The door to the other end of the small secret room leads into a corridor that seems to follow the outer wall, ending in another door disguised as part of the masonry, except this one is more clearly marked from this side, and there is a lever plainly visible nearby.
Beatrix finds a mostly intact tome, although some of the pages stick together a little bit, and the leather binding is cracked with age. Flipping through it, the pages seem to describe the details of the Hellknight Test that Alak mentioned, which seems to involve a fight to the death with a devil summoned by a signifer of the order. There are detailed diagrams for the summoning circles, and tables that list types of devils in order of challenge.
Alak's eyes widen at Kyrie. "You... were a Hellknight?" He struggles for a moment, processing what she just said and at a loss for words momentarily. "Well. Perhaps you'd like to share that story sometime." He runs his gauntleted hand over his forehead. "I know that they are pretty harsh in their training, if that's what you mean."
"I was supposed to be one. I do not think you would like that story." She moves up to the front near Beau, making sure to not get in his way as he advances looking for traps, but staying close enough to be at the ready to jump to the front line.
Karana stands at Kyrie’s side with a shield of her own.
She doesn’t know what story Kyrie is not telling, but knows it is not a story she wants to tell. Karana has no words for this.
She hopes her gesture says enough.
Beau gets up from a crouching position and shares the good news with the others. "It seems clear, Kyrie, so it's all yours." With that said, he draws his rapier and a dagger and waits for Kyrie to lead the way.
True to her nature, Amaya goes where she is lead, still having a hard time digesting where she is and what she is doing... and whom she is doing it with. Is this adventure? she thinks to herself, listening to her companions as they discover and share information. It doesn't feel like the stories, but, truly, what actually does?
She mostly just stays out of the way, so that she is not causing any problems with the winds whipping about her. Despite her seemingly absent-minded appearance, she is keeping a sharp eye open for anything.
Beatrix is looking around at all the interesting things about them, when she notices Amaya hanging back, still surrounded by the utterly and completely Fascinating winds.
Then she has an idea. Getting out some of the old chalk which is especially crumbly, she picks a white and a pink (why serious hellknight types have pink is the question... OH, for fleshy bit drawing!) and crushes a bit of them in her hands and moves to her side.
With a please humor me smile, she gets to the edge of the gale, holds her hand into it, and releases the colorful mix of dust. If her thoughts are correct the pretty mix will go around and around, up and up, until WHOOSH, out the top like a volcano. If she's wrong it goes in Amaya's face and eyes and... oh maybe that wasn't a good idea... too late.
Beau gets up from a crouching position and shares the good news with the others. "It seems clear, Kyrie, so it's all yours." With that said, he draws his rapier and a dagger and waits for Kyrie to lead the way.
Kyrie heads down the western hallway, both hands bracing her shield. She motions for someone with free hands to take the lever while she covers the door.
The lever, when pulled, causes the hidden door to swing inwards, with only minimal hitching and screeching as the old, rusted mechanisms are put into action once more. The passageway leads into an irregularly-shaped chamber with two doors set at an angle to the north-east. The northern wall is slightly curved.
"That must be one of the towers," indicates Alak, nodding towards the curved portion of the wall. "We can probably access the courtyard through there, and the battlements."
Uncertain of whether time is of the essence, and whether they should be diligent or hasty, Beau speaks up to give voice to his doubts. "Hrm, we could backtrack and check out the door to the left in the room with the training dummies. Things seemed quiet enough from the outside, so I don't think we have to rush on through to find these supposed 'dragons'."
"If there was an attacking going on right now, I'd imagine we'd be hearing it." Beatrix agreed.
Karana isn’t sure what course of action is best, but Bea makes a good point. “If there is no ongoing battle to rush to, I think being thorough makes sense.
“Also, does no one wish to wield the silver sword? It is very pretty… as far as instruments of death go, that is to say.”
Gofran takes the silver sword. "I'll take it... I prrefferr biggerr svorrds, but sometimes a smallerr one can do the job betterr... my cousin Kaldrred used to say this and ve had alvays made fun o' him!"
He also nods to Beau's suggestion. "I'd also advice to go back and check the otherr rrooms. Ve dvarrves arre nothin' if not orrganized, and that is one o' the main rreasons ve have thrrived."
Karana offers a plausible third option: “Perhaps two swords do the job better than one? That is not to say I have ever tried handling a sword in each hand. I am capable of using a longsword effectively, but the sword is not my preference.
