IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE
SESSION 14C: THE TEMPLE OF EBONY
January 5th, 2008
The 5th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty
Intrigued by these discoveries, Ranthir selected one jar from each of the six rooms and slipped them into his bag of holding.
They had now opened all of the doors on the upper level and were prepared to go down to the lower level. This proved slightly troublesome: There was a ladder on the iron catwalk in the middle of the chamber, but it had been rusted into a raised position. So, in lieu of that, they simply pitoned a knotted rope to the floor and climbed down along one of the walls.
Most of the rooms on the lower level appeared to have been kennels of some sort. Those around the base of the pit itself had metal doors, but through a set of double doors in the south wall of the pit there was a long hallway flanked by nearly a dozen more rooms with wooden doors that were almost entirely rotten away from sheer age. Large channels from these rooms led out to a 6-inch wide gap in the middle of the hall’s floor. Beneath this gap there was a 50-foot-pit down which charnel waste was apparently washed.
Another door off the pit led to a room filled with weapons hung from iron racks covering the walls. All of these weapons were designed for beasts: Claw-like tines; serrated harnesses; and the like. All of them seemed to be crafted to appear as vicious and merciless as possible. Many were stained with blood. The vast array was impressive in itself, but a closer inspection revealed that most of them were unusable: Either custom-crafted for unusual creatures; with important bits rotted away; or their metal rusting and fatigued from age.
THE TEMPLE OF EBONY
At the far end of the kennel hall, another set of iron doors led out to a hallway which took a sharp turn off to the west. From there the hallway branched again, and the decision was made – with Ranthir once again studying his partially completed map of the upper level – to return to the upper level and finish exploring there before proceeding to the lower level.
They climbed back up their rope and returned to the first major chamber they had entered after leaving the laboratories that had been inhabited by the bloodwights: The large room flanked by four massive statues of Ghul.
From here there were four halls: To west lay the bloodwight laboratories and they had explored everything to the north. This left the hall to the east – which they could see ended in a set of large iron doors – and the hall to the south.
They decided to start with the hall to the east: The iron doors opened onto a large room paved in glistening ebony. It rose in three tiers. Two horrific statues stood in the corners of the second tier. To the left a twisting pillar of coiled tendrils and to the right a squat monstrosity.
In the center of the third tier, at the top of the room, there was a slab of black ebony with the appearance of an altar.
The room seemed permeated with a palpable sense of evil, but Tee took a deep breath and slipped through the door. A cursory examination turned up no hidden exits or treasures, but she did discover that inscriptions had been written in a strange and alien tongue upon the base of the two statues on the second tier.
Ranthir, hearing this, entered the room himself and went up to study the statues. He confirmed that the language was completely unknown and, surprisingly, his magical arts gave him no translation, either.
Tee, meanwhile, had been exploring the uppermost tier. The altar or slab in the center of this tier was completely featureless, except – Tee discovered – for a small sigil that had been carved into the rear corner of the altar:
Ranthir finished carefully copying down the inscriptions on the statues into a journal and then joined Tee to inspect the altar sigil. It wasn’t familiar to him, either, but he took the time to copy it as well.
Then they left. As they passed through the doors and shut them behind them, they could feel a palpable sense of dread sluicing off of them like an oil slick.
