Peering through the doorway, Balaxxius (and the others, when they descend) finds himself looking down a ten-foot-long, rough-hewn stone passageway that opens in into a much more normal looking corridor. At the border of the tunnel and the corridor, a flight of stairs descends, taking you down deeper into the earth and a lower level of the tomb...
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"Well gentlemen, it appears we have found the way down. Hopefully away from the source of that lava..." Balaxxius says to his companions.
With a glance, and a quick check of his gear, he moves down the steps, continuing his scan of the area for trip wires, magical runes, false steps, or anything else that might jump out and kill them.
Elan follows down and then down the stairs.
"Into the belly of the beast. A much better way down rather than that hallway."
"I can't help feeling we're standing on the tip of the iceberg, and the true dangers lay in wait further below," the old man says, stepping to follow the others, waiting for Balaxxius to signal them forward. "... as if we may only have now started to descend into the true, labyrinthine vastness of this place."
As the party descends the stairs, Alaric calls a halt, running his hands over the wall to the party's left. After a few moments of searching by him and Balaxxius, it's confirmed: there's a large secret door halfway down the stairs!
There is, however, no indication of how it would open...pushing on it does absolutely nothing, and there are no clear handles.
Ahead of the party, the lower hallway stretches twenty feet in drab, crumbling stone before turning to the right and descending down another flight of stairs. From your position, you can just barely see that a thick mist or fog seems to be drifting up those stairs, as though they descended into a mountain valley...wisps of it spill into the hallway at floor level before evaporating, but the thick cloud on the stairs themselves never dissipates.
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"Yes, I would think the same, wizard. I enjoy being able to see in the dark, I'm not as keen on not being able to see at all..." Balaxxius gets ready to continue moving, despite his trepidation, once the wizard has had a chance to weigh in.
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"For the time being," the gunslinger begins, looking at the tendrils of fog slithering across the steps. "It's best not to let it touch you..."
Ibid. and Quadravos peer into the fog, which seems like it must be pretty dense, given that it's not rising up the stairs...
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Quadravos φ examined the fog with his magical sight and after a few short moments states his conclusion.
"The fog in itself is not magical, but that does not mean that it came here by natural means. We must ..." At this point Sir Alaric states his idea for the secret door. "... try that indeed. An excellent idea sir Alaric. Let's see what this will do."
Quadravos φ casts the open/close cantrip on the secret door.
Quadravos spends several seconds muttering and waving his fingers at the door...but to no avail.
"I do have a spell which might dispel the magic. I can give it a try if you think it will help. Hopefully it won't blow up on us.", Elan says with a chuckle.
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"We have avoided explosions so far, how bad could it be?" Balaxxius says with a nervous chuckle.
"let's just see what happens. "
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"Dispel Magic. If you think it is a good idea I will cast it on the spot and see if we can open the door. I'm just not sure how successful I will be."
Assuming no objections, Elan then casts detect magic to see the spell and then Dispel Magic on the spell.
As Elan chants his spell, he can see the abjuration on the wall next to the door begin to unravel--and as it finishes, with a loud rumble, the door grinds slowly open, receding into the wall to the right.
Beyond the secret door, you can see a blank stone hallway that extends thirty feet before making a sharp turn to the right...leaving you with two potential pathways to explore.
Peering around the corner after finding nothing in this section, Balaxxius sees that the corridor continues another 40' before terminating in a massive, wooden oaken door. After approaching carefully, checking for traps on the way, the rogue sees that this door, unlike so many others in this place, has a clear handle, and no apparent lock...
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"Why do I get the feeling that grabbing this handle will drop the floor out from underneath us? Oh yea... because it probably will." Balaxxius says dryly.
Shrugging his shoulders, and taking his time to search the door, floor, walls and ceiling in the area for traps or hidden doors, he grabs the handle and pulls.
The door opens without trouble or danger, and you find yourself gazing into a spacious chamber. This chamber was clearly once a lab or workshop of some kind. Shelves line the walls, covered in dusty jars and unidentifiable alchemical tools. Against one wall is a large desk with a pair of chairs. In addition, there are two large workbenches covered with dusty tools and a pair of large stone slabs littered with scraps of linen wrappings, skulls, and bone fragments. Three large vats or cauldrons, apparently made from heavy clay, occupy the center of the room, each about 7' wide and four feet tall.
