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Elementals!     Golem

The walls and floor are smooth and hard, the inner orange wall also, and from the three entrances to the room, Balin, Jiriki (Darius having sensibly stayed behind when the his two companions could barely control themselves), Kin, Suva and Morin enter. The fourth corner of the internal room is missing, however.

Walking around the outside of the inner walls, Morin checks carefully, cringing every now and then as less nimble footsteps echo through the hard chamber. If there are any traps along these smooth surfaces, it is likely beyond even his abilities to find them.

The "missing corner" is an opening to a square room. Peeping carefully around, it is clearly empty: the first thing that strikes is how garishly bright it is - all walls are made from the blue-veined marble and are quite taxing on the eyes, lit as they are by sconces on each wall, each holding a nearly invisible source of white light.

The second thing that is noticed is the centrepiece to the room: there is a large patterned block on the floor but it is so transparent as to be rendered almost invisible. On top of this are three concentric stone rings that appear to have symbols of some type on their upper faces.

The room is cool and silent and looks never to have been touched...

Extremely cautiously, Morin steps in to the room, checking all the while. As he enters the room, the whole party have a feeling. It's like hearing a word without sounds, a meaning implanted directly into the head - and the word is "exchange".

A little perturbed, Morin moves further in to the room, followed slowly by the rest of the party. The three stone circles are identical but for their size and have a number of symbols on them. The centre of the stone ring seems to be a hole into the odd transparent block, but nothing sits within it.

Jiriki, Balin and Morin commit the puzzle to memory and then swap places with Dalrylshana, Darius and Jarek to give them chance to ponder it, too.

A quick test reveals that the stone rings do rotate – independently and fairly easily, the centre glowing briefly with a blue hue as each 30 degrees is passed through.

It's not obvious at first whether there is a particular position where (or indeed if) the rings should be aligned but a careful search by Jarek reveals a slight marking on the transparent tableau that could certainly be taken as a marker point. If patterns are being followed here, as they seem to be, then alignment of symbols would be intuitively the right thing, having already aligned three
statues to each other, three mirrors to the same point and three dragon statues to face upwards in the process of arriving here.

Working almost simultaneously, Kin, Suva and Morin recall the clues from the oracle:

“The final barrier echoes three again
The number of dragons, you see
Two clues are seen but unknown already
And the last is the curse of milady”

Realising that the two odd clues they have seen but not used could be the writings on the plaque in the greenery and before the doors to the north corridor. “Death, the final arbiter…” and “Water, above all…” have corresponding symbols for water and death on the three wheels so could be placed in the top and bottom positions. From the oracle’s words, the curse of Morriaga would seem to be lycanthropy which would have a viable symbol in a crescent moon shape also on the wheels. The details are coming together fantastically quickly and only the meaning of “exchange” seems to be a problem.

Placing some item in the centre of the ring seems a sensible idea and a quick argument ensues over what to use – Grae’s journal, the lizard chief’s broken spear. It seems a fitting resting place for the journal since Grae was obsessed with the Lady (as Morin asserts and Jiriki agrees) so the rings are aligned and the journal placed at the centre.

Once the journal is placed there, the hole glows blue again and slowly the journal begins to decay, gaps appearing as if invisible bookworms worked at a magical pace. Less and less there is of the journal until it is on the point of oblivion and then suddenly it begins to reappear.

Slowly, as if time were running backwards, it rebuilds from nothingness but as it does it is soon apparent that this is no book that is forming here. Silvery twirls and twists of metal appear here, leather grows there.

And after a few minutes, unmarked and fairly ordinary-looking, the hilt of a sword sits at the centre of the stone ring.

Cautious still, Suva reels slightly as he casts his first spell – detect magic. Not surprisingly, there is a lot of powerful magic here. But the most powerful, nearly blinding aura, is that of the hilt.

He waves away offers of aid and then calls upon St Cuthbert to allow his divinity to shine through Suva once again: the hilt is not evil – the three parts of the hilt having separate alignments, this would seem to fit as the scabbard was apparently evil.

It may not have had the perfect climax of battle for some of the party but nonetheless, the goal is achieved: this can be none other than the hilt of the Sword of Names and Morin deftly removes it from the centre of the stone rings as Suva gives thanks to St Cuthbert.

It is with some relief that it is noted that no traps are triggered nor doom beheld as the item is taken up.

As there is still a desire to be gone as soon as possible before a certain werewolf's return (or the remnants of the Mogradjinn), the party reconvene back in the misty corridors of their last battle. It is not entirely safe there, there is a feeling, but the Moon Gardens have had oddities spotted too frequently of late and the tropical gardens require the frustrating sloth of the boat journey from the door.