“It is better suited for your hands.”
Curious, she asks, “Do you mean you once ridiculed Kaldred for his advice on swords, but you now subscribe to his advice ?”
Beatrix continues to do her best to keep an eye on everything. As Beau pays special attention to the door, Bea notes the position of the training dummies to make sure none of them have been creeping slowly behind them to straw them to death.
Beau stares at Gofran with a big smile and a pair of eyes the size of saucers as he tries to process the dwarf's accent. The dwarf's purring-esque rolling r's make him think of the Vale's brown bears.
It's rude to stare! Right! "Ok, good, let's get cracking."
After Beau deems the door to be free of traps, Gofran opens it to a shadowy space of black-painted floor tiles. The light from the wall breach barely reaches inside, and most of the irregularly-shaped room is shrouded in darkness. A sunken, circular space can be seen to one side by those who have dark-adapted vision, its edges painted crimson and a pentagram is inscribed in its circumference.
Karana can see perfectly. She checks the room for any threats.
If she sees no obvious threat, she’ll cast Light on her necklace.
Whereas Karana has no troubles with the dark room, Beau does. He puts away the dagger and gets a torch from his adventurer's pack. It takes the Andoran a moment to light using flint and steel, but ha-ha! Light! And what's that, a pentagram?! "Oh rats, would you look at that ... is that like a, a thing for devils?"
Beatrix is looking around at all the interesting things about them, when she notices Amaya hanging back, still surrounded by the utterly and completely Fascinating winds.
Then she has an idea. Getting out some of the old chalk which is especially crumbly, she picks a white and a pink (why serious hellknight types have pink is the question... OH, for fleshy bit drawing!) and crushes a bit of them in her hands and moves to her side.
With a please humor me smile, she gets to the edge of the gale, holds her hand into it, and releases the colorful mix of dust. If her thoughts are correct the pretty mix will go around and around, up and up, until WHOOSH, out the top like a volcano. If she's wrong it goes in Amaya's face and eyes and... oh maybe that wasn't a good idea... too late.
Unsure what the little halfling is up to, Amaya doesn't interrupt her, but watches Bea with curiosity, right up until the point that she dumps the colorful dust into the winds, "I'm not sure that...." she begins, but is cut short when she sees the chalk get blown around. Oddly, it doesn't seem to get any close to Amaya, nor get blown outward or upward, but seems to be caught in some kind of eddy, going around and around Amaya in colorful patterns. She gives Bea a playful smile and watches the dust fly around.
--------------------------
Amaya's attention has been pre-occupied with watching the eddying dust. At the sight of the dark room, the dust just seems to dissipate harmlessly into the air as her attention is no longer enraptured. Her thoughts are being turned around in her head, seemingly searching for some piece of information that she may have previously forgotten.
"This is proper lighting for a summoning, but not for searching." she pulls out a piece of chalk and then a few arcane words later the entire thing glows brightly. Holding her hand around it allows her to focus the beam around.
With several sources of light, the group begins exploring the chamber. Alak steps inside as well, surveying the room. "This must be the testing arena." He half-smiles as he steps down into the circle. "I wonder what devil they will summon for me."
He barely finishes the sentence when a small flying shape apparates right next to him, whipping a vicious stinger at the armiger's unprotected face and leaving a deep, bleeding hole in the side of his neck.
"Damn it!" Alak shouts as he reaches for his sheathed greatsword, drawing it an taking a swing at the creature, which dances out of the way and snickers.
Karana scolds the nasty flying thing.
“Get off his face, you ugly little thing!”
Her arm is a little shaky, and as the javelin flies slightly askew, Karana just hopes she does not hit the man she is trying to help.
She decides to draw a melee weapon as she braces herself for the monster’s retaliation!
Karana offers a plausible third option: “Perhaps two swords do the job better than one? That is not to say I have ever tried handling a sword in each hand. I am capable of using a longsword effectively, but the sword is not my preference."
Gofran laughs hard, imagining if Karana got his initial joke or if she was just messing with him. He decided for the first alternative, since she looked too naive to be "playing with two swords", no matter the size.
He laughs even harder as she continues. He decides to explain, in order to save him a heart attack. "Oh girrl... vhen ve verre makin' fun o' him, ve verre usin' the vorrd svorrd to rreferr to somethin' else entirrely..." He then wiggles his pinky. "I do not like svorrds at all, underrstand?" He laughs again.