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"Well now we are really getting somewhere it seems..."
Excited, despite the circumstances, the burglar enters the room, wary of the many traps that could still be laid out for anyone savvy enough to make it this far. Otherwise, he excitedly looks through the implements, shelves, and other various things in the laboratory for any clues or signs of what else may be hidden in this tomb, as well as for anything valuable.
"Is there anything magical in here? There must be..." He asks to his companions, directing the question at them at first before trailing off in his own thoughts as he searches.
Elan says a prayer and begins to search the room with detect magic active.
"Looks like it's been a while since anyone worked in here."
After scanning the room, Elan heads over toward the desk to search it.
Examining the room's contents quickly reveals that there isn't much of value here...all of the tools are rusted beyond repair, many of them flaking, while the few books that Elan discovers on the desk have molded and aged down to brittle flakes. The urns on the shelves hold various foul-smelling unguents (in the few cases where they're not empty to begin with) that mostly seem to be past their use-by date as well.
The three vats in the center of the chamber prove to be affixed to the floor itself, and they each seem to be full of scummy-looking water, clouded thickly enough to make it unclear what else, if anything, lies beneath the surface.
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"Unused... old, forgotten. Much like the rest of this temple. Perhaps all we will find here is constructs and other forgotten wards against intrusion, and the owner of this place just as dead and forgotten as this lab."
Balaxxius dusts off his breeches as he inspects the area, getting ready to move on. "The traps in this place seem to live up to the legends, and for that, my interest is still peaked. If those benches full of silver are all we discover in terms of treasure, then I will be sorely disappointed..." the dark elf muses to himself.
Just before the group leaves the room, Balaxxius grabs a nearby stick or broom handle and sticks it in each of the vats to see if there is something solid within. "Might as well leave no stone, or vat, unturned."
As the group prepares to go, Balaxxius carefully probes the vats, starting with the eastern one. That one reveals nothing, but in the central vat the broom handle bumps up against something heavy that it knocks across the bottom of the vat...there's something resting on the bottom! You have a rough idea of where it is, but for all its weight, it's pretty small, and you still can't see it...
Hearing the stick hit something solid, Elan offers "I'll give you a boost if you want Balaxxius, so you can see what's in there and retreive it."
Good or bad it may be usefull.
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"It's not so much the height, but the water... or whatever this is in the vat. It is so murky I cannot see the bottom. I shudder to think what it might be, but my curiosity is peaked."
Balaxxius pulls the stick out to examine it and the liquid dripping off of it, smelling it and carefully touching it with his fingers to see what it might be.
Balaxxius can't smell anything from the liquid, but when he touches it with his fingertips he feels a sort of light, stinging buzzing sensation, as though he were drinking soda with his fingertips.
"Unfortunately, I don't know anything about it. Did it do any damage to your stick?"
Elan examines the stick and shrugs.
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"It doesn't seem like there is anything wrong with it... Must be fine. "
Balaxxius removes his gloves and rolls up his sleeves, and takes a deep breath to prepare himself. He dips the end of the stick back into the vat to get an idea of where the object is. Once he has found it, he reaches in quickly, grabs the thing, then pulls it back out.
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With what amounts to miraculous luck, Balaxxius bravely plunges his hand into the vat and manages to locate the object after only several seconds of groping. As he pulls his hand out, though, he lets out a hiss of pain and clutches at his steaming fingers--the vat's substance is burning like acid, albeit slowly. Fortunately he wasn't exposed for long...
The object he retrieved drops to the floor with a loud clatter. It seems to be a golden key--or rather, half of a golden key, which seems to have been bisected down the middle.
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"Yeeaaaarrrooouch!" Balaxxius shouts, flinging his hand in pain to get the acid off and in turn, sending the half key bouncing across the floor.
Taking his waterskin, he dumps some water on his hand and arm to help wash the acid off a bit. He flexes his fingers a few times to make sure they still work ok, glaring at the apparently unharmed broom handle.
"well, where do you suppose the other half of this thing us? And what in the world does it go to?"
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"That is a good question, one to which I have no answer. Let me see your hand." Elan then pulls out a wand and taps Balaxxius' hand.
