While she was perfectly capable of figuring out the command words on the other painting, she had no desire to hog all the glory for herself, so she also had no problem lending one of her magnifying lenses to Stein.

At Lucien's comment, she offered an answer.

"There was some discussion about heading off, but nobody actually left... I don't think," she says as she looks around and takes a head count.

In reply to Cassandra Darkwhisper (msg # 190):

Stein Actually showed reluctance to accept the lense, it was not his interest to take her tools where she could use them elsewhere and he wasnt actually that invested. but accept it he did, the moment he saw it he quickly offered back the lense and then wrote down what he saw.

"I'd like to leave this with tim but if anyone wants to write it down then feel free."

He would then turn towards the now open passage, and then the one he just read from, in kind to use detect magic on the two.

After he finally recovered from his laughing bout, Tyrol stands up again and walks over to the new passage in the wall and looks in. He watches Vashon walk all the way down to the other end and then step out into what looked like a crypt.

"It looks like most of the Wonders can be used by anyone," Tyrol says, "except the Armor, of course, and maybe the sword."

"Hey! I just had a thought. Yeah, yeah, I know all the jokes. What if the Wonders aren't in the form they are supposed to be? Like, a sword could have been polymorphed into a wand or something. It'd be yet another layer of security."

"If there's a secret magical passage to each of the wonders, then direction no longer matters, nor does knowing where that location is. I'd still say we should at least go in pairs. We might as well go after all the ones in each quadrant. There are enough of us that we can cover two of them."

"The Wand and the Cloak are in the southeast quadrant with the Armor, so that could be the first quadrant. And since Stein has found the magic word for the Hat, that's in the northeast quadrant with the Bracers and Shield."

"That's my suggestion, though I doubt it really matters what order we retrieve them in."

"I'm willing to go after the Wand. Anyone want to join me?"

Vogh was about to suggest they all go to each wonder when Tyrol asked who would like to go with him to the hat.  "Honestly Tyrol, I think we should all join Vashon with Hsang and Ozrus.  There may be something that each if us is able to help with a d since the distance of travel doesn't seem to matter anymore, I think our joint effort would be better!"

"Sheesh! Will you people make up your minds!" responds Tyrol to Vogh's suggestion.

"First, you want to all run off in different directions and then you want to all go together! Some of the locations, like the Field of Dreams, can probably handle all of us, but that crypt is already starting to look a bit crowded with just the three of them."

"If you want to join them, be my guest!" he finishes as he steps aside.

  "We need to find the words first then go from there. Not go running a dozen different places or any combo of the above. This has been the single most chaotic experience of my life excluding the trip to the Abyss to rescue a prelate of my order." he says. "Going to many directions at once will only mean we suffer the consequences of that. And odds are that won't be pleasant at all."

In reply to Tyrol Halverschlagen (msg # 194):

While Still maintaining concentration and focus on trying to pinpoint the magics of the tunnels, not turning to look in the direction of the person being spoken to "Gnome, perhaps it isnt a matter of the making of minds... but more a matter of you being too hasty." Stein chuckles for a moment "oh, how funny, we are cautioning someone to their haste... Ironic. anyways, Lucien has the right of it, there is a significant lack of cohesion. but who knows if that's necessary or not. Do we all know the magma is being funneled upwards? That we can stop that and return it to the earth? so long as the drow are willing to allow it. We have time, yet we dont, and it seems we only have one proper set of lenses... though we can likely make more if need be... but the need is not there."

Steins face goes somber, his cheerful smile betrays a moment of contemplation "hmmm"

"we are not use to talking to others besides ourselves, please forgive the double talk. Bottom line, unless someone can make an anti magic field then it's probably best we do split up... but tactically. If these tunnels are of limited use, unlikely, then we should conserve them for reinforcing and escape. So, the most pressing need, right now, would be to establish a unified form of communication and a plan."

Stein obviously detects magic in the passage--it simply couldn't exist without magic. In fact, now that the door is open, he can sense the magic circle underneath the plaster. Although he can't see the magic symbols, he can sense them, but the only one that's familiar to him is Duo-Dimension, though he hadn't been aware that there was a symbol to invoke that.

On the other hand, he can't detect any magic at all on the hat painting.

