Re: The Twilight Tomb: The Rains Fell On Furthinghome
With diligence and care, the scholars of the party inspected the stone ring, taking notes and drawing their conclusions about it.
Jorn explained the ring's construction was surprisingly good for non-dwarven work, and especially so for elven, who so rarely worked in stone. Wood would have been more likely, but this ring had been built to last for the ages. And it had done so, fairing remarkable well, with no ground-slips, subsidence or breakages to disturb it.
The carvings however had been less fortunate. Elven script was too curved, too flowing and fancy for stonecarving; good and solid dwarven Dethek runes were far more suitable, as Jorn was quick to point out. And so the letters had crumbled, eroded and faded away. A few scant curves and whorls remained, to hint vaguely at their mysteries.
Authiel puzzled over them for a while. Logically, they should be Elven, probably Espruar letters, but too little remained to be recognized. Jorn helped out, tracing out the faded indentations with dwarven skill, and completed several letters and a few words. So Authiel was surprised to realise that their were in fact two languages represented here. One was Elven, and written in Espruar. The other Seldruin, written in Hamarfae, a variant of Elven that was the ancient language of the legendary Elven High Magic - not one she'd ever had the need to learn. This ring was ancient and powerful indeed.
But what did it all mean?
Alessandra supplied the clues. On each menhir, she'd found signs of stars and moons, common symbols of the night sky, but none of her own faith, that of the sun. Also, there were several spiraling shapes, common symbols of portals and gateways to other worlds, as well as musical notes. The whole circle was a portal or another world, likely the star elf realm of Sildeyuir.
So Jorn drank his special potion, and the broken Elven and Seldruin carvings danced into his comprehension. Sadly, too much was faded to get a complete understanding, but what they learned by other means filled in a few gaps.
He saw the Seldruin script mainly controlled the High Magic at work here; he found it fascinating and intriguing, but too fragmentary and beyond his current talents to offer any arcane insights. Amazingly, the spell seemed to take the form of a song, by singing the words of power, the ring bored a hole from this world to another, the demiplane of Sildeyuir, and formed a portal there. The way would be open only during the hours of darkness, when the stars were bright - gateway to the stars... when the stars aligned... powers reach down... It also mentioned arcane rods that acted as keys to power and unlock the portal at other times; a surviving sketch showed a short stick, with a loop at one end and a crystal mounted on the other.
A small footnote, presumably intended for elven mages, mentioned something about spells of sound and song and how they would be more powerful.
The Elven language was less technical, intended for the common elf, but also more fragmented. Fortunately, the important parts were present. Welcome... the Citadel of Tir'in'tiral... Sildeyuir... home of the Tower Arcanum... Mourel Duskwalker... Enjoy your stay...
OOC: I rolled Jorn a Knowledge (The Planes) check: 7 :(
Allessandra: Just one will do, but I'll take your best rolls.
Actually, let's use that Comprehend Languages potion. :)
If you want to change your spells, do so now. The [sonic] descriptor gets an as-at-unknown bonus. I'll say you have the time to change your spells now.