The spiral staircase descends 30 ft. below the cellar to a large, unlit room (the dwarves estimate the party is now 40-50 ft. beneath the surface). As Saynard’s bullseye lantern scans across the walls, the light reveals an octagonal-shaped chamber of finely-laid, dressed stone, with a 15-ft. high vaulted ceiling. A thick layer of dust covers the floor. In the center of the room, from floor to ceiling, stands a wide stone “column” within which the spiral staircase winds back up to the cellar.
Four archways, one at each cardinal point, exit the room. Each is filled with thick, colored mist: red (N), blue (E), yellow (S), and green (W). On each of the chamber’s angled walls (at each ordinal point) hangs a brightly-colored tapestry. The party lights candles and begins examining the walls for secret doors. Vic and Aerion each examine a misty archway, but find the colored fog to be so thick as to totally obscure visibility beyond just a few inches. Sticking a weapon into the mist does not seem to have any effect.After the search concludes, the party decides to examine the tapestries. The tapestry to the northeast depicts a thick arcane tome on a blue background, with a yellow border and highlights. The southeast tapestry depicts a flaming longsword on a yellow background, with blue border and highlights. To the southwest, the tapestry depicts a steel pot-helm on a red background, with green border and highlights. Finally, the tapestry on the northwest wall depicts a sapphire lozenge on a green background, with red border and highlights.
Vic suggests that perhaps these tapestries depict the wizard’s treasures, and deduces that the tapestry border colors indicate which treasure lies behind each misty archway (if his theory is correct, then, for example, the red mist would lead the way to the sapphire lozenge.) Vic and Steeljaw volunteer to enter the red mist to see what lies on the other side.
Stepping into the archway, both adventurers are effectively blinded by the thick mist. Vic taps the west wall with his rapier while Steeljaw holds his axe in front of him. They advance carefully, but less than ten short paces in, Vic steps on a pressure plate which causes the floor to drop open beneath their feet. Both heroes tumble into the darkness, landing with a sharp thud at the bottom of a 15 ft. deep pit. With the sound of grinding stone, the pit doors close shut above them as the trap resets.
Back in the outer room, the rest of the party hears Vic and Steeljaw yelp as the trap springs, then they hear the sounds of the pair hitting the pit floor and the doors closing again. Cane gets down on his hands and knees and inches forward into the mist, feeling with his hands. Aerion enters the mist with him, tapping on the floor with the butt of his hammer. Cane feels the outer edge of the pit doors with his fingers, while Aerion discerns the hollow sound of an empty space below the floor.
Down in the pit, Vic and Steeljaw shout up to their comrades, who can hear their muffled voices through the stone. Cane and Aerion continue inching forward until they both come across the pressure plate. Once they find it, they back out of the mist to concoct a plan, shouting down to Vic and Steeljaw to “look out below.”
Saynard casts dancing lights and sends them into the mist, but finds that even their bright glow is swallowed up by the thick mist. He enters the mist, feeling his way along the west wall to the area where the pressure plate is reported to be located. Trusting his comrades’ measurements, he blindly leaps across the plate and lands on solid ground on the other side. Continuing along the wall, he shortly emerges into a wide hallway with an identical mist-filled archway behind him. (He travels a total distance of 15 feet between archways.)
Shouting through the mist to Aerion and Cane, Saynard tells them the way head is clear if they can jump over the pressure plate. He calls his dancing lights into the new hallway as he waits for Cane and Aerion to traverse the mist. Meanwhile, in the pit below, Steeljaw and Vic search their surroundings. The pit walls are coated in a thick layer of grease, making it practically impossible to climb them without proper tools. The pit doors above show no sign of mechanism or method to opening them (being as expertly-crafted as the rest of the dungeon stonework seen thus far.)
