Mazed and Confused

“Do you think this thing’s safe?” Jax asked warily, shaking the ropes that anchored the bridge to the ledge. It descended into the gloom ahead of him, and he could barely make out its far end in the darkness. A light suddenly illuminated the area as Wren cast Light on a pebble, then tossed it out onto the bridge. It rolled down the steep incline for a little ways before rolling off the edge, then grew fainter and fainter until it finally vanished with a distant splash.

“If the Arkonas use these for bringing smuggled goods up from the sea, then I’m sure they’re strong enough for us,” Tomas said confidently. Jax still wasn’t sure, and he asked Wren for more lights. She was creating Light rocks as fast as she could, and he chucked one across the open pit. It landed on the far ledge, beyond the foot of the bridge, and bounced a short distance before coming to rest against a wooden door. He realized that all his friends were gathered behind him, looking at him expectantly. Succumbing to peer pressure, he ventured cautiously out onto the swaying rope bridge.

He moved slowly, testing each plank carefully before placing his full weight on it. As Tomas had predicted, the bridge seemed surprisingly sturdy, and he crossed without incident. The ledge that anchored the far end of the bridge was small, barely a landing. Another shorter bridge led down to his right to yet another landing, then a third long bridge led even farther down from there. He tossed a few more light rocks down towards the bottom, and they revealed a wooden dock, with a small boat moored to it. The water reflected the magical light, casting rippling waves of faint light across the walls of the grotto.

As the others moved across the bridge to join him, he examined the door in front of him. It didn’t appear to be either locked or trapped, and he heard nothing when he pressed his ear against its surface. The landing was barely wide enough for three people; Erin and Shadow stood beside him, but the rest of his friends were strung out on the length of the hanging bridge. It wasn’t a very defensible arrangement if something inside came out to attack, but they didn’t seem to have many options. Expecting the worst, he shoved the door open.

To his relief, the room was empty. Its only furniture was a simple bed pushed against one wall, but the walls were lined with shelves that had been carved into the rock. All manner of animal figurines, some crude and carved of wood, others exquisitely sculpted from stone or precious metals, decorated these shelves. A heap of raw materials for crafting more of the animal figures lay in one corner. Nat quickly scanned the room for magic, giving a disappointed huff when he found none. Shadow quickly swept anything valuable-looking into a sack, and the group headed out.

The next landing down was slightly larger than the previous one, but not by much. Besides the dock and boat, Wren’s lights also revealed another door on the bottom ledge. Unlike the simple wooden door to the bedroom they’d just found, this door appeared to be made of bronze. The group began to gather on the landing as Jax checked the safety of the final bridge.

“Hey! There’s something here!” Tomas suddenly hissed. He’d been idly checking the wall next to them, and had discovered that one section wasn’t truly stone, but a cleverly disguised panel. Looking more closely, he could see a hidden catch that would release the panel and let it swing inwards. As the others drew their weapons, he quietly pushed it open. Inside was a narrow tunnel that curved to the left, then sharply back to the right. Jax slipped inside, and followed the tunnel for a short distance, thinking it might lead to a back door to the room whose door they’d seen below them, but he returned shaking his head. “It twists around for a ways, then heads off and down. I don’t know how far, but it’s not leading towards that other room.”

“Well if this was what they wanted to keep secret, then this is where I think we should go!” Wren declared. No one could fault her logic, so they set off down the secret tunnel. As Jax had said, it was serpentine for the first 60 feet or so, but then straightened out for the next hundred feet, continuing to lead gradually downwards. At the end, it turned sharply to the left, ending at a pair of large bronze doors, each carved with images of tigers chasing other tigers in four adjacent circles. At the center of each circle of tigers, a snarling tiger head looked out.

The doors prompted a flurry of activity from the party as they tried to detect or perceive any possible source of danger, but at the end of it all they found no magic, evil, or obvious traps on or around the doors. All the hairs on the back of Jax’s neck were standing up; he felt like they were walking into something bad, but he didn’t know what. With everyone waiting for him to act, he drew a deep breath and pulled the doors open.

He found an odd-shaped room. Just beyond the doors were a pair of small alcoves on the left and right; each held a statue depicting a tiger-headed man with his arms spread wide, as if to usher visitors into the room. Beyond the statues, the room pinched in slightly, then opened back up again into a small oval room. This room also appeared to have alcoves on either side of it at the far end, but from his vantage point at the doorway, Jax couldn’t see into them.

Jax was in no hurry to step into the room; he smelled a trap. With his friends pressing impatiently behind him, he meticulously scanned the floor and walls nearby, searching for any sign of danger. The only thing he saw was a slight gap in the floor, walls, and ceiling of the room at the point where it pinched in. He reported this to the team in a whisper.

“It’s got to be gas,” Nat said confidently. “It’ll pour in and poison everyone in the room. You’d better go disable it.”

