Past the colonnade, a lantern sits near a set of stairs leading down into darkness. Near the lantern is a deck of cards and a few small piles of copper coins (138 cp in all).
Near the north wall of this chamber, opposite the stairs, is a statue carved from red stone that depicts a woman with wild hair and her face set in a sneer, holding a clenched fist out in front of her. Four smooth columns hold the cracked ceiling aloft.
"Huh." Triel looks around. "This is what they were sitting on?"
Looking over the statue and the other items, Fioralba shrugs "Unremarkable. Let's keep moving."
"The statue appears to be a divination device. Perhaps someone is watching through its eyes?"
"Who even is it a statue of anyway? Never seen anything like this." Elanna says, getting up close and looking at its features, trying to find any clue, but failing.
The stairs lead down even further to a lower level. Three marble columns still support the roof of this room, but a fourth column has toppled into an ancient-looking collapse in the southeast corner of this roughly octagonal room, leaving a heap of rubble partially blocking a cave-like chamber to the east.
You don't find anything of interest here. Moving through a door to the north, you enter a wide hallway. A double door stands on the western end of the hallway. Halls leave this area to the north, east, and south. You can see another door to the east.
Hope was rather surprised when Triel summoned a ghost, or something like that, of her dead brother. For a girl who had been through what she had it wasn't the strangest thing she'd ever seen. It helped that, for now, her emotions had gone numb on her. It was something she'd done at times to help her through traumatic events and it was working now as well. Hope kept her silence and, when they were all ready, followed along.
"This place is a maze, we're going to get lost. Look, let's pick a random direction and stick with it. Let's go right, because nothing can go wrong if we go right?" Elanna suggests, trying to make a light joke out of the matter, no matter how unsuccessfully.
You go right and through the door to the north. The north wall of this room seems to have suffered a recent collapse, leaving open bedrock where a northern wall once was. Four thick columns stretch up to support the ceiling fifteen feet above, likely preventing the collapse from being even larger.
Suddenly, a creature emerges from the rubble. Grasping arms emerge from a tangled cluster of debris and mechanical parts. A metal skull hovers above the clanging mess. ”Come to laugh at me again, have you, Dolland? Wait... You’re not Dolland! Are you? Who are you?” the skull demands in a feminine voice.
Fi studies the thing before answering to see if she recognizes it.
Triel blinks in confusion when she sees the... metal skull and mechanical bits.
"A gearghost..." Triel starts. "...no, none of us are Dolland. We're here on our own business."
"People around here call me Madame Hawk. What's your name?"
”Sharlise. I am... I was... Who are you? Did you do this to me?!?” the spirit asks angrily.
"We've done nothing to you, Sharlise." Madame Hawk holds her hands up in a placating gesture. "We've only just arrived here ourselves--and what happened to you was tragic indeed."
She glances at the others. "A gearghost rises from the corpse of a thief who died in a trap. They're fond of inflicting the same fate on others, so mind your manners." She whispers.
"Oh," Sharlise says, seeming to calm down. "Well, if you see Dolland, give him a kick in the ass for me, will you? I think I'm mad at him... Can't remember why, though..."
"...well, if I had to guess, this Dolland may be responsible for your death." Madame Hawk continues. "What was the last thing that happened to you? Can you remember?"
”We came down here to look for ancient treasures. There was a trap... Rocks fell...”
Picking up Tsu-la, Screaming Moon places him into a bag strapped over his chest. He is nervous being in the presence of a ghost, and more so one that likes to make traps.
"This Dolland certainly does sound like a jerk. We'll be sure to give him that kick if we see him."
He looks meaningfully at Triel. "Maybe we should go?"
Elanna nods to Screaming Moon, knowing full well to keep quiet as not to anger this sorry ghost, but keeps a sharp eye, knowing there might be traps that it has set around.
"If we come across Dolland, we'll take care of him. In the meanwhile, why don't you just take it easy here and we'll get out of your way, okay?" Fioralba says, backing up as the others leave.
