"No traps that I can see. This one's an actual tunnel. It curves off to the right. Might be time for a summoned scout."
You all see Isletta pull back the corner of her collar revealing a green scorpion tattooed to her neck.. She speaks a few quite words and to your amazement the scorpion starts to move and detach itself, crawling down her sleeve and onto her hand..
"This is Shade.. He is an excellent scout and can communicate with me mentally.. If yall wish i can send him forth to check out the hole.. He's very small and light so i do not think he will set off any potential traps.. Shall i send him?"
Garret smiles in surprise and nods. "Sounds good. Go ahead."
Selene casts and then whispers a few words of encouragement before sending him off..
Shade skitters off into the hole..
Skittering into the crawlspace, the tattoo-scorpion notices a few things - after the turn, the crawlspace turns into a very short hallway, only a few feet in length. At the end of a hallway, the scorpion (or rather, Isletta through the scorpion) notes a few of the standard features of a secret door. Barely visible seams, a secret opening mechanism, extending slightly farther out than everything else, etc.
Seemingly lost in thought Isletta suddenly snaps out of it.. "The tunnel ends in a small hallway.. It contains a secret passageway at the far end.." She instructs Shade to return.. Once back he crawls up her leg and reappears as a tattoo on her neck moments later..
"Well, since we have a path ahead of us, let us press on."
"Indeed.. After you Sir Garret.." She'll follow into the passageway after someone takes the lead..
"Hold up now. This is the red one. There's still the black one to look into. If there's one thing I've learned about this place it's that nothing is ever straightforward."
Moving to the black sphere, Garret once again checks carefully for traps before testing the illusion.
"Alright, well lets check it out then..
Garret, detecting no immediate danger from behind the veil, sticks his head right through. This is just another crawlspace, and it too turns to the right after a short distance.
"Another passage. Looks safe from what I can tell. Want to send your scout out again?"
"No problem.." Once again she summons the familiar and casts on him before he skitters off..
If permitted..
Shade skitters down the tunnel, turning once, and then again, and then again, and then a fourth and fifth time. This tunnel is very long, and still only has room for a crawlspace, and it ends in a dead end.
Shade conveys all of this to you when he returns after several minutes and melds with you.
"Well its a very, very long crawlspace stopping at a deadend.. Odd though Shade didn't detect any secret doors.. If we have to come back to it ill send him again with a detect secret doors spell active..'
"Dead end at the end of a long hallway? It's either another trap, or actually the way onward."
"Lets check the red one. It's a tight squeeze. I'll go first."
Garret proceeds to crawl into the hole.
"I hope it's not a trap triggered by weight..." Shadassa eyes the hole warily.
"Me too." Garret's voice echoes back from inside the hole.
Aviel sighs and waits for the rest of the group to move on before entering in himself.
"Hmm, curious."
Crawling forward, Garret is not met by any weight-activated trap, and reaches what Shade identified as the secret door in short enough order.
Garret carefully scans the door, looking for anything that might be dangerous.
Garret, with careful observation that takes several minutes, notices a mechanical link between the door and the floor beneath his feet. If the door is opened, the mechanism will trigger.
Garret sighs and shakes his head, jotting in his notebook for a moment, and then marking the trigger link, and the floor with chalk.
"Pit trap here, connected to the door." He says behind him to warn the others, and then goes about setting himself up a safety net.
Retrieving his hammock from his pack, he strings it up across the narrow hallway, slamming pitons into the walls with the hammer side of his black axe.
Then, he sits in it to test that it will hold him, lays face down and looks for a way to disarm the trap.
With a few careful moments of tool-jiggling, Garret manages to disable the trap, which coincidentally just springs it. In his fiddling, Garret discovers that the door doesn't really lead anywhere, and sees the floor drop out beneath him. Ten feet below, another room beckons.
This room is a fifteen-by-fifteen-by-ten rectangular prism with no features but three chests - one gold-bound, one silver-bound, and one bronze-bound, and all otherwise oak.
Staring down into the room below.. "Well i think that might qualify for the gold below portion of the gold ring.. Perhaps you should go search the naga tunnel more throughly before we mess with this.. Something tells me Shade missed something.."
"It doesn't look like this room goes anywhere else, which means the other tunnel is probably the way onward. I'd prefer to look over these chests before moving on. Any objection?"
"Just be cautious about it Garret. We've lost enough family members and friends to this tomb before."
Isletta will cast detect magic and take a look at the chst..
Both the gold and copper chests detect as magical, and radiate magic of the conjuration school. The silver chest does not detect as magical. Both chests that radiate magic were created by a seriously powerful spellcaster, and their power is evident even now.
"This is definitely a trap..." Garret says scratching his head.
"Aviel, now might be the time for that summon spell we mentioned earlier."
"I agree that they are trapped.. Extremely powerful conjuration magics were used on the gold and bronze chests.. The silver does not radiate.. A summoned critter might just be the best bet here.."
