Yasmeena and Neela gladly accept Aith's resist energy spells while they all look at the heat mirage (or whatever it is).
The mysterious face appears on the golden surface of the brass walls. "A fiery orb from days of old lies suspended betwixt brass and sky, yet hidden from mortal eye. It is the key to your quest. In ancient adoration did this fiery heart lie, and only by heart’s blood of the true believer can the way be opened." Then the face vanishes again.
"???? Does that mean anything to anyone?"
"Mysterious face on the brass being mysterious. I guess we have to sacrifice you somewhere here to get a fire orb." Haleen replies to Bylo with her first attempt at an interpretation.
Bylo grins at Haleen's words, "That would be the 'heart’s blood of the true believer'? That's why I hate phrases like that. Anybody can be a true believer if they believe in something that they know is real! Not very useful as a description though."
Yasmeena concludes, that it has to be in Jhavhul's palace and that between brass and sky limits the possible hiding place a lot. For it to be in the open it would have to be invisible, but that doesn't hinder mortals with magic to see it. If it needed an immortal to see it, they would be the wrong group for the task, but also not mortal are the dead. And fat in sight from the highest tower is a 100 foot high bronze pyramid - between brass and sky. And Yasmeena would bet copper to gold coins that there is a corpse in there - and the fire orb.
Like Bylo, Aith takes a moment to check the heat pulsing in the middle of the room, trying to figure out where it’s coming from, and what it might be doing, when their elusive, cryptic guide pops in for another moment.
“Oh, good,” she says, halfway between rueful and sardonic, nodding as Yasmeena unpicks the riddle in a much more poetical way than a technically-minded (however whimsical) mage could hope to. “I wouldn’t be particularly surprised if that weird ghost in the palace proper would just love to muck about with actual flaming hearts, but if this hidden orb is a key and a heart, then whatever is in it, or it’s made of, should be something like blood, and this –” “– should be a … lock?”
She does wonder what opening it would look like. Given the lingering heat here, and fieriness of the mentioned orb, would it result in the ignition of a pillar of beacon-fire? That might be something to see!
She takes another look around the room, looking for interior stairs, before the adventurers butterfly off towards the pyramid without fully exploring the tower. Maybe behind those doors?
The quest for stairs is a short one, as there are stairs downwards on the terrace. This would have been the way up without flying if the entrance at the bottom of the stairs wouldn't be a hidden one.
There is a - empty - guard room accessible through a door on the terrace. Another chamber, accessible from the opposite terrace or one of the doors between the curtains has its floor covered in coals kept magically hot (3d6 fire per round of contact). You have to be en efreet or another crature of the fire type to enjoy this surroundings.
The other door between the curtains leads into the master bed chamber. A bed composed of hundreds of overstuffed cushions and richly woven comforters occupies the far wall of this opulent chamber, positioned beneath great bay windows that overlook the city below. A golden censer hangs from the ceiling, giving off a heady scent. An elaborate tea service and hookah rest on a short parquetry table at the foot of the bed. Wardrobes hold exotic noble outfits sized for an elemental giant. Two magnificent tapestries of prodigious size adorn the walls. One depicts an elegant sky citadel in an endless cerulean expanse, falling in flames to a horde of efreet and their fiery minions. The other depicts a powerful efreeti noble leading an army of undead horrors across a barren desert landscape.
Poking about, it becomes clear that Aith is all too fascinated by the luxurious apartments, and would reproduce their decadence at a more suitable scale (and temperature) in her own life if she could.
She makes a beeline for the tea service and starts calculating the best way to stack it for, er, liberation from a brute like Jhavhul or his minions. Although it must be said that the idea of letting the weird mage drink coffee from cups that size, with as much sugar as she likes, is the sort of thing her friends will probably veto in short order, in the interests of the general structural, chemical, and magical stability of her surroundings.
Aith also takes a look at the hookah in passing. Not her poison, and who knows if they’ll ever meet the former inmate of these chambers, but the guardswoman in her checks anyway, just in case, especially if it turns out to be something that would be worth factoring in: would whatever was in there boost aggression, or reduce inhibitions, or just leave the smoker kind of dopey? Forewarned is forearmed!