Jax briefly considered flinging Nat into the room to check for traps, but decided he might need the wizard at a later date. Moving with the utmost caution, he eased into the room, carefully choosing where to place each foot as he crept across the floor. When he reached the gap, he examined it carefully, but didn’t see any sign of obvious danger. It was very narrow; you could have slid a piece of paper into it, but not the blade of a dagger. It continued in a line across the floor, up both walls, and across the ceiling, a very slight break in the stone of the two segments of the room.

“Maybe it’s an elevator?” Erin speculated. She’d followed Jax into the room once he’d pronounced it (probably) safe. “Maybe that part of the room will drop down to a lower level?” Jax just shrugged; it didn’t look anything like the elevator they’d found back at the Hospice, but who knew?

Just to be safe, Erin tied a rope around Jax’s waist and she and Tomas held onto it as Jax moved slowly across the gap and into the larger part of the room (if indeed it was an elevator that worked the way she speculated, they’d at least be able to slam Jax against the ceiling of the room as it descended). He moved carefully forward until he could see into the alcoves at the far end of the room. The one on the right was empty. Looking around the corner into the alcove on the left, he saw a long lever with an ebony handle extending from the wall.

Most of the others had been gradually moving into the room as Jax and Erin survived, although Tomas and Nat hung back by the bronze doors. Wren was knocking on the floors and walls as she walked, to see if anything sounded hollow, but it all seemed solid to her. “I guess we just need to pull the lever,” she stated.

“I think that’s a really bad idea,” Jax warned, although he couldn’t offer any alternatives. He’d thoroughly searched the room and found no other possible exits.

“Oh come on,” Wren sighed. “This whole secret passage wouldn’t just lead to a dead end – there’s got to be a way forward, and this lever is pretty obvious.” She gripped the lever and turned back to the others. “You might want to be in the room when I pull this,” she warned. Nat and Tomas exchanged a worried look, and grudgingly passed through the bronze doors. “I think you might want to be past that gap thingie,” Wren suggested. “If this is an elevator, we don’t want to get separated.” Surrendering to her logic, Nat and Tomas squeezed into the oval room, making sure they were past the gap in the stone.

It was well that they did. As Wren pulled the lever down, there was a loud grinding sound and the entire room began to shake, as if in an earthquake; it was all they could do to maintain their footing. In less than a second, the opening back into the entryway with the two statues closed, replaced by a wall of stone that seemed to be sliding from left to right. The shaking and grinding continued for several long seconds, and as it subsided, the wall opened back up – but to a different room. Instead of the small entryway with two statues and the bronze doors leading to the secret tunnel, they saw a larger room, with openings on the left and right.

“What the frak?” Jax muttered, and eased into the new room. To his right, it opened into a small square area, with another ebony-handled lever on the wall; to the left was a closed door. Tomas moved to the door, checking for any signs of traps. Finding none, he pulled it open.

There was something inscribed on the floor just inside the door, glowing with magical power. As soon as he saw it, Tomas felt a wave of pain sweep through him, but he managed to shake it off. Behind him, Shadow and Wren were also in line where they could see the strange symbol; like Tomas, Shadow managed to control the pain, but Wren cried out, and then began moaning as her body was wracked by debilitating pain.

“Oh my gods!” Tomas cried as he scrambled back out of sight of the symbol. “There’s something on the floor in here! I think it must be evil!” That was all Erin needed to hear, and she rushed to investigate, but as she laid eyes on the magical symbol she, too, was overcome with horrible pain. She staggered away, tears streaming down her face as she struggled not to cry out.

Everyone else moved away from the open door, not wanting to risk catching sight of the magical symbol. But they had nowhere else to go; unless they were able to cross the Symbol, they were bottled up in this small area. “I knew this was a bad idea,” Jax thought to himself, but he steeled his nerves. Keeping his eyes firmly on the floor at his feet, he approached to the edge of the Symbol, then knelt and began feeling its outlines with his fingertips. Disabling magical traps was a tricky business, and could easily backfire. After a few moments of blind study, he removed some items from his belt pouch. Using a small brush, he carefully brushed powdered silver into some of the junctions in the outline of the Symbol, then added a pinch of sulfur to each. The magic flickered, then died away.

Despite Jax disabling the Symbol, Erin and Wren felt no better. Nat carefully examined what was left of the runes on the floor. “This looks like it was a Symbol of Pain,” he declared when he finished. “Symbols are nasty spells, and there’s not really anything you can do for their effects but let them run their course.” That wasn’t exactly what the two women wanted to hear.

