Balaaxius sees nothing untoward on the wall around the door, or on the door itself (though a close inspection reveals that the "hinges" are indeed solid pieces of metal, meaning that the door will be impossible to pull open). As he's looking at it, something faintly catches his ear, and (after first double-checking the area on the door) he presses his ear to the door. Distantly, the strains of music can be heard beyond it, and the sound of several different people talking (indistinctly) and laughing. Both male and female voices seem to be present...
"My magical knowledge doesn't match yours Quadravos but let me see if maybe I have encountered this before."
Elan then casts detect magic and examines the door.
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"there are people on the other side, I can hear them... Conversing. I would guess that they do not know we are hear by the tone of their conversation, but it is difficult to hear. Finding a way to open this without making a bunch of noise would be... Ideal."
Balaxxius shares his thoughts without taking his eyes off the door and walls , hoping to find something to clue him in to the trick behind this puzzle.
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Sadly, even with his enhanced sight Elan isn't able to make much out of the door aside from the already established fact that yes, there is indeed a spell of some kind operating on or around the door.
Balaxxius's examination of the door and surrounding area also reveals nothing new...it looks like the only way to get through this door might be to break it down...
"I am unable to determine that there is anything other than a spell on the door. I do have a thought though. Ghost Sound."
"Aye," the old gunslinger nods in agreement to Elan. "Makes sense." Ibid unslings the musket-strap from his shoulder and eyes the door suspiciously. Looking back to Elan, the old man motions to the musket. "Just in case it's not magic and there actually is something on the other side doing the talking..."
The old man stands watching the master thief look around the door, but keeps his sense alert in case the door is opened suddenly and something dangerous spills through.
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"Of course. Everything in here is a trick, or a trap. I would guess that if you are right, and we tried to force this door, a trap would open beneath us. There must be something else to this door, or else we have come a long ways only to find a dead end."
The rogue puts his ear up against the doorway, listening for the sounds again. When he heard them, he tries to imagine a dinner party, visualizing the people merrily chatting, eating, and drinking. Once he has the visual, he dismisses the whole thought, training his mind to uncover the deception behind the spell, if it really is a spell.
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Balaxxius listens carefully, but after a few minutes comes to the conclusion that these "diners" must be real--there's no discernible pattern or loop to the sound, nothing to suggest that it's a spell. There are occasional stretches of silence, bursts of laughter, heated statements; everything you'd expect to hear in an organic conversation is there.
After the master thief has relayed the noises heard on the other side of the door, the old gunslinger stands motionless for a moment, lost in thought. Before them stands a door they can not open, with someone talking on the other side.
Raising his musket and leveling the barrel at the doorway, the old man speaks with a crooked smile. "I believe its customary to knock when you want those on the other side to do the opening..."
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Balaxxius stops in his tracks at the suggestion by the wily gunslinger.
"I guess I'm already conditioned to expect that everything in here is a devilish trick to kill us. What is the harm?"
He smiles, before raising his hand in a clenched fist, pausing for effect, then rapping lightly 3 times, pausing again, and then 2 more times. He holds his breath, waiting for the ceiling to drop on him.
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Balaxxius quickly realizes that waiting for the ceiling to fall in on him is a bad idea, and tasks a few steps back from the door. After all, if it was a fight they were about to get into, he wasn't the one who should be in the front line.
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The master theif's thudding knock seems to echo off the walls of the still and silent chamber.
Tightening his grip on the musket as his eye remains trained down the length of the barrel, he sees Balaxxius step away from the door in his periphery. "That-a-boy..." the old gunslinger says, slowly closing one eye while watching the door for signs of movement. "Best be careful."
"Plus if you die, we may never find our way back out..."
The group watches, waiting, holding their breath...but nothing seems to happen.
For about twelve seconds.
Then, suddenly, with a clunking noise, the door shifts inward slightly on a pair of concealed hinges. It's not open, but it's now...ajar.
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Balaxxius looks at the others and shrugs his shoulders. He pulls his rapier from its sheath, grabs the door, and finishes opening it, feeling anxious to see what is on the other side.
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As Balaxxius steps into the hallway, you can all hear the faint, distant sound of frightened voices and running feet, moving away from you. Far to the north, a distant orange light glows.
The hallway you've stepped into is made of smooth, white alabaster, and the floor is perfectly smooth grey marble--a marked change from the rough, coarse-hewn stones of the rest of the tomb. There are no light sources in this hall, aside from your own light spells and the distant glow to the north.
"Don't get ahead of yourself, you crazy fool! You may be running into a trap!"
Elan waits for something bad to happen.
The old man looks onward in shock, raising his musket and leveling the barrel down the hallway beyond the knight. "Listen to Elan, you fool!" he shouts, watching the space showing beyond the weapon's hard-sights for signs of danger which might befall Sir Alaric. "We need to proceed cautiously!"
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"Wait..." Balaxxius says, looking up from his customary initial sweep for traps. Worried about what the knight is getting himself into, Balaxxius moves down the hall as well. The fact that the sounds he heard were frightened people had him concerned... Merriment before, and frightened screams now. The fact that they ran as the door was opening was concerning as well, what would make the simple opening of a door cause a room full of people run in fear?