As she fiddles absently with the furnishings, the mage looks up at the tapestries, trying to decipher the details of their subjects. Jhavhul himself, or an ancestor? Is that a desert back home, or some even more viciously blazing one on the Plane of Fire? And what are those … things? Necromancy was never her favourite type of magic, and her postings never took her closer to Geb (mercifully), so Aith is a bit shaky on matters related to the not-quite-dead.
Bylo follows Aith. Is there any 'portable' treasure.... ??
Anyone looking for more practical treasure like coins gets disappointed.
But those that didn't follow for a tour of Jhavhul's private chambers get something else to see. High in the sky from the west comes a flying creature. Red as the sky it is hard to see at first but as it gets bigger and bigger in sight the closer it comes it is hard to miss at last. A huge red dragon approaches, flies past the tower and then turns into circling the premises.
“Lovely tea set,” Aith announces as she finishes her magpie tour of the chambers. “I think it would be wonderful to have for when we’re entertaining. I’d have to take a moment to consult my notes for shrinking spells to make it more manageable – most everything is genie-sized – but if there’s anything else that speaks to someone’s heart-”
Her ramblings are cut off by a glimpse of a large, scaly, winged something that swoops past her field of vision. She looks to the others to gauge if she’s seeing things, and the mood of the group.
“Ah! Looks like we should expect a visitor soon, speaking of! How much time do you think we have to prepare, or should we decide we’re not at home?”
"You think that flying lizard is stupid enough to come in here and be trapped with us?" Haleen inquires.
Bylo watches as the dragon flies by. "Probably not. Although red's seem to be the most vain and possibly prone to do stupid things for it. I expect though that unless it wanted something specific it would fly by and blast this place with its fiery breath several times first."
"If it stays out there I doubt we could beat it. It will just fly away if we hurt it...."
"You think that flying lizard is stupid enough to come in here and be trapped with us?" Haleen inquires.
“If it wants a fight, and if we hit it hard enough,” Aith guesses. “Or if it’s bound here by a geas or some other enchantment. It may not have much more of a choice about staying here than we do. Why now? Do dragons just fly over cursed old palaces in the City of Brass all the time?”
She wonders if they’ve tripped some alarm or contingency by entering the tower, and, as the visitor circles outside, gets a distinct feeling of a cat watching a mouse in a hole – but not of being the cat in the situation.
She tries to find a window with a view of the pyramid, trying to gauge the distance, and see if there’s a door they could jump behind to minimize the risk of jumping into tons of solid metal and stone.
“Do we want to try talking?” she asks, watching the windows as if expecting any one of them to erupt with a gout of flame at a moment’s notice.
"About what?" Haleen asks curiously.
Yasmeena adopts her learned stance and considers what she knows about dragons.
"If we are going to fight it, and I think it is likely that we will have to, we should be ready against its fearsome aura. I will cast a spell that should help protect us." "But I do not think this tower is its lair, because there is very little in the way of a hoard. Unless there is a hidden area we are not seeing..." Her nose begins to twitch, but she continues. "But it seems like it might be patrolling rather than defending its home. Or maybe there is not enough treasure here for it to properly spread out as a blanket?"
Jasmeena ponders what she knows about dragons and what she has read about dragons in several books and comes to the conclusion that she should write a book about dragons, so all the knowledge is finally in one place. She could add descriptions of other creatures too and give it the title "Monster Manual", if that title isn't already taken.
Yasmeena looks around the tower and thinks that when they finally escape this planar prison, she will write her memoir and call it Dungeons & Dragons: The Legacy of Fire.
"So do we want to get its attention to speak with it? I can cast Righteous Might and grow twice my size, yell and wave...."
"About what?" Haleen asks curiously.
“Oh, you know, ‘Lovely day for flying - bright and warm - isn’t it? Don’t mind us, we’re certainly not ransacking the palace of an exiled warlord for any interesting antiques. Would you care for a cup of tea?’ That sort of thing,” Aith says glibly. Honestly, she doubts they want to get the dragon’s attention, or if they get it without calling out a greeting, that the ensuing … conversation will be all that cordial.
