IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE
SESSION 16A: TO LABYRINTH’S END
January 19th, 2008
The 6th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty
They left the Temple of Asche. Tee headed down towards South Market to meet with Edarth and collect their payment for the consignment of gems. The rest of the group split up: Ranthir and Elestra headed back to the Delver’s Guild Library to continue Ranthir’s research. The others headed towards the Undermarket and began asking questions about the taint and showing around the tainted objects they had recovered.
Their goal was to find out more about the taint or the objects or both. Maybe there was some other way that they could dispose of the objects or cleanse themselves of the taint.
Unfortunately, their inquiries were unsuccessful. Those who had any familiarity with the taint could only give them one piece of advice: Stay away from it.
Sheva Callister told them the same thing when they asked her about it: “There are dark things beneath the city. Some look for the power to withstand them, but in my experience its better to learn how to avoid them.”
RETURN TO THE LOWER LEVEL
By noon they had all returned to the Ghostly Minstrel. They had learned nothing of value, but at least they had the money they would need to pay the Temple for their cleansing rites the next day.
Despite the fact that neither Tee nor Ranthir were feeling entirely well, the decision was made to return to Ghul’s Labyrinth. “I’d rather not just sit around and wait,” Tee said. “Besides, I may feel a little under the weather, but it’s not that bad.”
They first thing they did was open the doors to the temple of ebony, throw every item they had identified as tainted into the room, and then slam the door shut again. Then they headed straight back to the area they had been exploring before being driven out of the complex by their wounds. The strewn wreckage of the constructs was undisturbed, and they took this as a sign that there were no more immediate threats in the area.
On the far side of the chamber of the jewel scarabs they found a series of workshops that had apparently been dedicated to the creation of various constructs.
In the first of these chambers there was a large forge built into the corner. Strange metal frames were built up here and there and the middle of the room was dominated by a large stone worktable. The materials in this room had been badly damaged, but Ranthir estimated that it could still be quite valuable (worth 2,000 gold pieces or more). However, the total weight of it all – more than five thousand pounds – quickly dissuaded them from any thoughts of looting the place.
The new chamber appeared to be a parts storage of some kind. The walls of the room had been carved out with numerous cubbyholes, cabinets, shelves, and the like. Ranthir identified these golem construction parts as being more valuable – worth 5,000 gold pieces — and lighter weight (only a thousand pounds or so). But it was still more than they could hope to carry out of here. (“We’ll need to come back with hirelings,” Agnarr said, gazing appreciatively around the room.)
In the next chamber there were several rack-like structures running down the length of either wall. Most of these racks were empty, but two of them still contained mechanical constructs.
Various sections of these constructs, however, were open. They had either been disassembled or were never complete to begin with. Ranthir was intrigued at the thought of completing them, but this was a project that would undoubtedly require a great deal of study and even more time.
For now they moved on, taking a hall that led east out of this final chamber. This took them into another workroom in which a large drill – literally ten feet long and half as thick – was suspended from scaffolding. The drill was flanked by two workbenches and was clearly unfinished. However, Ranthir was able to ordain enough of its mechanisms to recognize that, intact, it would have been self-propelling. The drill’s cutting surfaces were edged with at least 9,000 gold pieces worth of adamantine.
While Ranthir had been examining the drill’s mechanisms, Tee had been poking through the workbenches. In one of the many drawers, she found a cedar box inlaid with Ghul’s skull sigil in blackoak on the lid.
Opening the box revealed a number of perfectly-preserved schematics, all obviously pertaining to the drill itself. Tee showed them to Ranthir. He suspected that their state of preservation suggested that this was another stasis box (a supposition that he later confirmed).
