Barrowmaze IV: Delving for Power and Glory

[redwarrior]

Isvand stands ready to follow Orgoth into the room.

[Spearmint]

Exploring the Western Corridor

Crowbars to the fore, the spikes are torn free of the door jamb and the last crypt door opened. The room beyond is 20'ft square. The walls are plain; no frescoes, no mold, no blood streaks or odd garments hung up, no shadows dancing in your torchlight. In the centre of the room are five silhouettes. Each are made of bronze and are hollow, a rectangle of human height or short and stout like a dwarf might be represented, a larger frame built for a half-orc, a gnome or halfling depiction, a slim svelte figure which contrasting to the others must represent an elven image. The cut-out figures have basic poses, similar to a gingerbread man. The silhouettes ring a central black marble coffer whose lid is covered in intricate gold leaf designs. Two of the Silhouettes cannot be viewed through to the central coffer, instead the elf's has an image of a forest scene whilst the dwarf's is filled with swirling mist.

There is a body on the floor by the door. The figure is dressed as an adventurer in mundane garb with a rusty battleaxe strapped to their back. The startling feature is that the person has no visage. Literally no face, for the eyes, nose and mouth are absent. Not hacked away but as though the person was wearing a plain mask which concealed all their features.



actions please.

[Rex]

Orgoth

"This doesn't look good."

[OGRE MAGE]

Sven helps pull the dead figure into the hallway so it can be searched before the clerics say something over it while interring it in a more proper and fitting manner.

Is the dead figure dwarf sized by any chance?

Looking closer at the five silhouettes around the marble coffer a bit longer from the doorway, the young mage shrugs. "Anyone got any guesses about this one?"

Unless someone comes up with a better idea, Sven will tie his rope around his waist and hand the other end to Orgoth. He will close his eyes tightly behind his mask and enter the rom. Using his staff as a guide, he will tap his way over to the coffer, trying to learn if it is stationary or could be dragged across the floor. Never during this time does he open his eyes unless warned about something from the others. "If this should go badly, yank me back into the hallway if you can, please."

[Rex]

Orgoth

"Got it."

he ties his end of the rope around his waist and grabs hold of the rope with both hamds.

[OGRE MAGE]

Sven turns back around before entering.

"If I die, Gerdal can talk to the crabs next." He jokes.

Yes, I do keep forgetting about that.

[sastaz]

Shadow corridor, crab room, spore room, black box & silhouette room, chest with overturned lid room, ghast room

[sastaz]

Gerdal looks worried, and tries a joke as well.

"Good luck brave Sven. Who knows, maybe the magic here will steal your face mask by mistake, huh?"

While Sven is entering

"This wonderful box in the middle looks almost too good to be true. Could it be powering the silhouettes? In that case, we might have ourselves a really powerful artefact here."

She holds her breath as Sven enters the room.

[Spearmint]

Exploring the Western Corridor

The figure is human sized, by the clothes and build, a faceless male. Interesting (if you find faceless bodies interesting?) the blind, mute and noseless unfortunate does have ears, pointy elven ones. Isvand can rifle through the pockets and pouches. A standard short sword, unremarkable in crafting is sheathed at the waist, a ring of silver on an index finger. A purse of coins, a meagre 47sp. The body has begun to putrefy. The visage, clean skin without spot or blemish contracts to the rest of the body indicating they may have been dead a while. While having a strange featureless face, there are no other apparent clues to the identity of the victim or how they became in this condition.

sorry, should have made my descriptions a bit more clear. This black coffer is sized like a sarcophagus or coffin rather than a typical chest size.

Sven braves the room. You can tippy-tappy your way to the center, getting close to the bronze silhouettes. You can either pass through a silhouette or between them to gain access to the coffer, though from the description I assume you swerve the outlines and step between them. With bated breath (random dice rolling noises in your heads), you lay hands in the edifice and try to inspect its features while still closing your eyes.

It is stone cold, smooth marble with raised filigree of gold leaf. The block is heavy and doesn't move though the lid might. You spend several minutes feeling, listening, smelling. No troubles erupt, certainly no rope is jerked to pull you out of the room. While the clerics attend to another 'John Doe', others can enter the room and with eyes wide, explore a bit more.

You note one more feature. Inside the ring if silhouettes, you can clearly see through the dwarf and elf outlines as though nothing was blocking the view but from this side, the other three outlines have images or scenes.

The smaller halfling silhouette shows a dark corridor and some flagstones, which immediately makes you think of the Barrowmaze. The larger framed humanoid has a bog scene, a pool of boiling tar surrounded by thick weeds. The human displays a room, a wood panelled interior typical of a tavern with an empty table and bench.

The 'marvels' are fascinating of course, interesting the gnomes especially.

actions please. You have a black marble sarcophagus and five Silhouettes with images visible on one side. And a faceless figure.

[redwarrior]

UPDATED
Isvand pockets the pouch and slides the silver ring onto his finger for now. To be shared with the party later, unless the ring is suuuuuper cool Next, he moves up to the coffer/coffin and checks it for traps on its lid. I think that there was some magic triggered when these opened the lid. I'm confident that there are no traps on the lid. Do we want to open it? Maybe we can put a rope with a grapnel on it and pull it open from the hallway?



