"Keep the prisoners between us then?" As Rodrigo moves towards the left Flank about 30' away from the nearest person when space is available to do so.

I'll follow Elwood.  That way I can back him up if he runs into any real trouble.

Tom starts to follow Elwood through the ruins.

"That's fine. Just don't get too far ahead of us," Dominic cautions as he heads out after Elwood and Tom.

At the first opening on the left, he cautiously peers inside. The blue glow is in here as well.

Mista nodded towards Dominic and followed him.
When she stood where he stood she too took a look behind the door.
"Isn't that the same blue glow that came of those creatures wands?"
She took a good luck inside to see if anything moved.

"There seems to be no one here. I can try a spell to determine if there are any magical traps in here. If not, I suggest we cautiously walk inside of it.

"Not sure checking for traps is really needed, these gray guys did move very fast and they don't much seem like the sneaky type"

"We're only looking to make sure there aren't any other creatures in these rooms," Dominic replies. "And if there are any obvious ways to get into subterranean tunnels."

"Once we've checked out the extent of this place, and we haven't found any way down, then we can go back and look for secret doors and stuff."

"My opinion, of course. Not that I'm any kind of expert on exploring."

Other than the blue glow, nothing unusual is found in the room or the next room or the next room. Expecting the blue glow to come from some sort of moss, you do realize that it comes from the very stone itself.

After about 50 yards and 9 rooms, the passage comes to a T-intersection. While the left hand passage continues on with many other openings visible. The right hand passage, however, is a flight of wide marble stairs leading down. There is quite a lot of debris on them, apparently from overhead even though they aren't open to the sky. Once again, it looks like the surrounding buildings collapsed and the walls of those buildings wound up forming the roof over the stairs.

Some of the debris fell on the fancy marble banisters that line both sides of the stairs and seriously damaged them.

The stairs appear to lead down to a lower level that has an arch about 20 feet away from the bottom stair.

Elwood examines both directions. "We were advised to go underground, so I reckon we should head down the stairs. Everyone take care, though. Don't trip on the rubble."

Unless someone objects, Elwood will try the stairs first to see if they're safe.

Tom replies easily.

No objection from me.  I'll keep following you.  About 5 steps behind you should be safe enough, right?

"I hope so. If you want to wait until I get to that archway, just in case the whole stairway comes crumbling down, I won't fault you."

OOC: with my magic belt, I have lots of bonus hit points, so can probably survive a tumble.

Rodrigo nods to Elwood "Let's explore it." he moves along forward his bow in hand and arrow nocked but not drawn upon it so that he can quickly fire if need be.

Mista follows suit, her eyes looking around in case anything moves.

Other than the footing being a bit unstable if you aren't careful, the stairs seem safe enough.

Elwood has no problem reaching the bottom without any of the stairs collapsing or giving way underfoot.

Although the language carved into the frame around the arch is not one that Elwood recognizes, he does recognize what he sees through the arch: this is the entrance to an underground crypt.

There are some areas that have cracked and shifted, and there is some debris on the floor, but, for the most part, it seems to have remained intact.

Mort takes his time desending the stairs.  Wanting make sure the there is enough room for him
This message was last edited by the player at 20:41, Wed 22 May 2019.

Gierdon marvels at the glowing stone, carressing it as he descends.  He takes in as best he can the crypt, senses heightened for anything that would indicate a passage or space beyond the walls or floors.

Mista too descends down into the crypt. She walks up to Elwood. "I don't have a good feeling about this." she says. "The Immortals may know what might be in here. Meanwhile we are turning our back towards what may be the only way up and there are probably more of those grey creatures walking around. I say we go back upstairs and continue to inspect the place to find out what they are up to."

"Well, I guess we should discuss this. On our way here, we met a creature called a kirin. It's a beautiful creature of Law. It advised us to stay underground once we got here, and to overthrow some evil wizard that lives here and bring back golden apples. Personally, I expect we could have those grey fellas coming at us from any direction down here or up there. But let's see what everyone else has to say on the matter."

Elwood gathers the party to see what everyone thinks: go back to the ruins on the surface, or explore down below.

Tom says to the group after Elwood speaks.

I believe the Ki-rin was telling us the truth about staying underground and we should follow that advice until we are ready to leave the moon.

Rodrigo nods in agreement as he looks down the passage "We should explore that further to see if this is what they meant or not."

"While I agree with Mista a bit, I have a bit more knowledge of the situation," Anya suggests.

"There's no guarantee... and certainly the kirin never said that there wouldn't be danger down here... that the tunnels were safe. I think he implied that we weren't quite up to the dangers above ground but that we could handle whatever we ran across below ground."

"We saw that there were no tracks on the stairs down... though we've now made some... so it doesn't seem likely that the blue-skinned people come down here. They certainly don't give the impression of explorers or even particular activity."

"I realize you don't know us, Mista, but we should at least look for these underground tunnels and evaluate them when we do."

The crypt clearly wasn't designed for anyone as tall as Mort, but the arched ceiling was made high enough to accommodate ceremonial religious banners and such. So Mort can pass through barely... keeping his head down a bit.

Tom chuckles softly.

Everything we do is filled with danger.  No matter if we stay above ground or below ground.

"Never understood why some of my kind likes the underground and mazes, give me the outdoors and open skies any day"

The crypt tunnel has some debris on the floor that's fallen out of the walls or ceiling, but while it might make running through the tunnel difficult, it's easy enough to navigate.

Twenty feet in, you see that there once was an stout iron gate that kept would-be looters out, but the moonquake that caused all this destruction has broken the gate. The left section is twisted back against the wall while the right section has completely fallen down.

The actual burial crypts and chambers start after the gate.

Simple crypts are just slots in the wall where the coffin was slid in foot first. A simple plaque was fastened to the end of the coffin, and a fancier marble one was fastened to the outside to seal up the slot.

You can see this because some of the outer plaques have fallen off, smashing onto the floor. Some of the coffins appear to have been pulled out with the desiccated corpse dumped onto the floor.

You also spot several cracks in the sides of the tunnel, from just visible cracks to larger 12" wide. The deeper in you go, though, the bigger the cracks get. Also, the floor of the tunnel seems to be sloping downward.

The fancier crypts begin to appear about 120 feet in. These are larger stone coffins or sarcophagi that have been carved out of the tunnel walls themselves.

In reply to Mysterion (msg # 54):

"Interesting the various ways the dead are treated across the land. At home it is a joyous occassion when one gets to travel beyond the mortal coil. We send them out upon the sea in a boat that we set a flame to aid their journey. Some choose this before they have even passed but knew it to soon happen." Rodrigo remarks as he examines the various crypts.