Salaamati thinks about the horrible figures.
Rigth! What was that?!?
by the time the others have returned, Ben has already picked through the area and made a small pile of the loot.
"Nothing magical, but some really nice items in here. This investigating thing sure is lucrative, provided you survive."
Ben is right behind Ulretha as he (presumably) descends.
Ben grabs the hope knife with the intention of finding its owner or a relative of the owner if possible, and tosses the locket and silver to Lidia to hang on to.
"Well, I'm thinking with all of our four footed friends that we should take the other route down."
Thyste pulls out two lengths of rope from her pack, one silk and one hempen.
"Unless you don't mind a little harnessing," she suggests.
and tosses the locket and silver to Lidia to hang on to
"Yes... as evidence, surely," says Thyste, palming the locket.
Ahhh... Let's see if Ben noticed.
I suspect so. Dang. He's turning into quite the watch dog.
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Lidia looks down the hole suspiciously, still obviously shaken by her terrifying ordeal with the angry ghosts.
"If there is anyone down there, they might very well have used this trap door to escape us as we came down the stairs. We could split up and come at them from both sides. Or we could just barricade this trap door and all use the stairs."
"Still, I don't think lowering the animals down through the trap door would be too hard. Getting them out fast would be a different matter though, if we run into trouble."
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Ulretha pulls his own length of rope out of his pack. He ties it off to the barding that Onnikka is wearing.
"Are we sure that the stairs go to the same place this trapdoor does?" He looks back at the doors they came in and in the direction of the stairs.
"Let's go look. I don't want to go through all this if I don't have to," he says.
Before he goes though, he gives Lidia a little push then tugs her back to make her feel like she's going to fall in for a moment.
His yipping laugh follows him out of the room.
Sal just observes the group and smiles.
”I am really glad that I met you and that we are investigating this case! You have so many ideas and are so capable! By the way, I am not going down trap door!“
Sleight of Hand + Derring-Do: 25
Though Ben sees the little snatch, he doesn't say anything for the moment. He wears a half smile as he watches Sal go one way and Ulretha the other and breathes a soft laugh.
What a group. If one of us isn't stealing from the others, we are all dashing off in different directions. Hmmm... A lot like orcs.
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You can tell that the stairs go down one floor, about the same distance down as the trap goes for, so you can be certain that they are the same level of the building. As for where either goes, not much you can tell without going there.
Looking down the stairs: The stone stairs end in a stark subterranean chamber. Doorways to the northwest and southwest offer egress from the room. Around the corner to the south, a lone statue has been relegated
to a dusty corner behind the stairs.
Looking down the trapdoor: Embedded into the floor of this chamber is a ten-foot-diameter granite emblem of a faded gold and white longsword. Four passages lead out of the chamber in different directions. A portcullis blocks the southern exit, and a sturdy wooden door leads west. A ladder in the southern corner of the room leads upward (the trapdoor ladder), and a small chest and decrepit bookshelf face one another from opposite walls.
”Let’s go down then, right?“
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Looking down the trapdoor: Embedded into the floor of this chamber is a ten-foot-diameter granite emblem of a faded gold and white longsword. Four passages lead out of the chamber in different directions. A portcullis blocks the southern exit, and a sturdy wooden door leads west. A ladder in the southern corner of the room leads upward (the trapdoor ladder), and a small chest and decrepit bookshelf face one another from opposite walls.
Perhaps Lidia feels she has something to prove. But as the others file out of the room heading for the stairs, her eyes stay focused on the trapdoor, and in the end she begins to stealthily make her way down the ladder to have a more careful look around. Once at the bottom, she holds position and looks and listens intently in the half-light.
Thyste waits for Lidia to be situated at the bottom, then hops down after, not even bothering with the ladder.
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Ulretha stops and pokes the statue with the haft of his flail. He doesn't know why but humans seem to have an obsession with making these stone men as art and then making them come alive with magic. He doesn't want to be surprised and attacked from behind if it lurches to life.
Assuming he isn't attacked, he moves to the Southwest door to open it.
Ben decides that he, too, would prefer to take the stairs rather than try to lower the critters down. So he tags along behind Ulretha.
Sal rides down with her dog.
”Can you all see well?!“
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The stone stairs end in a stark subterranean chamber. Doorways to the northwest and southwest offer egress from the room. Around the corner to the south, a lone statue has been relegated to a dusty corner behind the stairs.
DC 10
This is a statue of Iomedae in a pose of peace, with both her hands wrapped loosely around the hilt of her sheathed sword, which looks oddly askew.
"I can see just fine. Look, more evidence that this was a temple of Iomadae," Ben says as he gestures at the statue. "That sword looks a little off kilter."
He moves closer to examine it without touching, looking for traps.
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Lidia and Thyste are in a different room!
Embedded into the floor of this chamber is a ten-foot-diameter granite emblem of a faded gold and white longsword. Four passages lead out of the chamber in different directions. A portcullis blocks the southern exit, and a sturdy wooden door leads west. A ladder in the southern corner of the room leads upward, and a small chest and decrepit bookshelf face one another from opposite walls.
