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Alessio lowers his crossbow and holsters it. The shifting voices are definitely disturbing but it's much more likely for Thurl to have committed this treachery than a demon to be standing here lying to us. A demon wouldn't trifle with subterfuge, it would just try to kill us like the scores of demons we've already faced. If you've been down here, why have you not investigated his lair?
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Sangkip actually finds this quite plausible. While he looks for Valais' secret door, he calls over his shoulder, "Hey does anyone have any spells that can help Valais keep the whole three-personalities-stitched-together mess under control? I figure at some point the demon parts are gonna try to take over"
Valais looks a little confused at all the talk of demons and multiple voices.
"I know not of demons and such, beyond the fact that Thurl was trying to harness their powers in strange ways. I was never able to figure that part out..." She looks confused for a moment, then her mind seems to wander, as she stands there unresponsive for a moment, before continuing on, as if nothing had happened. "I was pretty clear that he had tossed aside any sort of moral boundaries on his research, though. Hopefully we can learn more below."
Parts of her seem almost human, but they seem to be stitched together with demonic parts... from more than one demon... with no particular design to it all.
Much of her body is covered by the tattered clothing she wears, but the purplish parts of her face seem to have come from a babau demon, as best you can tell, though you've only seen a few of those, after the siege. The reddish parts, including her clawed right arm, and overly-large left leg are harder to identify, though from your readings, you suspect they may have come from a more powerful horned demon... the kalavakus.
How someone managed to piece them all together, such that the parts would live past the procedure, you've no idea.
You can't imagine the dichotomy that must be raging through her body and mind, as the demonic parts exert subtle, and not-so-subtle influences over the human parts.
They put your own situation into perspective.
"Sadly, I don't know much about what was happening in the lower levels, as I escaped just after I woke up. I've been waiting here since, for the Decemvirate to send me some fresh minions. " The two other voices seem to be fighting for control for a moment, though it quickly fades.
She glances towards Alessio, shaking her head slightly, still obviously unaware of the battle raging inside her. "I knew the Decemvirate wouldn't abandon me, I just had to wait." She pauses again, a rather vicious looking snarl working its way onto her fanged jaw. "Also, in case he returned, I wanted to be ready to stab him in the back, then skin him alive" The sibilant voice returns to finish whatever she was about to say.
While she talks, Sangkip is able to find the rather cleverly concealed door she was referring too. Much like the door you came in through, it is almost impossible to spot from inside the room, when it's closed. He's pretty sure he would not have spotted it at all without the elixir he consumed a few minutes before.
A set of stone steps leads down from there.
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Floria tentatively approaches her and places a hand on her shoulder, ever so carefully.
"The decemvirate didn't forget you. We're here to help"
She gives her a sad smile. Adventure indeed
She resumes her precautionary posture from before, rod and wand out and light cast, and prepares to absolutely in no way be first down the stairs.
As you start down the stairs, Valais nods.
"Below is a large area Thurl used as some kind of dumping ground... mostly ruined now, as it shall ruin all of you." She says, the last but a hissing whisper, as she moves to follow you down. "A small shrine conceals a secret passage to another level below even that... that is where I got out."
The steps go down quite a ways, before the end before an opening into a vast room beyond. There is no door, just a short hallway, then nothing. The room stretches further than your light, or darkvision can see to your right and left, and ahead to the east.
Small rusted and broken sconces intermittently line the walls on the side you're on, but the torches in them have long ago burned down to useless nubs.
The room beyond, though vast, is not exactly empty. What appear to be wall segments, stretch from floor to ceiling, as much resembling overgrown stalactites and stalagmites as architectural features. Chunks of shattered masonry and other rubble are strewn about the floor.
It takes a moment to get an idea of what you're looking at, but eventually you realize that the walls that once stood here defined a huge maze of some sort... but now, only a few partially ruined segments of wall remaining, ranging in length from five to twenty feet or so. Everything else has been destroyed, long ago... only the rubble and broken bases of the walls marking where the maze once stood.
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Floria looks shocked as she pieces together what she's looking at.
"The labyrinth! Like the picture on Thurl's wall, made of ivory, the one with the minotaur."
The one that's been haunting my dreams...
Her excitment starts to fade. "I don't know what it means, but it was important to him. Perhaps he chose this place because of it?"
"Let's stick together and explore. We could walk the route of the old maze, or try to map out the extent of this chamber. If this is his shrine, then maybe the way down is at the centre"
"The shrine is at the center." Valais offers, from the back, looking dubiously into the darkness. "though I'm not sure which way that was from here..."
"That way I think?" one clawed hand points hesitantly into the darkness straight ahead.
You make your way tentatively out into the large open space that once held the maze.