FaRT Target 25 [1d100]=93

[Rex]

Orgoth

Orgoth will continue to anchor Sven.

[Spearmint]

Isvand I don't mind you rolling skill checks and then at least you can roleplay being confident that if one is there you found it or shrugging that you lack skill to determine if one is present or not.

[OGRE MAGE]

Sven opens his eyes once the others join him inside the room. He encourages the gnomes to take a closer look at the oddities with him.

"I cant figure out any correlation between the contents of any of these 6 rooms. It seems they are all just random crypts and another hallway."

The mage uses his staff to poke and prod the figures, trying to determine if the areas they reflect could be accessed by simply walking into the scenes they represent. "I wonder where these places are? This one looks like it might reflect an area inside here somewhere. Does anyone recognize the tar pit bog, or the tavern area?

Sven moves back to the last room with the shadow hallway to mentally compare it to the scene inside the halfling figure, wondering if they are the same.

Once he returns, if there have been no new revelations with the coffer, Sven will try moving the human figure depicting the wooden room, testing if they can be slid around the floor into different positions.

"That elf who lost his face certainly concerns me, so please be careful opening that sarcophagus."

[redwarrior]

Isvand's post is updated. He is SURE that there are no traps, but equally certain that something bad happens when you open the coffer, suggests doing it with rope & grapnel from the hallway if we do it.

[sastaz]

Gerdal

...inspects the silhouettes as well.

"Fascinating! Whatever these things do, there's some strong magic at play here. I can't seem to make anything out of it though. Their purpose will probably remain unclear to us."

She picks up a small stone from the flagstone floor and throws it though the halfling "Barrowmaze" silhouette to check if it lands within the corridor shown, or on the other side.

[OGRE MAGE]

I forgot to ask in my post, but Is the faceless elf we found the same size and shape as one of the five figures?

[Rex]

Orgoth

Orgoth tries to keep an eye out as he anchors Sven.

[Spearmint]

Exploring the Western Corridor

I forgot to ask in my post, but Is the faceless elf we found the same size and shape as one of the five figures?

No. The elf is not a direct cut-out figure shape. The Silhouettes are average sized in who they represent. In that sense, a short fat human might waddle through the dwarf image as much as a slender human female could walk through the elf image.

Studying the images. They are an enigma. Two people could stand on either side of each image. One person can see clearly through to the other person on the other side while that person views an image of forest, bog, room, passage or misty scene. Your immediate interpretation is walking through an image might teleport you to that particular scene rather than walking just through to the other side. You can access the marble coffer without walking through a Silhouette. The Silhouettes are fixed in position and do not move. There is no apparent reason why the dwarf image is on the left and the elf on the right, they are not constructed in size or height order.

Certainly this room is as random as others in this western passage and none of the crypt contents seem to have any relation to the others apart from size and construction of the rooms.

Sven moves back to the last room with the shadow hallway to mentally compare it to the scene inside the halfling figure, wondering if they are the same.

Looking into this last room, you can only see the passage extend twenty feet before turning to the right. On the edge of your candlelight, shadows move along the wall, shadows of humanoid shape. You might be reminded of some graffiti found in the corridor south of the tapestry room that noted, "I have lost my shadow' or words to that effect and even a silhouette of a figure on the floor (like an outline of a figure from a murder scene). If these crypts are the same size, then reasonably you can imagine the passage might proceed right twenty feet then turn south then east in a spiral type design ending in a centre square that contains ... another mystery, trap, creature, trove?

Gerdal tosses some loose stone which goes through the halfling passage image, it doesn't shimmer or break the image and doesn't land in some flagstones in another passage elsewhere in the Barrowmaze but at the feet of people standing around the coffer.

You have two ropes. One anchored by Orgoth fixed to Sven once he returns from checking the Shadow passage and another rope held by Isvand and the gnomes which has a grapnel edge under the coffer seal lip. Checking the lid as you try to place the grapnel to a suitable grip, you do not other attempts have been made to move the heavy lid. Perhaps it has already been taken off, coffer raided and replaced. Certainly it has signs of being moved before as it does not sit completely flush.

Amos and Treyvor can assess the area for traps but both characters are not confident of finding any. Gnimish wonders if the Silhouettes actually display an illusion rather than a teleport magic device.

The searches, studying, discussions take time. Time is on your side as you have no reason to rush anything. That being so, cue a random roll for random things, Truro who is on guard by the metal door at the end of the passage notices so troubling movement and slurping sounds.

The three bodies of the slain barrow ghasts, corpses piled in the corridor and sloughed of flesh and body parts are regenerating as a new corruption of undead life. But rather than three individual critters, one monstrosity of abomination is being fused together.

actions please

[Rex]

Orgoth

Orgoth continues to anchor and watch.

[OGRE MAGE]

Just for clarification, does the monster look like it is about to attack? Or do we have time to react to this discovery before it is fully re-formed?

I was thinking about pushing it into the jello slime room, if possible.