---
As the creature appears, Gofran moves towards the creature as he draws his greatsword . He doesn't attack, though, as he first studies this little monster .
"I find this conversation excessively lewd. I think it also involves certain assumptions about peoples' armaments that I do not like."
Alak jumps as the javelin flies past him. "Hit the imp, not me!"
Armed with rapier and torch, Bojas strides forward and attempts to send the fiendish creature back home with a series of strikes. "I'm on it, Alak, I'm on it!"
Amaya reacts before she even has the chance to think. The winds around her gather a static charge, which she directs towards the new threat in a powerful charge, then becomes a deflective force.
◆◆ Electric Arc
◆ Shield
Gofran shrugs. "That vas lewd? Please Dame Kyrrie, I advise ye not to visit a dvarrven taverrn."
As Gofran recalls what he knows about imps, he regrets having drawn his sword too fast. "No point in burrnin' 'em, but silverr can harrm it prretty good! Carre forr the stingerr Alak, it is poisonous." Gofran is fully aware his information about the poison is late, but he shares it anyways.
She nods. "I will cross that bridge if and when I get there."
Under the combined assaults of Beau and Amaya, the imp soon perishes, falling to the floor. With a swift movement, Alak beheads it.
"Damn hell monkeys! You need to make sure they're truly finished off. I suppose my predecessors may have overlooked that."
He nods at Beau. "That was some fine skewering you did."
Karana goes to retrieve her javelin. If tossed into a bush or soft beach sand, a javelin can be reused. But what if it struck the hard floor?
"Why thank you. It's a gift, really!", the rogue explains. He had, in fact, been lucky that the imp was wholly focused on the armiger. What would've happened had the imp focused on Beau? But admitting you were lucky isn't half as heroic and stoic.
"Are you alright? The fiend managed to get you good, didn't it?" Beau actually sounds concerned. Again, had it been him, would he have survived that?
"It's not that bad. At least it didn't poison me." Alak gives Gofran a two-finger salute. "You know a lot about them. Encountered their kind before?"
Showing he ain't much of a swordsman, Beau clumsily wipes his blade clean of whatever the fiend splattered all over it. He'd feel pity for the thing, but every Andoran worth his salt knows that the fiend-friends of Cheliax are not to be shown any mercy. "Lemme' have a look, see if there's anything in here that's hiding from the eye."
"An imp!" Bea exclaims, barely before it is hacked apart. As the others talk she moves to the thing, pulling off her hat as she bends over ti to look at it with quizzical eyes "I wonder how long it has been here? Surely the goblin's had opened this door before?" Bea turns her gaze to the circle, using her arcane senses to see if the circle is active, wondering "Is this still active? Did someone summon it recently?"
By the dust on the floor, no-one has been here in a long time. Beau does not find any secrets or traps, and Beatrix does not sense any new magical auras, so the north-east door is opened to reveal a disused pantry. Floor-to-wall shelves fill the room, holding long-rotted provisions and some cooking utensils. The space is quite filthy, and has clearly been ransacked, with sacks torn open, lids pried off boxes and their unusable contents spilled everywhere.
Karana looks at the little beast. She pities it, for it stood no chance. But it was stupid to attack.
“Giving up hunting animals has softened my throwing arm, it seems. I had better practice regularly if this hero business will pit me against such tiny monsters.”
Not liking it that Karana is knocking herself for missing the fiend with her javelin, Beau weighs in as he goes about checking the room. "To be fair, t'was a tiny target, and with it hugging Alak's face ... I can't judge you for making sure you didn't hit our armiger friend."
Beau opens the eastern door to what was once a mess hall, by the look of things. Rows of long dining tables sit in skewed rows throughout the room, together with overturned benches and chairs, and the entire room has an air of disuse and disarray.
Karana replies to Beau, “Your words are kind. But I do not take my failure so personally. I was merely thinking aloud. When I was a small child, I many times heard my father warn our order not to be tamed by the civilized world.”
She could go on, but this is not the time or place.
“Your strikes were quite powerful, Beau. It is inspiring to me.”
She then heads into the door Beau opens.
Aside from grime and decades-old crumbs lodged in the cracks between the tiles, Karana finds nothing of interest in the room.
Beau has a look through the room, but he has no hopes of finding any valuables here. It's a storage room and a darn smelly one at that! Did the goblins go through this? Or who ransacked it? Questions!
