chest, nothing happens. When Ood attempts to duck down, he feels that the chest itself is attached to the plinth in some manner. He wiggles the chest but it does not budge. The ceiling does not slam down either, and the lock itself appears to be very cheap, like one used on small farms to keep the neighbor's kids off your land.
The bright colors on the walls continue to fade, dripping slightly in the humid air.
"Ugh, you are being too delicate, just cut it out of there and let's get on with the fighting."
"Ood, want to borrow a crowbar?"
Ood grabs the crowbar and attempts to use it on the lock.
"Thanks Alset!"
Stonewall attempts to estimate how long it will be before the colors are completely faded. Something seems off about this paint.
Stonewall thinks it could take another minute or two before the paint is faded completely. While looking at the painted scene he notices among the piles of gold, shiny armor, sparkling jewels, and various auras all done in vibrant oils, there is an old, plain, and frankly ugly chess board, painted as if by a finger coated in mud. There are no pieces on the board.
Ood jams the crowbar in between the lid and the box and with a twist pops the lid off and-
SLAM! The ceiling collapses again, triggered by the opening of the chest. Ood and Stonewall feel the full brunt of the collapsing ceiling.
"Ouch!"
"Ood, what's in the box? Stony, what's up with the paintings? Do they tell a story?" says Alset as he digs for the wand of healing.
Ood looks into the chest and says "hey it's a..."
”Oh my head.”. Stonewall looks a little woozy for a second but shakes his head and clears up quickly. ”I’m not sure. The fading paint is worrying me. I think we should be out of the room when it is all faded. Other than that, the chess board over there seems off to me. I think we should check out that section of wall real quick.”.
Stonewall waits for Ood to check out the chest then goes to look at the chess board painting. He is constantly checking the fading paint levels to make sure he is not in the room when the colors are all gone.
Ood grabs the stuff from the chest and exit's the room with Stonewall. "Good idea Stonewall, if what just happened wasn't bad enough... Thanks for the help Alset."
Need to remember to look before I leap, painful lessons.
After nursing their throbbing heads, Ood and Stonewall feel the wall star to retract. The chest, with its now-broken lock, has a loose lid, and Ood is able to carefully tip open the lid. When no shock from above slams down, he pushes back the lid and sees inside a bleached cat skull with a faded handwritten note in its mouth that reads:
Curiosity Kills: another ingenious demise, courtesy of Addington’s Fine Traps and Defenses.
Built by: Addington
On: Arodus 22, 4686
Installed on: Rova 4, 4687
There is nothing else inside the chest. Ood grabs the skull and note, but no further roofs are dropped.
Stonewall notices around the painting are 16 pawns, half black and half white, that have been chiseled from a different kind of stone and inserted rather artfully to blend in with the walls. They pawns look like they can be removed from the wall with a small chisel.
The fading paint will still take about ten minutes to disappear; the red and green hues are still particularly vibrant, but the golden-yellow hue of the coins has almost all dried up and flaked off onto the ground.
"Can we get a move on? We're burning daylight here!"
"Wait, I have dark vision, but still guys. It is just some cat skull. Let's go bust some skulls with brains still in them!"
Alset leans in and inspects the paintings and pawns (right number for a game). Does he notice a chess board anywhere?
Looking at the pawns and for a chess board on the floor, walls, ceiling, table, etc., "I haven't played chess in a long while. Do any of you know how to play?"
Stonewall thinks it could take another minute or two before the paint is faded completely. While looking at the painted scene he notices among the piles of gold, shiny armor, sparkling jewels, and various auras all done in vibrant oils, there is an old, plain, and frankly ugly chess board, painted as if by a finger coated in mud. There are no pieces on the board.
Does he notice a chess board anywhere?
Alset sees the other, non-pawn pieces, but they are beautifully painted as if they were ivory and obsidian on the walls like the rest of the treasure. All that Alset can remember about chess is that pawns, the least powerful pieces, can turn into queens, the most powerful pieces, if they cross to the other side of the board.
Stonewall looks in his pack for anything he could use to get the chess pieces out of the wall. He has a hammer but, alas, has no chisel with him so he looks for something else. He holds up a piton wondering if it is pointed enough to get the pieces out without damaging them. He briefly fingers his dagger trying to decide if it is strong enough to pry the figures. He completely ignores Odie but responds to Alset, "I don't know how to play really, I wondered if the pieces would go on the board and unlock something."
"What? A dwarf named 'Steelpounder' and you don't have a chisel! Oh, the shame of it all. Also, not sure how you're going to get the pieces to stay on a board that's painted on the wall."
"I'm with Odie, when the paint is finally faded in a few minutes and we can't ponder it's meaning anymore, we should go up and eliminate the evil there then come back and figure this out."