DCC DotSK: Act 1-3

Peering at the floor in the torchlight, Ty unfortunately sees many tracks, though they are faint. They go deeper into the tomb, they go down one set of stairs and up again. They look to descend that second set of steps... it looks to the elf like the beast was all over, perhaps pacing, looking for a way out.

"There is a malevolence here ... " Aldric whispers to his fellow tomb robbers. Under Pelagia’s spell, his vision is drowned in an eerie undertow, letting him glimpse the spiritual depths below. The writhing aura in that pit churns his gut like a squall on open waters. He swallows hard, knuckles white around his oar. "The pit is inhabited by something foul," he manages, voice tight, "and there’s worse deeper within the tomb. Best keep moving!"

The thief assumes that burials would be in the lower chambers. He takes his torch halfway down the first flight of stairs and then stops to look and listen.

Creeping down the damp stairs, Dufgal reaches the landing and peeks around the corner -- to see the stairs descending further and then leveling out into a short passage that extends to the edge of his torchlight. It's a narrow stone passage, perhaps five feet wide, and it looks like there might be a door at the end, on the right.

Ty tries to trace the path that the animal tracks make across the floor, but soon concludes that it's hopeless. The marks cross one another and seem to take every passage; there's no way of knowing where the creature came from, or went to.

"Whatever was-- or is-- down here, ran all about. I can't tell where it came from." The elf's weird eyes, with their absence of white, narrow upon the passage directly ahead. "We haven't much daylight left to us. We should see what we can of this level, and then head back."

This last he says with raised voice for the benefit of the thief, who has taken their light down the nearest stairs.

Peeking around the corner, the thief does his best stealthing thus far in his career. He assumes the party is impressed and very happy with his initiative to go scout out ahead.

Without the flickering torch to play havoc with his otherworldly, strange sight, Ty sees something else on the damp, packed earthen floor. Boot prints, several pairs of them... leading towards the edge of the sloping pit. Peering, he sees perhaps more -- a scuffle? Steps back and forth, to the side, and then... they disappear. Did their owners slide down and through the opening in the bottom?

---

His senses bristling, nose twitching and arse itching, Dufgal sees something on the ground as well -- in the passage ahead, leading to or perhaps from the doorway at the end.

Bloodstains, and plenty of them.

His itching arse has always been a true guide. Dufgal feels it squinch and he knows that he must return to the rest of the crew with the description of what lies below. He backs up half the stairs and then turns to climb the remainder and finds Anora where he left her. He whispers, "I’se stumbled on a gruesome scene down there. Blood errywheres. Made my ar… uh…. Made me afeared. Best we’se stay up ‘ere."

"Other humans have been in here as well," Ty declares. For who else could it have been? The chance of another elf having come to this place is vanishingly small.

Ty takes a few steps back toward the room with the pit. He swings a spread palm through the air, as if he can feel the impressions left by those boots in the slime that glistens on the slope before him. "There was some struggle. Down there, closer to the pit. I think they went in."

The elf ponders a moment, then adds, "Unless they closed that round stone door behind them-- and why would they?-- then they must have come in another way." And, perhaps, whatever made all of the animal tracks went out the same way.

Aldric has seen Dufgal gut a man with a knife, so he knows he's not squeamish by any measure. The thought of what gruesome scene made him afeared sends shivers up his spine.

"Onward, then," he whispers. "Deeper."

Forward, the group goes, quietly, into the deeper recesses of the foul-smelling tomb. They leave the stairs on the right where Dufgal spotted the blood and likely a door leading beneath the first room (C3), then the torch is held high as they pass the second set of stairs, these on the left. They lead to some circular chamber (CIRCULAR CHAMBER), but to see more the quartet would need to descend those shallow stairs.

They pass another passageway on the right, this one leading, perhaps, to some partially collapsed catacomb (C6).

Finally, continuing on to the north, they come upon an antechamber (C7). Tall slabs of stone support the high ceiling here. Three long steps descend to the floor of the antechamber, while two hammered bronze braziers resting before a towering stone door at the far side of the chamber. That door is carved with hundreds of spiraling runes, spinning into infinity. Inscribed above the portal is the image of an enormous wolf being crushed to death by a giant snake.

The floor is covered by what appears to be thousands of thin, translucent strips of vellum. To their horror, the explorers realize the crackling dried strips are the discarded skins of an untold number of serpents!

"Why didn’t the serpent guardian not keep the beast within this place? It would have kept us out, if not for Aldric, but surely its intended purpose is to keep the dog in!" Anora says, as she looks about the snake-encrusted door.