All that needs to be decided now is whether to leave the doors opened, how exactly to leave and whether there is anything else here that should be explored or done before departing. The Wayfarer’s Gate is an option but then should the party return to Karnak? And to add to the options, Morin brings up the fact that the area he discovered whilst the rest of the party were in the enormous dragon room seemed to have potential treasure – and it is on the way out.

Morin and Suva (as before - taking no chances) remove the dice blocks from their respective positions and the door begins to slide slowly shut of its own accord, blue walls of energy filling the gaps in the corridor as it does.

Balin and Jiriki quickly head off to finish their cairn to Kord - most of the extra additions are already collected together in the Moon Gardens so barring any unforeseen problems, it should not take them long.

As this is a matter of divinity, it's also not worth persuading them out of it for the sake of haste. Anybody adventuring here in future will surely know that Balin and Jiriki have passed this way by their glorious wake!

With a little time to fill, then, Morin leads the way from the misty room (carefully avoiding the pit traps on the way out) back towards the room between the Oracle and the Wayfarer's Gate. Inside the small room where only dust and bones was glimpsed previously, Morin lifts a 2ft by 2ft trapdoor in the floor to reveal a rusty iron ladder descending down about 6 feet to a corridor which runs east, Morin explains, into a trapezoid room.

This is quickly confirmed as he descends the ladder, followed by Suva and Dalrylshana, providing light. At the entrance to the room, the edges of the corridor glow a pale green, shedding dim light back along the corridor and into the room beyond. In the room itself (no doors or other visible exits), obvious as it is approached, are three very large wooden chests, each with a padlock on the front.

The Illuminatus is revealing nothing else of interest, except that the padlocks seem to be invisibly marked with some symbol.

It is intriguing, certainly, but Suva, at least is impatient and merely wants to leave – none of this seems necessary.

This feeling is not yet shared by enough of the party; approaching the edge of the corridor, the green glow seems to be a source of mild, if eerie, illumination as much as anything - no bad feelings or barriers are encountered. Kin finds that magic is flooding the room - the glow, the chests. It's too blinding for any specific observations, except that the green glow perhaps contains a warding of sorts. Whatever it is, it is affecting none of the party as the they move forwards, Dalrylshana casting a spell upon herself, Suva fidgeting at the back and wanting to get going.

The chests are identical in every way, except for one small detail: each of the padlocks has a different symbol on it. The three symbols are, from left to right, a claw, an eye and a feathered wing. Symbols seen before and understood by now to be those of Yandroth (the claw), Mogria and Serestius (the eye and feather, although which is which is unknown), three ancient dragons.

Suva casts a spell to bless the area and give some warding in case of unwanted intrusions from undead. Morin cracks his fingers and then shrugs and gestures everybody to move back as he huddles over the middle chest, preparing to carefully open the lock with the eye symbol upon it. After a few minutes of trying, Morin stands up, hands on hips, looking at the lock and then turns to the party and indicates with a sour look that he can't open the lock.

A gesture with his hand also indicates that he figures the other locks to be of similarly difficult vein; the chests, it seems, will stay locked. It’s enough for Morin and he heads to the back of the party with Suva.

There is still interest from others and magic to try, though.

The keys Kin holds are very clearly far too large to fit the padlocks, so, having checked, Jarek hands them back and then allows Kin to work his magic. Focussing his energies on the chest with the claw-marked padlock, the mage weaves his spell and magically forces the opening of the lock. It clicks, audibly, and falls open - a fraction of a second later, there is a sound like approaching thunder which gathers to a swift climax and then ends in a whoooomp as an arc of white light bursts out from the chest.

Thankfully nobody is injured, but as dazzled eyes recover, the first thing of note is that all three chests are gone.

The wrong chest opened, perhaps? There seems little to do but get out and with perfect synchronicity, as Morin, ahead of the rest of the party, climbs out from the underground passage in the otherwise empty room, Balin and Jiriki appear in the corridor looking rather content, if mildly gore-covered from arranging trophies in honour of Kord. They are unscathed although there was disturbing movement in the Black Gardens, hints of it from beyond the translucent walls.

Morin is worried where the Wayfarer’s Gate may lead when the party is carrying the hilt – if Beryn was previously worried about a gem from the hilt being scried (which he was) then surely this would be the case with the hilt?

A frustrated need for a little more urgency forces the decisions and the party set off to join back up with Karnak again; first, though, the heads of the dragon statues are reset so that the door through to the mist-filled corridor is locked again. Dalrylshana has a brief look at the crystal sphere by the Wayfarer's Gate but nothing overly useful is gained: it is solidly fixed and magical but she neither touches it nor discovers any hidden detail with the Illuminatus.