Under the baleful eye of Trixxex, the Gibbering Mouther is slashed, hammered and torn. While it continues to reform and shift, it's clearly unable to contend with the repeated ferocity of the blows and eventually is severed into multiple chunks that slough off the edge of the platform and fall into the nothing.
With a blink of white light, you find yourselves before the bronze doors once again. The right hand door stands slightly ajar and slowly is opening backwards, almost if the push that Avi and Trixxex had delivered was now just resolving.
An intricate chamber is glimpsed through the slowly opening door, different from the maze. You've clearly reached something new.
Avi -3
Krystiana -9
Bartolomey -3
Brun -16
Kala -9
Stinky -0
Trixxex -13 (-1 NL)
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Avi looks around, confirming his "reverted" surroundings.
Wow. I wonder how many more dimensional tangents we'll trigger along the way to finding our minotaur.
He nods in appreciation when Bartolomey comes by with his healing wand.
I thank you, though it's only a few bruises.
He peers through the now open door, weary of possible traps or other hazards.
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As everyone starts healing themselves, Kala waits around, hoping that someone will share their wand with her so she doesn't have to use up any of her precious few spell slots. Bartolomey's automatic sharing of resources pleasantly surprises her. Despite her mistrust of the man with the ghost companion (so unnatural!), she has to admit that at least he is a team player. After he heals her, the "Thanks" she gives him likely communicated the conflicted feelings she is experiencing right now. To cover any awkwardness, she joins Avi at the door to peer inside and assess the situation as well.
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Krystiana, a soldier of the church, defender of Lastwall, muave sheep of an aristocratic household is trying to rescue a minotaur diplomat from a multi-dimensional maze hidden under the most powerful city in the world.
She knows how to hit things with swords. She knows how to call on deific powers to hit things with swords extremely hard. However, she's not the best tracker. She's gotten lost on her own father's estate at least twice this year.
All of this is going through her head as she looks around for clues to help out the actual trackers she's following behind.
It's at that point a thought occurs to her, "Presuming we're still on the same plane, are we under Starstone Cathedral? I haven't gotten to see it yet. From the outside that is."
The room beyond appears still and Avi and Kara detect nothing amiss as the party is healed. Stepping lightly inside, the chamber opens up into a larger space, approximately 50' across and 90' wide, in the shape of a large oval.
This chamber is lined with symbols like those near the entryway. There are obvious signs of a recent struggle, including blood and the corpse of a morlock. Drag marks slide through a pool of blood formed around the head of the morlock, indicating a large creature was pulled through the sealed door on the east side of the room. Several large pillars support the ceiling and there are four square openings about the size of a person in the ceiling that appears to be ducts or some small space that extend vertically upward.
The door in the east wall is intricately formed from bronze. Four interconnected, circular windows reveal a confusing series of cogs and sprockets within. Levers, dials, and knobs protrude from the frames surrounding the window, but nothing appears to be an obvious latch.
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Kala examines the body on the floor to see if she can tell what type of creature killed it . She absent-mindedly shoos Stinky away from the body as she ponders what she sees.
She is also suspicious of those open vents up in the ceiling. She tries to see if there's anything up in them, like some sort of creature that could drop down to attack the party.
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Stinky noses forward to sniff at the dead Morlock on the floor. Glancing back and forth between it and Kala, he puts on his puppy eyes and lets out a tiny, begging whine. So... um... About that body on the floor... You know that I'm hungry, right? C-can I, you know, have a tiny snack? Just a little bite or two. Please? Please? When she pushes him away, the expression of doleful, disappointed resignation on his furry face is intentionally adorable, but Kala is too preoccupied to notice.
Phooey.
The door is extremely complex and the layers of mechanisms are difficult to ascertain what may be linked to the door latch and what is purely something else. The gears and such seem overly complex for a mere door and your engineering and perception leaves you to believe it's almost two sets of mechanisms, one opposing the other. As if the door would interact with the manipulator and change to meet it's conditions.
The morlock was clearly killed by a large axe, reminiscent of your minotaur's known preference.
The chutes are very wet and drip down a small stream of water. The puddles on the floor are not large though, as if it's been a slow leak and evaporation has kept up with the condensation.
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Kala snorts at Krystiana's comment. "Ha! You shouldn't've emptied your pockets before you left." What? Why did I think that was funny? Lame. That was lamer than a one legged duck in a bucket of tar. Ugh.
She continues craning her neck up at the vents in the ceiling for a bit, still paranoid about a creature's ambush, then out of frustration and boredom (because she's no use with the fancy clockwork door) proceeds to look around for a hidden door. Just because.
As Kala stares at the door, she becomes more intent on solving it and applies her wisdom to the imagining it's opening. Suddenly, the gears start to whirl and buzz and the complex mechanism begins to shape and move.
There is grating sound overhead and one of the four openings slowly closes and seals tight, the drip of water stopping. One of the large tumblers on the door pops open, signifying progress.
Trixxex then catches the eye of the door and attempts to plot the next moves that would open it further. However, there is a whining sound and some of the gears angrily mesh together. Suddenly, water begins pouring down from the three remaining openings in the ceiling. The gushing torrents of water are cold and strong, the floor beginning to quickly fill and rise.
