[2] The Library & The Lighthouse

The steps themselves are fine, but your magehand is suddenly blown away by a deeply-resounding roar of subsonic force that sets your teeth on edge. It seems your instincts are at least partially right, but was it Fallowcrest or S'sylin? Where is he, anyway?

It happens again, so it seems to be something that's permanent - or at least quasi-permanent. You can't help but notice that it wasn't like this before you found the secret door.

The secret door is easy enough to find again. The question is, do you go through?

As S'sylin prepares to go down the passage, he hears the trap activate from the main room.

When Turchuk, Astrid and Verin step through, they have just enough time to see dank and musty stone walls with moss growing in the cracks and water seeping in gradually through the stone ceiling. Every ten feet or so, a bookshelf sits, full of tomes that are not only chained to the shelf, but also locked in the same way the front door was. One book that seems grander than the rest, sits open in the middle of the room on a pedestal. Gold fillagree and illumination cover the pages, but the finery is faked.

Then the air is filled with a mind-ripping cacophony.

After the trap quiets itself and there is a bit of calm, you're confronted with a small-to-middling sized room here with books all around, carefully placed on pedestals, and a long hallway leading off to the right. As S'sylin could tell you, it finally dead ends after about a hundred and a half feet or so at a T junction. From one branch of the junction comes the clunk of heavy machinery and from the other, the sparking of something electrical.

It's impossible, however, to take a step - unless you walk in S'sylin's already prepared footsteps - without disturbing the dust on the floor. Whatever is down here, it was clearly set up far in advance of your arrival.