After being presented the card recovered by Morin, the door quickly slides up into the ceiling and reveals a small, lit room ten feet wide and fifteen feet long which ends in another door with another panel--although this plain grey panel does not glow like the others. With a simple touch, this door pulls back into the ceiling like the ones before it and reveals a large room beyond.

A large metal desk with blinking lights and strange glowing panels sits atop a raised area on the east side of this room near a circular table. Two couches covered with black material sit to the south a pair of black metal pillars. Splatters of dried blood stain the floor and walls near a pair of doors to the north, while here and there patches of rust-red mold and fungus[Private to Morin Matzylford: You're fairly sure these patches of mold are the burnt remains of a large patch of Russet Mold cleared away recently] cling to the southern wall. The room itself is brightly lit by glowing panels on the ceiling. The doors to the north and east each have panels adjacent to them glowing brown while the smaller door to the northeast has a panel which glows black.
Group 0 Map Updated
This message was last edited by the GM at 01:09, Fri 08 July 2022.

Morin pointed out the patch of red mold on the southern wall.  "Russet mold." He declared confidently.  "I don't think there's enough left to be a threat, but where there's russet mold, there's vegepygmies.  They're like little plant people that grow out of corpses infested with the stuff."

"I'd say this patch of mold was destroyed pretty recently.  I'd guess our man Baine came through here, torched to mold on his way through, then...well, it looks like he got turned into a big red stain!"  Morin didn't seem the least bit concerned about the blood splattered all over the north door.  If anything, the sight made him more irritatingly cheery.  "With any luck, this means our rescue mission is almost done!  We just need to find a chunk of meat that we can actually confirm belongs to our man, then bring him back for resurrection!"

"First things first, though." Moving around the room, Morin searched the thoroughly before the party moved on.  He continued to use his unseen servant to clear the path in front of him for traps, and paid special attention to the desk with it's glowing console.

"Oh, good. For a moment I was worried nothing new would try to kill us after all, but luckily there are now murderous plant people that grow out of corpses around." Cain comments dryly as he looks around the room, staying well away from any mold he can see.

"As for blood, it could be Khonnir's, or not. Maybe it belonged to some other unfortunate bastard from his group, or from someone or something that attacked them. We won't know for sure until we find him. Or what's left of him, anyway."

Any idea on which way we should try next? Smaller door maybe? Could be a storage of some kind. Or just a bathroom, of course.

Zorden kept a watchful eye for any surprises, but also fanned out to take a look at the room.

He gravitated towards the desk with the lights, curious if there were any buttons, as they seemed to have been worth investigating thus far.

While there he looked towards the nearby door.  "Morin, try that black card.  Sanvil said black works on black and brown.  So whatever is behind this is maybe more important than what's behind those?"  He reasoned.

Morin nodded along with Zorden's suggestion they try the higher-security door first.  "Can't argue with the logic!"  He responded, still poking around the desk.  He held the black card up towards Cael.  "Want to do the honours, Muscles?  If you're taking point, you should probably take the best key.  Besides, the three of us already have brown cards."

 Cael looks to the black card presented to him like it was one of the most foreign things he has ever seen. Eventually the big man takes the card and speaks up again, resisting the urge to smell it.

 "What for this?"

As the party inspects the room, letting the unseen servant thump about with its torch, they take a closer look at the raised desk. The desk contains several panels full of lights and buttons which blink in seemingly random patterns and other panels which contain screens, some of which are cracked, which seem to cycle through static, images of strange creatures, and Androffan text too quickly to be parsed. Other panels still seem to be filled with other random technological instruments, dials, and meters. What buttons, meters, and instruments there are that still display any kind of writing is in Androffan and is either abbreviations, acronyms, or gobbledygook which defy any attempts to translate or interpret.

Zorden was stood in front of the desk watching the monitors, specifically the ones that were cycling through pictures.  He was trying to catch a glimpse of the animals or other creatures to see if he could tell if they were any of the things they had encountered so far in the brief time they were on display.

When Cael asked his question he looked up, then towards the door, then back at the man.
"It's like a key.  Only instead of inserting it into a lock, you just hold it in the correct spot."  Zorden explained.  "Like this."