"There will be unpleasantness wherever we choose to go. Do we want to open doors while we are at it?" Anora says, wondering if they ought to push on, or explore the extent of the place without releasing anything else!

Aldric's voice is a panicked whisper as he delivers a warning to the others. He wasn’t sure whether it was a boon to see all the dangers in the dark or a curse. A typical Pelagian blessing, he surmised. Bitch Queen indeed!

"Not so loud, Anora the Blue! Something utterly vile lurks in that circular chamber we passed... and now, in this chamber, Pelagia’s sight senses a threat above, in the vaulted ceiling…"

He gestures at the high ceiling. "Raise the torch! Let’s see what horror lurks above."He concurs with Anora that the doors merit an inspection, but as to opening them, he does not yet know. Perhaps after they had sorted out the dangers, he would have a firmer opinion.

Dried snakeskins crackle underfoot as Aldric lifts the torch towards the ceiling -- which he sees is the inside of a semi-circular, packed earth and stone dome. The top of the thing is no more than a dozen feet in the air, but it's a higher ceiling than anywhere else they have seen in the tomb. Nothing lurks up there that the priest can see, and nor does his blessing from Pelagia pull his senses upwards. Rather it tells the cleric to turn around, and as he does his stomach lurches. Perhaps there is a small amount of pee.

There are rotten, fragmented remains of something wooden on the ground... perhaps from the collapse of some age-old wooden structure? It might have been attached to the wall via a series of now empty bored holes that are evident. Once a ladder, perhaps? It would make sense, given that the man also sees a crawlspace of some kind above the door's lintel. It is that strange orifice that gives the man pause. Two feet high and as wide as the doorway, that black, drafty space is from whence the sensation of evil emanates...

Tyravasiel slips into the chamber, doing his best not to step on the tangle of snakeskin littering the floor. Still, the crispy leavings rustle and whisper wherever his slide-step brushes a piece with ankle or calf. It's as if the ghost of their maker haunts this place, hissing a spectral warning.

The elf glances back at the crawlspace where, as Aldric has suggested, danger lurks. Then he studies the door, with its spiral runes and carved lintel.

"The serpent was a guardian spirit for these barbarians," Ty muses, his voice pitched low and soft. "Look at the iconography here, and consider the shape of the tomb itself. Recall the water sprite we passed at the entrance." He swallows, then finishes, "And there are these skins."

If the snake is opposed to the wolf, then perhaps it is not-- or at least, not necessarily-- their enemy.

Ty contemplates the door from several paces away. How would the primitive humans have opened such a huge portal?

Stepping lightfootedly, Ty comes to stand before the large, stone doors in the north as Aldric frowns at that black crawlspace behind them, just above the room entrance.

These ancient, spiral-rune-covered doors are strange. There are no visible hinges, handles, knockers, or any of the supporting structural elements one would expect to see if they were to slide to the side, rumbled upwards, or swing outwards. They reach the ceiling at the north edge of the room -- making the pair eight feet tall or more.

Perhaps they can be pushed open?

The floor in this space is stone; tracks and prints do not linger.

"Nothing good ever comes from a hole like that," Aldric mutters*, eyes locked on the dark slit above the door, Pelagia's sight worrying him endlessly.

His fingers twitch, instinctively searching for something—anything—to block the opening before something slithers free. But there’s nothing. The damp, crumbling detritus around him is useless, too slow to gather, too loud to pile up. His robe? Not nearly enough.

He voices his unease, hoping someone else has a solution. If not, there’s no choice but to press forward. He steps inside, careful, deliberate. He keeps his gaze flicking between the room and the opening above, breath tight in his chest, waiting—because sooner or later, he expects something to emerge.

Once he reaches the door, he examines the runes in case they are familiar to a Witness like himself. But he knows he's stalling. They came here for a reason, and they'd best get on with it!

"Shall we open them, then?" he whispers to his companions. If all seems innocuous, he presses against the heavy stone door to test if they can be pushed open.

---

* - His lucky sign is Traps, and luck modifier is negative!

The grooved, highly carved stone is cold as Aldric's fingertips explore it. The doors seem unyielding until the man applies a good amount of pressure -- then they give, moving suddenly. It's less than the length of a thumbnail, that motion, but there is an audible clunk behind the doors -- which go no further. If the priest had to guess, he would say they were set into the earth, and not designed to open!

A few more sounds come to the group as they listen, and watch... it is almost like they can chase across the ceiling with their eyes the slightly mechanical sounds of pulleys and switches... until there is a final click and scrape that comes from the crawlspace.