Garret opens the trapdoor and looks down.
The trapdoor lifts easily and reveals a tightly spiraling staircase that winds downwards into more depths.
Garret takes up his usual position just behind Ferrek, letting the dwarf go first to check for danger.
Ferrek goes first, checking for danger.
Shadassa follows Ferrek, her fins undulating effortlessly down the steps.
Isletta follows as well..
The staircase leads down, and down, and down...into the deep. Eventually, though, it stops, and opens out into a narrow cave. All of the party members can easily squeeze their way through the cave, but that doesn't necessarily make it comfortable, especially for Shadassa. It takes a few minutes to navigate the cave before it turns to the right and into a steep incline. Pushing upwards with strong legs and fins brings the party back up vertically almost as far as they climbed downwards and into another 10-ft-wide stone hallway.
About twenty feet down the hallway is a gleaming, adamantine double door. The door, held aloft by massive, reinforced hinges blocks the way forward though three small rectangular slots mar the door's smooth surface. Each slot is an unspecified depth, about three inches tall and about one inch wide.
There is an obvious lock mechanism as well, and an obvious handle for the door, but the door is locked.
The door radiates magic of the school of abjuration.
"So, three locking mechanisms stopping us from entering through the most heavily fortified door I've ever laid eyes on. I realize that I was a bit late in my arrival, I don't suppose that you may have located any such objects?"
"Nothing like this," says Shadassa, peering at the door from a healthy distance. "A key, but not three keys. Who knows which order in which to use the three...missing...conjectured keys. It probably needs three severed humanoid fingers, judging from the rest of this place."
Garret just looks at the door, thinking.
"Is this thing magic? I'm guessing it is."
"Everyone get well clear while Ferrek and I give it a full inspection. This door looks like it's going to be a problem."
As his head emerges from the opening in the floor enough for him to look around, Ferrek's eyes widen and he can be heard to mutter under his breath. "By Torag's hammer..." He scrambles the rest of the way out, and begins carefully approaching the door.
"Assuming that this is a real door, and it's actually locked, and keys exist for it, then whatever is behind it is surely worth guarding... In any normal place." His earlier awe is rapidly being replaced by cynicism. "However, I would not be surprised if this was just another false lead, designed to hide something trivial in the midst of such obvious defenses."
Nonetheless, the traps-dwarf begins making his cautious way to the door, followed by the ever-watchful paladin. "If it decides to fall on us, will you be ready to jump out of the way?" he asks his companion quietly.
Garret's brows rose. That wasn't an outcome he'd considered. He nodded, looking at the edges of the door frame.
Isletta steps back out of the way of a potentially falling door and observes.. "My gloves will allow to see whats on the other side if you can't figure a way to open it.. There's always teleportation should we need too.."
"Make sure there aren't traps that will electrocute you before you do that, dear Isletta," suggests Shadassa. "You know, I've realized what sustains a lich. Clearly it is practical jokes. The fellow must be scrying us and laughing his...well, laughing his pelvis off, I suppose."
The door is untrapped in a dangerous sense, but that's not to say that it doesn't have precautions built in.
The lock is incredibly intricate, indicating that it would take a master trapsmith to even have a hope of opening it. The other three slats are also seemingly tied to the lock mechanism, meaning that they must in some way be interacted with before the door opens.
Inspection of the hinges reveals a mostly magically-powered system that swings the doors open and closed on their own - a good thing, too, these doors are likely prohibitively heavy to open via one's own strength.
After traps are detected for etc.. "Here let me take a look at what's beyond.." She moves up and places her hand on the door, peering beyond the doors..
Touching the wall with her gloves immediately deserves a response. A non-harmful wave of static electricity moves across the wall and forces her hands off the wall. Isletta's used her charge of the gloves, but the spell within them was countered.
Shadassa wrinkles her brow as much as a merfolk's brow wrinkles, which isn't much. "Many wards are on this door...against all kinds of weapons, magical and non-magical...it's as if it is rotated into another plane, but is still here...and there's an invulnerability spell on it. Not one that I use--something of you wizard types. I wonder if it can be dispelled."
Isletta jerk back with a start.. "Well thats never happened before.. Couldn't see beyond.. Some kinda spell effect blocking it would be my guess.. Any thoughts on this contraption or shall we look else where?"
Fingers twitching as he examines the lock, Ferrek shakes his head. "I would love to give that lock a try, but we should find the things that match those slots first. I don't think the lock would even turn without them. And it's still possible that it's just a massive distraction, even if it isn't going to fall on us."
He suits action to words by looking around the rest of this area for another exit.
Unfortunately, there aren't any sekrit doors around them, nor any entrances of any other sort. The only way forward seems to be through this massive reinforced door.
"Hmm..."
Ferrek examines the slots in the door to try and get a better idea of what they are for.
The holes in the door are nearly perfectly rectangular, and it doesn't look like they have the intricate mechanisms of a lock on the inside of them. It really just looks like you're supposed to put something that fits into it. What, you ask? Well, that's the million-pound-of-adamantine question.
