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Elementals!     Golem

Suva has divined that using the “die” with two spots on he door past the stream is a good option; convinced of his divination's clarity, the party are ready to return along the river to the door there. Jarek gives his armour to Morin and takes up the elven chain from the drow for himself, which is a good enough fit, fortunately.

30 minutes later, after two separate journeys with the boat, Suva takes the cube with two spots and places it in the recess in the door. A light tingle fills the air but Suva's faith is strong and he follows through with confidence on his own divination; grasping the door, he slides it to one side. It opens with barely a sound to reveal a corridor beyond - it has a steely floor and ceiling, smooth and hard, and the walls continue the overly intricate red marble that began on the other side of the door. A few feet in, there is a narrow gap all the way around the corridor which seems to drop away into blackness.

Further on there is some sort of magical barrier filling the corridor; it is translucent and would seem to indicate a second such barrier beyond it and then perhaps something else beyond that, but it's difficult to say.

Morin heads in to check but finds no traps or mechanisms and the Illuminatus reveals no extra clues.

After around five minutes as the party deliberate about the newly revealed corridor, the sliding door abruptly slides shut of its own accord, quietly but very quickly. In the blink of an eye, the die is back, sat with the others; Morin was trapped inside checking the lay of the ground, Dalrylshana having been enticed away by the lure of Jiriki's necklace (which she has now recognised as a necklace of fireballs).

But he is not gone for long this time - placing the die back in position allows the door to open again and reveals a slightly surprised Morin. Evidently there is a timer of sorts built in to the door and from Morin’s observations, that is not all – the gap along the corridor was filled with a wall of force when the door was shut and disappeared again when it reopened.

The party ponder and Morin suddenly has an intuition that cracks his face to laughter: what if all the dice open the door?

After some discussion, the door is opened and Morin steps inside; after minutes have elapsed and the door has closed again, Suva takes a breath as Dalrylshana hands him the Illuminatus to scan the area under its light for any extra clues that may appear.

Summoning an invisible servant, Dalrylshana places the 'three' die into the receptacle on the door and then Suva, having seen nothing unusual, slides the door aside......to find Morin, unchanged, unharmed and the corridor looking as it had when opened previously. Emboldened by the harmless effects of experimenting with the door, the party test out the remaining cubes, each time Morin observing events from within the corridor.

Some 20 minutes later a bemused feeling descends as each die gives exactly the same result within and without. It would not seem to matter which cube is used - although the way forwards is still blocked.

There is a feeling that the door through the Black Gardens is perhaps related so as Morin ponders orders with which to load the dice into the recess and other possible variations that might help, Suva, Jiriki, Kin and Jarek head off to the other door, detouring slightly so that Jiriki can leave his newly obtained trophies with the Akkenophon cairn. Their journey is made quickly and without hindrance, the Black Gardens now ominously quiet.

It takes a few communications by Hawker bags and lots of trial and error but the party soon figures out that the choice of cube seems unimportant on either door. A cube at the river door removes the first barrier and a cube at the moon door removes the second barrier.

The third barrier, at the point when the other two are removed, is clearly the final one and seems to lead into a room but remains of course, impassable. Unless there is a specific sequence or pairing, the key to this barrier must be elsewhere – the untried northern double doors beckon and the party are soon gathered there (once they’ve remembered that somebody needed to take the boat back to those at the ‘water door’).

From the end of the corridor, Kin unlocks the doors with his magic and then Morin advances and opens them. Not traps seem evident, nothing booms nor bangs and none of the dragons feared by Dalrylshana leap forth!

As the door creaks opens into a room, a waft of air smelling of charcoal and decay fills the nostrils. The room is roofed and unlit - no magical torches here - but enough light seeps in from the corridor to be able to make out detail. There are sarcophagi lining east and west walls, perhaps 25 of them in total, built of metal which has aged and tarnished but all appear whole from here. Further into the room there is a stone table, built into the floor; nothing sits atop it and it seems unmarked.

In the doorway there are three bodies - skeletal and burned to almost crumbling carbon, this is clearly the source of the ash you had espied under the door earlier. The bodies still have remnants of armour, damaged and charred as it is but the only thing that stands out (by virtue of being relatively undamaged or burned) is a pair of metal gauntlets on one of the bodies.

Opposite ,at the far end of the room, is another door.

No traps are apparent but whether, as Morin suggests, three characters have clearly barely entered the room before being incinerated, or as Darius offers, were burned attempting to flee, the party are less than keen to move on hastily. The obvious are left alone as being far too obvious and then, with Jiriki and Darius hammering iron spikes into the floor to keep the doors open, Morin heads in. He gets to the other end of the room safely and then quietly indicates for two more to come to him – Kin and Suva are at the front and advance, Jarek and Dalrylshana advancing into their positions and looking alert.

