Holly snorts, "Wooo, spooky." She says, "Gross. Either way."
None of the traps have anything magical about them, nor are the runes carved on the floor in the central entrance magical. detect poison does pick up poison below the floor of the central entrance, some ways in.
The trap in the eastern entrance looks like a sliding stone door set into the wall.
"So lets get together an itemized list of what we know so far.
- Falling Rocks of Doom
- Closed Wooden Door
- Crushing Doors of Doom
- Closed Wooden Door
- Riddle of Doom
- Poison of Doom
- Walkway that splits down the path.
I might be able to get past the mechanical traps if we can't disable them from this end, but I would need the wooden doors opened first to make sure I have a safe area to get to. Did anyone see any Arches at any point? And what is a Tormentor?"
"And 'air we can't see through'. Which means mist. I can see through it, but it could be...poison."
"I think I can rig these so they won't go of if the doors open. If they've been here this long, they are probably self-resetting. I'd bet they've gone off before, and I doubt anyone comes to rebuild them or reset them every time they go off."
He talks as he breaks out some tools and approaches the West door.
"Most entryway traps have a mechanism somewhere to disable them to keep people that know the trick from getting hurt. All I need to do is find the safety mechanism, or jam up the reset..."
Working quickly, Sir Garret finds a pressure plate that encompasses a 10-by-10 section of the floor. Shoving a tiny sliver of metal into the space, he wiggles it around until he finds a catch: he's de-activated the trap in the western entrance.
Clearly marking the trap and the deactivation point with chalk, Garret points and says. "Should be safe now, but don't go jumping around on it. I'm going to check the other side."
Garret crosses the hill in about half a minute, entering the other crawlspace. He finds a way to interrupt the flow of the ball-bearings that the door would roll on, and he's sure that the stone wall won't close in on anyone that's in there.
Holly had gone in the western one, "Hey! This doesn't even go anywhere! Ugh, I don't like this guy already," She pokes the wall a few times to see if it will open again.
"Figures." Garret said with a snort as he marked the other trap and it's disabling mechanism.
Opening his door, he says "Same here. Give them a good once over. They may be false walls."
Several minutes of searching, feeling, looking, and hitting later, Garret discovers that it was just a stone wall after all.
"Right. Front door it is." Garret says, making his way back to their small basecamp and tucking his tools away.
"A few things before we go inside. First, If you stay close to me, I'll do everything I can to keep you safe. if you get outside of my reach, I'm not going to leave whoever else I'm protecting to save you. Keep close."
"Second, we've never worked together before, so we haven't worked out each other's tricks yet. Until we do, we stick to the basics. I need a wingman on each side of me. Everyone else behind. If we get into a mess, we try to bottleneck them as much as we possibly can. Doors and halls are good. If we can't bottleneck, we get our back to a wall. We live and die by Gralamin and Shadassa. They give us options and options keep us alive."
"Last, if we don't understand something, we don't poke at it or take risks. We take our time, or we find a different route."
"Anyone have anything to add?"
"Perhaps we can assume we now know the meaning of being congratulated on our powers of observation - the two side passages are false." Gralamin peers into the central entrance. "A red brick pathway. The obvious decision would be to walk on it alone. But should we trust to the obvious?"
Gralamin sits down and studies the paper on which he copied Acererak's riddle, attempting to decipher it. He mumbles and mutters to himself, ignoring most everything else.
Go back to the tormentor or through the arch,
and the second great hall you’ll discover.
"The tormentor...perhaps a demon of some kind. Possibly a statue. Go back to it, though? A twisting passage, perhaps? Teleportation? Hmm..."
Shun green if you can, but night’s good color
is for those of great valor.
"Avoid the color green when there's a choice, obviously, but the color of night? Scientifically speaking, there is no color of night, for night is darkness, darkness is black, and black is the absence of color. But perhaps Acererak was not as learned as I am in modern science."
If shades of red stand for blood the wise
will not need sacrifice aught but a loop of
magical metal—you’re well along your march.
"Some kind of magical ring acts as a key to avoid sacrifice. We'd best find this ring."
Two pits along the way will be found to lead
to a fortuitous fall, so check the wall.