There was a closed door just beyond the Symbol of Pain, and a pair of rooms connected by a slanted hallway to its left. Nat cast Detect Magic, then frowned. “There’s magic behind that door,” he warned. “Might be another Symbol.” Jax was examining the other rooms and hallway. The walls were decorated with a complex mural depicting a hot, steaming jungle brimming with hungry life. Predators of every sort stalked and maimed and fed on dozens of hapless people. In the canopy above, monkeys, snakes, and birds seemed to chatter and mock the victims below. With a start, Jax saw that one of the people being devoured was him! He blinked his eyes, and the painting showed just another anonymous victim.

A hallway, also painted with murals, slanted away to his left to another painted room. As he turned the corner, he could see another room beyond the mural room – with another magical Symbol inscribed on its floor. Before he could avert his eyes, he saw its full extent, and collapsed on the floor, unmoving. The others saw him fall for no apparent reason, and Shadow rushed to his aid. He also saw the Symbol, but it seemed to have no power over him, and he was able to drag Jax back to the rest of the party. Jax seemed to be asleep, but no amount of prodding or slapping could rouse him. To Wren’s practiced eye, he almost seemed more catatonic than simply sleeping.

“It was another one of those Symbols,” Shadow informed them. “I don’t know what it was, but it didn’t seem to bother me. I’ll see if I can figure out how to shut it down.” He retraced his steps and approached the Symbol. He could feel power thrumming from it, but it didn’t affect him. Unlike Nat, he’d never studied this type of magic, and couldn’t identify what type of spell it was. He tried scuffing the symbol with his feet, or scratching at it with the point of his dagger, but it did nothing to inhibit the magic. He returned to the party and admitted defeat.

Tomas sighed; he supposed it was up to him. He gave Jax another kick, part in hopes it would awaken him but mostly in frustration, then moved in among the murals. Keeping his eyes on the floor, he was able to reach the Symbol without looking at it, then used his own training with trapfinding to figure out how he might disable it. It was complex, and dangerous, but at last he felt the magic fade away.

At last able to look around at his surroundings, Tomas saw that a short hallway continued out of the room containing the Symbol of Sleep, ending in a closed door. There was also a closed door in the mural room behind him. Shadow joined him and cast Detect Magic on the door at the end of the hall. “More magic?” Tomas asked, and Shadow nodded his head. “Shit!”

The door in the mural room didn’t show any magic behind it, so they decided to try that one first. Tomas swung it open, and an odor of old death spilled out. The room was empty, but the floor was littered with old bones and patches of mold. Nat, remembering the fungal guardians who’d attacked them upstairs, worried the mold might be something more sinister, but it didn’t react to being walked upon. Several people searched the room, but found nothing of interest, so they returned to the mural room, shutting the door behind them. No one wanted to spend any more time among the murals than necessary; every time they turned, they’d catch a brief glimpse of their own image in the paintings, being dismembered or eaten alive.

Shadow returned to the room with the Symbol of Sleep. He cast several protective spells on himself, backed well up, and then used a Mage Hand to open the door at the end of the short hall. It revealed another short hallway that turned to the left after ten feet, but from his vantage point he couldn’t tell what might be around the corner. “Oh well – how bad could it be?” he thought, and moved forward, through the door. As he reached the end of the hallway, he could see around the corner into the room beyond – and could see the Symbol inscribed on the floor. A wave of power hit him, threatening to overload his sensory systems, but once again the elvish blood flowing through his veins helped protect him, and he was able to leap back without succumbing. “Looks like we’ve got another of those Symbols to disarm,” he reported back to the group. “If we want to, that is. It looks like that room’s a dead end, although I could see another one of those gaps in the floor against the far wall.”

Jax was still asleep, and Erin and Wren still moaned with pain. The trap-filled maze was wearing on Tomas’ nerves. “Fuck this!” he growled. “I’m not opening any more doors and I’m not messing with any more of those fucking Symbols! I say we just start pulling levers until we can get the hell out of here!”

“But there’s no way of knowing where the next lever will take us,” Erin said through gritted teeth. “It could open up onto another Symbol, or something even worse. I think we need to wait awhile, to see if we can get Jax back, and for Wren and I to feel better.”

After all they’d been through, doing nothing seemed like a pretty attractive course of action. They drug Jax back to the room where they’d come in, and sat down to wait. “I don’t get it,” Wren said with frustration as they sat there. “What’s the purpose of this place? Why would they build something this elaborate and this confusing?”

“To make people like us waste time?” Erin speculated. “Or to soften us up for something else?”

After an hour or so, Wren and Erin’s pain eased. Another thirty or forty minutes after that, Jax finally woke up. “Man – what happened?” he asked with a big yawn. “How’d I get all these bruises and loose teeth?” Everyone looked at the ceiling innocently.

After they brought Jax up to speed, he agreed to try his hand at disabling the Symbol of Stunning that Shadow had discovered. It turned out to be even more complicated than the Symbol of Pain he’d worked on before, but he still managed to get it shut down. He rejoined the group, where Tomas was inspecting the final door they hadn’t opened, the one beside the Symbol of Sleep where Nat had detected some magic on the other side. Everyone moved out of line of sight and Tomas pulled the door open.

