Yes

Corym steps through the archway into the southern hallway, and immediately notices that the walls of the room are covered in glyphs and sigils. He pauses, taking a closer look before possibly triggering something.

((ooc: Anyone with Spellcraft can roll a NWP check to inspect the walls.))

There are spells of domination inscribed on the walls. Lots of them, in a sort of cascading array. This room appears to be the culmination; the runes continue down a corridor to the east. None of the spells are currently active. The spells are complete; they've just been turned off.

Corym steps further into the room, carefully inspecting the runes. The spells are specifically focused on compelling extra-planar beings; though they're not a type he's ever encountered before.

"This is scary" says Torvek "It looks like this room is some kind of mind control trap.  Not active right now but probably safer if we don't all stand in this room at the same time." he says.  Heading his own words, Torvek stands outside the room.

As Torvek looks over the lines upon lines of carefully engraved domination magics, all written in an archaic elven script he sometimes has trouble deciphering, his eyes trip over a familiar word. Proeskampalar. The old name for Procampur, back when it was first founded by dwarves, before human refugees arrived. Looking through more spells, you pick out other names. Teshar. Suzail. Others. The names of five cities bordering Cormanthor.

"My best guess is that this was a hub of Gates connecting the old city of Cormanthor with its neighbors.  There seems to have been some fear that extra planar beings could utilize the network, which could explain the presence of Tanar'i and Baatezu here. I don't recall them being part of the original Army of Darkness which was mainly your typical fair but lead by Yugoloths.  I'm going to check to see if there are any other untriggered traps and then we should be safe to proceed."

09:58, Today: Corym Ildroun rolled 48 using 1d100.  Find Traps/Secrets 95%.

Torvek, standing outside the door, looks for traps and notices absolutely nothing dangerous.

16:24, Today: Torvek Ragdar rolled 88 using 1d100.  Find traps.

Corym carefully examines the spells scribed on the walls. All of them are intact, but safely deactivated. And, if he's reading things correctly, would not target elves at all. That's leaving aside any problems the mythal might toss into the equation. There aren't any hidden traps, though he does find a very subtle rage magic braided through the more powerful, and obvious, charm spells. A creature affected by this room and hall of spells wouldn't just be dominated; they would be furious.

The only other thing of note is that the hallway gets noticeably hotter the further to the east you go. It's sixty feet long; a hallway branches off to the south after forty feet and a hall does so to the north after fifty.

The air gets steadily hotter as Corym goes east until it's genuinely sweltering. When he reaches the first branch in the hallway and glances south, he can immediately see why.

To the south, past a short hallway, is a fifty foot wide circular room. The center is filled with a pool of lava, its surface mostly crusted over but still laced with shimmering cracks. Directly across from the hallway entrance, mounted on the far wall, is a massive archway made of red iron and gleaming rubies. The air shimmers around it; whether from more than just the heat, it's hard to say.

Corym frowns. He would be more interested in rubies if they weren't attached to a gate. Instead, he decides to check the north branch.

The northern hallway runs for about thirty feet before ending in a closed door. The ceiling also slopes down from the thirty feet of most of the eastern rooms to a more normal eight. Unlike some of the earlier doors, there's no over or under on this one. Checking the door, he finds it locked but not trapped.

It's not that complicated a lock, and he quickly pops it open. Opening the door reveals a triangular room. The walls are covered by slate boards and there are a couple of chairs a table, and an (empty) bookcase scattered about. He checks for anything that might be hidden or dangerous, but comes up empty. There are a few very fragmentary bits of spell work that weren't completely erased from the slate. Not enough to be useful, but enough that him to guess that this was probably a spellcasting working chamber of some sort.

Content he'd found everything there was to find, he headed back to the group.

"There's no clear benefit to attempting to cross the lava.  We don't know anything about that gate, and I suspect that it won't like us prying rubies out of it.  Whoever destroyed the rest must have left that one alone for a reason. There's the Southern passage in the initial room that we haven't explored.  It's possible we'll get an explanation there.  Until then, we're at a dead and unproductive end."

"Agree, we should try the passage we have not tried yet.  If needed I could send a wizard eye across the lava but you say it was ending in something that looked like another gate and there was no further path to explore down there. "

With the eastern branch as fully explored as you wish at the moment, the group returns to the entry room and re-orients themselves to the south. This hallway runs for about fifty feet before it ends in a doorway, and there's a door in the wall about halfway down on the right.

While the hallway's ceiling starts out at the thirty feet common to the eastern branch, it rapidly comes down to a more normal eight feet.

