Amandine doesn't know what to do except stare. "What the hell?"
"What the hell is right. Think you can get through it... or stop it, Amandine?"
"Um, I don't know what it is. What is it?"
Photinè’s eyes widen a little as she steps into the hall. She reaches out as if to touch one of the circles, but pulls her hand back as Greenly’s babbling about wizards reaches her. She examines several circles closely, but is careful not to come into contact with any of them.
Thankfully, the imposing door with the two keyholes - which you hope will finally offer a clear step towards escape - is free from the bloody circles. Putting the two keys you collected from Factor 12 and the gremlin should pose no additional danger.
Amandine examines the brass-plated door, and she finds that while its locking mechanism is nothing short of a masterpiece, there are no traps lurking among the darkwood panels.
Photinè stops herself from staring too intently at the bloody circles, sensing an almost imperceptible reverberation of negative energy - sort of like an echo from down a long corridor. She cautions everyone that looking at them too long could form a connection that would be as painful as making physical contact.
Greenly's description of a "soul entering a rat" gives you a clue about the origin of the creature known as Dagio. Whatever spell the wizard may have attempted, its effect could have been shunted onto his familiar. This could possible explain a dire rat with sentience and longevity that borders on immortality.
However, you cannot single out one particular spellcaster who could have met such a fate. Countless minor nobles throughout Oppara (and Taldor at large) dabble in magic, including the more forbidden avenues of the art. Furthermore, the evidence you've encountered that indicates this Dagio has been around for centuries suggests that whomever Greenly glimpsed in her vision actually met his end very long ago indeed.
Photinè takes a step back from the circles, shaking her head as if awakening from a trance. Touching Greenly gently on the arm, she begins to explain her theory. ”I believe that your vision may solve at least one mystery,” she says, and turns to address the rest of the group as well.
”Suppose our mysterious wizard truly did manage create a spell to become immortal—but it went awry somehow.” She moves her hands up and down in opposite directions, indicating a pair of scales. His familiar became the target of the spell instead, whether by accident or purposeful experiment, giving us,” she gestures dramatically to the door at the end of the hall, ”this strangely intelligent, seemingly immortal animal. I’ve no idea who our wizard could have been, though...”
She is quiet, apparently lost in thought.
Chana borrows the two keys and holds one in each hand as Photine relays her conclusions. She shakes her head in dismay "Poor little rat! Some reckless wizard messing around with dark magic, and its the familiar that has to suffer for it. Cursed with immortality and enough smarts to understand just how much time is passing."
'Ey Snips, fink we can 'elp this Dagio? Would be good if we could put 'im teh rest.'
With her mind focused on how the rat Dagio must've been suffering, she wanders through the cursed hallway and inserts both keys in the door at the end.
The old keys slide into the locks, and with a little force from Chana, they click into place, opening the door.
As the door groans open, another message from Martella flows into your minds.
"Stavian's forces retreating. Military is divided. Maxillar Pythareus seen moving with impunity through Stavian's assassins."
Beyond the now-opened door, wide stairs descend into a tiered, circular chamber. Chairs stand in odd positions throughout the room, collected into circular patterns, even outside of the greater circular patterns of the hall itself. Circular gouges mar the surface of the wooden walls and floor here, some left to stand alone, while others are made from multiple circular scratches overlaying one another, joined by other lines and scrawlings.
The greatest concentration of circles gathers on the ceiling, some forty feet above, where multicolored circles inscribed with artistic fanaticism surround a five-foot-wide hole in the ceiling.
Chana gives a start at the emotions coming from her bond to her hidden familiar. She looks around the room with trepidation. Whatever scared Snips was in here... somewhere.
She waves for the group to join her. "I think we found where our immortal rat is living. There's more circles here than I can count. The fella wrecked the place." She looks out up at the ceiling, mouth agape at the extent of the 'artistry'.
"How in the heck did 'e get up there?"
"I believe we are nearly at the end," Photinè thinks in response to Martella.
She stands in the doorway, looking up and around the room with caution and... interest. "The circle must be very prominent in our mysterious wizard's spell, or ritual, peu importe. Of course, it's not as simple as just drawing a circle," she says, remembering the scrap of paper she drew on in the archives, "but it seems to me that Dagio has obsessively latched onto a piece of what his master created."
