Gnasher's ability to rage is restored, while Malgrim ignores the hint and leaves the question unanswered.
Gnasher makes a vow of death and dismemberment on all inhabitants of the cursed place, sans slaves, which seem to claim a soft spot in his heart, as the group leaves the dubious comfort of the trog den.
Listening to Malgrims hypothises, Gnasher considers what his friend is expaining. Admitedly Gnasher knew Malgrim knew more about magics than himself, but he had trouble believing it. He confesses. "Ghost know more about magic than Gnasher." Nodding back towards the troglodyte lair. "But if Gnoll witch could affect lizards, why wait till know?" Shaking his head, he continues toward the slaves' lair to the north. "It matter not. Tribe leave girl with her own kind and finish Carrion Kings followers."
Once they reach the slaves hiding place to drop the girl off, Gnasher will get ready to go back down the tunnel they dug the day before.
Malgrim will follow along behind Gnasher.
After dropping off the mute girl at the area where the former slaves are hiding and thanking Tarak for helping him feel better; Gnasher gestures towards the tunnel Tarak dug and asks "Shall tribe return to Warrens and Middle Temple?"
"That seems as good a place as any to start clearning again." Malgrim says.
"Aye, that sounds like a plan." Tarak agrees.
Leaving the mute girl with the other freed slaves, Gnasher, bardiche in hand, leads the tribe back to where they'd fought the elemental. Gesturing toward the hallway going back around he asks. "Tribe continue that way?" Without waiting he began to move up the hall, keeping a keen eye out as he goes.
"Lead the way." Urah calls from the back
You head down the corridor and it bends around and you see a door in the distance. You approach the door cautiously and listen but hear nothing. The hallway after this point has mostly collapsed, and a lot of the rubble has blocked the doorway, preventing you from opening it easily. You estimate it will take hours of hard work to clear even 10'.
Frowning at the rubble filled doorway, Gnasher turns, having a gift for the obvious, "No gnolls in there." Remembering how well Tarak's large animal form dug through the rocks previously he asks, "Storm Blessed want to dig, or have tribe move on and find gnolls to kill?"
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"I think we go everywhere we can first and then we can consider excavations. I doubt whatever attacked us is under tons of rock. So there is either another way beyond this or our attacker is somewhere else." Malgrim says as his back already is aching and he did not feel like trying his hands at digging.
Looking over the pile, Tarak nods. ”I be happy to dig again, but yesterday it used up all me energy to change shape, which would have been helpful against that gnoll king beast.” he finishes with a wince, recalling how close he had been to death.
”I agree we clear the rest, then I be happy to come back and dig.”
With the party in agreement, they head off towards ?.
Nodding his muzzle in agreement, Gnasher head back out to the large room with the odd little stairs headed towards the door on the north side. Pausing when he notices the rubble he looks toward the north.
(H4) A wide archway opens into a large square room. Along the room’s outer walls, statues of robed, morbidly obese humans sit cross-legged, perhaps in some sort of praying position. The heads of all the statues have been smashed off. In their place rest small piles of humanoid skulls. In the center of the room four iron braziers surround a marble font half full of brownish, stagnant-looking water.
Gnasher recognizes it as a place to anoint new high priests of Rovagug. Or, at least, it used to be.
"Nice ermm looking place."ventures Urah after peeping into the room.
"Looks like a place with possible treasure?"
Hearing Urah's observation, not sure if there would be treasure or not, Gnasher shrugs "tribe can look." He cautiously moves into the room, intent on double checking to see if there may be treasure.
Unless you prize skulls or want to sift through the nasty looking water you do not find anything.
After circling the room Ghasher, in a very human fashion, shrugs his shoulders. Turning towards Urah, gesturing towards the pool, "Gnasher find nothing. If Firestarter wants to search water, Firestarter can."
Not waiting for an answer he moves out of the room turning to the west he stops at the closed door on that side of the great room. Inspecting the door for traps, He then attempts to open it.
You open the door and find that it is another store room. It has stuff like poorly preserved meat (who needs to preserve when you got the gut of a gnoll?), barrels of water, poorly maintained weapons and armor and other supplies like clothing, rope, nails, tools, and in a few foul-smelling barrels, a revolting drink made from fermented milk of an unknown origin.
Sniffing the odd container of fermented milk Gnasher wrinkles his nose in disgust. Turning to the others, "Gnasher see's nothing Gnasher wants, tribe want to check for magic before tribe head on?" He then points towards the south and the odd square shape blocking the view of the western portion of the room.
"This does not look like a well funded operation" Malgrim says as he looks over the poorly maintained weapons and armor.
Nodding his head in agreement with Malgrim, Gnasher waited for Urah to come from around the corner and tell them if the room had anything magical.
There is nothing magical in the room.