Steeljaw notices the concealed seams of a stone panel at the base of the west wall: A hinged, 2-ft. sq. panel that opens easily when he pushes on it. Behind it is a 3-ft. diameter duct that leads west into darkness. While waiting for their comrades above to assist them out of the pit, Vic and Steeljaw enter the tubular passage to explore further. As they move carefully through the confined pipe, the pair searches for traps and perhaps other secret doors.
Back up top, Aerion and Cane emerge on the other side of the misty archway and join Saynard in the wide hallway beyond. The passage is 10-ft. wide and 25 ft. long, but is otherwise unremarkable. At the north end of the hall, a 5-ft. wide passage exits to the east. Saynard sends his dancing lights down the narrower passage and the trio follows close behind. The passage heads east for 40 ft. then turns south. Moving carefully along, they search for traps and secret doors.
Down below, Vic and Steeljaw continue making their way through the pipe. After about 20 ft., the duct turns southward for about 50 ft. before ending at a 2-ft. sq. iron grate. Beyond is an open space—a chamber. They thoroughly search the interior of the pipe and determine that the grate is a portcullis-like mechanism, but they find no means or method of raising it.
Vic places his candle through the grate to illuminate the room, then uses his handheld mirror to get a look around. The room is only about 15 ft. square, with an exit in the center of the south wall. The grate is at the base of the north wall, in the chamber’s northwest corner. The west wall features an arched niche about 3-ft. off the floor (chest height on a man.) The niche is 3-ft. wide by 4-ft. high at the apex of the arch, but from his low angle near the floor, Vic cannot see into it. Stymied, the pair returns to the pit to await their friends’ rescue attempt.
Up above, Aerion, Cane, and Saynard reach the southern turn in the passage and see that it continues south about 20 ft. then doglegs east again. Continuing south, Aerion notices something unusual on the east wall: An image of an eye discretely carved into the stone at roughly chest-height on a man. The pupil of the eye appears to be an actual peephole, and a thin beam of shimmering blue light shines from it.
Aerion peers through and sees an unusual sight: A chamber lined with rotting velvet curtains and dimly illuminated by a glowing sapphire lozenge that orbits slowly about the tip of a 6-ft. high pole standing in the center of the floor. The others check out this strange room and then move to the eastern turn in the passage. There, they find the corridor continues for 25 ft., then turns southward again.
The way forward is blocked, however, by an open pit, 20 ft. across and spanning the entire width of the passage. The pit drops 20 ft. to the surface of a pool of brown, bubbling mud. An acrid, loamy stench rises from the pit. Cane notes that the pit walls—including the corridor walls all the way to the ceiling—are thickly coated with grease, making free-climbing across a near-impossibility. In addition, the short landings to either side of the pit negates Cane’s otherwise-impressive leaping ability. With no apparent way forward, the trio returns to the red mist archway to attempt a rescue of Vic and Steeljaw, trapped in the pit below.
Cane fashions a long prod out of his quarterstaff and Aerion’s greatsword, and uses it to trigger the pressure plate within the mist. When the pit doors drop open, he jams the blade of the sword into the seam, wedging the 1.5-ton floor panel open. Soon, with the help of Aerion’s rope, Vic and Steeljaw climb out of the pit and rejoin their comrades in the wide hallway on the other side of the mist-filled arch.
The combined party reexamines the area Saynard, Cane, and Aerion explored. Steeljaw finds something the others missed: The chiseled seams of a secret door on the west wall of the wide hallway. After searching around, however, they find no means or method to open it, and Steeljaw concludes that it only opens one-way (from the other side)—a sophisticated engineering design.
Moving around the narrower passage, Vic and Steeljaw get a look at the peephole and the open pit filled with bubbling mud. With tempers flaring and no new ideas forthcoming, the party decides to return to the entry chamber with the tapestries. Cane removes the pitons keeping the pit door open, and the stone panel swings shut with a heavy thud. Everyone then carefully negotiates the pressure plate in the red mist and arrives safely in the large octagonal room. Flint joins them at this point.