Amandine follows Chana, and simply nods at Photine's theories about the rat as she listens. It's all quite beyond her, so she ha to assume something of the sort must be correct. She does concentrate to she if she feels malignant auras in the room. Detect Evil
When Martella contacts them again, Amandine can no longer resist asking what she's wanted to ask every time before.
"What is happening out on the city's streets? Has the violence spilled into other districts?"
You cannot see him, but you hear him. Dagio is on the scaffolding above, of this you are sure. You can just barely hear his breathing and the rustle of his whiskers, the faint creak as he shifts weight between his paws.
Amandine's question brings a hasty response from Martella.
"Just escaped the senate building. Guiding a dozen or so survivors to a safe house."
Chana drops into a wild crouch as she hears some noise coming from the scaffolding above. She hisses, whispering "He's here! I can hear him up there, in the scaffolding. Can't see him though. Must be good at hiding."
"The guy's crazy. Maybe he'll leave us alone, but I'm not goin' ta count on it. What do we want 'ta do?" She glances back at the rest of the team.
Greenly, wiping her eyes dry, nearly trips over their friendly halfling porter and notices nothing in the room.
Chana strides on into the room and looks up into the scaffolding. She raises her voice "Hello Dagio! We're just trying to get through here and don't mean you any harm. Unless you want us to harm you so you can be done with the immortality after all these years? I can imagine that must be awful..."
She keeps her eyes and ears open to see if he's approaching.
Seeing what Chiara is attempting, Photinè takes a few steps down the stairs, looking carefully around the room, and spreads her hands in a show of peace.
"Yes, we mean you no harm, and we hope you will treat us with the same courtesy. We know we have intruded on your domain, Dagio, but through no intention of our own. Surely a creature of your singular power and intellect knows the value of mercy; we simply wish to return to the surface, whence we came."
Greenly narrows her eyes, casting eyes around the room. "Who are you ladies like talking to?"
She draws her bow, suspicious.
The raspy, nasally voice reverberates along the arching walls of the hall and seems to echo all around you.
"How dare you intrude upon the Senate of Circles, interrupting my research into the will of the circles?" Dagio demands. For now, though, his wrath seems to be stayed by Photinè's decorous speech. Nevertheless, his tongue remains far from silenced.
"Indeed! It is good that you show respect, for you are in the presence of Dagio the Great: Hierophant of the Arc, Archduke of Tangencies, and the Beginning of the End. However, perhaps your arrival is fortuitous. I have long wanted to study your kind in its 'default state' to glean potential insights."
As you keep your senses sharp, though, you become aware of another sound. Small titterings waft out from beneath the benches and within hidden cubbies along the tiers of the lecture hall. Countless normal rats lurk within these recesses. Your empathic link with Snips warns you that these other rats frighten your familiar.
While the more eloquent members of the group address the surprisingly pompous sounding Dagio, Chana directs her attention to the myriad of rats hiding in the benches and hidden cubby-holes around the room. She begins to chitter reassuringly to the rats.
'Cmon litt-e guys, no need ta bover us. If you're 'ungry, we'll bring ya food back.'
She tries to convey her positive, helpful intentions to the rat audience.
There was nothing in Lady Martella's response to soothe Amandine's worries about her brother's safety. She leaves the others to pay attention to the rat. All Amandine wants to is move on as quickly as possible and get out.
The legion of rats peer out from their hiding spots, but they seem unmoved by Chana's appeal. She is relieved to have her new friends at her back, as for the first time in her life, she is utterly unwelcomed by the rats.
"What do you know of the circle?" Dagio demands "Master's thoughts - they echo in my mind. What is the circle? We must master the circle!"
"Circles have, like, no beginning?" Greenly lamely suggests, struggling to remember her maths class.
More and more convinced this will end poorly, she places her back against Maplhene's, notching an arrow against her bowstring.
"Don't you worry, Miss. I got you fer sure."
"And no end," Photinè finishes for Greenly. Projecting her voice to ensure that the unseen rat can hear her clearly, she continues along this line of thought. "Your master discovered that life is much the same, didn't he? Retour éternel?"
