Recovering from the battle, Kahan asks if anyone needs healing, but your attention is drawn to the northern door where the grenade-like object had come from.

Borimer goes through the door and finds himself in a familiar-looking room (Room 20b):



A 10-foot-diameter hole, ornately edged, gapes in the floor of this room.  Directly above it is a similarly sized hole in the ceiling. A small pedestal sits against the southwest wall, a diagram barely discernable above it.  There are three small bowls on the pedestal.  The center bowl is empty, but there are smooth stones in the other two bowls.

There are doors to the west and south (where you are at).  The door to the west is closed.

This is the white level of the teleporting hole.  (The others are red and black.)

Unlike when you were at the previous level (the black-ringed level at 20a) the day before, Esylia has apparently added something here.  Three of the exploding balls fall through the hole, reappearing as they keep teleporting repeatedly in an infinite loop.  They are at terminal velocity and keep falling, ready to explode if they hit anything.

Esylia is nowhere in sight, obviously having disappeared through the teleportal hole in the ground and ceiling or through the west door.
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:49, Tue 07 Aug 2012.

Looking down the hole, Kahan points out the western door. With those balls falling down, there's no way Esylia could have gotten through them without exploding one of them. And they probably would have heard it. He approaches the west door and readies his mace and shield.

Flint stands back, spellbook in hand, but he says, "Unless she just dropped them right now after going down or up."

Borimer readies himself near the west door, takes a deep breath, and then carefully listens...

"It looks like they're falling too quickly. She must have put them there right after she tossed the other one at us." Kahan explains in a whisper.

Borimer hears a slight humming sound as he listens at the door, similar to the soft hum of the device at room 32d (a mechanical, almost sub-audible hum).  But he hears nothing else.

Naj takes a close look at the diagram and the pebbles.

In total, Esylia would have had about 1 minute between the time she threw in the orb and the time you went through the door.

Naj looks at the diagram and sees the following, which is faded but visible:



In the left bowl is a pebble that is black with one white dot.  In the right bowl is a red pebble with three white dots.

Kahan looks over the bowls and decides to experiment, pulling the stones out to see what happens.

Borimer puzzles over the diagram until his head hurts, and then settles in to watch the west door.

"So do we arrange the pebbles like the picture on the three levels and jump head first into the portal for some reason?" Harak wonders.  "No matter, we have business to attend to first."
This message was last edited by the player at 05:27, Wed 08 Aug 2012.