"The pits lead to a good fall? A treasure trove? The way deeper? Or something else? Regardless, we should be checking the walls often for clues."
These keys and those are most important of all,
and beware of trembling hands and what will maul.
"What will maul. A tiger, naturally, or some other great beast. But what keys? And what does he mean by twisting grammar and using the word 'those' there? Bah, riddles."
If you find the false you find the true
and into the columned hall you’ll come,
and there the throne that’s key and keyed.
"What first appears to be false will actually be true. A door that seems to lead to nowhere? Perhaps one of the very doors my companions have already found. Could it be that Acererak hides the solution at the very entrance? Hmm. A throne that requires at least one key, and that is itself key to the puzzle."
The iron men of visage grim do more than
meets the viewer’s eye.
"An iron golem, I'd wager."
You’ve left and left and found my Tomb
and now your soul will die.
"Two turns to the left? Left the tomb twice only to return? Turning left twice results in facing the opposite. Again, a clue to the front entrance, perhaps?"
Gralamin continues pondering the meaning of the riddle, then eventually shares his thoughts with the rest of the group.
"Or we sacrifice a ring...yes, perhaps sacrifice it to avoid getting ourselves sacrificed," says Shadassa. "I had a thought that the color of night could be some dark purple, but perhaps that is too poetic. I don't trust the writing, though--for example, 'fortuitous' might just mean it's fortunate for the owner of the place, not for us." She shivers.
"First things first. Where is that poison? Then we can look at these mosaics."
She casts Detect Poison again, triangulating to pinpoint the source.
You can detect four sources of poison from the space right adjacent to the crawlspace you've dug-all are several men's heights below the floor, and at varying levels of distance from the entryway. The closest one is about fifteen feet away.
"I very much agree with you Sir Garret, though I'm more of a soloist, though I do decently well with a partner. I do my best work when I have space. I won't stray too far until we know more about what we are up against. Think of me as a litmus test, I'll find out what is safe and what is acidic to our health. Then we can tackle it together.
I'm not much for riddles though, I'll leave that to you smarter people unless I stumble upon a revelation."
Saren peers down the central hallway taking in the simple layout and calculating the distance of the hall, the best way to get across and to see how the poison will activate.
"Garret, think you can take care of the poison? If not, I'll set them off so we can get through safely... Hopefully."
Saren, in the main hallway, actually cannot see to the end of the hallway - it extends past where the light does. The hallway doesn't seem to have another way to get across than simply walking across the floor. The hallway is ten feet wide, and the walls on either side are intricately painted and carved. The red brick walkway that meanders down it crosses the hallway multiple times, switching sides.
About fifteen feet in, just at the edge of the visible portion of hallway, Saren does spot a strange-looking floor tile. It seems more separate from the other tiles than the rest.
"Let's take this slow. The other entrances were trapped, and fake. No reason to believe this will be any less ruthless."
Garret takes point, slowly moving and scanning the everything in front if him before he takes a step.
"Can someone be my eyes for magic? I never figured out how to see auras."
Holly creeps after Garret, eyes still peeled, and detect magic up.
"Watch your step there Garret, that tile looks out of place." Saren point out the tile he sees. What is the point of the red brick road, why can't it be yellow, I know where that one leads to.
Holly casts light on Garret's sword, too.
Garret doesn't get far into the tunnel (only about 25 feet) until he recognizes that he can't walk further without triggering at least one trap. On the floor 20 feet in, on the right side of the corridor, is one thing that he recognizes as a trap.
On the floor 25 feet in, on the left side of the corridor, is another.
You note that the red brick pathway runs through the first trap, but not the second.
Another thing of note in the first section of hallway is one of the mosaics- 15 feet in, a pair of jackal-headed kings hold a golden chest. The chest is actually not painting, and protrudes into the hallway. There are hinges on the chest, and it appears that the bottom face swings open using a tiny stud on the bottom of the chest.
detect magic picks up an overwhelming magic aura coming from the very end of the hallway, a full 60 feet away, well into the darkness.
"Magic down there!" Holly declares, pointing to the end of the tunnel.
Shadassa has flipped out her Ioun Torch to whizz around her like a bit of orbiting flame.
"No doubt that golden chest is also a trap," says the mermaid. "Do we even bother? I didn't come here for treasure."