Once in the corridor, she moves alongside Triel and says "Nice work." before passing her and catching up to Ela.
The first door in the south corridor leads into a room with a marble table, its surface strewn with alchemical equipment, sheets of paper, a few potions, and an ancient-looking suit of splint mail armor. A bedroll lies in the eastern alcove.
Each of the following potions sitting on the table is labeled: potion of barkskin, potion of bull’s strength, potion of cat’s grace, potion of darkvision, potion of fire breath, potion of invisibility, potion of protection from arrows, and potion of reduce person. The suit of armor on the table is +1 splint mail armor. There is also a scroll of protection from evil, and a masterwork cestus.
A brief perusal of the notes reveals they belong to a man named Dolland. He is apparently trying to crack the code on a vault nearby. It also details his relationship with his ex-apprentice Sharlise.
Once Dolland’s apprentice, she was the first of the Roadkeepers to perish in the vault after she triggered a trap that collapsed a portion of the nearby room. When she rose from death as a gearghost, she continued to treat the Roadkeepers as allies, but for a time her trapsetting antics caused problems. Dolland took it upon himself to disable the unwanted traps, but he has left a few active or else Sharlise gets angry and plays pranks—sometimes deadly pranks—on them. The notes indicate these traps are located in the next room over: a poison dart trap, a wall scythe trap, and a burning hands trap on the crate.
Dolland maintains an interesting relationship with the gearghost and is the only one here who communicates with the unfortunate thief. Her stories of her time among the living are disjointed and incongruent, as if all her memories have been muddled. Dolland believes that if he was able to lessen her confusion and tendency towards anger and violence, he might be able to learn how to access the vault, something that would win him greater prestige among the clan than just being the most skilled at disabling traps.
The second room in the hall features a marble table and a small crate. Cobwebs stretch across parts of the room, and debris and dust litters the floor. This is where Sharlise’s traps are located.
"Based on the writing in the other room, I don't think we should bother exploring here.
Let's head to the northern hallway before we start looking for this vault."
"I can always try to disarm the traps, it might be worth our time and I know we could always do with the money." Elanna says, eyeing up the room, hoping for ancient treasures to sell.
"What do we think?" She asks no one in particular, inching forward with hunger in her eyes, trying to work out what she can see based on the notes.
"I think it is unlikely they woukd keep treasures in the one place they allowed the ghost to keep treasures, especially considering the nice things we found in the previous untrapped room."
Elanna can see the poisoned dart trap right in the doorway to the room.
Elanna is not one to resist temptation or a challenge.
"Well, that may be true, but if I just..." She bends over and starts fiddling with the mechanism in front of her.
Elanna fails to disarm the trap, almost triggering it in the process!
Nonchalantly stepping back, Elanna shrugs her shoulders.
"You're right Screaming Moon. Let's leave this room alone."
The northern hall ends abruptly at a collapse of rubble. Double doors to the south seem to lead into the same central chamber as the ones you just passed. There is a small side chamber to the north, however. A five-foot-diameter space, ringed by arcane runes, sits on the floor at this room’s center.
Detect magic reveals that the runes radiate a moderate aura of conjugation magic.
Fi explains to everyone that the runes are radiating a moderate aura of conjuration, something she further explains in greater detail if anyone asks.
Fioralba is unable to identify the runes or their purpose.
"Those runes are likely a summoning circle. Fortunately nothing seems to be trapped here."
Studying the runes, Screaming Moon attempts to determine of there is any other function to the circle.
Shaking his head, he decides he doesn't want to mess with ancient summoning circles and turns back to the door that leads south.
"Seems like the vault is that way."
"I'm just thinking we don't walk over them, am I correct?" Elanna says with caution, placing a hand on her sister's shoulder, holding her back from closer investigation.
Triel takes a look at the runes herself.
Ultimately, she comes to the same conclusions as the others.