The party next decides to try the blue mist where, they believe, the flaming sword can be found. After some initial exploration, the party finds that no trap awaits them within the blue mist, so they cross through into a long chamber with a barrel-vaulted ceiling. At either end of the chamber is a 1-ft. high, 5-ft. diameter platform. On the north platform is a stone box with a hinged lid.
Vic and Cane check out the box while Saynard moves to inspect the south platform. The dwarves stand vigil, looking for threats to appear. Inspecting the box closely, Vic determines that it is part of the platform and cannot be moved. He opens the hinged stone lid, but the box appears empty. A careful examination discovers a false bottom, however. Beneath it, Vic finds a panel with four bronze buttons, each engraved with a sigil: a leafy tree, a blazing sun, a bare tree, and a snowflake.
Assuming that the sigils are meant to depict the annual seasons, the party concludes that the leafy tree represents Spring, the blazing sun represents Summer, the bare tree represents Autumn, and the snowflake represents Winter. Vic presses the buttons in the order in which the seasons actually appear, starting with Spring as the first selection.
A crackling ball of energy appears on the south platform where Saynard stands. He leaps off the platform just as a strange creature forms upon it. Hissing at Saynard, the dog-sized, rust-colored monster snaps at him as he quickly backs away. Steeljaw steps up and wallops the creature with his axe, but as his blade cuts through the creature’s metallic hide, the steel immediately rusts, despoiling the weapon’s meticulously-honed edge. Aerion retreats into the far corner and casts bless on Steeljaw, Vic, and Flint. Cane steps up and smacks the rust monster with his quarterstaff, then delivers a punishing kick to its head.
Soon, the creature is dead and the party assumes they entered the wrong combination. Vic tries again, this time starting with Summer and proceeding orderly through Autumn, Winter, and Spring. Again, the south platform crackles with energy, but this time a different creature appears—a cockatrice. Before it can do anything, however, the party members assembled around the platform all score decisive attacks against it and the monster is quickly vanquished.
Vic tries once more, starting with Autumn this time. Again, the south platform crackles and another creature appears, this one a large, panther-like creature with six legs and two tentacles which flail from its powerful shoulders. The air around the creature wavers and blurs, causing the party members to miss with what would otherwise be on-target blows. Cane lands three rapid punches into the displacer beast, and notes the creature’s tough hide and dense musculature. In retaliation, the creature swipes Cane with one of its tentacles, smashing him unconscious to the stone floor.
Vic darts into combat and stabs it with his rapier, then tumbles nimbly out of range before the displacer beast can hone in on him. Saynard viciously mocks the creature over and over, but it seems mostly unfazed by the bard’s spells. Steeljaw, Flint, and Aerion press their attack and keep the creature contained in the southwest corner, but the displacer beast’s attacks are punishing. Soon, Flint is also knocked out, but the remaining party members manage to defeat the creature.
The party bandages themselves up and reconsiders what they are doing. Convinced that the right combination—by process of elimination—must start with Winter, Vic once more presses the buttons in the same order. The south platform crackles with energy, and now two rust monsters appear. Determined not to lose his axe, Steeljaw resorts to punching one of the creatures and lands a solid blow into it. Cane likewise attacks with his wooden staff and precise fists.
Aerion retreats into the corner and dodges. He throws his greatsword to Steeljaw and suggests that the barbarian use that weapon instead. Steeljaw reminds him that the weapon will be damaged, but Aerion assures him he doesn’t mind. Attracted by the amount of metal being carried by the dwarf paladin, both creatures come at Aerion, attempting to tickle his items with their feathery antennae. He manages to avoid their corrosive touch, however, and the rest of the group quickly kills the creatures.
The party decides to thoroughly explore the room. Aerion's and Steeljaw’s dwarf-knowledge of stonework enables them to find two carefully-hidden secret doors—one on the south wall and another on the east. Like the secret door Steeljaw found in the wide hall, both of these appear to have no way to open them from this side. Wounded and without a clear idea what to try next, the party pauses to consider their next steps.
The session ends here…
(It is now 12:45 PM)
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