The next room is bigger and its purpose immediately becomes apparent. Beau can't help but wonder why the goblins hadn't taken any of the furniture. He would have! "Let's check the door over there next? Alright."
It's a shame the citadel is just a little too far away from Breachill, because he could use a new dining table for his loft ...
A pantry and a dining room are not as interesting as summoning circles so Bea is just waiting while using her arcane senses to make sure there isn't anything interesting in the uninteresting.
No magical auras reveal themselves to Beatrix, but Beau finds a silver knife wedged behind a shelf in the pantry.
All the rooms discovered so far have been windowless, except for an arrow slit in the space leading to the tower, the light of torches and magically lit implements throwing moving shadows everywhere. South of the mess hall, Beau opens the door to a space that was likely a kitchen or galley. A dust-covered, black wooden countertop runs along the southwestern end of the room, while cupboards and shelves fill most of the walls. A large, heavy wooden table sits in the center, deep gouges and scratches on its weathered surface.
Most of the shelves are bare, with a lone jar or satchel here and there, some of them holding still-usable oils and herbs. In a cabinet that looks like it once contained medical supplies, Beau finds two doses of white powder that are labelled Arsenic.
At the discovery of the silver knife "Hellknights use silver as a common kitchen knife? Is that so they are always prepared to defend themselves from the evil of diabolisms? Even while munching on dinner?" Bea muses while looking arcanely about.
Pointing to the south wall, "So that is the outside wall." then pointing to the door to the east out of the kitchen "So in accordance to our desired methodology we should through that before the door here in the dining room."
"It's not that bad. At least it didn't poison me." Alak gives Gofran a two-finger salute. "You know a lot about them. Encountered their kind before?"
Gofran nods as he sheathes his greatsword back. "Tvice. Once in a taverrn vherre one o' these took a likin' o' a cask o' good ale. The otherr vas some sorrt o' a pet forr a vizarrd I vas charrged o' capturrin'."
---
Karana looks at the little beast. She pities it, for it stood no chance. But it was stupid to attack.
“Giving up hunting animals has softened my throwing arm, it seems. I had better practice regularly if this hero business will pit me against such tiny monsters.”
"Ye can aim forr peaches orr apples in trrees, no? Is therre a rreason forr ye to stop huntin'? I, perrsonaly, love the thrrill o' a good hunt." Gofran comments.
---
At the discovery of the silver knife "Hellknights use silver as a common kitchen knife? Is that so they are always prepared to defend themselves from the evil of diabolisms? Even while munching on dinner?" Bea muses while looking arcanely about.
Pointing to the south wall, "So that is the outside wall." then pointing to the door to the east out of the kitchen "So in accordance to our desired methodology we should through that before the door here in the dining room."
"|Perrhaps they verre eatin' some imps, like chicken? Imp casserrole, anyone? Orr some imp vings?" Gofran suggests, joking to the gnome that appears so interested in strange stuff.
Bea's ponderings cause Beau's to pull a quizzical face that says as much as 'I don't know!'. He keeps the silvered knife at the ready, knowing there might come a moment real soon where he might need it. "Perhaps it's for those days they had a fiend over for dinner?", he quips as he goes through the kitchen's cupboards. "Anyone care for some arsenic? I ... fine, I admit, I don't know what one would use this for. But it looks fancy."
In reply to Gofran, Karana says of her otter hide armor and her yucca fiber skirt adorned with cormorant feathers, “I still wear the things I made from my prey. But after many summers and winters with no person to talk to, I decided the animals would be my friends.
“I still fished though. A girl has got to eat.”
Karana searches the next room, first looking for potential threats. And imps are not very big, so Karana considers places a gerbil could jump out of. Or… an imp. Prior to a few minutes ago, Karana would have considered a rodent more likely to jump out of the woodwork than an imp.
I used to think such a creature was imp-ossible.
Karana does not share the words that have popped into her head. She is ashamed of them.
Beatrix seems to consider the edible imp question seriously "I think... that is unlikely. The nail order is against barbarity, right? So eating their enemy seems a bit barbaric. Hmm... unless your enemy was a cow that is." the gnome looks about while continuing to contemplate.
"I think it might be a poison? I remember a play, one of the few we went to, about it and old lace. Where a pair of nice old ladies murdered people with it... I think at least. Could have been artistic embellishment."