Leaving the runes alone, you head across the hall to the central rooom. This room appears to be nothing more than a hallway surrounding a 15-foot-by-10-foot room. A double door exits the room to the east and a single door allows passage to the north. The western reaches are choked with rubble. A large stone door on the south side of the central section bears a carving of a seven-pointed star. Seven round knobs, each etched with their own runes, each protrude from a point of this central star-shaped carving.
A dwarf in studded leather armor kneels by the door, turning the knobs with a look of frustration. Once he notices you, though, his frustration turns to rage as he whirls on you. "Bloody hell! What good is posting guards if they can't even keep the riffraff out while I'm trying to work! Lazy dolts!" He reaches for several vials at his belt.
They had traveled further into the passageways when they stumbled on the gearghost. Hope almost felt sorry for the woman given what had happened and nodded firmly in agreement that they would make sure the bastard who got her killed paid for it. Then they found the room with traps and Hope considered just trying to trigger them all from the doorway but didn't feel like throwing Elanna a bone and helping her right then.
Finally they found the dwarf, cursing at his dead thugs for failing to keep them out, and noticed when he grabbed the vials from his belt. Hope didn't want to see what was in those vials so she began to move, pulling in power, and sent a ball of gravity flashing out at the man in hopes of slamming him into the wall.
Watching the dwarf fingering his vials, Screaming Moon became concerned that he held some kind of thrown explosive.
Backing up to the eastern doors so that the dwarf would be out of the area of effect, Screaming Moon waited until after Hope and Elanna acted and then summoned a cloud of mist to limit the dwarf's effectiveness.
Elanna hangs back and fires her crossbow.
The bolt grazes the dwarf's armor but doens't pierce it. Hope lands a solid hit with her blast, though she finds it hard to push the steady dwarf anywhere he doesn't want to go! Screaming Moon fills the room with obscuring mist.
You can hear the sound of the dwarf guzzling an elixir, but you can't see the effects of it!
Drawing his morningstar, Screaming Moon walks to the edge of the cloud (south of the eastern pillar) and takes a defensive stance as he looks around to gauge what the dwarf is doing.
Fioralba casts her fatiguing spell and dashes forward to engage the dwarf to deliver it with her rapier.
Elanna dashes in to support her sister and flanks the dwarf.
Hope wasn't quite sure what Screaming Moon thought he was doing by casting that spell where he did but it was far too late to matter now. She couldn't attack what she couldn't see so she instead moved to stand before the exit so he would have to come at her to flee and prepared to send a blast of gravity at him if he did.
Triel conjures a shield in front of her while Vindir forces himself into an ectoplasmic form.
Elanna and Fioralba move in to find the dwarf in the fog. Both of them manage to hit, lightly wounding him. While Hope and Triel hang back, Screaming Moon approaches as well. He can see a shimmering in the air around the dwarf, which he is surmises is a shield of faith spell.
The dwarf steps out of the flanking position, fading into the mist and avoiding opening himself up to attacks of opportunity. You can hear him guzzle another elixir, then a blast of flames shoot out at the twins!
Sighing heavily, Screaming Moon dismisses the mist while grumbling to himsepf. "You were supposed to keep him out of the cloud."
Fioralba screams as her body is badly burned from the flames. She wants to scream back at Moon, but she just can't right now.
Stepping back, Fi tries to disable the dwarf by blasting him with beautiful colors.
Elanna dodges out of the direct line of fire adeptly unlike her sister. "Fi, are you ok?" She shouts whilst trying to flank and stab the dwarf.
With the dispersal of the mist Hope saw her target and the flames he breathed out. She saw how Elanna somehow avoided them completely but her sister was not so lucky. Hope pulled in another ball of gravity and then kept pulling in more power before firing it at the dwarf.
Triel winces underneath her mask and moves to heal Fi with her wand.
After her spell goes off, Vindir moves to flank with Elanna and, as per Sharlise's wishes, give him a boot in the ass.
Hope and Triel’s brother land solid hits on the dwarf while the twins miss. Still, he takes stock of the situation. Badly hurt and surrounded on all sides, he drops to his knees and begs for mercy. ”Alright, you win! Spare my life and I’ll tell anything you want to know!”