Each of the symbols slides an inch into the wall as he presses them. After pressing the final one, everyone waits with bated breath, expecting someting, anything, to happen. But nothing happens. Was Shandor correct? Did he over-think it? Under-think it? Is there nothing to be puzzled out after all? It's a tough question to answer!
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Natalia mumbles to herself, in a quite unladylike like manner, "I knew I should have used Enlarge Person. I #@&%ing knew it!"
She picks herself up, and quite uncharacteristically moves carefully to the side of the trap. "Rodrigo, are you all right?"
She'll do what she can to help Rodrigo climb back up
Once she has helped Rodrigo back up, and has healed him, she tries to rid herself of some of the water and muck that she's acquired. Seeing that this is a quite impossible task, especially for someone bedecked in full combat plate, she moves to Shandor, asking, "Shandor, would you mind casting a prestidigitation when have a moment?" She does looks quite uncomfortable.
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I'm alright ! Don't worry Lady Natalia. It's my job to take all the traps. You must be protected, but thanks for asking my lady.
responded Rodrigo to Lady Natalia worries
Thanks to the rope he was able to climb with ease and joined his comrades.
He took his wand and asked to be cure from his wounds
Did you find the meaning to all of this ? he asked looking at the hieroglyph
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Sharna makes a noise of deep interest and satisfaction, forgetting about Rodrigo's pain in favor of studying the hieroglyphs. She lowers back to the ground again and walks normally over to the wall to examine them.
She nods along with Shandor and Zaquielle's observations, watching intently as the orc presses on the walls.
"I believe your calculations are correct," she tells Shandor. "Ten, six, nine, four... perhaps it opens something in another part of the complex? As you say, we shall remember the sequence."
Sharna moves to the faint outline of the door, and probes at it with her fingers, while Ra sulks and says things in bird-language to the effect of Mistress, you can't fault me for not seeing these things, they were under the water!
Sure enough, as soon as the words are out of her mouth, Sharna steps upon the trapped flagstones and triggers the tiles to fall. Ra shrieks out in objection at the sudden hole, but Sharna immediately steps back from the gaping hole.
Ra examines the outline of the door, but is unable to discern any way to open the large slaps of stone set deep within the wall.
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"Sharna, are you still able to hover? If so, I could push you in front of the door, in order to examine it. Otherwise, I could use my Enlarge Person spell, and try and hold Rodrigo out far enough so that he could investigate the doorway. If I stand at the side, I would assume he'd have enough room to check out the door."
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Sharna steps back, with a wry snort at the aptness of Zaquielle's warning as the floor caves away beneath her. Ra flaps his wings and scolds his mistress in a series of shrieks right in her ear, which causes the witch to grimace.
"Moving before the door is not an issue, but Ra's eyes are far keener than mine, and he tells me that he perceives no mechanical way to open the door. I can likely do nothing more there."
She looks thoughtful. "We have now discovered three of the four holes-with-pits we noticed on the lower level. There was one more at the end of that tunnel, though, as I recall. If we cannot get this door open, we might be best suited by ascending through that one."
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When they have returned to the last section of spikes, Sharna lets Rodrigo and Ra look it over once more for any signs of trouble, or sounds from the room above. Then she levitates up to hover at the tunnel's ceiling level, standing off to one side so the water doesn't drench her when it pours down.
The bird settles on her shoulder in his customary position. Sharna uses her rarely-used club to poke and prod at the tiles, studying the way they fit together to find a weak spot.
Activating the rope of climbing, it anchors itself to one of the statues on either side of the northern door and drops below into the hallway below. The group climbs / floats downward and moves north and around the bend to the final (maybe?) set of spikes in the hallway.
Unlike the previous traps in the lower hall, this trap in the out of the way bend cannot be triggered from beneath. It seems as if it is triggered elsewhere.
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Zaquielle gets up as nothing happens, "Is it stuck, or can we find how its activated. I'll see if anything up stairs has stirred. The puzzle probably opens the doors...if we can see how the key works."
Zaquielle climbs back up to the room above, looking to see if anywhere in the hieroglyphs have been disturbed by their activity.
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"Agreed, Zaquielle. I think that Shandor's solution may be flawed. I am thinking that the first cypher tells us what the NUMBERS are, and the second is the key, right?
I am assuming that no numbers are duplicated, and that all numbers are represented. However, I am stumped right now.
Shandor, would you mind explaining how you got to your solution?"
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Shandor proceeds to explaining how the cipher works - or at least how he thinks it works. "Every symbol corresponds to a number. By using the first cipher to understand the operation symbols and the second cipher for the numbers, a simple mathematical operation allows to deduce those four numbers. Child's play, really."