In a very human like fashion, Gnasher shrugs his shoulders. Looking towards the others he points west "Tribe go that way?" and moves on. As he heads west he stops at the odd curved wall with the square pillar investigating the wall.
"Bleh." is Urah's expressions as he finds nothing, absolutely nothing of worth in the rooms he searches.
Joining the rest, he complains.
"Nothing. No Magical dust or anything. These Gnolls are pretty much worthless in terms of value. Having this place to themselves is a complete waste."
Tarak grumbles a little along with Urah at finding nothing worth noting in the rooms.
"I had hoped to find more loot in this big place. Bah!"
At Gnasher's prompting, Tarak nods and follows the group west.
Tarak and Gnasher notice that there are some small slits in the wall starting about 9 feet up. They are only a few inches wide and there is no way any of you could (unmagically) fit through any of them and through the wall.
Peeking around the corner you also see a few doors further on.
Knowing that Tarak can take the shape of smaller things, Gnasher points up to the small slit, asking, "Storm Blessed want to explore or move on?"
"Those look like arrow slits. So there is probably a way to get to the other side. If something bad happens we would not be able to intervene currently." Malgrim says.
"So we need to search for the other side then." Urah doesn't like the sound of arrow slits. It'll be truly difficult for them if they were to be caught out on this side.
Having a gift for the obvious, Gnasher gestures towards the door on the right ahead. "Maybe door let Tribe see." He moves ahead to the door quickly checking it for traps, If he thinks the door is safe he will open it up.
Tarak ponders the slits for a long moment, wondering if he could change into a form small enough to fit into those slits and see what was beyond.
As the group moves, he shrugs and says ”Aye, we can move on.”
Gnasher does not notice anything and opens the door to another useless store room. To the left of the door is more clogged corridor.
bump.
Where do you head? Does Tarak make his way into the room with the slits?
"Any other rooms? I think all of these are a dead end."
Nodding his head in agreement, Gnasher repeats, "Aye, tribe move on." As he moves past the rubbled filled hallway, he points out the obvious. "Tribe can explore if want to once all Carrion Crown's creatures dead."
Moving south very cautiously he looks towards the west and then back south asking, "Which way did gnolls come from?" Shaking his head, he points back to the large entry changer "Gnasher did not see, Gnasher over there getting beaten up by wind thing."
Urah's face turns green at the thought of the air elemental. Compared to the rest, he got off the worse being flung and carried willy-nilly by the creature, helpless to do anything else.
Gnasher moves further west until he comes to some doors that have been sealed shut. Either magic was involved or somehow the stone grew over the edges of the door. In any case, ain't nobody gettin through without magic or severely punishing that door.
After leaning on the double doors a little, Gnasher figured that whatever kept him in, kept whatever was on the opposite side out. Turning from the double doors he continued skirting the wall counter clockwise until he came to the first door on the southern wall. Gesturing towards the door he asked he others, "Shall we?"
He then carefully inspected the door, if he finds no traps, he will open the door with one hand, Bardiche in the other.
"This seems like a good place to go next." Malgrim says with
a nod. He then stands next to Gansher and looks over the door for traps or alarms.
Following the group, Tarak also tries to keep his eyes open for traps.
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How terribly exciting. Another storage closet. And another, and another.
It is not until you get to the room that the guards boiled out of that you find anything interesting (H5), if you can call an abandoned gnoll barracks interesting. You got your flea ridden, nest-like beds complete with well noshed on bones, shedded gnoll fur, and bits of rotten food not yet claimed by the rat population. Worst of all it reeks of gnoll urine. All that Tarak's excellent perception buys him is a nice big draft of stinky stench. Apparently hygiene is not a concern for gnoll guards. Anything and everything of value has been removed from this room. There is a flight of stairs that descend to the lower level.
Urah trawls through the multitude of empty rooms. That last room though had a certain whiff of its last occupants and wasn't pleasant at all.
Seeing the stairs though.
"The fates couldn't be more clear on which direction we should be headed too."
Using his boot to kick a few gnoll nests, Gnasher casually investigates the rat and urine infested sleeping quarters. Finding nothing that interested him, he nodded back to the middle area. "Stairs out there look like stairs tribe found below. Let us go down them." Returning to the small set of stairs in the middle He descends to the lever where they killed the carrion king.
Finding his way to back the next level He moves south to the double doors, taking a breath, "Tribe look here?" Inspecting the doors as he gestures at them.
"Yes We'll look here."
Urah agrees while making way for the rest to take a look.
The stairs lead to I10 where I have placed your icons.
This geometric maze of hand-carved passages is covered by ancient writing from floor to ceiling everywhere you look.
Give me a DC 20 linguistics check for more info on the writing (or use a comprehend languages spell).