To your alarm, the rear doors of the chamber begin to close, beginning to trap the room in the rising water.
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"Whoa! What the--! I knew those holes were bad news!" Kala dashes (splashes to the open doorway they just came through and wedges her warhammer under it, hoping that at least then the water won't rise too much as the team works on opening the other door. ...And hoping that she'll be able to yank it back out again when it's time to move on. It would break her heart to leave behind her grandfather's warhammer.
She then takes a moment to use her Animal Focus ability to give Stinky the Aspect of the Frog and to take him from Avi. "Thanks. I got 'im!" She hoists him up onto her shoulders firefighter style. Water streams off his coat, soaking her clothes and lending her a rather unfortunate musky smell.
"Hey, how's that door coming?" There is an understandable tension in her voice.
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Huh. A waterfall. Inside. That's unusual. Oh, hey! Kala! This is getting deep! Aack!
As Avi tries to lift him up, Stinky at first is happy to take the assistance, but as soon as he's lifted above the water the wolverine gets rather picky about his savior. Hey! You're not Kala! I want Kala! Where's Kala? Kalaaaa! He's behaving like a toddler who only wants Mommy. As soon as Kala takes him into her arms, his squirmy antics transition abruptly from escapee-wannabe-themed to hyper-kid-with-too-much-going-on-themed. What's going on, Kala? That's a lot of water. I'm thirsty. Can I get a drink? Please? And I'm hungry. Are we going to have to swim? Where will we go? How high is the water going to get?...
Bartolomey grasps one of the aspects of the doors innerworkings and with a loud thunk, another of the four bolts on the door opens. Once the bolt is withdrawn, a second opening in the ceiling closes with a grating of stone on stone.
Avi next approaches the door. With the water pouring down and the noise and confusion, he doesn't manage to interact and begins to get dizzy as the whirling images of the gears and mechanisms are overwhelming.
Kala's Warhammer holds for a moment, but then slips away from the closing door with the water pouring at the opening, not able to resist the flow.
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Kala scoops up Orc Brains, her warhammer, almost losing her grip on Stinky and soaking her face in the process. She then power-strides through the rushing water back to the mysterious door.
Well, it worked once. Will it work again? Kala almost tries again, just like she did before, but something stops her. Her ever-present inner demon: self-doubt. I got lucky before. I can't count on being lucky again. No one is ever lucky twice in a row. At least not me. My luck's run out for this. If I try it, I will fail. More water will fall, and everyone will be drowned, and it'll be all my fault. Oh, Stinky what am I to do? She turns her head to nuzzle into Stinky's warm, coarse fur for comfort and reassurance, only to get a face-full of cold, wet wolverine. The shock of the unexpected snaps her thoughts back to the present. Her face hardens as she forces her weakness deep down with sheer strength of will. It's not my time to die yet!
"Okay, people! One more option: Break it down! We'll need to try it before the water gets too deep, but if we all do it together we may be able to bust it open. Who wants to try it with me? On the count of three!" Once a few people have indicated their intentions, she'll plunk Stinky into the water and slam herself into the door with all her might.
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Bartolomey fresh from his first success tries again, but is unable to overcome the doors intricacies. A headache grows in his mind and the water continues to pour in.
Avi is frustrated by events and is forced to retreat and one of the slots in the ceiling reopens, allowing more water to flow.
Trixxex’s baleful eye takes the door in turn with Avi’s retreat. All of you smile as you hear the third bolt retract from the door.
Trixxex's mind works rapidly, outpacing the door's defenses and with a final thunk, the remaining bolt on the door withdraws. Simultaneously a gurgling begins in the center of the room as a hidden drain opens and the water rapidly starts to recede.
The door's swing outwards and you are greeted to a view of the room beyond. Once-cheerful mosaics of smiling children and adults running through the streets of Absalom line the walls, but age and water damage smear the faces enough to make it seem as though they weep. Sturdy work benches and bookshelves line the walls. An intricate mess of bronze chains, plates, pendulums, and gears that form a sort of astrolabe dangle high above the room. Catwalks spin out from the walls in three places, curving on a horizontal plane and meeting in an open circle in the middle of the room. Between the catwalk circle dangles the body of a desiccated elf, ragged and dusty scraps of clothing barely covering his thin, bony body. He seems to be dangled in a maze of chains connected to the massive astrolabe above and the chains clank silently as he lolls his head from side to side.
Chained to an old sofa, a large white minotaur lays motionless. His head has some bloodstains and from this distance you can see that his breathing is shallow.
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Kala braces herself as the water drains, the force of it nearly sweeping her off her feet. Once it has drained to her ankles, she crouches to dump Stinky onto the floor. "All right, squirmy! Get down."
Striding to the door, she stops just before crossing the threshold to inspect the room. Seeing the state of the minotaur, she'd like to go cast Cure Light Wounds on him, but the way the elf is hanging seems suspicious to her. What type of trap is this? And why is the elf's head lolling? Shouldn't it be stiff with rigor mortis?
"Guys, wait. Let's see if there's a tripwire or trigger tile or something before we go in there."