March Week Four

 Welcome friends! This week we delve into rooms of danger and delight. step carefully or you might fall prey to a dastardly trap or two. The rewards, you will find, are equal to the challenge. Jewelry, magic, and secrets galore await those brave enough to plum these depths. read on to see a room of undersea beauty hiding dangers galore, a room of treasures and transporters, and a trap that preys on the very thing that brings adventurers into the darkness in the first place... 

Week Four

3/20: The Fountain Room

This large 65’ by 45’ room houses an ornately-sculpted fountain. The peeling paint on the walls in here is made to resemble an underwater scene. There is a U-shaped white marble half wall that separates the large fountain in the center of the room from the wall around it. The half wall is delicately carved to resemble corals and sea plants, giving the room the look of an underwater garden. There are two pools set in the floor, a larger one in the west which drains into a smaller pool to the east. There are 3d20 gold coins scattered between the two pools. Two great green marble statues of sea nymphs stand on either side of the two pools. The air here has a sour note to it.

• North: A heavy iron door hangs on this wall. Above it, the inscription “He who holds the Pearl shall guide the way.”  has been carved. The corridor beyond the door is covered in green tiles sculpted to look like the scales of a snake. It glows a spectral green. Halfway down the corridor a floor tile is glazed with a coiled serpent instead. (See room 3/22 for further details.)
• East: The heavy brass door on this wall has been cast with scenes of frolicking dolphins on the inside and scenes of sharks devouring people on the outside.
• West: Behind the marble screen that rings the room on this side is a secret door. Next to the door, a frolicking starfish with lots of wear on it can be rotated until the sound of stones grinding between the walls can be heard. When the noise stops, the hidden door is revealed.
• The Fountain and Sculptures: Though the waters here may look crystal clear and potable, they are in fact a powerful acid. The acid deals 2d6 damage to anyone who touches it. The acid will corrode any organic matter it encounters, fully consuming a body in 24 hours and leaving only metal behind.

3/21: The Teleporter Room

This 25’ by 30’ room can be found at the end of a small hallway hidden by a secret door. The ceilings here are only 10’ tall, and the walls are of roughly hewn stone. At the back of the room, a large magic circle has been fashioned on the floor next to a metal box with a number of glowing gem-colored protrusions and odd handles. In the southern end of the room, a heavy wooden chest with a built-in lock sits, waiting for someone to open it.

• South: The entrance to this room is guarded by a stout wooden door banded in iron staves with a heavy brass lock on either side. The key in room 3/13 will open this door.
• The Chest: This heavy mahogany chest has been enchanted against physical harm. The built-in lock is not only gorgeously fashioned out of brass, iron, and copper elements, but hides a concealed needle trap. If the key from room 3/14 isn’t used to open this lock, the needle will pop out from the lock and stab the hand of the opener (take 1d8 damage and succeed at a Poison save or fall unconscious for ten minutes. Inside the chest is a sack of 700 gold coins stamped with the face of Oxyus, two gold and silver armlets studded with grape bunches of emerald, ruby, and jade (650 gp each), a Luck Stone, and 2 jars of Restorative Ointment. 
• The Teleporter: This odd contraption resembles the teleportation pads in rooms 2/8 and 2/11. Similarly, with the right combinations of button presses and lever pulls a person can successfully teleport to any other pad in the dungeon. There is a degraded and weathered panel on the front of the control surface that shows directions to six different rooms, although only three are still legible. Those rooms are 2/8, 2/11, and 4/11.

3/22: The Research Library

This room is a simple 30’ square and appears to be some sort of arcane study. The room contains an L-shaped desk with chairs on either side and two bookshelves. The desk is strewn about with moldering papers, a large brass orrery, a verdigris-crusted astrolabe, ancient star charts, a cracked glass mirror, and what seem to have been various plum bobs. The books on the bookshelves are mold-ridden and ancient.

• North: Behind the desk and to the left of the bookshelf, a secret door is hidden. A switch hidden under the desk reveals and unlocks the door. A corridor beyond leads to another secret door, although it looks like a normal stone door from this side.
• South: There is a 55’ long hallway that leads to this room from the south. A locked heavy iron door blocks entrance into room 3/22 from this direction. The key from room 3/13 opens this door. Above each of the doorways, the inscription “He who holds the Pearl shall guide the way.” has been carved. The floor of the hallway is covered in green tiles sculpted to look like the scales of a snake, but halfway down the corridor a floor tile is glazed with a coiled serpent on it instead. It glows a spectral green.  The floor is scattered with a trace of sand. Anyone who steps onto the coiled serpent tile without the key from room 3/13 will magically activate a trap! As soon as someone steps across the tile without the key, the doors at both ends of the corridor will slam shut and lock. Once this happens, stone grates slide open and sand starts pouring into the corridor. It will take twenty minutes for the sand to fully fill the chamber and smother anybody inside alive. After the first ten minutes though the volume of sand in the corridor will become great enough to hamper efforts to escape.
• East: A 30’ long hallway once connected this room with another hallway to the east, but it has been completely filled with sand at some point. Sand has managed to burst through the heavy metal door on the eastern side of the room and pools around the doorway.
• Bookshelves: The bookshelves in this room are filled with mostly rotten and molding book remnants. Diligent searchers will find a scroll of Wizard’s Lock and Locate Object.

