Arianna is quite unsure of what sort of giant left that print. It could be anything from a large ogre to a small cloud giant.
You make your way back to the burial halls, keeping an eye out for spiders or giants or giant spiders.
Luckily, you meet none of either. As for the burial halls, they are much as you left them. The secret door still stands open, with its crude stairway turning north and down. The unexplored tunnel leading north is still unexplored. All of the skeletons you've slain have yet to rise again, the red bones lying where they fell.
"Well, at least they're not reviving too fast. Down the stairs?" Rhiannon suggested, pointing past the secret door before heading in that direction. Cautiously, of course.
"Sh-shouldn't we try to lay them to rest," Arianna asks as they pass the bones. After getting her answer, she scouts ahead, trying to avoid anything dangerous.
Kesh nods at Rhiannon's suggestion. "Hey stone-shaper, could you put up one of those stone walls to block whichever tunnel we don't go down? Maybe it'll prevent anything from coming up behind us...or at least give us warning if we hear it smashing though..."
"Well I feel a lot refreshed now and I am sure I can give you much more support from now on! I mean if I do not have to empower hidden doors, I can empower you."
Gren slows as they reach the intersection between the tunnel and the secret door. "Hold on here. Let me investigate the area ahead in the tunnel. Otherwise I don't know which way we should go. Arianna would you mind joining me?"
Gren pulls out his rapier and assuming Arianna is going to follow, slinks forward along the wall of the unexplored tunnel leading north, checking for traps as he goes. He will stop as soon as he either meets a new room, finds something interesting, or finds another tunnel.
There's no natural light to be had down here. He'll have to light a torch or borrow a light source to see anything.
Assuming he does either, he finds the end of the tunnel some 60ft. further along. He doesn't enter the room ahead, but from the mouth of the tunnel, he can still see a fair bit. Unlike the other rooms, this one is massive. With the 80ft. diameter circle of light he carries, he's quite unable to see the walls on either side, nevermind the cieling, its vault hidden somewhere in the darkness above.
What he can see though, is unsettling enough. The edge of this chamber is lined with sarcophaguses, all of them open and broken. Dead ahead, in what is presumably the center of this grand hall, stands a fountain of blood. It's tiered basins have been piled high with pillaged bones, and a single, large rune has been inscribed on the base of it, pulsating slightly with a faint if omnious red glow. The continuous splatter of warm blood on the floor has given rise to all manner of rot and fungus, forming a circle around the whole thing. The smell is rather repulsive.
Rhiannon considered Kesh's suggestion for a moment, then shook her head. "Probably best to not do that." she said regretfully. "I can only maintain a few at a time, and we might actually need those closer to us."
Gren lowers his torch and hurries back to the others, describing what he saw.
"In a word...disturbing. If we proceed, we proceed with all due caution. Possibly we also think ahead...Kesh - Do you have any recommendations if we are ambushed again?"
Arianna does her best to keep her breakfast done when the malodorous smell assaults her nose. She manages it for a few seconds before quietly retching up the contents of her stomach. The ranger's ears lie flat against her skull, disappearing into her hair. After a few dry heaves, she manages to recover enough to shakily join the others.
"I-it's all wrong! this place is all wrong," she says in a small, frightened voice.
"Yes...it is decidedly not where I want to be either. For you though, think of your sister. She may be here somewhere."
And for me? Well I hope there is something I can take home for me from this trip
"So, which way shall we push on?"
Hearing the talk back and from, Lorien just keeps silent for a moment, understanding that she was supposed to be here, bringing light to darkness.
"As good can be spoiled, evil can be cleansed. We will prevail, and this moody place wont break our spirit!"
"Down the hidden passage, I think." Rhiannon said as Gren asked for input on directions. "I mean, seriously, glowing red runes, ominous fountain of blood, abnormal ring surrounding it? That's, like, every red flag you can possibly imagine, saying 'don't go over there'. Not without, like, a hired group of priests specializing in cleansing and sanctifying. I say we don't even get near it unless we really have to."
"That's the only reason I'm even here," Arianna replies to Gren.
At Rhiannon's suggest that they take the hidden passage, she nods eagerly, desperate to stay away from the room with the fountain of blood.
"Lorien, if you are ok with holding off on the whole cleansing of evil thing for now, I'd agree with Rhiannon and Arianna on going down the hidden passage."
Not waiting for a response from Lorien, Gren raises his torch and plunges forward, rapier in his right hand, torch in his left. Trying to stay as quiet as possible.
Arianna sighs and follows Gren, hoping to keep him out of too much trouble as he investigates the passage they'd chosen.
Following suit Lorien falls in line after Gren.
The light flickers over the rough-hewn stairs. The shaft down is clearly only partially man-made: here and there the natural rock formation gives way to smooth, hewn surfaces. The shaft widens and narrows by turns, winding somewhat, but generally keeps heading north, and the types of rock changes as you make your way down.
It doesn't take long before the stairs emerge into a small cavern. Your light sources reflect off of a dark pool that covers the eastern half of the floor in here. The walls are set with iron sconzes at regular intervals, devoid of torches and light. At the far northern end of the cavern, a brick wall has been erected to bar further passage, set with an iron door. The door has clearly been defaced, much like the ruins above.
or moved an inch. Yet.