She digs around in her purse and pulls out the wizard's journal she took from the archives, holding it slightly aloft. "Much like yourself, I have a great desire to study his findings; I would gladly share whatever I discover. Is it your desire to remain down here in the dark, in all senses, for eternity? We have an opportunity to help each other, Great Dagio."
Reckoning that the rats here must be mind-controlled by Dagio, Chana sends an uneasy tenseness through her bond to Snips. It seems more and more that the snobby immortal rat-wizard (?) is not going to allow them to get through without a fight. Snips tenses up, priming himself for the fight.
She adds to Photine's argument with "And to help each other, we need get through here and out to the surface. There's probably someone up there that can explain all the secrets of circles to you."
Amandine keeps walking, sticking close to the others. She's not sure what's going on exactly with the rat and it's horde of rat buddies, and doesn't want to be isolated if something goes sideways. She looks anxiously back and forth between Photine and Chana, but stays quiet.
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Much incomprehensible muttering floats down from the invisible rat creature above. Reverberating along the lecture hall's walls, Dagio's frustration is almost palpable. He seems to be in the throes of arguing with himself.
One last exasperated screech seems to herald that he's reached a decision.
"Fine! Go! Go! Be away with you, before I change my mind!"
The swarms of rats lurking around the circular room retreat into their cubbies, frightened of their master's excitable mood. You take this as a clear sign that you have a very narrow window of time to continue out from this hall before Dagio reconsiders and decides he wants to experiment upon non-living specimens.
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'Awful nice one there Photine!'
Chana ducks her head in respect to the invisible Dagio and quickly heads towards the east before the pompous rat can change his mind. When she comes to the door heading out of the chamber, she stops to quickly check it over for any 'surprises' before she opens it.
She eases it open and beckons with a hand for the rest of the party to make haste. Once the party is through, she whispers "Good one Photine. Now lets hope he's not going to hold you to a study meeting or whatever."
"Yes, yes, great job, Miss Mitchell," Greenly utters, standing beside the door until all members of their escape team are through, taut and alert, arrow still notched.
Chana finds that the door leading out of this lecture hall is a duplicate of the one that brought you inside, requiring the same two keys. As you fumble among your pockets and bags to remember who took along the keys, Dagio continues to screech for you to leave. The maddened rat emphasizes his insistence by throwing fistfuls of rubbish from his hidden nest above. Wads of chewed paper, oblong pebbles, bits of wood, and far worse smelling offal rain down wildly.
Greenly hones in on the sound and walks back in the room, pushing the trash around with her toe until she's sure she finds what made it. The kleptomaniac that she is, she immediately bends over and grabs it. "Thanks, dip s&&#," she says, smiling her too wide smile at the rat and examining the shiny thing in her grip before going off to rejoin the rest of the party.
”As you say,” Photinè says to the invisible rat, and hastily curtsies before gathering her skirts and hurrying across the room. She looks quite pleased with herself as she joins the others at the door.
With Greenly dashing back to pick up the metallic trinket, Chana uses the same keys she used on the previous door to get this one open. Once the group is through, she closes them with some haste and re-locks them from this side.
"I 'ope that woz the right choice..." She speaks audibly, though her thoughts are directed towards Snips.
After a couple more moments of considering whether she should go back, Chana instead takes a look around the room the team entered.
Dust-covered couches line two of the walls in this long-disused lounge. A narrow passage opening to the south curves back towards the circular hall you just vacated, leading to a trap door that must have been hidden on the other side.
Another door sits in the eastern wall, the offer of escape seeming like both a promise and a tease at this point.
Perhaps more worryingly, tracing these footprints in the dust to the next door leads you to discover evidence of a trap. A wire has been connected to the door and runs upward along the wall, concealed beside the doorjamb, and leads to the ceiling.
The wire leads to an iron apparatus fastened among the rafters above.
In fact, its surface appears perfect and unspoiled.
"Ooh," Greenly mutters, pushing on the gold ring. She sticks her arm out straight and examines the ring from a variety of angles, pulling her long braid forward and making a kissy face at nothing, quite taken with her find.
In the dusty lounge, she promptly inserts an arm into the couch, rooting around for loose change. "Mr. Gulbend, could you, like, help me look in the, uh, crevices of these couches?"
