"We should start with the left!" Baheera says, more emphatically than one would expect.
Still clearing grit from his eyes and sinuses. Tek nods.
"Left is bine bith be." He says still a bit stuffy.
Having focused on the left-most cylinder, Tekumbray and Silas begin their examination. While the pair search the area an errant gust of wind nearly blinds and chokes poor Tekumbray rendering his ability to search nearly non-existent for the moment.
Fortunately for the pair, the same gust that kicked up the dust revealed a thin wire to Silas's keen eyes. Following the wire he sees one end cleverly concealed, running into the bottom of the door and the other end runs along the joining of two stone slabs in the floor to the western wall where he sees an arrangement of four holes in the wall.
Second Checks:
While Silas and the other contemplate what to do next in regards to the trapped door and/or the other cylinders, Tekumbray manages to regain his composure enough to notice a faint hissing sound in the chamber. Moments later Utsuri notices the sound too. It would seem the sound is coming from the corners of the room.
While seeking out the sound, Tekumbray notices a concealed trapdoor in the floor of the chamber.
"Find anything, guys?" Myev is poking around the hall, but not having a lot of luck with anything interesting.
"I think we need to choose and enter one of these door before whatever has that is fills the room." Baheera says, with a hint of both fascination and excitement in her voice.
When Utsuri literally turns green and warns of toxins in the air, Tekumbray quickly reties his scarf over his mouth. It had kept the worst of the sand from his lungs, he could only hope it will slow the toxin's infiltration into his system.
With a greater sense of urgency stoked by the incoming gas, Tekumbray checks the newly discovered trapdoor for locks and traps before trying to flip it open.
Meebo tries to figure out if there is a way to stop the gas, or determine what is going on with these doors or the trap door Tek is inspecting.
"Be careful, there are holes for darts there. I think we need to do something first before opening the door so that they don't pop out." Silas explains, looking at the others. As a mist begins to come out and Utsuri turns from brilliant silver to an aged-coppery green, the cleric's face pales.
Frantically, Tek searches the previously concealed trapdoor for traps and finds none other than door itself. The door opens downward and upon further inspection, seems to be tied to the latch on the right-most bronze cylinder.
Kicking at one end of the trapdoor opens it, revealing another level some fifteen feet below, but no ladder to go down. Peeking inside of the trapdoor and glancing back toward the directions of the cylinders, you see three ladders - each corresponding with one of the bronze cylinders on your current level.
Tekumbray pokes his head into room below. "Looks like those cylinders each have a ladder inside that leads down below. About a fifteen foot drop from here." He looks around for any sign of danger or potential threats.
"We've already run into two potential traps. Whoever built this place sure didn't want visitors." He says getting back up from the floor and unwinding his rope from his pack. The casual remarks being a rough attempt to cover up his growing jitters. "I don't trust those things." He says pointing an unsteady finger at the metal cylinders. "To easy to go in, get stuck, and be turned to mush, gassed, or fried by some runic wizard's trap. If there's a way around, I say we use it."
He suppresses a shiver and looks a bit pale as the memory of Gregor, Knight of the Blue Moon, flashes across his vision. The boiling, oozing sickening brown, red, and yellow remnants of the brawny warrior flowing out of that chamber beneath Vizier Lar Shan's tomb in Sokkar. The sound of the knightly armor clattering to the floor echoing in his mind along with the remembered image that gleaming, acid polished steel glittering in the flickering torchlight as Tekumbray screamed in horror.
"Could we take a rope down through the trap door, instead of using the weird tube ladders?" Meebo went and looked down through the opening. She couldn't see anything Tek hadn't already pointed out, though.
Utsuri opens the rightmost door, revealing the ladder to level below, and on cue, the trapdoor opens fully.
Meebo takes a look down below and sees a similar room to the forty-foot square room you find yourselves in currently. Beyond the three ladders, there are three stone doors in the room, one to the east and two to the west. A number of clay jars and various bits of broken machinery - pulleys, gears, levers, and such litter two of the corners of the room
Just as Meebo is about to pull head back up from the hole, three points of flickering orange illumination come into being from the backs of three two-foot long beetles, crawling out of the machinery bits on the ground.
"Hold a second." Tekumbray says to Utsuri before he can cut the wire. The gnome then takes a small stake that used to keep the tents in place before they all blew away in the sandstorm. A bit of work with a small hammer and pliers and he has a hooked stake that he drives securely into a seam in the stone near the trap door. Creating a bit of slack in the wire, the nimble fingered gnome detaches it from the hook on the trapdoor, loops it a few times to around the stake and finally secures it with the hook.
