Chapter 3: Third time's the charm

[drpete]

Date: Skullmont 13, 1:10 am
Season: Early Fall
Light Sources: Brother Galen (Lantern, 4 hours, 0 minutes remaining), Climent (Lantern, 4 hours, 0 minutes remaining)
Time since rest: 10 minutes
Moon phase: Waxing Gibbous
Location: Chapel

The group takes a load off, drinks some water, and catches their breath before trying to figure out what is going on with this mechanism.

Galen and Climent investigate the bodies. They find nothing extremely interesting about them. They are definitely dead, and not moving at all, now. They are dressed in a very old style, reminiscent of the Thulian Empire more than today. Today, you see these kinds of clothes in religious statuary, not regular people. The bodies, for all their apparent age, seem fairly well preserved... they are putrid and somewhat bloated, but not completely dessicated, as you would expect if they'd been mummified or something. Curiously, their tongues and teeth are black and shiny.

At the altar, Steel discovers that he is actually wearing a backpack, now. It contains the rest of the food he'd been eating, the waterskin, and the set of thieves tools he'd been asking for. Somehow, something (hunger?) was clouding his mind enough over by those bodies that he didn't realize he'd taken them with him. He and Randolpho try to find a way to engage the mechanism, but it seems to be a counterweight, and they can't get enough leverage.

Torgyr and Ranulf investigate the pillars. They find that the boxed numbers are just carvings in the back of the niche. The niches are large enough for a person (presumably one of those black skeletons) to stand in, though you step over a little lip to get into it, and the lip contininues around the whole thing. They are painted black inside, where the pillars themselves are red. On the top end, the niche is rounded. The floor of the niches is a flat stone platform. You note that the stone platforms in the two niches you've singled out look like they might ... move. They seem to be pressure plates.

[bobloblah]

"Hm. Presumably the black skeletons standing in their appropriate niches marked with squares are heavy enough to counter-balance the altar, allowing it to..." Brother Galen notices the others staring at him, "What?"

Frowning, he turns away to play with the dog, scratching the hound behind the ears and slipping him a piece of salted meat from his own rations, "Who's a good boy?"

[kalstone]

Solaine ponders. "I wonder how much weight it would take to trigger these plates. I suppose we could drag the skeletons in here and pile them up in the alcoves."

[Zorroroaster]

Torgyr looks around. "The quick way would for two of us to just step in and see if that provides enough weight to unlock the mechanism while the others stand ready with ranged weapons to handle anything that might be underneath. The safe way would be to take some time and do as Solaine suggested and pile some bodies in there, just in case something untoward happens to the alcove when it's triggered. Lets get one body in each as a start and see if that does anthing."

Torgyr grabs a corpse and drags it over to the alcove, pulling and pushing until it's nestled inside, resting on the pressure plate.

[kalstone]

Solaine grabs another body and piles it into the other niche similarly.

[Zorroroaster]

Before placing the body in, Torgyr calls out to the others in warning.

"Prepare yourselves. We don't know what might happen, or what foes may issue forth if this works. Be ready."

[drpete]

You manhandle one corpse into each niche. It takes some effort to get them in without flopping out of the holes, and you become intimately familiar with their clammy skin.

Once you get them in, you hear a distinct *click*. At first, nothing else seems to happen. Then the altar slides forward smoothly, not scratching the floor, and revealing an opening in the south wall of the room.

[kalstone]

Solaine says, "Good job, guys."

[Zorroroaster]

Torgyr whispers. "Well, ain't that something."

[Dogma]

"Well, will you look at that? Nice job that was,"says Ranulf as he pulls his sword and peers through the hole in the wall. "Galen, bring your lantern over and shine some light through this hole. Give us a good look at what we've uncovered."

[bobloblah]

"Heel!" Galen whispers to the hound, then moves next to Ranulf with his lantern.

[drpete]

Peering into the opening, you see a room that extends 20 feet to the south, and is 30 feet wide.

You see some large amphorae like the ones you saw in the orc room. There are shelves along the south wall, but they are bare. You see several bags littered around the room... mostly empty-looking, rather than full, though there may be a few with things in them, left behind.

It looks like a treasury... a looted treasury.

[bobloblah]

Were the scrape-marks on the floor before the altar the first time we came here, right after destroying the black skeletons?

[Zorroroaster]

That's what I remember.

[Zorroroaster]

Torgyr gapes at the ransacked chamber beyond the lamplight.

"Damn! Double damn! You dirty, thieving, no-account, fatherless ..." He barks out a long string of Dwarven expletives as colourful as they are obscene. Some of the more delicately minded of his fellows find themselves sheepishly looking at their feet or off to one side or the other until he runs out of breath. He storms into the smaller room and looks around, his anger fading as quickly as it had risen. He chuckles.

"And here I thought it was payday. Well, what now?"

[drpete]

Torgyr notices a few things as he rants and raves.

He notices one pretty full looking bag.

He kicks an empty-looking bag, and a handful of silver coins skitters across the floor.

He smells a familiar smell... of pipeweed. Someone has been smoking it in here, recently.

And yes, there were scratch marks there on your last visit.

[bobloblah]

Brother Galen lets out a long sigh,"We'd best search the leftovers..."

[drpete]

A search of the "leftovers" reveals:

4 large pots of lamp oil.

One female statue head. Galen immediately recognizes it as Tyche.

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400 sp
10 gp
4 gems:
Obsidian (value 10 gp)

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Zircon (value 100 gp)

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Onyx (value 100 gp)

red-onyx-001.jpg (7.48 KiB) Viewed 784 times

Tourmaline (value 500)

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And a piece of jewelry, a silvery scarab beetle with blue enamel.

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[Dogma]

Ranulf looks over the small pile of treasure they managed to glean from the refuse. "Better than I thought we'd find, though still not making us rich," he says with some disappointment, "but at least it's been paying off enough to keep us going."
He picks up the statue head and examines it, "So this is Tyche? Not to shabby looking," he observes before giving the stone head a firm kiss, "Never kissed a goddess before. "What do you think Galen, should we give put it back on the body? Think she'll come to life and give me a real kiss?"

[bobloblah]

"Either that, or blast you from existence. You've really got to ask yourself one question: Do you feel lucky? Well, do you, Ranulf?" Brother Galen says with a wry grin. His mood is considerably improved with the small find.

Still in good humour, he continues, "Seeing as none of us will be retiring just yet, where shall we head next? I would like to restore that head to its proper place; we can smash the likeness of that blasphemer."