"Well in that case, stand back and allow my assistant to aid us." Before he began chanting he looked over at the group with a small smirk on his face. "They don't teach it to many; the trick to calling the creature is making yourself more open to it's natural ways. But they tend to stay around longer this way."
Aviel took a deep breath and slowly expelled the air from his lungs. He called to his mind an image of a windy day and began miming a tree being moved by the wind, before he began speaking in a wispy tongue.
A whirling sound precedes the appearance of a thin, wispy blue humanoid, floating in front of Aviel in the hallway.
The air elemental floats down serenely to the box and pulls on it, and it opens easily. Resting in the box is a pristine crystal box that, because it is see-through, is revealed to contain a gold ring.
"Command it to bring the crystal box up here.. Afterwards maybe we can see whats up with the other 2 chests"
He held out his hand expectantly and looked over at Isletta, a small smile playing across his face. "Which do you prefer more? Fire or lightning? Well I could be wrong, but the vast majority of you Evocation specialists seem to be pyromancers at heart. Ahh but perhaps I should let you decide, my dear."
Isletta looks at Aviel.. "Actually neither.. I like to see thing melt.. I was born under the sign of the Black Dragon and being from the underdark have natural affinity for the earth.. Acid is the element i choose to play with.. For the most part.."
The air elemental goes to retrieve the crystal box from the chest, but as soon as the box is lifted free of the bottom of the chest, a click precedes more than a half-dozen darts exploding out of the chest and embedding themselves in the elemental's torso. Doggedly, injured as it is, it floats upward after a moment to bring Aviel the box.
The box looks quite lovely and valuable, and is unlocked. It contains a ring of protection +1.
"Hmm.. Very nice ring! What do you suppose the other chests have in thme? BTW thats deffinitely qualifies as gold from below.. Now where's the tale untold? Ah it just dawned on me after looking at your map Sir Garret that the archway in the first hall is the one the gold collar speaks of.. To wend would be the indirect/random path around all the pits traps.. The ring also qualifies as a loop of magical metal.. We just need to figure out how to sacrifice it.. Ah maybe the sphere of anihilation? It destroys anything that touches it.."
"Or perhaps the ring will allow passage through the archway.. I deffinitely think we should finish looking at everything here before we test any theories.."
Garret hated using summoned creatures like that. It was one of the hardest things he had to grapple with in his career fighting against the evils of the world. In his youth he'd been adamantly opposed to it, always electing to volunteer himself for trap-detecting and disarming duties even at a time when he couldn't have found a trap if it was clearly labeled with arrows and bright red flashing letters.
He'd died more than once, only to have been brought back by a timely Breath of Life spell and Pharasma's grace. Those experiences were what inspired him to learn the trap-breaker's arts.
It had actually been Aviel to change his mind on the usefulness and moral acceptability of asking extra-planar creatures to put themselves in harms way for them. That conversation had always stuck with him.
You understand that they do not die here. They are simply dismissed back to their home plane.
Yes. We're wrenching them out of their home and throwing them into danger against their will. It's cruel.
If we had a spell that could summon you from raven tower to put you between us and danger, and if you would normally be killed, you would instead just be sent back to finish your dinner, would you mind?
Mind? Hells no. I'd want you to use it as often as you could.
Why?
There's would be no real danger to me. Better that I be temporarily inconvenienced than you die.
But what if you get hurt?
Would the pain stay when I go back home?
No.
Then so what? I can handle some short lived pain to save you from the lasting kind.
Would you imagine that most goodly creatures would feel the same way you do?
I suppose so. Why?
Magic users have been calling outsiders to help them for a very ling time. Elemental creatures and celestials of all kinds understand that this will happen to them from time to time. It is actually a part of their way of life. It isn't even random. Who answers the first time can be, but after a while we learn how to call an entity we've called before. We establish a relationship.
What do they get out of it?
What would you want if it were you?
Nothing. I'd be glad for the chance to help you.
Why
Because I know you. I know whatever you're doing, it's to help keep people safe.
You see where this is going?
Yes, but it still seems wrong. What about the ones who don't want to help you?
They don't answer.
...I could have saved myself an awful lot of pain if I'd just listened you you in the first place, couldn't I?
And a lot of money on curative scrolls and potions.
The situation still bothered him though. It may be ok in theory, but harder to accept in practice when the elemental was there in front of him leaking the gasses it used as blood and obviously pained.
"Thank you." he said as he took the box.
The air elemental nods, gas seeping liberally.
Aviel nodded sagely at the elemental to continue.
The air elemental wordlessly (but not soundlessly, as a soft hissing accompanies it everywhere)floats back down into the room, laying wispy hands on the gold chest. Heaving it upward, it's momentarily obscured by an explosion of scales and hissing.
By the time the frenzy subsides, nothing remains of the elemental but a faint airy scream and a mass of tiny, writhing snakes. They had lunged out of the chest as the top had been opened and ripped the elemental limb from airy limb.
Garret winces as the elemental was rent apart, and looks down at the mass of snakes. "Isletta, you're up."
"My pleasure" She cups one of her hands and mutters a few arcane words and lets loose a cone of acid the engulfs the room..