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Standing in the very cramped confines of the chute, Vandal tries in vain to maneuver his "pokey-stick" to test for any unseen hazards. The best he's able to manage is climbing back up the rungs of the ladder and tap about from above. To his relief, there are no *clicks*, *whirs*, *snaps* or *clanks*; it appears that there are no obvious poison needle traps or triggers along the oval's edge.
Standing in the very cramped confines of the chute, Vandal tries in vain to maneuver his "pokey-stick" to test for any unseen hazards. The best he's able to manage is climbing back up the rungs of the ladder and tap about from above. To his relief, there are no *clicks*, *whirs*, *snaps* or *clanks*; it appears that there are no obvious poison needle traps or triggers along the oval's edge.
Somewhat relieved at the lack of potential danger, but deciding that the oval was better left to people with greater expertise in contraptions than he, Vandal climbs up the rungs and indicates the chute to Guillemin.
"Artifice."
A pause later, "Examine?"
Facing north, Guillemin peers through the holes in the center of the oval, which are conveniently almost exactly lined up with his eyes. You can dimly perceive very faint light coming from somewhere to the right (west). Directly across from you you can make out what looks like the dressed stone of a wall, to the right is a very dim outline of an arch leading west. The wall you are staring at runs about 5 feet to the left before you see a darker void, so perhaps another chamber or passage?
It's about the neuronal firework in my spergbrain that gets set off by the two misaligned map grids for real though: highly appreciate the map!
"Monsieur Guillemin, are you mayhaps peering into the very chamber that lies below us right now? If so, might it be of help if we were to lower a lantern with the tripod contraption again?"
On a positive response, Daphne would do just that: ignite her lantern, attach it to the rope's loose end and lower it carefully
presupposed that she was not actually hit by a rock.
Daphne lowers the lantern by the rope and immediately Guillemin sees much more clearly; he can just barely make out a vaulted chamber to his right and passages receding away to the north and east when he glances to the left.
the 'S' marks where the oval "door" with the two eyeholes is located. the chute is just behind that. The party location marker is not in the hallway (yet) I just did that for illumination purposes because I was too lazy to create a seperate light source in Roll20, so Nyah!
The illustration above is what the passage looks like from inside the archway of the western chamber. The secret door is about 4' ahead of the skull and to the right
Not to imply you didn't think about it, but if you don't want to leave everything to the whims of fate you can take a turn to search. Let me know and I'll make a secret roll for you (or anyone else who cares to try) . . . However in this instance, we'll just proceed with your stated action.
Good news . . .
The latch lifts easily and with a bit of effort the stone hinges grind and the oval-shaped door swings out into the dimly lit hallway. Guillemin sidesteps through the opening and takes long a moment to listen intently to the suffocating silence of the tarterean gloom and assure himself that no foul demons lay in ambush. Satisfied, he glances at the opposite side of the door and is somewhat astonished at the remarkable and slightly ghastly artistry of the bas relief sculpture on the other side
[/CENTER]
You can see that the fang on the lefthand side is turned outward; clearly the mechanism for unlatching the door.
You look to the west through the archway, and see a high, vaulted chamber that has collapsed along its western verge. Numerous animal skeletons litter the ground here, and you also see human remains; a skull, a partial ribcage and a broken humerus barely held together by a few bits of rotted cloth and leather. The parts of the wall that haven't collapsed reveal heavily worn frescoes depicting what looks like a funeral procession leading to a barrow mound. Disquietingly, the dark splotch below the hole in the ceiling makes a lot more sense now; clearly dried blood and the bit of rotted rope tangled in the rubble next to it illuminates how it might have come to be here. A further search along the edge of the chamber walls reveals another chilling aspect to the place. A bit of doggerel in archaic french is scrawled about a foot above the floor in what looks to be dried blood. "Trapped. No way out. Make no sound, they will seek you out!". Lastly, there are streaks of old dried blood leading away to the east and footprints of an indeterminate age headed that way as well.
Guillemin turns back to Vandal and the others, bringing a finger up to his mouth to advise silence, and motioning towards the grim, bloody warning.
Not quite finding the courage to follow the path East just yet, he returns to the fresco to see if any detail jumps out at him... although deep in his heart, he knows he is mostly there to wait safe and sound while the others descend the ladder and join him.
Daphne hauls and extinguishes the lantern, then descends down the chimney and joins the others.
Are the footprints of human origin?
Is there a discernible cause for the littered skeletons? Are these piled up in one spot or distributed all across the place?
General question - the beautiful illustrations you share, are they purely there to set the mood, or do we have to look for clues or dangers in them, too? If so, is there something going on with the roof down the hallway just before the arch approx. 20ft away? Looks kinda like a hole.
Anyways, in case there's no obvious danger that caused all those animal and human corpses, Daphne investigates the murals in the chamber to the left.
Madeline carefully navigates down the dark ladder then gently steps into the room once the rest of the party spreads out and looks around. At first, she stops herself at the relief of a seemingly shrieking creature expertly sculpted into the heavy doorway and slides her hand across it, feeling its pattern with her fingertips. Remaining silent, she ponders internally what sort of creature it is supposed to depict. A gigantic rat? That's not exactly an animal worthy of a permanent artistic rendition. She then spends enough time to try and figure out if the oval door would be able to be opened from the room they're in now, should it somehow end up shut - and whatever she finds, she wordlessly instructs Sancho to help her move some loose rubble in order to block the doorway from shutting back down. She wants an escape route to be ready just in case, and climbing a rope is not it.
She then moves on to the West, and uses her sense of orientation to assume that that is probably the collapsed pathway they found upstairs, and were considering clearing out. If it looks fairly stable, she'll get closer to the frescoes and give them a more thorough examination - she specifically looks for signs that they depict the funeral of a specific person of import, and could thus reveal something about the history of this place and who was buried within, or if they're just a generic depiction of a funeral processing?
