The Manor

Upon witnessing Ealdwig's killing stroke upon the mechanical beast, Blornvid shouts, "Way to go, lad! That'll show that stupid blue ball that size doesn't make a warrior." He's about to thank Skeeve for his quick thinking with the scroll, but he sees that his friend is kneeling over the motionless Edair. His smile evaporates as he charges over. Upon confirmation that Edair has fallen, he bows his head. Solemnly, he says, "Fare thee well, Edair."
"Aye. That seems to be the rule for this place. I thought we were being cautious after that training room, but Edair has fallen and Etcher has vanished." He pauses a moment to collect his thoughts. "Maybe this metallic scorpion knocked it over in haste." He stares at the dead contraption, reflecting. "A lot of valuable metal in that thing. And the magic to animate it is something else."

Ealdwig standing with the remainder of the group, compacts his acrobat pole and says quietly what do we do with Edair? We can't just leave him here.

Skeeve responds, "Well, we have a few choices. First is to indeed leave him here. It is quite likely we are the only intelligent people in the building, with everything else being some kind of automaton. The body should not be messed with while we are here, and we pick him up on our way out. Second is to proactively move him back to the entry room, figuring that even if we leave the building from a different room, the door should reappear and we can reach in and grab his body after we escape. Third, is to take his body back to the control room and see if the annoying blue dot will let us out since it's idiocy killed someone. At a minimum, I think taking it back to the entry room is a good idea."

Blornvid listens to Skeeve's suggestions. "If anything, putting Edair's body by the front door will serve as a proper warning for anyone foolish enough to enter this building unprepared."

OK, so we take Edair's body back to the front room, working around the pit. I was going to say that Skeeve uses Onyx magic to carry the body over the pit, but, heck, he might as well just use the magic for the whole trip, if it isn't too much!

Once we get him back to where the front door should be, Skeeve lets his inner mercenary show a little: He scans Edair's body for magic to see if he has any magic items. He figures anything major he finds is likely a loaned item, so he isn't planning on keeping it. But he isn't going to let it go to waste, either.

If the armor works for Ealdwig, he can use it if he wants to. We'll leave the rest by the body for when we can get out. We lay the body down respectfully for later retrieval.

Skeeve then says, "Do we go back to the control room to see if we can interrogate the blue light some more, or do we continue to dive in deeper?"

"I honestly don't know, Skeeve. I'm worried that the blue orb will just kick you and me to the next level of the training while Ealdwig will be forced to watch."

"Then let's delve deeper and see what we can find."

Unless Ealdwig objects, we head back to where the construct was destroyed, and then we go into the statue room and check it out.

Ealdwig, unsure how he is feeling about all this, doesn't say much. Never having people to worry or care about, all of this is new to him. He's never lost anyone before. And to loose someone during a "training" exercise has him, sad, upset and angry. He leaves Edair with armor and all his possessions intact. Maybe after we're clear and Edair is properly laid to rest he'll consider seeing if he has anything of use to him.

Not knowing how to act or caring where is best to go, he follows his new / only friends back into the house of horrors. Mumbling how do we kill that blue dot?

Skeeve pats Ealdwig on the shoulder and says, "Don't worry. Well get through this. We just have to figure out the puzzle it is presenting and beat it."

Back to the statue room, then! At least to the entryway to that room.

Oh hells! Let's go kill something!

"Well guys, any preference on the doors? If we go back to the door in the previous room, that would take us deeper into the building. If we take the west door in here, it would take us closer to the outside wall. Or, we can risk this magic iron door. Any preferences? I'm up for any of them."

"If we go through the stone door and something comes out of the iron door, then we're cut off if we need to escape. But the iron door has some magic aura about it, so I'm a bit leery of it. It's probably another 'training exercise' room." Blornvid sighs. "Let's go with the stone door."