Once out of the rat chamber and into the next room with the door close, Amandine lets go an audible sigh.
"That was an amazing stunt Photine."
"Are you at least going to correspond with Dagio to keep your fledgling friendship alive?" she jokes shakily.
Amandine begins to look around, but she's not yet refocused enough to accomplish much.
Chana's hackles rise at the first sign of a trap. "Over there." She points to a wire connected to the eastern door that runs up along the wall (concealed against the doorjamb) and up to the ceiling where it meets an iron apparatus in the rafters above. "Someone took care enough to trap this door, and not in some small way either."
"And it was recent too. Look at the footprints in the dust on the floor..." She points out the footprints near the eastern door. "Anyone think they can stop that big metal thing from crushing us when we try to get through?"
With Gulbend holding the magic lantern for her, Greenly sifts through the couch cushions. She stirs up plumes of choking dust in the process, and for her trouble she finds two mismatched pewter buttons and four silver coins.
Chana points out the fan-shaped device mounted among the rafters. Amandine recognizes that the trap is designed to hurl a barrage of daggers downward in a sweeping arc should it be triggered. Fortunately, it seems like whoever set this trap was in a hurry, and it is not nearly as perilous to disarm as it might be.
When Chana points out the dagger trap, she squints at it and frowns disapprovingly.
"It's all a bit much don't you think? How did anyone ever manage to move from place to place down here?"
Then she goes to work on the trap.
Greenly has no opinion about how out of place a roughshod mechanical trap is compared to the various magical and electric traps they've thus far encountered, busy as she is pocketing the coins and buttons.
Chana looks up at the trap and shakes her head "I think whoever set this up wanted no one getting out. Maybe they were worried Dagio would get over here somehow. But... other than Dagio-"
"Smells awfully like someone knew we'd be here and didn't want us to leave. Martella?" She snorts. "If she wanted us dead there shoulda been a hundred easier ways to do it. So someone else?"
"Not Martella," Photinè agrees. She gestures to Malphene with a slight smile. "And the good Lady Trant here is not cowardly enough to try to harm us with a trap."
She turns to look pointedly at the group of nobles that the party has been carting around, and then at the treasure-draped halfling. She raises an eyebrow, considering. "Refresh my memory, s'il vous plaît. How did all of you arrive down here?"
Greenly snorts. "Yeah, Miss Malphene would just wreck all of you if she wanted, no need to try and trap us." She smiles at her charge and elbows her in the side, playfully.
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With the suggestions that the trap is not an original feature of the room but a retrofit, Amandine pays particular attention to anything suggesting whether the device is old or new.
Most of the nobles do not notice the accusatory tone lurking in Photinè's voice. Sir Gryphus, Lord Botoles, and Lady Urbaen tell the same story: in the midst of the attack on the senate, they found themselves magically whisked away to those long forgotten safe rooms. Lord Manshum had been transported with them, but he was torn apart by those undead when the nobles tried to explore their surroundings.
Zubari takes a more indignant tone in his response.
"Are you accusing us of working against you? How dare you? I was invited here as a guest of the Trants, practically lured into this whole ordeal. What's more, how would I have gotten this far to set a trap - bypassing so many dangers, only to return again and wait where you found me?"
Gulbend tries to calm the Abadaran.
"Now, now, good sir. We can't let tempers flare when we're so close to escape," the halfling servant says, seeking to placate the priest.
Picking up nothing obvious at first glance, Chana shrugs "We 'ad to get all those keys and ev'ryfing Photine, I dunn- I mean, I'm having a hard time imagining how anyone could have..."
She cuts off. "Y'know. If you were sure someone here's been trying to stop us from leaving... you'd just have to pat down each one until you found the one with an extra set of keys. Right?" She looks at each of the fairly weak willed people the party picked up and shrugs. "Though I don't think it'd be any of the people here."
"Please calm yourself, Monsieur, I'm only trying to ensure our collective safety," Photinè assures Zubari.
She purses her lips, unsatisfied with the results of her questioning, but cannot justify pressing the matter further. If there is a double-crosser among them, they are clearly adept at deception, and her direct approach will get her no further than it has already.
"Very well," she concedes. "I suppose we must all wait and see."