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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 1283886" data-attributes="member: 1210">The Room of the Three ChestsYou can always count on Lester to pull the lever you shouldn’t pull, break the seal that shouldn’t be broken, or let the thing out that should be kept caged away.Which one of his friends said that first?  Lester can’t remember, but it flashes through his mind as he opens the first chest, cringing away from it as he does so. Nothing happens; no monster jumps out, no trap is triggered, no ward explodes.  “Whew!” the L sighs in relief, then looks in the open chest.  At the bottom of it is a box made, perhaps, from glass; certainly it’s transparent, whatever it is.  Within the box can be seen a ring.  “Perhaps the box is trapped,” Verzavi says quietly.  Nodding, Lester ponders for a moment and then determines to overturn the chest rather than pull the glass box out.  First he closes the lid, then he struggles with the chest itself; it’s large and very heavy, and he wonders for a moment whether he’s bitten off more than he can chew.  Then Angelfire trumps through and she and Thrush move to Lester’s side.  Together the three burly warriors tumble the large chest forward, knocking it on its face.  They hear, quite clearly, a set of thunks from within and a tinkling noise.  Upon muscling the lid open- not easy with the chest face down- they find that the box has broken and three poisoned darts are imbedded in the lid of the chest.  They snatch up the ring.“Well,” Lester blusters, “that wasn’t so bad!  Should we open the others?”“Perhaps we should rest first,” Azekia suggests.“What, are you afraid?” sneers Angelfire.“I fear nothing!” the solar snorts disdainfully.  “If you are so eager to face more danger without first resting, feel free to open the next one.”“And you’ll open the final one?” challenges the Coilite.“Certainly.” All these angels, so prideful, thinks Angelfire.  So predictably full of hubris.  So easy to bait...  She flexes her hands within the Deleter and throws the second chest open.  While the first was of silver, this one is of wood.  As the lid is thrown back, a hot wind issues from the chest and then, suddenly, there’s a huge skeleton standing there!  It swings a massive morningstar at Verzavi, catching the poor githzerai across the chest and smashing her backwards!  The thing seems to be moving with unnatural speed, striking rapidly until the arcanopath tumbles away.  Lester dives for cover and screams at Orbius to start trumping the party in.  The party moves in as quickly as they can while those in the room duel with the huge skeleton.  Now the skeleton is surrounded by Angelfire (making a point to step behind Patyn for cover during the battle), Patyn, Drelvin, Thrush and Sybele.  Ulla’s there as well, but nobody really notices her in the form of a bumblebee.  Even moving with twice the speed that it should the skeleton is not match for our heroes.*  Soon it is a bunch of splintered bones scattered about the chamber.“Your turn.”  Angelfire stares at Azekia with a cold grin.  With a curt nod, the solar strides to the third chest- this one made of gold- and opens it.  And snakes spill out. It’s a huge chest, about 20’x10’x5’; it’s full of vipers.  Azekia gives a yell of surprise as the snakes swarm out of the chest like a living carpet, biting at everyone.  Our heroes are ready for action and well-armed, however, and they slice and slash and shoot at the oncoming horde of snakes.  It’s over in the blink of an eye, with a few of our heroes taking a bite or two but everyone still in reasonable shape.  A quick look turns up another ring at the bottom.“I wonder if these are keys of some kind, or important in some way,” muses Drelvin.  “I can check them out,” Sybele offers, extracting a length of orangish crystal from her pack.  Using two charges from her dorje of identify, she ascertains that the first ring is a ring of wizardry while the second one is a cheaply-made, unreliable ring of protection +1.  The contrast between the two rings is striking.  Drelvin frowns and wishes again for Thimbleton’s presence.  “Now can we rest?” Sybele asks plaintively.And they do, setting heavy watches. ***Bit to come once an encounter happens.  Related to the above bit to come- you could say that the above bit will introduce something, and this one will show us a little about its technique.***An unmolested nine hours after settling down to sleep, our heroes are a little less weary.  Refreshed, most with a new complement of spells, our heroes set to finding their way.  There are no obvious exits from the chamber of the chests, but a search by Drelvin- proclaiming, “I’m an elf, I’m good at finding secret doors”- turns one up, set 10’ aboeve the floor.  A little teamwork soon sees the party moving through another crawlway, this one leading to another passage.  Angelfire, in the lead, pokes her head out the exit and is surprised to see that the wall behind her looks solid- it looks like her head is sticking out of a red circle painted on the wall of the hall.  Cautiously, the party pops out of the hidden passage and examines the great hall of spheres.The floor beneath their feet is tiled with some sort of ceramic tile.  The walls all painted with a variety of animals, signs and glyphs, demons and monsters, and everywhere spheres- although, really, they are mere circles, being painted on a two-dimensional surface.  The weird symbols are easily recognizable to those in the group of greater arcane learning as symbols of magical power, necromancy and conjurings, death magic and unholiness.  There’s an almost visible glow of magic everywhere in this place, an almost audible hum of arcane powers.  Clearly, this is not a place to be trifled with.  “Remember the green face!” warns Patyn harshly.  “Be careful about sticking anything in any of those circles!”  At the far end of the hallway is another mist-filled archway, which Sybele frowns at suspiciously.There are a couple of doors, as well.  However, both turn out to be traps; when opened, they reveal only spring-loaded traps.  Rex takes a blow from a great blade and shakes his head in disgust, but is heartened when a search of the trap’s recess turns up a key.  “Well, that’s something,” he mutters to himself.The group starts systematically and carefully examining the spheres to see if any of them are illusory.  Immediately they find one, a gold one held high above the head of the strange, fey-looking image below it.  Ulla flies through and changes into a cat, following on Rex’s heels as the dragon disciple crawls through into a room with- “Uh oh,” Rex mutters, retreating quickly.  “There’s some kind of statue back there,” he reports.  “It looks kind of mean.  Like some kind of three armed gargoyle.”“Let’s check it out,” says Angelfire cheerily.  Most of the group heads into the statue room while the larger Sybele and Azekia stay out in the hall of spheres.  After the last of the others vanishes behind the gold circle, Azekia and Sybele wander to the arch of mists.  This time, instead of blue, yellow and orange, the stones on the arch glow olive, russet and citron when it is approached.  The two of them retreat from the arch, not really feeling like getting into quite that much trouble on their own, and Azekia remarks, “I shall perform an augury on the arch.”  She spends a few moments in intense contemplation of a set of stones that she casts before her before looking up at Sybele with a tight mouth and proclaiming, ”Woe.”***Meanwhile, our heroes examine the statue in the small room beyond the gold circle very carefully.  It’s a three-armed gargoyle, with it’s fourth arm broken off and nearby.  The hands of the statue are outstretches and open, and each palm is set with a carved concavity, sized for... something.But what?Scratching their heads, our heroes decide to mull this one over for a moment before doing anything rash, but knowing our heroes, something rash is doubtless in the works.....*It was under the effect of a double actions spell, which has been developed independently by several wizards over the aeons, including Marius and, apparently, someone involved in the godsforsaken tomb that our heroes are presently in.Next Time: Our heroes mess with the statue, and we’ll have us a good ol’ time with the Dark Shadow and a nasty, nasty trap!  Those of you familiar with the original S1 may remember the instant death, no save, over the top trap, and some of you may have caught a reference about my getting to roll 30d6 points of damage...</blockquote>

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