3/23: The Greed Trap

This room is another 30’ square, but it has a 20’ long hallway leading to it from the west. This room is filled with corpses. In the northeastern corner there is a pile of rags and the disarticulated bones of three people. In the northwest corner a long-ago mummified corpse of a human in rusted chainmail is sprawled, and in the western corridor the mostly rotten body of a Goblin slumps against the wall. In the south of the room is an open treasure chest containing a drawstring bag filled with coins. The smell of rotting flesh is pungent in the air here.

• East: A simple wooden door leads out of this room to the east.
• West: At the end of the 20’ long hallway leading from the room is a simple wooden door.
• The Chest: This entire room is a devilish trap meant to prey on an intruder’s greed. The chest originally contained four bags of 50 silver coins each that had been stamped with the face of the wizard Oxyus on one side and a serpent’s eye on the other. This treasure is cursed to never leave the room. Anybody who tries to leave (whether on foot or by magic) while in possession of even a single coin will find themselves re-entering the room from the opposite side. Outside of disenchanting the coinage, there is no way for someone to leave with it. The treasure can now be found spread out among the corpses (see entry below), save for a single untouched sack of 50 coins that still occupies the chest.
• The Corpses: Three bags of special coins from the chest in this room can be found among the piles of ancient bones and rags, along with three golden finger rings (55 gp each) and two onyx-studded silver bracelets (100 gp each). The body in the northwestern corner has been here long enough to desiccate. The corpse has seven special coins in their pocket and a sack with ten iron pitons in it. The corpse of the Goblin is bloated and smelly. It is clutching a single special coin.

3/24: The Armory

This room is 45’ long by 40’ wide and made of roughly cut stones. A pile of crates and three large cabinets occupy the southern side of the room. Rags, half-eaten food, rat droppings, and all manner of debris has been scattered on the floor in here. The stench of human sweat and rat shit permeates the air. The shine of beady rat eyes can be seen glinting from the edges of the torch light.

• North: This wall bears a stout wooden door that appears to be stuck. Behind the door, a corridor leads to an impressive colonnaded hallway running east to west. 
• West: A 20’ long hallway running east to west connects this room to a perpendicular corridor that runs south. The door between these halls is made of battered wood and has been painted red.
• Crates and Cabinets: There are all manner of preserved foodstuffs and daily necessities in the barrels and crates. Each cabinet holds an assortment of old weapons. There is a cabinet filled with short swords, a cabinet filled with axes, and a cabinet filled with spears.
• Guards: The room is guarded by 3 Wererats hiding in their Giant Rat form, alongside 1d4 regular Giant Rats, and two groups of 2d6 Rats each that take commands from their Wererat masters. The Wererats prefer to hide at the edge of the light and will only engage in combat if supplies are being stolen from the room. A rat will be sent to alert Warrik in room 3/19 if PCs tarry here.

3/25: The Torture Room

This 40’ square room is fashioned from dressed stones with a hand-sized brass grate in the center of it. This place bears the marks of torture. A large torture rack occupies the northern end of the room, and stool, a bloody table, and a pail full of rusted torture implements make up the rest of the room’s contents. Blood stains everything in this room, and the coppery smell of it permeates the air.

• East: A purple wooden door on the east wall connects this room to a 55’ long hallway leading to room 3/4.
• West: The western wall contains another purple door. This one is stone and shows signs of being hacked at. Beyond the door the corridor extends west for 25’ and then turns south and continues for 40’ before it intersects an east/west hallway. At this T-junction a tripwire has been carefully laid across the east/west passageway on the western side, cutting off the eastern side of the corridor from the western side. If the tripwire is pulled, a cleverly-rigged rockfall will topple down on the square marked T, dealing 2d4 damage to the person who triggered the trap.

3/26: The Chapel of Saint Hyrax

This long 50’ by 25’ room has been cut with precision. Half-columns line the north and south walls every ten feet, and the ceiling here is carved to look like bird feathers. At the eastern end of the room a black basalt altar slab lays waiting. Between it and the entrance are rows of pews. Atop the altar, bone divination sticks, a bloody brass bowl, and a fist-sized carnelian carved into the likeness of a phoenix can be found. Behind the altar, a fresco has been painted on the wall in bright reflective paint depicting a human woman with black floor-length hair wearing pink and orange robes. She wields a staff topped with a carved phoenix. The woman stands before the Sphinx Beoshasalam, guardian of the Temple Beyond Time. This is a famed scene depicting the life of the legendary sorcerer Saint Hyrax the Inscrutable, a saint of Zaltus Embri the Phoenix God of Magic.

• East: The fresco behind the altar hides a secret door. A careful search of the painting will reveal that the phoenix atop the Saint’s staff is a push button. This button will unlock and open the secret door.
• West: There is a door on the western wall made of stone and carved with a scene of a phoenix rising from the ashes.
• The Altar: The basalt altar stone has been carved in repeating geometric patterns of squares and triangles. Atop its surface, the words “Zaltus Embri hear my call, rise now from the ash’s fall. Now awakened, bloom in fire. Bind your will to my desire.” have been carved. The carnelian phoenix carving itself is worth 400 gp.