Feeding a string into a hole is difficult, but it looks like it goes back at least four feet, which is slightly disturbingly suggestive of the depth of the door.
"I agree with Ferrek. I rather think we may find the keys, or gigantic trident, elsewhere. There is the other entrance we haven't tried..."
"Hmm, yes. Quite the puzzle here. Although another entrance way. Would not surprise me if there was indeed pieces hidden throughout this place one would need to find and only by uncovering this door to continue forward... Or indeed fall into a nefarious trap. Remind me to tell you of a locked dungeon mystery I once read about."
"Sir Garret, Ferrek, would you care to lead us down the other hallway?" Shadassa says with a smile.
"As you command, m'lady." Garret says with a smile. He was clearly enjoying himself.
Abandoning their attempt at opening the massive adamantine door, the adventurers crawl back through the crawlspace and enter the four-way hallway again. The southern door proves to be false (and not falsely false like the northern one was, but like really false) and so the eastern way is traveled.
Ferrek easily disarms the pit trap that mars the floor below them, and so they have two directions to go from this corner - north and further east. There are two doors at the end of this hallway.
Garret arbitrarily picks the north door to inspect next.
Ferrek does his thing on the northern door.
"It does figure that he's set things up so that we have to run into every last trap and monster before we can get through that door..." the dwarf grumbles as he works.
"It's probably his privy," says Shadassa.
"I don't think liches need privies."
"Unless they want to have one just to drown adventurers in."
"it's fairly hard to drown me, although I have no desire to swim in a cesspit," says the merfolk with a smile and a shudder.
Garret had somehow managed to become a bit comfortable in this awful place. He knew that death awaited around every corner, but he was pretty comfortable with death itself, so there was really no reason not to enjoy living while he could.
People expect Pharasma's chosen to be dour, humorless people. They really tend to be the opposite.
He laughed out loud at the banter and decided it was time to get to know his fellows a little better.
"So why are you here?" he asked Shadassa. "A dwarf and the drow make sense to be exploring places like this, but an underground tomb is about the last place I'd ever expect to find a mermaid."
"A mixture of revenge and curiosity," says Shadassa quietly. "I was in Nidal, with friends, rooting out a group of undead. It was a terrible mistake. We were outnumbered...and then the leaders, or lieutenants, appeared. Vampires. My friends were bitten and overwhelmed...I burned everything. everything. Whether the bloodsuckers truly died or just fled back to their coffins, I don't know..but I found items on them relating to Acerak. I wondered if that was the name of their leader. I don't think so, now; probably just reverence for a mighty member of the undead. But it was enough to drive my curiosity, and so it led me here."
She shrugs. "For my friends. I would like to think they'd enjoy knowing I helped take down a lich. Pharasma guide them onward."
"Good reason." Garret said with an approving nod. "How did you end up running around with us land bound folks in the first place?"
While Garret and Shadassa talk, Ferrek works. He easily finds and disarms any traps on the door and flings it open. Behind it is a short hallway, perhaps fifteen feet long, ending in just another simple door. Trying to enter the hallway, however, just results in bumping into what feels like a wall, but looks like thin air.
The passageway radiates extremely strong transmutation magic.
"There is a small city of water-dwellers in the River Kingdoms. Outsea is its name" says Shadassa, "I was born there, and under a curse, one which I have used to my advantage. It did not make me feel particularly in tune with the other merfolk, to wield fire, and I decided to set out into the world. I found fellow adventure-minded friends...and I have told you the end of that chapter." She bows her head, eyes flashing.
She glances at Ferrek's work and the doorway. "Another invulnerable shield? I have been wondering if summoning hound archons for these doors may be of aid. They can teleport to the other side and see if there is an opening mechanism."
"Not a bad idea. Even if there isn't a mechanism, it would be good to have a scout check the area before we figure out how to get though ourselves."
The dwarf runs his hands against the solid air, looking for any kind of discrepancy or hole in it. "Allies that can appear on the far side may be useful, but what if it's just as locked from there?" he calls over his shoulder as he does.
If the "wall" is perfectly smooth, he'll pull out an iron spike and try to chip at it a bit.
"Well, if it possible to do so, I'd be the most able to easily get to the other side. But first, let's see if I can't properly identify the magic here."
It looks like passwall is in effect here, made permanent. It's only accessible from one side - once the other side has been passed through, one cannot return. It looks like you're looking at the wrong side of the passwall.
Given that, Ferrek is unable to fix his piton in the invisible wall - it's completely unyielding.
"Unfortunately, this would appear to be an exit rather than an entrance. A Passwall spell has already been triggered from the opposite direction. We'll have to find another way around."
"I'm of the opinion that we should try some other routes," agrees Shadassa. "Back up the stairs? We can look for a way through these otherwise impassable doors...three great keys, a dispelling device...a chain of hound archons..."
The dwarf frowns at the magical exit. "Couldn't you wave at it and dispel this barrier?" he asks the spellcaster. "If we're not supposed to travel this way, so much the better reason for doing so."