The schematics were written in orcish, but Ranthir was able to use a minor spell to translate them. In this way he discovered that they were labeled “DRILL OF THE BANEWARRENS”. Unfortunately, he also discovered that the schematics weren’t complete – at least half of them were missing. However, in addition to the schematics, he also found that there were several arcane notes that seemed to pertain to the drill’s construction. These took some puzzling over, but he eventually concluded that the papers described, in general terms, the properties of walls sealed with incredibly powerful spells and exotic materials far beyond any mortal ken. Whoever had written these notes seemed unsure of the exact characteristics of the walls they were describing, but the tensile strength of the drill seemed calculated to overcome them.
Near the workroom of the drill they found two bedchambers filled with pristine furniture and gleaming white tile floors with Ghul’s skull sigil worked into them as a mosaic. The rooms seemed oddly familiar to them, but it took them a moment to realize why: They had seen similar rooms left rotting and ruined from age on the upper level of the complex. Apparently these had benefitted from the preservation magicks they had found scattered around this complex.
Searching these bedchambers turned up only one item of interest: A key in one of the bedside chambers. Tee pocketed that, having little doubt that it would prove useful sooner or later.
THE VAULT
This series of hallways dumped them back out into the room with the vast, silvery-grey pool. They emerged into the recessed portion of the southern wall, next to the bluesteel door.
There was another hall directly opposite the one they had emerged from, but they could see that it ended in a complete collapse after only a few dozen feet. (A careful examination of Ranthir’s maps suggested that this was part of the same collapse that had blocked their progress on the upper level.)
Unable to head in that direction, they instead turned north and followed the wall of the pool room to the east until they came to the next hall.
This hall was quite narrow and dead-ended almost directly into a small, semi-circular chamber carved from pitch-black stone. A strange spiral pattern had been carved into the floor of the chamber and Orcish letters had been worked into the far wall. Ranthir – whose translative spells were still in effect – read it aloud for the others: “LABORATORY OF THE BEAST”
None of them were able to guess the purpose of this chamber (if it had any), so they returned to the pool room and continue following the wall to a set of iron doors. Swinging these open they discovered that they were standing at the other end of the hall leading to the bloody pit. (The same hall they had looked down before turning around and heading back up to finish their exploration of the upper level.)
They headed halfway down this hall and took the unexplored turn to the north. This led them to a crossroads of sorts where they took a turn to the right and ended up in a room of plain, cream-colored stone.
This was actually one of the few completely empty rooms they had found in the complex, and it actually made them all the more suspicious. Tee quickly began minutely inspecting every inch of the floor and walls. After a few minutes, their suspicions paid off: She found a small keyhole concealed in the center of the far wall.
Tee slipped the key she had found earlier into the keyhole and turned it: With an audible click a stone panel popped out. Tee was able to grasp handholds on the sides of the panel, pull it out, and slide it off to one side.
This revealed a small, square chamber. Four iron rods, each topped by a ball of brass, stood in the corners of the room. On the opposite side of the room there was an iron door. The door had no handle. Instead, a large impression in the shape of an orc’s hand could be seen in the center of the door.
Agnarr decided to try the most direct approach. While the others waited in the outer room, he walked up to the door and put his hand into the oversized orcish handprint.
Bolts of lightning lanced out from the four rods, arcing between Agnarr and the iron door for what seemed like endless minutes (but was really little more than a few seconds). The barbarian, near-dead, was left twitching on the floor until Dominic could come to his side and use his divine power to ease the traumatized muscles and organs.
Elestra and Tor came into the room to help haul Agnarr back to his feet while Tee moved past Agnarr to take a look at the door and see if she could find any sort of locking mechanism to manipulate.
As Tee continued to work, Agnarr went over to one of the rods and looked at it closely. After giving it a few moments of “careful” thought, he whipped out his greatsword and whacked the brass ball at the top of the rod.
As the blow struck, the trap triggered again – sending bursts of electricity arcing around the room, catching all of them (except for Ranthir, who had wisely stayed outside) in the blast.
Tee, her muscles screaming in pain, whirled around: “AGNARR! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”
Agnarr shrugged. “It hit me. I hit it.”
The others quickly shoved Agnarr out of the room before Tee could kill him.
