Corym checked the door. Satisfied that it wasn't locked, he pushed it open. On the other side is a room much like its northern neighbor, though somewhat smaller. The stone has had the same faux-wood treatment as the first room. Like that room, this one is dominated by a long table and chairs. However, the table is much less formal (though not quite crossing over into rustic) and the chairs are a mis-matched hodge podge. There's a door to the south.
Corym circles the table, checking the room and furnishings for traps. Though he finds none, he elects against actually
sitting at the table and moves to the door. Once again it is unlocked and not trapped, and he pulls it open.
Through the door is a very brief hallway that immediately opens into a large square room forty feet on the side. A hallway exits to the east. On the wall opposite you are a number of wood poles leaning against the wall, some with decayed scraps of cloth clinging to them. Moving closer, he shifts one slightly and nods. They're the remains of cots. A quick mental calculation and there's enough there to fill the room. This was probably a dormitory.
The hallway is 30 feet long and ends in three doors: ahead, left, and right. With the rest of the group trailing about ten feet behind him, Corym checks all of the doors. None of them are trapped, and only the center one is locked. They're all fairly standard wooden doors, with just enough decoration to fit into an elven home, but only just.
Deciding to leave the locked door alone on the off chance there is something dangerous behind it, Corym opens the door on the left. Beyond the door is a long, narrow room, about 20' x 40'. It's a bedroom that is at least a bit reminiscent of the senior apprentice bedrooms in the mansion above, though there are two beds, dressers, and desks. The walls are a warm faux-wood, and there's a rather bland rug covering most of the free space on the floor. He spends a bit of time checking over the room, but it's about as boring as any apprentice room he's been in. The chests and dressers are all empty.
Leaving the room behind, he tries the other unlocked door. It opens to reveal another bedroom, though this one is rather higher quality. Two of everything again, but it's clear whoever would use this room ranked above the apprentices to the north. A bit of searching reveals there are no traps, and only the rotted remains of several cloaks in one of the wardrobes. After so many years, they're more strips of fabric than coherent garments.
Corym steps back into the hallway. He looks first at one bedroom, then at the other, trying to pull everything he's seen down here together.
One of the interesting things that happened after the Opening was the great about of cross-cultural influence that happened in the various arts. The other races brought their own materials and design sensitivities for everything from clothing to furniture to music, and as time progressed, all of the artists interacted. Ideas spread, and even artists that were cleaving to their own culture's mores were doing so in response, and in dialogue, with the art of the others.
All of the furnishings of the mansion were very much of that period. They were of elven make, for elves, but visibly part of that Myth Drannan conversation. Everything down here is of a notably different style. "Pure elven" is not the right way to phrase it, but it is very much pre-mythal. These rooms have been closed up much like the eastern part of the complex. But to Corym's mind whether there was any connection between this area and the mansion above is getting increasingly... nebulous.
His mind still wheeling art and history and architecture together trying to make sense of what he's been seeing, he tries to unlock the hallway's final door.
And snaps his pick.
