Vic pokes his head into the 15x20 room and shines his candle around. Rotting velvet curtains line all four walls, save for the north corner of the west wall where a brightly-colored tapestry hangs. With his hand crossbow, Vic fires arrows at the sapphire floating slowly around the tip of a 6-ft. iron pole set into the middle of the floor. He hits the grape-sized gemstone several times, but fails to dislodge it from its orbit. Undeterred, he finally hits it with enough force to knock the sapphire loose. Its glow subsides as the jewel falls to the stone floor. Luckily, it is not damaged.
The party enters and Vic recovers the sapphire while the others fan out to search the room. The rotting velvet curtains turn out to be real (not illusions), and the ancient cloth comes apart at the slightest touch. Behind the curtains in the east corner of the south wall, Steeljaw discovers a bronze handle on the wall--the back side of a one-way secret door. The stone panel swings open onto the landing on the other side of the pit of bubbling mud. The corridor beyond turns 90 degrees and continues on to the south into darkness.
Cane notices a discreet carving of an eye on the west wall, the other side of the peephole from the corridor the party previously explored. Vic and Aerion, meanwhile, investigate the tapestry. It is an illusion, like the four tapestries in the entry chamber that feature Bergummo’s four treasures. This tapestry depicts Bergummo standing by a river that winds through an autumnal forest.
Gazing upon the tapestry and inspecting it closely, Vic is in wonderment at the detail and beauty of the illusory image. Suddenly, in his mind’s eye, the scene animates as the bare limbs of the tree begin to sway and the waters of the river flow by. Bergummo steps closer to the riverbank where he kneels down. Four curious fish poke their heads from the water, and Bergummo appears to speak to them. After a few moments, the fish submerge, Bergummo stands, and the scene returns to its original appearance. Vic tells his comrades what he experienced, and they surmise that this might be a clue to the puzzle of the four buttons.
The party decides to exit via the one-way secret door and explore the corridor beyond the mud pit. Steeljaw spikes the secret door open with a piton and the group marches down the corridor, methodically searching as they go. Cane finds another secret door on the west wall of the corridor. Easily pushing the panel open, he peers into an alcove 5-ft. wide by 10-ft. deep. At the far end, he sees a now familiar-looking handle in the center of the wall--the obvious back side of yet another secret door.
Looking closer, Cane realizes that the door he holds open is one-way, meaning that once he enters the alcove and closes the door, he would not be able to reopen it from the other side. He figures that the other secret door ahead might do the same. The party decides to continue south, so they close the secret door after marking it with candle wax.
They tromp down the corridor a short ways before coming to an apparent dead-end. Hanging on the wall at this terminus is a brightly-colored tapestry, similar to the others found elsewhere. This one, too, is illusory, and it depicts Bergummo standing on the snow-covered shore of a frozen pond at the edge of a forest.
Vic and Aerion gaze upon the tapestry and marvel at its detail. Suddenly, Aerion feels a bit light-headed and the scene animates in his mind. Bergummo turns, as if he hears something. From the snowy forest strides a pair of winter wolves, who approach Bergummo, then sit and listen attentively as he converses with them. After a few seconds, the wolves return to the forest and the scene resumes its original appearance.
Aerion informs his comrades what he saw, and the party concludes that these tapestries are magical clues to the sequence of the four bronze buttons (per Bergummo's verse: “The beasts know the score.”) By their reckoning, the four fish in the autumn scene and the two wolves in the winter scene indicate that the snowflake (winter) button is second in the sequence and the bare tree (fall) button is fourth.
Faced with this dead-end corridor, the party decides to head back to the button room to test their theory and take a chance on the sequence of the other two buttons. They figure they have a 50/50 chance to get it right with the clues on-hand. They decide to test the secret doors first, however, so they return to the midpoint of the corridor where they marked its location with wax.