In reply to GM StarMaster (msg # 197):

ooc: gm. If it is a 'magic Item', I am going to focus until I can determine the actual abilities or functions of the magic. The idea here is there is speculation on whether these are one time use or not. Stein is making sure he knows for sures before using the one for the hat.

Vogh could argue with the gnome all day but it wouldn't get them anywhere closer to a decision.  Yes, there had been many ideas going about on what they should do and even those who had already run off trying to find some of the wonders.  It definitely was chaos at its best, that is what happens when you get so many different minds together with their own ideas.

"I agree with Lucien, let us get all the command words done first and then we can decide what to do next, though as I said I think it best if we send as many people as we can for every item to have the best chances at recovering the items."

Trickster had been standing next to Vogh but was now a bit easier to see as the camouflage he was using to loiter shifted and faded. "Could be fun to take them one at a time. The players in a story rarely have the glossary to the chapters. Is it just the tiny letters then?"

"This is hardly chaos," the Arctic Druid comments. "True, it does appear a bit chaotic, but that's mostly because we don't have a leader, which, in turn, is because we don't know each other."

"While Ozrus and Hsang may have been a bit hasty in going after the Armor, it was kind of necessary in order to prove to all of us that this Green Star problem was real and the Wonders were real."

"It certainly wasn't necessary for all of us to stick around here to finishing deciphering the writings. Hsang did his part. Remember, the Armor's location was the only one we knew at the time."

"I suppose it does make sense to gather all the command words first, while we can. Let's see what Stein finds out."

Stein can't really sense that much about the magic circle that was used. There's a combination of conjuration aura and transmutation aura. As he understands magic circles, they normally have to be 'energized' by the wizard (or whoever) created it. Otherwise, it just site there. There's also an aura of divination.

Adding everything up, he's able to 'determine' that the divination aura was what sensed the magic word and then activated the doorway. Since the magic circles do not appear to be energized, there's no magic in the circles, only potential. Unless there's some other symbol in the magic circle that would otherwise negate it, the doors should be able to be opened any time the magic word is said... presumable in front of that painting, not just anywhere in the room.

"Sure, that sounds like a good idea," Cassandra says, "just in case."

She sets about using  her two magnifying glasses to read off the other command words.

She moves to the Bracers painting next to the Hat painting, and after adjusting the lens, reads off: "T-H-U-N  Z-A-R  T-H-A-L." (Command words courtesy of the GM!).

Then to the other side of the Hat painting, to the Shield painting: "A-B-R-A-C-A-D-A-B-R-A. Well, that should be easy enough. No subtlety there."

She then moves to the southeast quadrant.

First the Wand painting: "K-L-A-A-T-U  B-A-R-A-D-A  N-I-K-T-O."

Then she re-read the Armor painting, just to be sure, even though it had already worked: "I-N-C-A-N-T-A-T-O," she repeated.

Next up was the Cloak painting: "H-O-C-U-S  P-O-C-U-S  O-U-T-A  F-O-C-U-S. Ha-ha! Someone had a sense of humor with that one!"

Continuing around the compass to the southwest...

The Medallion painting had: "M-A-L-I-K-A-R-I-N-I-A-N. That sounds kind of Elvin."

"This is another 'ha-ha' one," she says as she examines the Staff painting, but double checks herself to be sure: "S-H-A-Z-A-M."

She moved on to the Boots painting and quick read off: "M-A-L-D-O  R-E-M-O-R-A."

And, finally, moving to the northwest, she started with the Gloves painting.

"S-I-M  S-A-L-A  B-I-M," she read off.

"And the Ring painting's word is S-A-L-I-M-A-R  S-A-L-I-D-A-R."

With the last one, the Sword painting, she read out: "K-R-A-K-A-B-A-K-A  K-A-R."

"I'm thinking some of these would be almost impossible to guess."
This message was last edited by the player at 22:59, Sun 06 Dec 2020.

 Klatuu Barada Nik*sneeze* yeah that's the ticket." he says quite confident that his pronunciation is correct. When nothing happens he shrugs and tries again sneezing again at the end. "Guess that is not my boomstick."

I absolutely had to. Bring on the Necronomicron Ex Mortai I will go get Ash!

