Herok safely disables the trap. You open the door to the room the demon had been in, now able to fully search the chamber.
The silver bowl on the altar is worth 5 gp. The knife sitting on top of it is a low-grade cold iron dagger with the rune of Abraxas etched on the blade. Within the bowl are six smooth garnet beads, one worth 2 gp, two worth 5 gp, and three worth 10 gp.
A search of the dagger reveals that its pommel can be detached—a seventh garnet sits inside the dagger’s hollow handle. This garnet is of higher quality and is worth 25 gp.
The other small door here leads to an ancient cloak room that once contained raiment sacred to the worship of Abraxas. Most of these robes have long since decayed away, but a green and orange cultist cowl currently emblazoned with the rune of Abraxas remains draped over a peg in the wall.
"Well, this is a pretty blade," Tekmin picks up the dagger and swings it. "Except for the fiendish runes on it."
The halfling just manages to avoid cutting himself while tossing it into the air and catching it by the handle. "Do you want it, Ximble? Cold iron is useful enough."
Tekmin will poke his head into the closest door after they search the demon room.
The closest door happens to be locked!
"This one is stuck!" Tekmin puts a shoulder against the door.
It takes a second, but he breaks the jamb.
Thick layers of ash cover mostly empty weapon racks in this room, although an old sword and a small stack of arrows sit on a shelf in the southeast corner. A single seven-pointed star is carved in the ceiling. At its center flickers a strange blue fire that periodically trails what appear to be snowflakes that melt away to nothingness before they reach the floor. What appears to be a scorch mark radiates from under the door to the south, as if a great explosion sometime long ago burst in the room beyond.
As soon as anyone enters the room, the Sihedron’s blue flame flashes brightly and for a split second, everyone in the room feels the temperature drop alarmingly. The fire then sputters, only to fizzle out forever, plunging the room into darkness.
The lone remaining sword is a +1 cold iron longsword, while six of the arrows are beacon shots. A seventh arrow that looks identical to the others unless it is cleaned of the thick layers of dust is a single storm arrow. Finally, two striking runes sit, covered with dust, on the floor in the northwest corner.
"Another trap whose power has long since gone dormant?"
The darkness was of no issue to Herok - he'd been blessed with the ability to see in the dark of his orcish ancestors - but he still cast a spell of light on his bow to illuminate the space for the others.
"The arrows would be useful, I think, but I can share them out with others. I have a couple of beacon shot arrows already."
"Never learned the trick of archery, myself," Tekmin replies. "Always hit my wrists with the string. Some nice equipment in here, though. Looks like its been abandoned for a long time. I wonder if those ghouls were cultists, or if they just moved in to an empty lair."
Tekmin gathers up the treasure to be applied to weapons or redistributed later.
"I'll check this door. I'm surprised that it wasn't blasted down!"
Ximble shrugs at Herok. "Take them. I rock a crossbow and I'll probably end up destroying the arrows if I tried turning them into bolts. Can you even turn an arrow into a bolt? Probably not. Now, those runes though ... those I like."
The walls, floor, and ceiling of this long, pitch-dark hall are blasted black with soot, and a fine layer of ash covers the floor. Scattered here and there are heaps of ash from which a few fragments of bone protrude. The tunnel heads further to the west into darkness.
Wherby deduces that a powerful blast of magical fire tore through this area ages ago.
Searching the hall, you discover two secret doors in the east wall. One is caked with soot and somewhat tough to locate, but the other one is more obvious, as there is a door-shaped ashen patch on the wall.
Tekmin peers at the southern door, "Tricky! Perhaps there is still something good behind it."
Tekmin doesn't find any traps on the door. The walls of the room on the other side are adorned with unsettling carvings in an eerie-looking alphabet. To the east sits an even more unsettling sight—a five-foot-wide egg or plant bulb carved from dark green stone. Stony tentacles or roots radiate out from the sides of the egg, making it appear to be clinging to the eastern side of the room.
Herok looks around the room in distaste. "This room serves as a shrine to Yamasoth, the qlippoth lord of cursed kingdoms and vile experiments. Perhaps these are old Thassilonian ruins - that was certainly a cursed kingdom of vile experiments, if the stories are to be believed. Come to think of it, isn't there a seven-pointed star associated with Thassilon?"
"I think so, Herok. Did the Thassilonians worship Abraxis and qlippoths? Tekmin questions. "They certainly seem like nasty customers."
"What do you suppose they were doing in Sandpoint? There's nothing really interesting here."
With only unsettling carvings here, Tekmin is ready to open the other secret door.
"They might have. Thassilon is supposed to be thousands of years old - who knows what they were up to or what demons or gods they worshipped?"
Herok, too, was ready for the next secret door.
As soon as you touch the ashen patch that was a door, it crumbles! This room’s walls, floor, and ceiling are caked with a thick layer of dark soot and ash. A five-foot-wide, two-foot-tall slab of red stone stands in the middle of the room, its top etched with the image of a seven-pointed star. Surrounding it stand five more slabs of red stone. These red pylons and the central stone are curiously devoid of any ash or soot, and occasionally seem to shimmer with faint fiery energy.
When you enter the room, though, three burning undead guardians rise up from separate piles of ash and bones to attack! They wail in agony as they stumble towards you!
As the burning, undead guardians rose up, Herok desperately racked his brain trying to figure out what they were. Once he recognized them, he said, "These are undead known as combusted! They were lives ended in flames, consumed by everlasting anguish driving them to reckless violence. If you have ways to magically deal cold or douse them in water, it will hurt them more. Being doused in water can also stun them."
He then shifted his feet to better wield his bow in the tight space and fired an arrow at the nearest one.