She pulls out her crossbow and loads a bolt, readying it for anything that comes down the hallway.
Saren looks over every inch of the chest without touching looking for any triggers, should he see none he begins to poke and feel around it, "So we have a red herring chest here, or perhaps it isn't a red herring and actually contains something helpful to taunt us. I can see that, one: the demilich places it here and we skip over, he makes fun of us for dying to something that we could have easily done if we had whatever is in here. Two: We take whatever is in here, and then he taunts us when we die that he gave us a handicap and still failed. A classic narcissistic view. Either way, we should try and see what is in here."
"Do we have a ten foot pole?" Holly suggests, now thinking that she won't touch anything of this jerk's without one. She sighs, "He's right, its not the treasure I'd be concerned about as more riddles or half clues that may or may not help or hinder. Either way, it tells us more about this place."
"I was going to bring one, but it weighed too much," says Shadassa apologetically. "A pole arm, perhaps? An unseen servant or mage hand would also work."
Garret halts taking a good look at the pressure plates.
"Celing drops are hard to make reset. No holes in the walls, so probably not gas o a needle sprayer. That means it's either going to be a pitfall, a mancatcher or we're going to have something mean flying at us from the far end of the hall. I have a pole, but these traps are pretty sophisticated. They might be calibrated not to trigger unless a certain amount of weight is applied."
Something occurs to him.
"I want to jam open the door. If one of these pressure plates shuts it and seals us in, we're looking at death by starvation."
"Some of us have rings of sustenance, and I can create food and water..." says Shadassa a little gloomily. "Not that I care to be entombed whilst conscious. We shall leave that to our host."
Poking around at the chest, Saren doesn't recognize the mural to be anything of significance, but he does find a tiny needle on a catch on the bottom on the chest. The catch appears to open the chest, but the needle is right on the top of the catch, meaning anyone that tries to press it will be pricked. The needle glistens with poison.
Garret recognizes the traps as pitfall traps. He sees tiny hinges inside the gaps in the stone.
Saren pulls out a bolt and presses it into the catch opening the bottom. Hmmmm we have a lever here, smells like we have a trap within a trap. My vote is to move on.
Saren pulls out a magnet from his backpack and tried to see if the needle is loose and will come out of the catch disabling the catch trap, if the needle doesn't come out then he calls Garret over to come disable the device.
Garret watches Saren check over the chest and nods when he recommends moving onward.
"The floor is made to drop out from under us here, there and there." he says pointing down the hall.
Holly waits 'till Garret disables any traps before trying to shuffle the bulk of her Eidolon down any farther in the tunnel.
The farther trap clicks off-the door device has been disabled and will no longer spring open. The closer trap, however, proves stubborn and Garret's tools get stuck time and time again. The trap is still deadly.
We're just going to have to avoid this one." Garret says, carefully marking the area around the trap with chalk, indicating it is still dangerous.
"This one should be fine, but let's not tempt fate. he says, marking that one as well and then stepping carefully across the point where the two pit traps come near each other.
Moving forward, he continues to look for danger.
"Ahem. Two pits along the way will be found to lead
to a fortuitous fall, so check the wall. So...check the wall?" Shadassa still keeps her crossbow ready towards the hallway.
Garret stops and pays careful attention to the walls for a few moments, then thinks about something.
"Fortuitous?" he repeats. "Everyone stand back. I'm going to trigger the live one."
"Remember, it might mean fortuitous to the d!$!&ead." Holly cautions, and stays back.
The trapped floor falls open at Garret's poking to reveal a 20-foot deep pit, with glistening spikes at the bottom.
Moving forward and checking, very carefully, everything in the hallway, Garret will discover the hallway ends at 70 feet in, and contains three more pit traps. There are, however, no pit traps that are adjacent, so Garret can continue to walk along the path without triggering them. Two of the traps lie along the red path.
At the end of the hallway is an interesting sight. A stone face of a grimacing devil, long sharp horns extending into the upper reaches of the hallway, dominates the wall at the end. To the left is a small room that contains an arch. Inside the arch is a thick white mist that obscures vision. The arch is set with three gemstones. On the top is a glowing blue gem, to the left is a glowing yellow gem, and to the right is a glowing orange gem.