1. The Tomb (action)

[tibbius]

Wraith chuckles and looks around the room. "Famous last words, huh?" He shrugs and cautiously follows his companions into the passage, looking up, down, and to either side as he progresses.

When you're checking for traps, please go ahead and roll a Trapmaster Test.

[Paladin]

He's pretty much always looking. Except when he grabs scrolls, apparently.

[1d6] = 1, [1d6] = 3, [1d6] = 4

[tibbius]

You pass uneventfully along a passage about six feet across and ten or twelve feet long. The lantern glow illuminates at the far end of the passage a room with no flat surfaces; it's bumpy all around, uneven footing and ceiling and walls.

Gleaming metal stuff is strewn all over the bumpy floor of the room. The floor glistens, too - like it's oiled. As you enter, you notice the other surfaces in the room also glisten.

Who's first? Who's last? Who's in the middle?

[Rex]

Sealgair

Sealgair sniffs it before entering. Any idea what it is?

Left to right, wasn't sure how many dice for this.

Sniff [1d6] = 1 [1d6] = 6 [1d6] = 1

[Paladin]

Wraith swipes his fingertip across the oily substance and sniffs it, then examines the metal pieces to see what he might glean from it all.

[1d6] = 5, [1d6] = 6, [1d6] = 3

[GreyWolfVT]

Grax follows along behind Wraith and Sealgair.

Regular [1d6] = 4 [1d6] = 6

[tibbius]

The metal stuff includes gold, silver, and copper coins, fragments of shattered steel and rusted iron, verdigris bronze. The oily substance smells somewhat digestive. Sealgair shies back from the odor. Wraith, stooping forward to squint at the metal and swipe his finger across the floor, is less cautious.

The soft floor of the room ripples toward Wraith's touch kind of like a writhing snake. The walls and ceiling sway inward. Drops of oily substance fall from the ceiling and spray from the walls.

[Rex]

Sealgair

"This is not good, something is off here."

[GreyWolfVT]

Grax "Aye somethin' is off it's like we're in a stomach er somethin."

[Paladin]

"And these metal bits are all that it couldn't digest," Wraith mutters as a cold knot tightens in his gut. "We've got to get out of here," he says quietly and begins backing slowly toward their point of entry.

[tibbius]

You scramble back into the passage. Its surfaces are reassuringly immobile smooth and porous rock.

The hidden bookshelf door swings open at a touch and you emerge back into the relative safety of the moderately insect-infested library.

Elzarune's bag has no more space for scrolls, it's crammed full with seven of them.

The structure lurches. By this time it's hard to ascertain whether it's moving or stationary, your inner ears are permanently aswirl and you've grown accustomed to the pulsating vertigo and nausea. However, it appears that the passage from the library back toward the spider room has been temporarily occluded. Most likely, next time it opens it will lead somewhere else.

There's not much to do but wait ...

Elzarune takes the opportunity to peruse a random scroll plucked cautiously from a nearby pigeonhole. A Scroll of Phasing Crow - the reader and all their equipment takes on a feathered flighty form that endures until they have flown and touched the ground again.

[ybn1197]

Is there any way to read over a scroll to ascertain what it does without actually casting the spell? If so, Elzarune will peruse Mobile Mapping Model.

[tibbius]

The Mobile Mapping Model is not a spell. It's more like an enchanted scroll that shows a set of black and white moving rings labeled with numbers and a blinking red dot. Elzarune briefly watches the rings turning around each other; the effect is almost hypnotic, but also nauseating.

mobilemappingmodel.png (693.42 KiB) Viewed 1957 times

The blinking red dot is on "4" which is lined up with the blank wall at "13."

[tibbius]

Glancing back at the scroll, Elzarune sees that "4" has moved clockwise while "13" has moved counterclockwise. "4" now is beginning to line up with the rough passage that is clockwise from "13."

You all feel a slight breeze blowing from the passage where you entered the library.

With a grinding noise, the structure lurches to a halt. The red dot on the scroll begins to blink rapidly.

[Rex]

Sealgair

"I think we need to do something quickly. Through to the next room?"

[GreyWolfVT]

Grax "Ain't much else we can do what with a wall right there. So guessin' we gotta go ta tha next room."

[tibbius]

Rapidly, you head back toward the center of the rings, passing along the corridor that led you into the library from the spiders' room. Now it leads instead to a low-ceilinged tunnel, barely wide enough for each of you to pass in single file. Almost immediately after the last of you steps over the gap between passages, you hear a grinding noise coming up from the depths, and the structure starts to move again; a glance at the scroll by Elzarune shows that the rings are turning.

The tunnel quickly turns to the right and descends. The floor is damp and beads of water run down the walls. The ceiling is bumpy with tiny stalactites that almost brush your heads; Sealgair has to keep her head ducked, thrust fiercely forward.

It is less than a minute stumbling down the sloped passageway before you come to a three way junction. To the left, a tunnel descends, a small stream of water running down the center of it. Ahead, a tunnel ascends. You recognize a few cobwebs at the sides. You stand in a small somewhat round-walled chamber with a higher ceiling, rivulets of water running down the walls to pool on the floor before draining to the stream at your left. In the bottom of the inches-deep, yards-wide puddle you see several glinting golden circles about the right size to go on fingers.

What do you do?

[Rex]

Sealgair

"Ahead and up." Sealgair continues along.

[tibbius]

Following along behind Sealgair, Elzarune notes that "your" red dot on the map-scroll is moving counterclockwise from "13" toward an irregular chamber marked with a skull and crossbones.

[GreyWolfVT]

Grax continues to follow as well.