Morin points out that he has heard a muffled noise that seemed to come from within one of the sarcophagi; it is heard again and one other thing is slowly noticeable: the sarcophagi are tarnished but, this much closer and staring at them, it seems there is a
little more than that. There are small darkened patches here and there on all of the sarcophagi that look akin to tarnishing but reflect no light. None. And as one stares at these points, there is just the lightest of headaches that begins to well up behind the eyes and a hint of dread in the gut.

The remainder of the party advance and Suva brings his divine powers to bear to bolster the mood as Morin pases Kin a torch and the corridor revealed behind the checked door is entered. The wizard lights the way for the rogue to check – there are two doors on the east wall, one on the west and one opposite - each unlocked but closed.

The two return quickly, Morin whispering “shadows”. Some of the dancing shadows from the torchlight seemed to move the wrong way.With the mood that this place engenders, it’s enough to cause pause but Suva soon has a plan: he can cast invisibility to undead on Morin, Dalrylshana, Darius and Jarek which will last over an hour and hopefully give chance to explore this area better before any engaging with the enemy is needed, since that would break the spell. Meanwhile, the remainder of the party are visible and able to deflect any problems, with luck, two of them able to turn undead. The cleric has already ascertained that there are indeed undead in this area.

The plan is agreed and the spell cast. Morin looks at Kin and indicates the first door on the east wall and then steps away and allows the mage to approach the door and open it – holding his torch high and glancing around, a room is revealed but no undead come charging out. The room seems empty - it is a solid stone room with no other doors but is unusual in that the walls, floor and ceiling are covered in a complex pattern woven of gold, red and green lines. It seems to be just an elaborate pattern, rather than any language or runic symbols, however.

Further into the room, at the edge of the torchlight, it looks as though there is a small circular stone wall, within which is a pool of water. More detail cannot be made out from here.

With the duration of the invisibility already almost halfway through, it seems a wise idea to gather as much information as possible and still retain a possible surprise for any undead that may be lurking. Thus, Morin directs and Kin opens each door in sequence, standing in the doorway and observing as much as he can from that position by torchlight.

The second door on the east wall opens into a small room, empty and dusty. Here and there a couple of old brown bones, the long-decayed remains of some hapless adventurer, perhaps. It is dark and quiet and appears empty.

The north door opens into larger room, its full extent not revealed by the torchlight, although a door opposite is evident. For a moment Kin tenses and something is seen to move; it's dark, without full form and is glanced for but a moment before it glides out of the flickering light through the doorway and is gone. It did not seem to react to the door being opened.

Pausing momentarily, the party move on, Suva keeping watch for the return of any shadowy creature, and open the final door, the one on the west wall - this is very different from the others. It is unlit again but is clean and carpeted; sweet air gently creeps across the threshold and there can be seen within some furniture and a bed.

Kin brings the light source into the large room as Morin drives the party ever north, checking the area for traps. None are found in the room but two more doors are - the first is in the west wall, unlocked and untrapped, the second is found by Kin. Intuitively reacting to some feeling, he indicates the east wall to Morin who discovers a locked secret door, neatly hidden into the stonework but clearly a door once it's been spotted.

The north door is more unusual, it turns out, when chance is taken to check it more fully - it is more sturdy looking than the other doors and has three metal forms, flat shapes on the hard wood decorating the surface. They are each similar and quite stylised but are obviously dragons, heads pointing up. They do not move and appear to be no more than decorative. No keyhole is evident but the door does not budge on first tests.

The erstwhile secret door has a long-since defunct trap on it but Morin is unable to open it. Kin supplies magi to do the job and his spell immediately brings dividends; Morin silently applauds with a grin and dramatically waves the mage on to the door. It opens easily, with a couple of clicks and creaks to reveal a very small room beyond.

Small but intriguing.

In the centre of the room is a large, ornate golden arch, held a few inches off the ground by thick brass chains. In front of the arch is a round-based, tapering stand atop the point of which, about 5 feet off the ground, rests a crystalline ball. This is surely a Wayfarer’s Gate! The one the werewolf seemed to know was here but clearly didn’t find.

Eager to establish as much short-range reconnaissance as possible, Morin and Kin move on, temporarily ignoring this new room as the corpses at the entrance had also been. Perhaps with what has been experienced so far, it is wise to check all points of attack before relaxing!