He took a step towards the door and produced his brown colored card and pressed it against the black colored panel in demonstration.

"This isn't the right key,"  He elaborated with a wave of his card.  "because the color doesn't match.  The black colored one you have should open it though."

Zorden then stepped back out of the way so Cael could try it.

As Zorden touches the brown-striped card to the black panel, the wall emits a disapproving pair of beeps and blinks the black glow off and on twice.

Watching the screens closely for a time, Zorden manages to make out an image of the four-armed humanoids and a tentacled monster which could be similar to the one they faced earlier among several of what may be molds, flowers, and quadrupeds of some kind. The images flash too quickly and are too distorted to make out more than approximate shape before they flicker away again.

"Like this?"

 Cael is not sure about all this unnatural mechanical stuff or the idea of hiding things behind locks like a coward, but he was intelligent enough to be able to follow instructions. The big man stepped up to the panel Zorden had just used and held the black card in hi hand up to that panel.

With a more approving beep the black glow ceases and leaves the plain, gray panel. With a simple touch of the gray panel the metal door slides aside, into the wall beside it, and reveals a small room behind it. The room contains a few metal cabinets standing against the walls and segmented into vertical lockers. After ensuring the safety of the room with Morin's servant, a search of the lockers uncovers a flashlight, three batteries, 103 silverdisks, and a small, sturdy chest made of Numerian Steel and seemingly sealed with a technological lock of some kind with a white label.

"Excuse me, but what is this place? I'm afraid that when I was sent to assist you, I was told very little of where i was going and what the objectives were."

Synn examined the box. "I expect there is something interesting inside. Why else have such an elaborate lock?"

"What is this place?"  Morin repeated Synn's question thoughtfully.  "Now that is a complicated question masquerading as a simple one.  Okay:  Since I don't know what you know, I suppose I'll take it from the top."

The diminutive bard threw his arms out wide, theatrically attempting to encompass all of reality with one gesture.  "Golarion!  The third planet from our sun, celestial cage of the mad god Rovagug, and home to just about everyone you've ever met...so far!  But then you probably already knew that, so I'll move on."

Morin lowered his arms a little, narrowing the scope of his wide gesture.  "Numeria!  A harsh land of plains and steppe, inhabited by a hardy and tribal population.  Ten thousand years ago, great metal ruins rained down from the sky, filled with wondrous and terrible technologies!  Though the Black Sovereign officially rules from his court in Starfall, the real power lies with the Technic league, a cabal of tech-hoarding slavers that are widely agreed to be complete pieces of shit."

Morin's hands moved closer together, until they were about shoulder-width apart.  "Torch!  A small town imaginatively named after the pillar of super-hot flame emitting from the top of it's central hill.  The town's eponymous torch allows them to smith adamantium alloys with relative ease, at least it did until it went dead a couple weeks ago.  No flame means they can't smith, no smithing means they can't pay the Technic League's taxes, no taxes means it's just a matter of time until an army of gearsman show up and give the town a different kind of torching."

The distance between his hands narrowed once again. "Which brings us here, to a deep hole underneath Torch's torch, where there's a whole lot more technology waiting than they thought.  Robots and electricity, and some kind of underground desert fulla skeletons.  If the Technic League ever found out what was down here they'd invade the place, taxes or no taxes!  So, uh, try to keep it quiet.  We're expedition number...five?  Six?  Maybe seven if you count the mysterious pink-haired woman that apparently snuck into the cave right before the torch died.  The last expedition before us was lead by Cain's friend Khonnir Baine, the only one of the town's leaders with any guts or brains.  First priority is getting him out of here:  There's a 4000 gold bounty for bringing back his body, and on the off-chance it's still breathing when we find it, we get to keep their scroll of resurrection, too."

Finally finishing his expansive arm gesture, Morin's hands came together in a dramatic clap.  "Or, if you were being more specific...I think this is like a broom closet?"