There was no magical Symbol on the other side. Instead, the room contained three large wooden chests, their lids decorated with carvings of cavorting tigers. On the opposite wall was a painted fresco depicting hundreds of tigers marching in widening circles around a single green gem the size of a fist, set into the wall and carved to resemble a tiger’s head. Tomas cautiously entered the room. “There’s some inscription carved into the lids of these chests,” he called out to the others, “but I don’t recognize the language.”

Nat and Jax joined him in the room. Nat bent over the chests, being careful not to touch anything. “It’s Vudrani,” he said after examining the inscriptions. “I think I can make it out.” He started with the chest at the far end of the room, in front of Tomas. “This one says ‘By gentle caress shall truth be known.’” He moved to the middle chest. “Life within but death without,” he translated, then moved to the chest in front of Jax. “Breathe deep your salvation.” He looked at Jax and Tomas. “Those all sound pretty bad, if you ask me. Good luck!” Then he slipped out of the room.

Tomas knelt to examine his chest more closely, then backed away. “There’s something all over the lid of this chest,” he said with a tone of disgust. “Probably poison.” Jax couldn’t see anything wrong with his chest, but he didn’t see much upside in risking it, either. “Let’s get out of here,” he suggested, and Tomas agreed.

They seemed to have exhausted their options, so they returned to the lever they hadn’t pulled yet. As they passed the opening to the room they’d started in, Erin noticed that the lever Wren had originally pulled, which had stayed in the down position after she pulled it, was now back up. She pointed this out, but everyone decided to try the lever they hadn’t pulled yet. “I predict this will put us right back where we started,” Jax said confidently, and pulled the lever.

The whole room shook as before, and the opening to the room with the other lever was quickly replaced by a wall of stone, sliding from right to left. When the shaking and rumbling stopped, the wall opened back up – into a different room. Or rather, a room they recognized, but from somewhere else. “Hey! It’s those damn murals!” Shadow exclaimed. Sure enough – the disturbing jungle murals now lay just outside their room. “But how’d they get up there?” he asked with confusion. “They used to be that way.” He pointed the other direction, into the room with the defunct Symbol of Pain. Where the mural room had once opened up was now just a blank stone wall.

There was a closed door in the mural room, and Tomas confirmed that it opened into the room with bones and moss that they’d already explored. The hall between the mural rooms slanted to the right (hadn’t it gone to the left before?) and as Erin advanced along it, she saw that there was a new room beyond the murals, one they hadn’t seen before. Its walls, floor, and ceiling were decorated with a complex mosaic depicting an immense swarm of angry wasps. Nat joined her and cast Detect Magic; to no one’s surprise, the whole room glowed with magic.

There were two closed doors in the room: one to the left, just inside the entrance, and another on the wall opposite. Jax didn’t spot any obvious traps so Wren moved in and went to the door on the right, pressing her ear against it. Tomas did the same at the door on the left, but neither heard anything. Jax and Erin followed them in. “Which door should we open first?” Jax asked.

“Let’s go this way,” Wren said, pointing to her door.

Maybe he didn’t hear her, because Jax opened the door beside Tomas, revealing a short, five-foot hallway and another closed door. “Oh sure, just ignore me," Wren snapped. "No reason to …”

Wren’s complaint was interrupted as thousands of 6-inch long needles suddenly started stabbing in and out tiny holes in the floor, walls, and ceiling of the room, over and over again. The needles jabbed in waves, creating a beautiful but fatally unpredictable rippling effect. Everyone in the room felt a jolt of pain as they stabbed up through the soles of their feet, or into their arms or legs where they stood too close to a wall. Worse, they could feel the sting of some toxin coating the needles.

Luckily, they were all close to an exit, as movement through the waves of piercing needles was painful and difficult. Wren, Tomas, and Erin dashed back to join Shadow and Nat in the mural room. Jax chose to leap into the short hallway he’d discovered. As soon as they were out of the room, the stabbing needles retreated into their hiding holes.

“As long as I’m here, I might as well see what’s next,” Jax thought, and pushed open the door at the end of the short hall. The octagonal room beyond was dimly lit by some unseen source. In the middle of the floor was a six-inch-tall bronze dais, with a polished column of black marble rising from it. The black stone seemed to be vibrating softly, filling the air with a faint and oddly soothing hum.

A rustle of movement caught Jax’s eye. Tensing, he gripped the hilt of his sword and leaned to one side. Crouched behind the black obelisk was a bedraggled, filthy figure – Vencarlo Orsini!

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The PCs earned 3,600 XP, putting them at 68,343, with 71,000 required for Level 10.