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"Interesting. It looks like the first set are sort of superfluous. Really, the only thing we needed for this would be the operators. So, I've done some thinking, and I think I agree with your assessment. Now, we need to figure out why this didn't work."
She thinks about this as well...
[b]"However, let's let Rodrigo take a look on this side, and perhaps he can jigger something up and bypass the whole puzzle lock."[/b[
Nobody is able to figure out a way to trigger the the trap in the lower hallway from underneath. It must be triggered from elsewhere.
The same goes for the door in room with the hieroglyphs. The doors seem to be too deeply recessed for any access to whatever is preventing them from opening. It seems that the only way forward is to figure out this puzzle...
Will the group figure out the puzzle before them? Is there an answer? Would Aram hold the key to their dilemma? Would Aram be happy to see these seasoned pathfinders coming back empty-handed and with more questions? Could the key to this whole thing hang on Al Suresh, who hasn't moved from his spot by the spikes in fifteen, twenty minutes? Is it really that comfortable there? Only time will tell, and it seems as time itself is holding its breath, watching to see how this ends.
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Zaquielle goes back to the puzzle, then presses all the symobols of the first equation in order, followed by the wave and waits a moment to see what happens, If nothing happens she follows the sequence for all the equations with the answers they used before. "I hate their riddles" she says with a tinge of anger and frustration in her voice.
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Thoughtfully, Sharna returns to the room with the puzzle as well. She had checked Shandor's initial translation of the cipher, and found that her own mind agreed with his conclusions: could they have missed something? She mulls the hieroglyphs over in silence, Ra being 'helpful' here and there with annoying noises in her ear.
Rodrigo is able to slowly bring the floor back up using its mechanical triggering device and then locks it into place with a quick cut of a wire here and a jammed gear there. The floor once again looks sturdy.
Puzzling over their predicament, Shandor suddenly has an idea. Directing three others to the other three parts of the puzzle, they all press the corresponding tiles simultaneously. As they do so, the door to the north slowly opens.
Beyond the heavy door, a short stairway leads up to the center of a hallway with identical doors at either end. The floor here is barely damp. Each doorway features a simple stone handle. On the passage's northern wall are two figures in bas-relief: to the west, a human man holding an ankh in one hand and a khopesh in the other; to the east; a jackal-headed man double-wielding twin kukris.
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Thinking that we've been pretty lucky, so far, Natalia moves up to the "T" in the passage. Looking to the left, it seems likely that this would be where the trap door that we could not open would be. So, she will move to the door on the right (east?).
Before touching anything, she will cast Enlarge Person on herself. If given the "all clear" by Ra and Rodrigo, she'll open the door. Otherwise, she'll wait for Rodrigo to check it out.
Rodrigo finds no traps, but does notice that the door is locked. Taking his time, he is able to eventually open the lock .
After Rodrigo unlocks the door, Lady Natalia casts a spell, calling on the power of her "dead" god, and becomes much larger, filling the otherwise large hallway. Opening the door, you find a room filled with brilliant treasure. From every angle, gold, silver, and myriad gems catch the light. While the floor is a soupy morass and mold grows up the walls, the Dog Pharaoh's treasures sit atop shelves untouched by the grime below. An ornate sarcophagus lies on a dais at the far end of the room, mod growing up its sides.
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"Bah, fakes all of them" says Zaquielle as she enters the treasure hall, following after Natalia enters.. "Left here as a decoy." She is just about to turn from the away, when she takes a second look at the south wall. "That mold there, do you notice there's something unnatural about it. Why is it so linear?" she questions. "Any idea what mold it is?"
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Sharna delicately facepalms when, in the midst of her running her calculations again, Shandor solves the riddle.
She offers the orc a rueful smile (hidden by the veil, but her eyes crinkle, anyway) as they proceed to the next chamber. "How often we overthink, hmm?"
She glances at the statues with interest, noting their styling, then follows along to the room that overwhelms with its opulent treasure piles.
"Ha. Bright baubles for Ra to play with, but nothing worth taking back with us, I fear. An elaborate hoax..."
Rodrigo's observation draws her eyes. Sharna slips into the room and takes a moment to study the mold in question, her head cocked, while Ra moves from one shoulder to the other.
Sharna's keen eye is able to determine that yes, it is indeed mold. On closer inspection, she find that it outlines half of a secret door, confirming one of Shandor's suspicions. Though a jumping ooze would be magnificent. Just saying. The door looks like it is counterweighted to slide open with just a firm push.
And Al Suresh finally found the time to come up out of his hole! This is indeed a wondrous day for the Society!