But then, she’s not sure how dragons think. Is it safer to respectfully avoid intruding on their business, or do they want small, soft people to 'ooh' and 'ahh' and fawn a bit?
"So do we want to get its attention to speak with it? I can cast Righteous Might and grow twice my size, yell and wave...."
“Or, I think I could jump us to the top of the pyramid from here, which would put us out in the open, but also near where we want to be, if Yasmeena’s right about where the key to this thing is most likely to be. If we can get the pyramid’s doors open quickly, we might be able to take shelter inside if our visitor turns out to be grumpy,” the mage offers. (At least this time she’s not proposing to bypass the doors directly and jump in blindly, which turned out oh so very well with the sepid.)
“Might save you a spell until we know what it’s intentions are,” she adds, though she makes sure to ward Bylo and Haleen against fire just in case, before the group decides on their next move.
"Such a nice solid pyramid seems to be a good thing to be between me and a fire spitting dragon." Haleen comments.
“As long as there are no demons inside to pelt us with rocks and whatnot,” Aith suggests. “Maybe this time I won’t drop us in behind closed doors, just in case. We should have time to get inside if we have to, I think.”
With that, she gathers everyone around and, once everyone joins hands and she belts out the magic words, yanks herself and her friends through space to the top of the pyramid.
This huge roof walk extends from the gatehouse to the palace, its eastern face a crenellated battlement overlooking the Sea of Fire far below. To the west, the rooftop looks out over the palace courtyard, while a number of guard shacks, turrets, and garderobes top the walk. Yet the most impressive sight here is the one-hundred-foot-tall pyramid of ancient tarnished bronze that stands in the northern half of the rooftop. A wide stair rises to the pyramid’s apex, where a small temple with a double-peaked roof stands. Statues of draconic, four-armed female centaurs stand at each corner of this top platform, keeping an eternal watch over the surrounding area.
You notice, that the fire giant guards that usually patrol this area are nowhere to be seen.
The large double doors are not locked. The inside of the temple is decorated with pictographs and writings in ancient Ignan that relate numerous prayers to Ymeri.
"The writing here says the secret door in the floor here can only be opened with an offering of blood spilled on its surface."
"There we are. How much blood?" Haleen asks pulling out her cold iron dagger, pointing it at Bylo with a mischievous smirk.
Bylo gives a fake worried glance at Haleen. "Well, it doesn't say. Can't be so much as to cripple the donor or opening the door is pointless. But.... If this is for giants, they have a lot more blood in their bodies!"
Haleen pricks herself in the finger and tries with how little blood this will work.
One drop of blood.
Nothing.
Another drop of blood.
Still nothing.
on the fifth drop of blood stones start grinding and the secret door sinks into the floor, creating a spiral stair that descends 50 feet into a small chamber at the pyramid’s heart. A pedestal here holds a head-sized crystal orb of nearly indestructible glass within which appears to burn a raging inferno. This sphere of fire is slightly warm to the touch.
As the team descends, and approaches what appears to be exactly what they were looking for.... Bylo casts Detect Magic. "Hmm....'A fiery orb from days of old lies suspended betwixt brass and sky, yet hidden from mortal eye. It is the key to your quest. In ancient adoration did this fiery heart lie, and only by heart’s blood of the true believer can the way be opened.' This can't be this easy. What else is here?"
"Just for the record: I'm no true believer of whatever this here is for."
Bylo is stunned by looking at the orb in the magical spectrum for a short moment.
Bylo finishes his spell, and stands in place.... "Ahh....."
Aith throws a sympathetic look Bylo’s way, as he beats her to scanning the orb and promptly has his magical senses overwhelmed with, well, whatever it is. We’ve all been there, she muses ruefully as she waits for him to recover from the perils of testing powerful artifacts.
She rests a palm on the orb as she wonders if the fiery magic it’s stuffed with might have other weird properties. How heavy is it? Unless Bylo warns her against it, she’ll go with the empirical approach and try lifting it. After all, if it’s the key they need, they’ll need to bring it to the lock, no?
