The way east

[sageaqua]

After Ka'lion gets his nerve back under control he'll head back down.

search+5+roll

[at]

Ka'lion descends slowly, poking and prodding at the walls sure of magical traps. Indeed there do appear to be runes carved into the stone, though long faded, and the noise and sense of magic grow stronger as he descends.

At the bottom of the stairs there is a single thick iron door, ajar, with a complex locking mechanism on the exterior. Flickering light and an audible hum emanate from the room inside and Ka'lion spots that the door mechanism has been recently jammed to ensure it does not swing closed and lock.

The pattern of flickering light across the floor suggests water, though the group cannot see further without opening the door.

[sageaqua]

Ka'lion looks the jam over carefully. Can he remove it without making any noise or opening the door

[at]

The door is already slightly open, the locking mechanism exposed. Someone has jammed rubble into it - Ka'lion picks at it with his fingers but it's wedged in pretty tight - he'll need to pry it out with a piton or crowbar, or work it free with a knife.

[sageaqua]

Ka'lion frees it with a knife. And uses a knife to keep the door open. He wants it so if he pulls out his knife the door will lock when it's closed. Then he'll take a look inside. He intends to close the door trapping any hostile creatures inside.

[harknail]

Vadania watches Ka'lion with some amusement. But she keeps her bow ready and watches for something noticing Ka'lion playing with the lock.

[at]

The door is not weighted to close by itself and may not even lock when closed - it appears to have been jammed merely as a precaution.

Poking his head inside Ka'lion peers into a roughly circular room lined with rune-etched mirrors - the reflections making the exact size difficult to determine. Around the edge of the room six equidistantly spaced cagelike spheres made of iron and glass are attached to the floor by short iron stands.

Light dimply pulses from four of the spheres, brightening then dimming in time to the cycling hum which also emanates from those four objects; the remaining two spheres, however, are dark and lifeless.

What is most striking about the chamber is the flickering manifestation of an upright pool of rippling quicksilver in the centre of the room. While visible, the pool slowly rotates about the centre of its upright axis, the vertical surface rippling in response to unseen disturbances.


There appears to be no-one in the room.

[sageaqua]

"Don't enter. How good are you at shooting mirrors? I think the mirrors create doppelgangers of anything that enters. They need to be destroyed. The broken remains may have some uses afterward." says Ka'lion pulling the door open enough for Vadania but blocking the wolf from entering.
knowledge arcane: +5+roll=

[at]

With the door opened wider Vadania can also see the quicksilver pool - the noise she heard earlier however comes from the glowing orbs. As the hum reaches its loudest point the pool becomes visible and then flickers out of sight again as the volume of the noise drops.

The runes on the walls look vaguely like elven script but she does not recognise the characters.

Oct 2, 2013 10:05:35 GMT -5 sageaqua said:

knowledge arcane: +5+roll=

(you can make your own skill rolls for most things, just not search)

[sageaqua]

Arcane roll5+[dice=20]= for Kalion


Typical when Ka'lion is about to make a bad call the rolls come up 1's.[rand=0243981708772480524120050622150302840253441827371721370389056392014]

[harknail]

Vadania answers, "If we break the mirrors, we can't unbreak them. I'd rather have some idea of what they do first. They could as easily be a quick way to get elsewhere."

Vadania will stick her head into the room while otherwise staying outside to see if there is a mirror right next to the door that she can examine closely without actually entering the room.

[harknail]

The description of this room would fit nicely in a game of Numenera, a setting were old bits of extreme technology are indistinguishable from magic by the current inhabitants. I like it

[at]

The magic at work here is entirely beyond Ka'lions experience, he cannot even begin to explain the powers at work here.

Peering into the room Vadania examines the closest mirror - it is flat save for the runes that have been chiselled into the surface, and it appears that a tracery of silver has been poured into each sunken rune.

[sageaqua]

Ka'lion blocks the wolf from following Vadania into the room and keeps the door from closing on Vadania.

[harknail]

While still mostly out of the room, Vadania touches the mirror by the door. If nothing happens she tries touching one of the runes carved into the mirror.

How close is the closest pedestal?

[at]

Both the mirror and rune are cold and inert, at least to the touch. The closest pedestals are 8 feet away to either side of the door, though the partially open door makes it difficult to reach the one to the left.

[harknail]

Vadania tells Ylva to stay, then actually enters the room while Ka'lion and Ylva watch from outside. Fearful of setting off a trap or releasing something horrible from it's prison, she doesn't touch anything else.

Once she steps inside, the first thing she does is look at herself in the mirror. This is as much to actually she what she looks like to others as to examine the mirror, she'd never seen a full length mirror before, so this is the first time she's seen herself as others see her.

Once she's examined herself, she'll look around and see how confusing the reflections are. She makes sure that she can find her way back to the real door before she steps any further away from it. If she thinks she might get lost among the reflections, she'll ask ka'lion for an end of rope to find her way back.

Finally, she go examine the nearest pedestal still making light and humming to see what she can make of it without touching it.

[at]

The mirrors have dimmed somewhat with age making it simple enough to determine the way out, and despite Ka'lions fears no doppleganger appears as Vadania enters.

Her first impressions of her own appearance are that she is relatively gaunt and unkempt, more like Ka'lion in that regard than many others she had met recently.

The spheres are curious things, iron cages containing glowing cords of glass that criss cross in a complex pattern inside them, the iron simply holding the glass fibres in position. The light seems to flow along the glass which is scorched and blackened in places, the device it seems cannot contain the magic within it indefinitely.

[harknail]

Vadania goes and looks over one of the dark globes for comparison. She's curious as to how much has to be burnt before they lose the magic and go dark.

She also goes and looks at the quivery liquid looking mirror column in the middle. She keeps more distance here, since she doesn't want one of it's quavers to bump into her.

She wonders if the globes are containing the thing in the center, slowly failing as the containment on the demon failed. Or if the entire room is some incredible artifact slowly running out of power. The more important question, is this something that could help them in their quest to re-contain the demon? Or is this another monster waiting to escape and wreck havoc? Or is it simple something dangerous that could kill them but not affect the world at large? If only thing thing could talk...

Perhaps it can talk. Moving closer to the door again, Vadania asks in Elven "Can you hear me?"

She doesn't really expect an answer, but there isn't much she can do to determine what this is for other than poking about randomly. Destroying parts of the room might be easy enough, but there was no telling what harm that could do. Likewise touching the thing in the center might do anything. Perhaps it would transport her to another world, perhaps it would release something from within. Perhaps it would simply eat her.

[at]

The glass in the darkened orb has cracked apart entirely in places, though it looks no more scorched than the others. As the quicksilver pool appears and disappears in sync with the glow of the orbs it seems more likely that it is created rather than contained by the magic.

The pool shows no response to her words, but at this distance she can see that another has been here recently - there are footprints in the dust that are not her own.