[1] The Lower Road

Underwater, S'sylin sees that this isn't just a pool, it's a waterway. Something natural must feed the system because it's clean - far cleaner than anything else down here. There's a current too, although just a soft one, leading off in the direction that you're pretty sure you were trying to go in the first place - but there's no telling how far you'd have to go underwater before you could surface again. You grab the key and resurface, climbing out of the water easily. That's three out of four keys here now. Where could that fourth key be? There's really only one place you haven't checked, mostly out of a sense of nose-preservation.

The corpse is only booby-trapped in that it's been dead just long enough for the gasses that are endemic to all troglodytes are starting to build up in the chest cavity, just waiting until either someone handles the body roughly or the skin gets too thin to hold it. Fortunately for you all, this trog hasn't been dead long enough to become truly deadly yet, so while there's some stink that comes with the search, it's nowhere near as bad as having a trog direct it at you deliberately.

A few unpleasant moments later, Astrid comes away with a key, the fourth one needed to complete the set. You take them all back to the door with the keyholes. While you're examining them as a set, you notice that the symbols on the bows of all four keys come together to make one glyph. Nevertheless, you can easily tell which hole each key goes into because of the shape of the key's stem. All that's left to do is to turn them - unless of course, you think there might be more at play here.

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DC 15 (Int) History check to interpret
DC 18 (Wis) Perception check to thoroughly check the door

When Astrid places the keys together, she sees that the glyph that the keys make is actually a compound glyph, a combination of the ancient drow for high-priest and for dragon. It's fairly well-known, at least in your quasi-archaeological circles, that the dragons were the ones who finally caused the end of the giants' dominance of this continent. Why would a giant - or more correctly a group of giants need a high-priest of the dragons? Or did some simply turn to worshipping those who they knew afterwards to be superior to them? You ponder this as Astrid examines the door.

It takes her a few minutes to determine that - just like the entrance to this place - the four keys need to be inserted and turned in a particular order. The clues are on the keys themselves, and following the directions on them is not difficult.

With the turning of the fourth key, somewhere behind the wall a gear turns and the massive doors snap loose from their lock. The door parts, but only slightly. The room is all in gloom, but as you push the door open to enter, something in the shadows... moves. Chains drag across the stone floor, and a long, low groan catches your ear.

S'sylin can see, and assumedly passes on to the others, that there is someone sitting on the dais on the far side of the room. The figure, a female, is chained with long, heavy chains, to both sides of the room. She can stand, which she's in the process of doing, but she cannot advance more than probably ten feet in front of the throne. She seems to some sort of... elf maybe? It's hard to say. She looks far older than she should be, especially since the doors been locked and there's no food down here.


"Wait... Don't go."

Her mouth opens and something rasps out of it, but it isn't even close to a full word. She creaks and coughs and finally manages one word, "Water..."