Vic and Steeljaw enter the alcove and examine the far door. As Steeljaw holds the first door open, Vic tries the handle of the second but finds that it does not budge. Deducing that the first door must be closed before the second one will open, Steeljaw releases the first door and lets it swing shut, “trapping” them on this side while the rest of the party remains in the corridor. Vic tries the handle again and finds that, sure enough, the panel pushes open easily. He is pleased to note that it opens into the button room, and confirms that this door is also one-way only.
Steeljaw shouts through the wall for the party to open the first secret door, but it doesn’t budge. Vic closes the second secret door in order to allow them to open the first, but as the stone panel snaps shut, the entire alcove begins to tremble as the rumble of grinding stone fills their ears. It ceases after a few seconds, so Vic opens the second secret door again. This time, instead of opening into the button room, he sees Cane and Aerion standing in the corridor.
The party realizes that the entire alcove has rotated 180 degrees, and the one-way secret doors--which previously faced the button room--now face the dead-end corridor, preventing them from entering the button room via this route. Many curses upon Bergummo’s name are spoken by confounded and frustrated party members.
The party backtracks through the room with the velvet curtains and down the long corridor to the spring-loaded secret door. As they pass through it on the way to the room with the rotating walls, they recall that they never checked out a nearby door in this other passage--the only such "regular" door they've seen in this entire complex.
After inspecting the heavy iron door, Vic determines that it is unlocked and untrapped, so he opens it. Beyond, he sees a corridor stretching off into darkness. When he steps through the doorway, however, he vanishes before the eyes of his comrades. Without hesitation, the rest of the party files through the doorway after him, vanishing one after the other. On the other side, the party finds themselves standing in the dead-end passage they just left, with the winter tapestry on the solid stone wall behind them.
Once more cursing the apparently-insane wizard who manufactured this labyrinth, the party marches back through the spiked-open, one-way secret door into the room with the velvet curtains, past the spring-loaded secret door and the iron door that teleports, and once again into the room with the rotating walls.
The party touches the angled wall made of blue stone streaked with yellow. With the flashing of arcane runes, the room rotates from the third quadrant into the fourth quadrant, where the colored stone shimmers and changes to yellow streaked with green. When they touch the wall again, arcane runes flash across its surface and the panels rotate back to the starting quadrant with the green wall and an exit to the east.
Realizing that there is no “call button” for the elevator from this side, they take the east exit, which leads to a corridor that ends in the obvious back side of a secret door. Turning the handle, the party finds that it opens into a wide hallway with an archway filled with red mist to the south. It appears to be the same one they explored earlier, as there is a piton for the rope still spiked into the floor. But if they took the elevator down to the rotating room, how can they still be on the same level with the misty archways? More wizard tricks, perhaps.
Remembering that the far pit door has been spiked open, Cane makes a blind leap through the mist, but misgauges the distance and falls into the pit instead. Bruised and disappointed with his attempt, he is determined to make it across. Trusting in his monk’s discipline to carry him through, he steels his will and focuses his chi, and then leaps once again. Easily landing on the other side this time, he tumbles out of the red mist and vaults to his feet, ready for action.
He unspikes the pit and allows the heavy stone door to close and relatch. Then, the party makes its way carefully across the pit lid without triggering the pressure plate. Once reunited in the octagonal entry chamber (and having earned enough XP to reach level 3), they decide to head back to base camp and rest before returning to the puzzle of the four buttons. They depart the vaults and close up the stairs with the key.
Their fellow party member--the bard, Rake--has been patiently waiting outside the tower and he now joins them on the trek back to camp. Heading off down the path, they all look forward to eating a hot meal, tending to their wounds, and assessing their loot. Moving cautiously in single file, they keep an eye on the woods around them. Suddenly, a pack of six kobolds with slings prepared emerges from their hiding places in the treeline on a hillock to the west.