Stein quirks an eyebrow up at Lucien, but then quickly throws his head back "AHAHAHAH, oh, what a funny one you are, such a brilliant trickster... making us think you would rush onward and potentially waste a resource... perhaps in some effort to selfishly pursue the wonder you desire... oh. what a funny jest!" He then redirects his eyes back to focusing on the magics of the tunnel. A few light clucks and chuckles escape his throat as echoes of his laughter.


"Good thing if it was an actual earnest attempt... it would not actually deprive the greater effort of resources. From what we can see, these pathways use ritual magic, the actual source of power is not entirely clear but whatever the source is... it uses divination to detect the use of the command word and then power is surged into the ritual magic, some kind of magic circle, which is then shaped into play to form the tunnels. Unnerving, something has been informed this whole play has really begun and it's characters are accepting their roles."

Then, turning to everyone else and throwing his hands out to his sides as if greeting applause "YES! it seems the tunnels are safe to use as needed... assuming the source of their power is infinite."

As Cassandra went about the inner chamber and spelling out the words on each painting, Vogh took note of them all.  "Someone write that down for each painting?"  There was no use having to relook at the tiny inscriptions if they didn't need to.

"I think we should vote how we proceed further.  The suggestions so far are 1. We each take a wonder, 2. We send a couple to each one, 3. We all go to each one.  Do we have any other suggestions?"

"Yes, I've been writing everything down," Tyrol replies to Vogh.

"If only it was that simple! We should also consider where we're going. Some of these places may not be able to handle all of us. The crypt doesn't look like it could have held all of us."

"Okay, so here's the revised list, with the magic words added."

He shows his table to anyone that wants to bother looking at it.


"This Tomb of Zama Kindu might not be large enough to hold us, but we don't even know what it is. Same is true for the Spire of the Moon and The Rock. The rest seem like they might be okay.

 "Sending everyone is just as risky as sending just one person. 2 or 3 folks at most to each spot should be enough. Which means we could get 4 done at a time." the paladin says.

In reply to Lucien Soulban (msg # 208):

Stein made a passing glance to all the paintings "at the surface, it seems that the idea for security here was to hide the items more so then to protect the items. one person tried to place them somewhere.... however," he will then look back to the group and pat his breastplate, a few more white grubs shaking loose from his cloak. "we found every pass code, every entrance, and even a small crew of us found one of the locations manually... all within a day. and we should not assume to be the first... 'cycle'... It's possible, likely, that the locations will be able to be tackled by small squads but their security should not be underestimated."

Tim moved from his perch on the wall to a comfortable spot on the ground where he made himself comofrtable enough to nap.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:52, Wed 09 Dec 2020.

"Too much talking!" Bash finally speaks up. "Not enough action! And I'm a creature of action, in case you haven't noticed! So now you know that about me!"

She goes over and stands in front of the painting of the Cloak.

"Hocus Pocus Outa Focus," she says excitedly.

If another door opens, she'll turn to the others and say:

"So, who's coming with me?"

She'll wait for a minute to see if anyone else wants to go and then step through the door.

Of course, if it doesn't open, she'll just stand there and scowl at the painting in consternation!

Vogh liked that Ki'nae was about action and as she said another password Vogh went to the spot and would enter if it too opened.

"I will go with you!"  Vogh announced.

No scowling necessary as a door magically appears and swings open into the tunnel.

Bash steps into it and walks to the other end. She can't really tell if it's the same distance as the other tunnel, but it kind of looks like it. At the other end, there's a rectangle that she looks like a door. She can see through it to the landscape on the other side. All she can really see is an uneven grassy plain with a partially overgrown dirt road going left and right. As near as she can tell from what she can see by the position of the sun that means it goes southeast to northwest.

Vogh follows right behind her.

Lucien stands in front of the sword and intones "Krakabaka Kar" and looks around at his erstwhile cohorts "Anyone coming?" Regardless of the answer he steps through and draws his long sword and shield as he does so.

Oh but the scowl shows itself anyways, on Steins face. "ah, there it is, I suppose we can all just run off in a grab for artifacts. nevermind coordination and communication, then."

He will then turn to the painting he is standing at, give it a quick look... then look to tim, then back to those moving to a tunnel... and then finally he will turn towards the nearest exit to the building and make way to it.

"Taking a scenic route. If we are needed, let Tim know."

-Exiting and making way towards Deridor’s Tower-