As the group moved forward, Rhiannon abruptly stopped and raised a hand with her fingers together and pointed straight up, then pointed towards the waters. She wasn't jumping straight to hostilities... but she was definitely on her guard.
Kesh doesn't notice the welcome party until Rhiannon points them out...then scowls when he sees the frogs. "Want to to fly over, take a look at the far side? I think I could manage it."
Near the walls there's only 8ft. of space or so to the cielings. There's a fissure down the middle of the room where there's room to fly though - it's 15-18ft. there. The fissure gets narrow enough at the top that you could brace yourself against both sides, if you stretch a little.
It's also perfectly possible to walk dry-shooed around the pool, keeping to the western side of the room.
"Shall we stay on the western side? Don´t get me wrong but I prefer my clothes dry."
The young cleric shrugs and smiles.
Arianna nods and looks to Gren.
"Stay back, I don't need a light to see."
With that, she carefully picks her way around on the western edge of the pool.
Arianna knocks over a small rock by chance, sending it splashing into the water. It's not a huge noise or anything, but it has the giant frogs darting into the deeps, out of view. There must be a lot more room down there than the surface and layout of the cavern would suggest, for them to be able to withdraw like that.
Up close, it's clear that the iron gate is badly rusted at the hinges. There's a heavy duty silver lock set into it. It's decorations probably once featured Thyr and Muir's iconography heavily, but has been crudely bashed into approximations of symbols sacred to Orcus.
As the frogs retreated, Rhiannon kept a hand aimed towards the shore, just in case she needed to lift up some walls and interrupt an approach. She did take a moment to shake her head at the abuse of the door, though. "That was good metalwork." she muttered. "Check for wards?"
With a quick incantation Lorien checks for magical auras.
Lorien concentrates for a bit, finding nothing but the various aura's the party carries with them.
Gren kneels at the entrance to the cavern, peering into the gloom. Sensing something is happening but not knowing what it is, he whispers to the others, "What is it? What did you see? Tell me it's not skeletons..."
"No, no walking bones here. Just try not to fall into the water. It's deeper than it looks," Arianna answers.
"Giant frogs." Rhiannon muttered as she carefully moved to open the door. "Probably nastier than they look, so don't underestimate them just because they're not undead."
She grabs the iron handle and pulls. The door is locked, though. A large silver lock is set into the iron door. The door is quite rusted in places - it'll probably be pretty easy to break down, if you want to.
Close up, you can hear continuous howling of wind from the other side of the door.
"Looks like a job for you, Redbridge." Rhiannon noted. "I can batter something like this down given enough time, but..." she glanced back towards the lake. "Well, I'd rather not let too many of the locals hear us knocking."
"Okay, I grew up in grove of trees, but aren't we already inside the 'locals' house?' And what's a local?"
"Anything that lives here and would like to stab, bludgeon, desecrate, or otherwise do things to us that we'd really rather they didn't." Rhiannon answered promptly. "But more relevantly, having such big frogs there suggests that the occupants here don't bother with universal control of this place - it'd be too inconvenient to have large wildlife around to threaten lone members of your group or something, don't you think?"
"We had a bear live under the roots of the tree we slept in for a few winters," Arianna retorts, "So long as you make sure they can get food easily enough and don't bug them you can get along with big animals. Besides, don't you guys use those big horned buffalo things? Aren't those large animals?"
Kesh hunkers down to help Gren check for traps and (if none are found) pick the lock.
At Zatinya's comment, Rhiannon held up her everburning Celestial Lamp and waved it slightly, perfectly content to let someone else carry it if they wanted to. Either way, the party ought to have light when they wanted it.
Gren carefully makes his way around the pool, trying his best to avoid unwanted attention. At the mention of man-sized frogs, Gren can't help imagine being the fly pulled into its mouth. He unconsciously adjusts the grip on his rapier as he goes.
Once he gets to the door, he takes a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow, fishes around in his pack for a small vial, and pops the contents in his mouth. Unlike previously, there is no outward sign that anything has changed.
"Not so bad. That was one of my new ones too. Usually they don't turn out so tasty. Thanks for the help Kesh. Always useful to have a second set of eyes."
After a moment, he begins inspecting then working on the lock.
*Click*
The lock disengages. It should be open now.
Pushing the door open, you look down a natural tunnel. 45 or so feet ahead, you see pale grey light filtering down from somewhere above, out of sight. It illuminates the tunnel splitting in a T section, one fork leading west while the other one leads north-east. The sound of the wind is stronger here.
There's some faint stirrings in the air. Nothing that scales to the howling wind you're hearing from up ahead.
Gren studies the passage to try to get an idea on the relative downward slope and how far underground they are...
Rhiannon frowned a bit as she looked at the faint light coming from up above. "Huh." she said. "There might be some lamps up there... or maybe an opening somewhere." she mused. She looked back down a moment later. "West, for now?"
"Maybe," Arianna says. Whatever path they choose, she looks ahead to see what dangers lie before them.