Vic drops back behind some foliage to avoid the kobolds’ incoming missile fire, and then begins moving around the far side of the path to stay out of sight. Cane moves to zip up the hill to engage, but as he passes between two clumps of trees, he trips a wire and two kobold arrows fly past his head (missing him, fortunately.) Pressing on, he starts across open ground but then spots something suspicious on the ground before him: Shallow depressions dug all around and concealed with leaves; underneath, sharpened wooden stakes protrude up, their tips smeared with kobold poop--another nasty trap!
The kobolds launch a volley of stones at Cane and Rake and then duck back into the treeline. Rather than take the bait and ascend the hill, Cane dives into the nearby foliage for cover, where he triggers yet another trap: A tree branch strung with sharpened stakes and bent backwards. When he trips the wire, the spiked branches spring out with great force, but he manages to avoid the deadly snare.
Aerion moves down the path and seeks cover behind a clump of foliage. He notices a tripwire across the path and shouts a warning to his allies. He hops over the wire and continues south when a trio of kobolds leap from the bushes and stab at him with their daggers. Following right behind Aerion, Steeljaw safely jumps the tripwire and engages the kobolds. To the east of the path, another trio of kobolds emerges from the treeline and opens fire with slings.
Rake pulls out his lute and strums a sequence of chords that reverberates through the forest. The enchanting notes lull the six kobolds on the hill into a deep slumber. Vic joins Aerion and Steeljaw, and the three of them put down two of the three dagger-wielding kobolds. With the tables suddenly turned, a familiar pipsqueak’s voice orders his kobolds to “Run away!!”
Cane chases down the third dagger-wielding kobold, while their boss and the other two kobolds skedaddle away through the forest. Vic climbs the hill and cuts the sleeping kobolds’ necks, and then the rest of the party members loot the corpses, recovering a handful of silver and copper coins. The party continues on to base camp and arrives at approximately 5:30 in the afternoon.
They spend the evening recuperating and examining the items they found. The sapphire lozenge--apparently one of Bergummo’s legendary treasures--is an ioun stone that increases the wearer’s endurance. The steel pot helm--presumably Chilton’s--magically increases its wearer’s physical strength. The clay jar that feels empty, yet cold to the touch, contains bone-chilling vapors that can be used to attack enemies. The strange six-sided cubes are lucky dice, carved from the bones of a djinn and engraved with archaic numerals. These talismans improve a character’s fortune in battle or other such endeavors.
The party has an uneventful and restful night.
_____
Foray 4
On the lookout for more kobolds in the woods, the party returns to the tower site the next morning without incident and reconvenes in the octagonal entry chamber at 9:30 AM. Determined to try the sequence with only two of the numbers supposedly known, the party passes through the yellow mist and then (inexplicably) gathers around the platform as Vic enters a new guess: Summer, Winter, Spring, and Fall.
Once more, the platform erupts in an explosion of fire that engulfs everyone in the party. Vic takes the full blast to the face, and keels over unconscious and dying. Everyone else avoids the brunt of it, but the explosion is still powerful and burns them badly. Worse still, a series of glowing runes appears on the north wall--throbbing red and in the shape of a doorway. With a strange sizzling sound and an acrid coppery smell, the stone seams of a secret door melt together and fuse shut.
Undaunted, Vic tries pressing other buttons, but nothing else seems to have any other effect. Rake inquires more about the elevator, so the party escorts him through the green mist to the room with the plinth dials. They enter the sequence to open the secret door on the north wall, and Rake enters the elevator chamber. He tries the “Up” button, but nothing happens, so he presses the “Down” button.
As it did with the others, the south door of the room closes off, the chamber shakes gently for about 30 seconds, and then a door opens on the north wall into the room with rotating walls. Rake exits this room and comes back through the one-way secret door into the hallway with the red mist archway. He travels through the red mist, carefully avoiding the pressure plate trigger, and rejoins his comrades in the octagonal chamber.
The session ends here…
(10:00 AM)
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