As Sir Alaric bounds recklessly forward (and Balaxxius and Quadravos follow), there's a grinding noise after he gets about 30' down the hallway...as the entire floor of the hall beyond the door begins to tilt sharply downward, canting forward toward the flickering light at the end of the hall...
"I was afraid of this and I've no way to help them."
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Balaxxius stops short as soon as the floor tilts. "Alaric!"
Worried the knight won't be able to stop his momentum, he reaches for his rope, expecting to need to pull off a rescue
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Balaxxius sees the bold knight scrambling back and stops reaching for his rope. Instead, he scrambles back up the slope as well, getting back to level ground. His rapier remains drawn, expecting trouble any moment.
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As Balaxxius, Quadravos, and Alaric scramble backward, the floor continues to slope down dangerously. Quadravos makes it to solid ground easily, with Balaxxius feet behind. Alaric starts to slip back down the slope just as he reaches his friends, but with Elan and Ibid. lunging forward to grab his arms, the knight manages to pull himself to safety. As those who had to run for it collapse, panting, the floor continues to fall downward with a grinding noise, until with a muffled *boom* it comes to rest...forming a steep, marble slide into the bright orange glow of what is now revealed to be a churning pool of magma!
As the dust settles, everyone gets their breath back and clambers to their feet...there doesn't appear to be any other immediate danger...
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Balaxxius breaths a sigh of relief, as Alaric just barely makes it back to the threshold of the doorway.
"Well, that was close. Ah... Anyone for a hot meal? heh..."
Balaxxius attempts a little humor to lighten the mood after half their group was nearly roasted in molten earth.
"So... If I can't rig this back, then I am afraid we have come a very long way, only to find a dead end. Lets see here..."
Balaxxius searches the door, doorway, and the steeply canted floor for any indication that the trap could be reset.
From what Balaxxius and Quadravos are able to determine together, it doesn't look like the tilting hallway floor can be reset--or at least, not from here. If it resets by itself, it doesn't seem to be in any hurry about it.
Momentarily stumped, everyone spends a few moments chewing over possible solutions...the only obvious roads not taken have been the multiple archways of swirling mist, which no one's been in a hurry to enter.
"I concur, Sir Alaraic," states the old gunslinger in a gravely voice, though he sounds surprised with himself that he has something to add. "I don't reckon we finished investigating all of the spheres before we moved on and crawled through that cramped little corridor."
"Who's for heading back? Unless someone can think of something else we missed..."
The old man still holds the readied musket wearily, while watching in the direction of the tilting hallway.
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"On our way back, perhaps we can take a look at that altar in the room with the lich dust. Its where we ended up when we came out of that cursed tunnel. I remember it glowed with magic, gave me an awful feeling, but we ignored it when we went through the door that eventually led us here. Hey, maybe we can push the altar into the swirling portal..."
"Other than that, I'm afraid I have spent so much time searching these halls for traps that I don't remember what we might have missed..."
"In the original hallway I made the suggestion that we should check all of pit traps for passageways or items. After Quadravos conjured the air elemental we checked one and found a door. Maybe we should start from the end here and check all the pit traps for doors or items. Who knows what we will find."
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"Doors you say, in the pit traps? I disable and locked those up when I came in, which would explain why I didn't think of that. Yes. Lets go with that." Balaxxius' smile is disarming.
"Well I am not looking forward to crawling back through that tunnel, but better to get it over with quickly. Shall we?"
The drow gives one last look back at the magma that nearly swallowed half their party.
Not the way I want to go...
"We've got a few to try before we get back to the tunnel. At least three if I'm remembering this life correctly."
Retreating down the hallway, the group comes to the first of the pit traps on their route (and the shattered remains of the door that used to stand over it). With a few minutes' tinkering, Balaxxius is able to get the pit open and disable the counterweight mechanism that would normally make the doors snap back shut. Gazing down, the party peers into a ten-foot-deep pit, the bottom of which features several nastily glistening, sharp metal spikes.
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Balaxxius gets up off his knees, dusting off his breeches and then his hands after rigging the pit traps open. He takes a deep satisfied breath, and admires his work for a moment.
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And then realizes everyone is staring at him.
"oh, you want me to go down there, don't you... " he says with a sheepish look on his face. "got it, I knew that. On it."
He inspects the dangerous points and blades carefully before sliding over the edge, dangling for a few moments with his feet a few inches off the ground, and carefully dropping to the floor. Once down there, he takes a minutes to carefully search for anything besides rusty weapons and Bare stone walls.
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Carefully looking around the bottom of the pit, a seam catches Balaxxius's eye, and after a few seconds' investigation, he's sure of what he's seeing: there's a secret door at the bottom of this pit, painted to look like stone!
Finding the handhold that should open the door, a brief wiggle reveals that it seems to be unlocked...
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"What do you know, a door." Balaxxius answers the knight. "And poorly disguised too. Though if someone had fallen in here, I imagine the door is the last thing they would be thinking about..." he says with a wary glance to the wicked implements.
The dark elf dusts off his hands, takes another look at the handle and the seams, then reaches out and opens up the door, trusting that his sharp eyes will catch any trap that might show up, ideally before it goes off. As always, his escape route has been planned out, just in case the answer is to duck, dodge and run...