Frustratingly, she knows there are divinations that might be helpful for prodding at such a thing that are just out of her reach right now, and she gives the orb a baleful glare as if she can simply will it into revealing its secrets.
Yasmeena attempts to divine the mysteries of the orb using bardic lore.
The orb weighs what one would expect for a glass object this size.
Yasmeena begins talking, slowly refining her description of the orb as she goes, coached by some strange bardic magic. "The queen of elemental fire, Ymeri, goddess and elemental lord, she has filled this glass sphere with her breath, and the heat has imbued it with the divine warmth of pure flame. Lo, how Javhul was scorned by his elemental queen, and how he lusted after her. Yet perhaps this artifact has lain here unspoiled since before his desperate quest?"
Bylo is stunned by looking at the orb in the magical spectrum for a short moment.
Bylo recovers from the stun of magical feedback and shacks his head. "Well. That was stupid of me. Detecting magic on what is surely a very powerful artifact?"
He considers Yasmeena's words. "So we've avoided everything here, and got the fiery orb, the 'key to our quest'... Now do we teleport back to the spire and use it to open the door? I don't think flying would be good since that dragon would probably attack the instant it detects that we have the orb."
Aith’s arched brows lift even pointier as Yasmeena identifies just what the orb the reckless mage has hefted contains.
“Well. That’s certainly something,” she says, her tone suggesting some uncertainty on her part as to what bringing the key back to the tower is likely to do. Will the orb dissolve, or erupt in a blaze of flame? Or just start shining very brightly? It’s hard to tell, with her, which alternative she might find the most interesting, as she considers the options for weirder sorts of arcane locks. “I presume there must be a catch?”
“Something as fleeting as breath, and as intimate, that Jhavhul felt he had to preserve for who knows how long? What’s it the key to really, I wonder? Some other cruel reminder from the queen of Fire, or an incidental keepsake by our favourite hated warlord?”
Aith finds she rather admires the scorn implied by Ymeri’s – gift? Was it some sort of humiliating trifle intended to put an underling in his place? Or did Jhavhul somehow steal it?
“I suppose we’ll find out soon enough,” she adds with alarmingly empirical zeal.
"So we've avoided everything here, and got the fiery orb, the 'key to our quest'... Now do we teleport back to the spire and use it to open the door? I don't think flying would be good since that dragon would probably attack the instant it detects that we have the orb."
“We could do that,” she nods. “Or, if we want to take some more time to roll this thing around on the way … I would need to check my notes first, but I think I could stretch an invisibility spell to cover us on the way. Maybe the dragon’s just a coincidence after all?”
She gives a hopelessly optimistic peek outside to see if the beast is still circling.
The dragon still circles in the sky.
Aith watches the circling dragon for a minute, trying to gauge its rate of travel around the castle tower and overall attentiveness.
As she weighs up the odds, she pulls out a spellbook from her bag and leafs through to the right page, brow furrowing as she thinks of where she might be able to stretch a point here or there, be a bit loose with a gesture there… After a bit, she snaps the book shut with a nod and puts it away again.
“Right!” she says, trying to herd the others together.
“Gather round, please. I think if we just don’t stray too close to it, but stay together ourselves, if we stay out of sight, we should be fine. It doesn’t seem to be looking very hard for intruders in the tower, so… let’s get back to intruding?”
With a hasty explanation of what the spell she’s about to cast will do, the scatty mage does her best to return her friends, herself, and the key, to the magical lock, while preserving as much spellpower as possible.
The way back isn't interrupted by a dragon attack, but you feel watched anyway.
As the orb is brought into this chamber, it immediately grows quite hot. It reacts with the shimmering patch in the air, and the extradimensional bolt hole suddenly ripples and opens, creating a 2-foot-diameter vertical hole in reality and revealing a spherical chamber with walls of polished brass; this chamber is 5 feet in diameter, and its only occupant is another orb. This time a shiny silver one, hovering at the center.
Yasmeena examines the new orb carefully while concentrating on her bardic magic.
Yasmeena is stunned (literally, only shortly though) by the power of the magical artifact she is looking at. She remembers something about an artifact of that kind named the Impossible Eye.