Corym checks the door. It's locked, but not trapped.

06:42, Today: Corym Ildroun rolled 16 using 1d20.  open locks (75).

(Ooc: Shouldn't this have been a D% roll? Or you taking 75% as a 15?)

Rolled the correct die this time. 68(75)

It takes a little while, but with persistence Corym is able to get the lock to yield to his efforts and the door swings open. Beyond is a short hallway that opens into a room about thirty feet square. There's a door in the far wall, flanked on either side by an empty pedestal much like those in the entry room.

The walls of the room are almost entirely obscured by tall bookcases that have been bolted directly into the stone. All of the shelves are empty, and a layer of dust covers everything.

((ooc: Character locations on the map are approximate; anyone who wishes to investigate may do so.))

Corym does a sweep of the room, checking for traps or anything untoward. The room is clear, aside from the dust. The same is true of the other door; it's not even locked.

Pushing the door open reveals a circular room. It's fairly obviously a casting chamber; there are two large slate boards leaning against the walls, the floor has the mostly-erased remains of several different casting diagrams, and the stone is speckled and pitted from various minor explosions.

Once again, Corym makes a circuit of a new room, though this time he's not surprised to find nothing unusual. This is the sort of casting room he's very familiar with; an open space where anything that might be dangerous, hazardous, or just accidentally explosive gets handled, and where you keep nothing of value for fear of it getting burned/melted/etc.

With this branch fully explored, Corym leads the group to the southern door. It opens into a room thirty feet by forty feet. Unlike the rest of the rooms, this one has wood paneling, completely covering the stone floor, walls, and ceiling. The paneling is tastefully, though not excessively, carved with abstract scrollwork. In the center of the room is a large, oval table, and eight chairs are set around it. All of the chairs are of a similar style, and the chair at the head is noticeably more ornate than the others. There's one door to the south, which is currently closed.

Corym begins to fan out, checking the room, while the rest of the group is coming down the hallway.

((ooc: Pausing here to let everyone else chime in.))

“If there’s something secreted away, wood panelling gives a lot of options. Double check my work.”

The group moves into the room and starts to fan out. Kitheras touches the wall and draws his hand back in surprise. Though the wall looks like rich oak paneling, and even smells like wood, to the touch it remains stone. A stone that has the grain and pattern of oak, but stone.

As he's now looking at the wall with even deeper interest, Kitheras is in just the right place to see something just barely in relief as Kora moves around the table with her bright torch. A door has been cleverly hidden in the faux-wood wall, and with a bit of feeling around Kitheras manages to find the recessed button that (he assumes) will open it.

((ooc: Anyone with Observation, please roll a check. Any rogue that doesn't have Observation, please roll an Intelligence check with a +5 penalty.))

Torvek carefully looks down both corridors and in the new room, trying to understand what things are.

20:27, Today: Torvek Ragdar rolled 5 using 1d20.  Observation check (17).

As Corym, Torvek, and Kitheras spread through the room, each of them notices something a little odd with the table. At the head, at the seat that is noticeably (though not overwhelmingly) more ornate, someone has incised little drawings and figures in the wood. At first you think it was done with a knife, but the lines are too fluid, the figures too detailed, for these "doodles while bored" to have been done with anything other than magic.

They're all variations on the sigil that appeared earlier on the iron doors. The slim, elven blade is the same, but what it transfixes changes. Tyche's coin is there just once. Other unfortunate items include a hand pointing with its index finger, a piece of rippling ribbon or smoke, and a variety of skulls.

((ooc: Are you opening the secret door?))

In reply to DM (msg # 587):

((OOC:who'd have thunk it, Krackor spotted something too.

21:42, Today: Krackor Steelfist rolled 2 using 1d20-5.  Int -5.

Edit: Ooop, you wrote "rogue", missed that bit.))
This message was last edited by the player at 08:07, Mon 19 June 2023.

Kitheras finds the false knot again and depresses it. The hidden door swings open, revealing a circular room about thirty feet across. Its walls have not gotten the faux-wood treatment, and unlike the rest of the complex, a heavy layer of dust lies over everything. There are two large, stone chests set against the wall, their bases melded into the floor and their tops open. Their are also three clear spaces in the dust where other chests were removed, and footprints of the people who removed them.

Above the chests, two rows of shelves run the circumference of the room. One is at chest height, the other about three hands higher. The upper shelf is completely empty, but on the lower shelf two things gleam in the light from Kora's torch.


This message was last updated by the GM at 21:09, Sat 17 June 2023.