Chapter 1: The Knaves Visit the Spudfields

Gasping and wheezing, Elius Wax retreats out of the room, only stopping when his eyes and lungs no longer burn from the noxious fumes...

Once Watters has the stopper back in the bottle, the noxious fumes dissipate rapidly. The stuff is dangerous in an enclosed space, and eyes are still watering as the four explorers recover.

Elius is breathing hard, and there are flecks of blood on his lips as he gestures northward, to the alcoves and the shadows beyond. "Should we continue?" he croaks, grabbing one of the green-burning candelabras off the nearby table.

The dungeon -- for what else could it be called at this stage? -- again has that deafening silence, that eerie stillness as the foursome moves up the hallway to the north, carefully. The lights, carried now by Watters and Wax, drive back the shadows, sending them scuttling to the corners of the place.

At the end of the hall, as the passage turns to the right, they see that the three dark but open alcoves are burials -- interments in the wall. Each holds what looks like the shrouded and perhaps mummified remains of a human-sized figure. Down the eastern passage, torch and candlelight reveals a set of steps leading down into darkness on the right, the passage turning to the south after fifty feet or so, and most arresting of all, a huge stone head set into the north wall in a large alcove. It is flanked on either side by the now familiar candelabras, has been carved from some strange, pale yellow stone shot through with veins of green. It's two fist-sized eyes appear to be made of smoky glass... glass perhaps containing some swirling liquid or gas?

Watters' footfalls are soft as she approaches the massive head that's set into the north wall, and additional light brightens the room when she lights the eerie green-burning candles to the left and the right of the strange and impassive stone face. The material is unknown to the woman, pale yellow and smooth, but it is heavily veined with a network of green material that might be jade or tourmaline. Set into the thing's eye sockets are fist-sized spheres that appear to be made of glass; within those eyes, there is a murk that seems to shift and swirl of its own accord. Now that she is closer, the woman can also see that the lower part of the face might be hinged. Is the mouth meant to open?

Some distance from Audree, Clomm inspects the rest of the room more carefully now that the lighting is brighter. At his side, Wax holds his torch aloft as well, fully revealing steps that traverse down into the dark, and that end in a landing just at the edge of the adventurer's illumination.

Audree keeps her touch light as her fingers move across the face of cold stone, and she finds that she cannot open the mouth despite there being a seam and evidence of some kind of jaw-hinge. The glass eyes she can touch directly, and believes might pry loose with a little persuasion.

Clomm assumes the position, pointing his iron staff towards the face, eyeless infant's head-first. And then -- and then he does feel a tremor of power, of energy... in the room, in the staff, in him!

Wax, Watters, and Endrei all watch in surprise as the mouth on the huge and impassive stone face opens with the sound of stone on stone, yawning before the raised staff that the knave wields. In the thing's open lower jaw, a pair of small, purple gemstones twinkle, shining in the torchlight...