It his hard to tell exactly how long ago it was destroyed, certainly not recently. Enough bits of wall remain that you can never see more than about fifty feet, before something blocks your view, but usually its little more than a small section of wall that was never entirely collapsed. It takes a while to get a feel for the size of the area, but your best guess puts it at about three hundred feet north to south, and perhaps two hundred east to west, with the door you entered from about three quarters of the way up the westernmost wall.
It eventually becomes clear that the maze once filled the entire area, though only rubble and bits of broken walls remain to mark its presence. The maze itself appears to have had wide passages, nearly ten feet across, and you find it nearly impossible to follow the route as it might have been originally defined. Certainly, you can traipse along the remains of a passage for a short ways, but often it becomes hard to differentiate side passages, from broken walls, and often you can walk for a considerable distance without knowing if you're on the right path or not... from which point, finding where your way back to where you last branched off proves more difficult than you'd have thought.
You do occasionally note faint chalk marks on the floor, as if someone, once long ago, tried to mark their way along... though the success or failure of that endeavor is long lost to time, and the destruction of the maze.
You will eventually note that Valais, left to her own devices, sticks to the outlined hallways, never crossing over the broken walls, even when they are little more than a quick step to bypass. If called on it, she looks confused, and will do so, but eventually reverts back to following the vaguely defined pathways.
More than once, you come across small piles of what appear to be giant insect shells and demon carapaces, or small caches of barbed horns and bones. You're not sure why they are there, but seem to come from a wide variety of demonic creatures... all of them only lightly buried under the rubble, as if to conceal them.
You also manage to locate what appears to have once been the center of the maze. It proves not to be in the center of the room itself, off center to the east and south a ways... but it stands out once you spot it, for there you see what appears to be a raised altar made of ivory inlaid wood. Its virtually pristine condition lies in sharp contrast to the shattered walls around it.
As you get a bit closer, you see a statue resting in the middle of the altar, depicting two figures locked in combat: a giant brass bull, and a dwarf made of iron. The dwarf grips the bull by one of its horns from over its shoulder, while holding a warhammer aloft in the other hand.
Huni will detect a faint magical aura around on the altar, but nothing beyond that.
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Kara activates the Detect Evil feature of her wayfinder, starting with the direction of the statue and scanning in a full clockwise circle if given enough time and nothing pings.
Kara will detect nothing that triggers her divination, in any direction she looks.
As you get closer to the altar, you see there delicately incised words along the base of the statue that read: In my name is the strength of my history, my tradition, and my people. Speak your name into my ear, and I shall judge your worth.
The altar, and statue, do not appear to be part of the original design, both seeming to be far more recent than the events that destroyed the maze.
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"Suuuure. Not suspicious at all..."
He gave the statues a once over, looking for any kind of traps. If it was magical he probably wouldn't be able to disrupt it himself, but at least they would know it was there...
"Hey Alrik. You're pretty tough, right? You mind whispering sweet nothings to a bull?"
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Alessio frames the scene with his hands and walks around to get perspective. Y'know, it would seem the dwarf is winning this battle but this bull-like creature is about to counterstrike. Careful engaging the statue, we don't know what it may prompt.
Huni's religious training did not cover the symbology he's seeing here, nor the quote inscribed along the base.
Sangkip, his vision enhanced by the elixir he drank, spots of a number of irregularities around the alter.
He is pretty sure that a section of the floor is designed to move, though can find no trigger for it... as well, statue itself seems to be trapped somehow, though again, the trigger for it does not appear obvious.
Kara will not recognize the phrase as pertaining to any religion that she's aware of... though she's pretty sure the dwarf represented in the statue is Torag.
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"In my name is the strength of my history, my tradition, and my people." His name is Torag, but I don't fathom how that assists us here.
I trust this apparatus not, given that it has been placed here more recently and appears to be trapped, possibly in multiple ways. Yet I am intrigued.
I have rope and a casting of Feather Fall available. Does anyone wish to try speaking their name to our diminutive Father of Dwarvenkind here?
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Floria looks thoughtful.
She will also cast detect magic, and then attempt to any identify auras.
"I am hesitant to speak to this thing. I expect its judgement would not be to our liking. Does anyone have picks? We could try simply breaking our way through the floor"
It's clear from her tone and the vague waving of her hand that the "we" in that sentence does not include her.
As everyone bravely backs away to a safe distance, Alrik stays put, by the altar. Once folks are clear, he speaks his name aloud.
Nothing appears to happen.
Even as you stand there, trying to decide what to try next, there is a sudden grinding of of gears, and the sound of stone grating against stone. The altar starts to rotate away, revealing an opening beneath where it originally sat.
There, you see a narrow shaft, with an iron staircase spiraling down.
"Yes, I remember that." Valais whispers, her tone slightly nervous.