"As far as objectives go, I imagine that's up to you!  I mean, personally I'm here looking for inspiration as I write the next great Taldan stage-play.  My last work, Rovagug the Musical...kind of a flop, if I'm being honest.  The public's more into heroic adventure these days, so I figured a good first step in the writing process would be becoming a heroic adventurer!"

He gestured to the pessimistic half-elf of the party.  "Like I said, Cain's a local.  So his objective is trying to save the his town.  As for Zorden...Well, Zed's not the talking type.  I think it's just about the money for him?  Or maybe he's here on the hunt for some kind of fancy space gun.  At least, that's how I'm gonna write him when I turn this whole adventure into a play."  Morin finished, giving the taciturn Tiefling a cheeky wink as he talked about what personality to assign the gunslinger after the fact.

"How about you two?  If you don't know what's going on, and you don't know anything about these ruins, did you guys just show up and grab the first job that paid, no matter how dangerous?  Or..." Morin raised an eyebrow at the hulking blond warrior.  "Is the danger the point?  You got something to prove?"
This message was last edited by the player at 08:55, Mon 11 July 2022.

As amusing as Morin's monologue was, Cain didn't really need a refresher course on why he was stuck in this place. So as he rambled on, Cain's attention drifted towards a locked chest. He looks it over speculatively while twirling a lockpick between his fingers.

Looking over the chest for traps, then disarming / attempting to open the chest using the black e-pick.
08:37, Today: Cain rolled 10 using 1d20+7 with rolls of 3.  Perception.
08:37, Today: Cain rolled 21 using 1d20+12 with rolls of 9.  Disable Device.

In reply to Morin Matzylford (msg # 13):
Nice post, btw.

[Private to GM: edit: DM, you can make more Disable Device rolls for Cain until he gets this thing open, or it blows up in his face or something. It's what I would do next anyway, if this roll doesn't get the job done.]
This message was last edited by the player at 21:38, Mon 11 July 2022.

With no traps apparent and no imminent arcs of lightning threatening to fry him, Cain takes his time in gaining access to the inner-workings of the chest and tracing the circuits. With careful, measured application of the black e-pick's articulated manipulators and currents the chest's panel soon beeps and releases its seal. Inside the chest is a small trove of strange technological items: an assortment of colored, hand-sized cylindrical devices each with a dial at one end, a tightly folded, form-hugging jumpsuit made of a strange, reflective, scale-like material, and an oddly-shaped pistol-like device with slightly glowing circuits along its tarnished, clearly timeworn surface.

Morin takes a look at the collection of items and judging by the pictographs and rumors he's heard can identify two yellow-and-black striped cylinders as 'Bang Grenades' which can deafen and disorient people caught near them when they detonate and a purple-colored cylinder as a 'Gravity Grenade' which can briefly create a localized, crushing force towards the ground. The other two cylinders--white and cream-colored--and the jumpsuit and strange gun are more difficult for the bard to figure out, although the gun has clearly seen better days.

Cain is able to take 20 on the white lock(DC 30), using 1 charge from the black e-pick.

With Cain having taken his time, and to good results based on the sound of the mechanism that he heard coming from the room, Zorden moved from the desk over to the doorway to see what was found.

[Private to GM: OOC: Don't know if you did a Technology roll for Zorden already, but if you did not, and it's appropriate to potentially identify the items Morin could not, please do.]

As the newcomer, Synn stayed back out of the way of the others as they went about searching the room. She was interested in the items Morin retrieved from the box, especially that pretty one-piece jumpsuit. But as she had just arrived, she waited for Morin to declare their disposition. However, as the room seemed safe, she used the opportunity to ask more questions.

"On the way in, I saw plenty of remains from those who had come before. What kinds of threats have you encountered thus far?"

Cain tries to recall all things that tried to kill him during the last day. "Let's see, first there were bugs, then a monster that blinded us, then gremlins, some mold, a robot, a tentacled beast, four-armed skeletons, slimes, skeletons again, traps and finally a four-armed zombie. I think that's everything. The only thing in here that hasn't tried to kill us yet were the skulks, and now you."

"Anyway, does anyone know what all this junk is for? It looks valuable, at least."

Who wants to take what?
This message was last edited by the player at 05:14, Thu 14 July 2022.