She's spending time to test and examine the oval door, without closing it, to see if we can open it.
Then more time examining the frescoes.
Daphne hauls and extinguishes the lantern, then descends down the chimney and joins the others.
Are the footprints of human origin?
Is there a discernible cause for the littered skeletons? Are these piled up in one spot or distributed all across the place?
General question - the beautiful illustrations you share, are they purely there to set the mood, or do we have to look for clues or dangers in them, too? If so, is there something going on with the roof down the hallway just before the arch approx. 20ft away? Looks kinda like a hole.
Anyways, in case there's no obvious danger that caused all those animal and human corpses, Daphne investigates the murals in the chamber to the left.
If I post an image or a map it's meant to help set the mood, and provide some context for what everyone sees. I'm not pulling a Sierra, and expecting people to 'pixel bitch' and divine clues from these things. FWIW, the darkened 'hole' in the ceiling tile in the above illustration is just a shadow. So that also means that if I post something it's not automatically significant that there's some secret hidden here, or some grave threat. A lot of times it's easier to provide a picture than spend 3 paragraphs trying to explain some non-standard feature. The hallway is mostly to help set the mood: to show what the architecture looks like and just what 30' of lantern light might actually look like.
Madeline carefully navigates down the dark ladder then gently steps into the room once the rest of the party spreads out and looks around. At first, she stops herself at the relief of a seemingly shrieking creature expertly sculpted into the heavy doorway and slides her hand across it, feeling its pattern with her fingertips. Remaining silent, she ponders internally what sort of creature it is supposed to depict. A gigantic rat? That's not exactly an animal worthy of a permanent artistic rendition. She then spends enough time to try and figure out if the oval door would be able to be opened from the room they're in now, should it somehow end up shut - and whatever she finds, she wordlessly instructs Sancho to help her move some loose rubble in order to block the doorway from shutting back down. She wants an escape route to be ready just in case, and climbing a rope is not it.
She then moves on to the West, and uses her sense of orientation to assume that that is probably the collapsed pathway they found upstairs, and were considering clearing out. If it looks fairly stable, she'll get closer to the frescoes and give them a more thorough examination - she specifically looks for signs that they depict the funeral of a specific person of import, and could thus reveal something about the history of this place and who was buried within, or if they're just a generic depiction of a funeral processing?
She's spending time to test and examine the oval door, without closing it, to see if we can open it.
Then more time examining the frescoes.
Silently the group fans out into the chamber and begins carefully inspecting what's around them while Vincent and Vandal stand in the passage and peer into the gloom with their weapons held at the ready.
Daphne examines the scattered remains of animals and the partial human skeleton. They look like they've been gnawed on, broken and scattered about without any pattern. Their ages range from very old, to old, to maybe not so old based on their yellowing, and how some seem to be decomposing into dust. She also carefully follows the tracks leading out of the room. It seems like they could have been made by a man, but for every clear left footprint, there is right that badly drags. Perhaps someone was badly wounded here and was forced to plunge into the depths seeking a way out? Based on how wet it is in here, and they way mold and mildew cover everything you suspect that they aren't terribly old. Maybe weeks or days, not months or years?
Ganelon spends several minutes carefully inspecting the badly weathered frescoes on the chamber walls, that haven't collapsed. , but what or whom they depict is an utter mystery to him.
Meanwhile, Madeline examines the secret door with the garish sculpted head, it appears to be a bearded, bestial man's head screaming. The long canines however make it something else entirely. You've never sen its like. Guillemin points to the "bent" left canine tooth and shows her how pushing it trips the latch. The door grinds shut and she depresses the tooth with a satisfying *click* and puts her fingers into the eyeholes and opens the door again. Glancing to the east, she notes that there are several more bas relief sculptures nearly identical to this one in the passage, alternating from left to right about every 10 feet. Peering into the gloom she also notes passages and doors: to the north a couple of paces past the secret door is a passage, another passage north 3 paces beyond that, a door set in an archway on the south wall of the tunnel 5 paces away, and the passage she is standing in continues on to the east into the stygian blackness.
Ganelon takes in the scrawled note with a frown, then takes the time to sketch out the "happy bunny" in his notebook.
That done he motions Madeline into the stairwell. Once safely inside he whispers: "We should test the fang opening mechanism. We should close the door and see if it can be opened from the other side with someone to open it from this side to open it if it can't be."
The sound of rushing water is gone (likely some kind of primitive hydraulic mechanism used to elevate the slab over the stairwell using a gravity fed cistern). The tomb is quiet enough to hear a pin drop. every boot scrape echoes, every whisper almost sounds like a shout. The only thing that seems persistent is the drip of water in the clammy, cold dark.
For shits and grins I added some ambient sound to the dungeon that more or less captures what I'm talking about. Let me know if it doesn't play
Daphne takes a crack inspecting the frescoes, as Ganelon stands in front of them rubbing his chin and furrowing his brow in frustration, before he throws up his hands and walks away. She carefully examines the surviving fragments and what Ganelon could not perceive she does in spades. The figures bearing the deceased bodies in the murals are shackled and chained and though badly faded, she notes that each seems to be somehow broken and deformed - slaves, perhaps ancient Celts? The hooded figures at the head of the procession and at the tail, appear to be holding coiled whips in one hand, and scepters in the other. There's something oddly familiar about the figures that she thinks on for a few minutes until it hits her. Aha! she's seen the hooded figures in a grimoire before. A grimoire that belonged to her master that was full of necromantic incantations that was supposedly copied from ancient Egyptian manuscripts and handed down through the eons to Greek and then Roman sorcerers of antiquity. Critical Success!
for real though: highly appreciate the map!