The bookshelf holds little of value—only the mostly destroyed pages of Iomedae’s holy text, Acts of Iomedae, and several other weathered scriptures.
Little Ben: You can tell that this longsword can be removed and is quite functional as an actual longsword. Nothing else seems interesting, although you can see Lidia and Thyste in the next room behind a portcullis.
Thyste nods, flinging a dagger at the chest. Presuming nothing happens, she gets closer to check it for traps (and retrieve her dagger).
”If nothing else, I’ll bet you and Ben could lift it,” she suggests.
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Thyste finds 1 ounce of sovereign glue, 2 doses of universal solvent, 50 feet of silk rope, a disguise kit (with 6 uses remaining), a set of thieves’ tools, a noble’s outfit worth 75 gp, a signet ring worth 50 gp, and coins totaling 237 gp, 155 sp, and 55 cp.
Lidia finds a lever right next to the portcullis. Currently, the lever is in the down position.
Thyste rifles through the goodies. ”If I didn’t know better, I’d say this was tossed down here for someone like me. Jacket’s a bit big for me, though. Hey Lidia and the rest of you! Lots of goodies in here!”
Sal stays near Lidia.
” Please tell me anyone if I can support!“
Losing interest in the statue and loosely fitting sword, Ben and his buddy join the others in the main room. He adds the silk rope to his possessions and one of the solvents.
Wonder what they use the glue and solvents for? And can anyone recognize the symbol on this ring?"
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The symbol on the ring doesn't match any symbols you've seen in Trunau.
DC 15
This ring does not have an actual symbol that represents anything in particular. Instead, it appears to be designed to simply look like a fancy symbol that could be for a noble house in general.
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As the portcullis goes up, Lidia can't help but look rather pleased with herself. She shares a look with Ben and nods, then moves over to look at Thyste's discoveries in the chest.
"Thieves tools... disguise kit... universal solvent... odd things to find in an old Plague House of Iomedae. More like the tools of a spy. I think Rodrick's guess was correct. Something else is going on here..."
It's only then that she seems to register the hundreds of coins in the chest as well. She digs her hands into the pile of money and lets it fall through her fingers.
"A rich spy..." she murmurs. "I've never seen so much money."
Thyste takes the ring from Ben as he shows it around. ”I don’t recognize this crest. Pretty sure it isn’t one, technically—see how there’s all this flowy stuff but nothing really comes together to form a letter, or an animal, or a religious symbol? This is just to look fancy to rubes.”
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Lidia looks over Thyste's shoulder at the signet ring as she describes it to Ben, and nods in comprehension.
"So... we know that Rodrick's killer paid a lot of money to the innkeeper to keep quiet, and he was a person she'd never seen before. We know that the killer acquired the murder weapon from the Clamor, probably from the employee who conveniently vanished just before the murder. A tattooed half-orc paid assassins, who were already here in town, to kill anyone who began investigating the murder, which ended up being us. And some person or persons are leaving white cross markings at various points around town, which are being erased by town guards."
"The disguise kit makes me wonder if the same person might be both the human murderer at the inn, and the half-orc with tattoos. But we still don't know what their game is. What are they doing here, and why kill Rodrick so brazenly, just because he wandered too close to things? Wouldn't it make more sense to just ambush him here, or in some other out of the way place, using the assassins they had already brought here? It just doesn't make sense to me."
"Whatever they're up to, we can bet they haven't left town. The stakes are obviously pretty high to them."
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Ulretha isn't one to leave a perfectly good weapon behind, so when Ben doesn't take the sword, he does, slipping it into his belt next to the short sword he claimed earlier.
He pays little attention to the contents of the chest, though perks up a bit at the ring...until Lidia makes the coin waterfall. Then, he practically salivates.
"I can carry that," he says, reaching for a fistful of coins.
I would make the column headers the PCs - that way you can total the amount claimed by each player at the bottom and/or top) of the list. I created something for another game here, though that sheet is a little over-complicated since the loot was broken out by the locations we found them at.
That looks better. I will put a little time into it later and add the other characters and things like gold. Do we need to distinguish between claimed and carried?
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With the loot accounted for Ulretha looks around for the next place where they might find more loot. He doesn't feel like going back the way he came, yet so he goes to the next closest door and gives a sharp bark at the little lizard/dragon that hangs around Ben to get out of the way before opening the door to the west.
Little Buddy yips back at Ulretha and darts to the side, expecting Ulretha to follow and play the game. When he does not, LB looks quizzically at the gnoll.
Thyste follows after with her doru and buckler in-hand. "Agreed!"
Ben and LB join the exodus from the room.
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The walls of this chamber are pocked with skull-sized cubbyholes, each containing a single brass or clay urn—some long since shattered or dented, others still intact. A lightly colored stone statue depicting a burning chariot wheel occupies the northwest corner of the room. Two iron doors on the eastern wall allow egress from the room.
DC 17
You recognize the statue here as Jingh, one of Iomedae’s celestial emissaries.
DC 18
There is a secret door behind the statue
Ben gives Little Buddy the command to stay and enters, rummaging through the debris and urns.