"There. That should keep anything else from triggering if the tension is completely released from the wire." He says, returning his tools carefully and precisely back into the small leather case.
Myev is anxiously watching - this is not under her umbrella of expertise and it unsettles her to feel so out of control of the situation. "Nice work, guys." She says with some reverence in her tone.
Utsuri is just about to slash at the cord connected to the trapdoor when Tek stops him.
A few brief seconds later, the trapdoor is closed again and this time permanently barring any other intervention.
With the trapdoor secured, Myev begins to head down the ladder into the now glowing chamber below. With sound and vibration coming from the ladder, the beetles begin to move to the base of the ladder.
Pulleys, gears, and levers? In some lost forsaken ruins? She wanted to scrounge through all that stuff so badly her fingers itched. She watched Tek's work with an approving grin. "Not bad, Tek. Not bad at all!."
"Myev, look out for those beetles! We should try killing them from up here, before we go down." The impatient gnome flipped on her flamethrower, which emitted a high pitched whine, closing one eye as she took preliminary aim...right past her friend's upturned face.
"I can blast them from up here!" Baheera volunteers. "I just need to move to where I can see them."
"I can just drop on one of them after you all have gotten a swing in..." Myev will stare down at the beetles until one is in range, and, once everyone has had a shot at them from afar, she'll drop onto one of them and try to stomp one.
Meebo sends a burst of flame down the ladder, nearly taking Myev's eyebrows in the process, but does not hit the beetle.
Moving into position to see the glow from the beetle, Baheera unleashes another violet blast of pure eldritch energy.
Tekumbray moves around the opening trying to see if he can get a shot at the beetle below. Unfortunately he completely misjudges the narrow window and angle. The arrow shatters harmlessly against the stone floor below.
Baheera blasts one of the beetles into oblivion. Tek is about to take a shot, when he realizes he doesn't have a line on the other two that were seen while the trap door was open.
Silas takes a moment to pray for Myev's safety before the half-orc drops down into combat, his hand brushing against her back as he does.
Myev lands with a thump, turning to regard the beetles while her companions still remain on the floor above. The beetles begin moving in the direction of what they hope will be their next meal.
Myev bares her teeth at the beetles after she lands, then takes a step forward and swings her maul at the beetle in front of her ().
Utsuri climbs down the ladder and takes up s defensive position behind the half-orc warrior. Myev raises her maul and brings it down splattering beetle guts across the chamber.
Baheera once again takes aim from above, firing another blast of eldritch energy from above.
+
Tek scampers down the ladder and snaps off a shot at the big beetle while staying well behind Myev and Utsuri.
Baheera follows, climbing halfway down before unleashing a blast with one hand.
Baheera climbs down the ladder and blasts the last remaining beetle, splattering it against the wall, ending the threat before it could really begin.
After the "fight" the remaining folks from above come down into the chamber below.
The flickering light in the chamber begins to fade follow the deaths of the beetles. Looking around you see that you are in a forty-foot square chamber with two stone doors to the west and one to the east. The chamber has a number of pulleys and gears strewn across the floor of the eastern side of the chamber and several clay pots.
"Well done everyone. Good fight." Silas quietly whispers to them all, making his way towards the eastern door. With a whispered prayer, his amulet begins to glow with light as he examines the door for anything unusual or out of place upon it.
Meebo ignored any signs of further danger and made a beeline to the northern scrap pile, poking through the gears and parts with keen interest, seeing if any of it looked like something she could use to build with and wondering what it used to be for. Was this a big machine that was destroyed? A trash heap? Something else?
Tekumbray walks over to the door opposite of Silas and does a similar check for traps, locks, or other hidden dangers. But as luck would have it, the gnome is looking directly at the cleric when his light spell flares to life. Eyes watering and blinking as red spots dance in his vision, he isn't really able to distinguish much except the location of the wall when he bumps into it.
Baheera is distracted by the discordant self-conversation of Utsuri, the half-elf getting caught up in trying to make sense of any of it.
Myev feels a little out of her element now that the combat is over. She keeps her maul unstrapped and easily accessible, just in case, and moves over near Meebo. She is most interested in determining what these weirdly-shaped urns are--she looks them over carefully, without touching them, trying to get a feel for what they might be.