The Necessity of Travel

Irwin begins his prayer. One by one, the skeletons turn to dust, collapsing one at a time into nothingness. Being prepared is good, but being done is better. That's the old saying that comes back to your mind as you realize far too late that one of the skeletons was holding it's spear up at an odd angle, wedged into the corner of a slab of stone. As it turns to dust, the spear drops, and the slab of stone slides shut behind you, sealing you in the now-empty tomb. Perhaps there's another way out.

Irwin searches, but to no avail. Nothing really seems to mark any one of the three passageways available as being any better a choice than any other. And so you take the first of the three, heading in the direction you believe to be north.

The passage narrows until you're forced to proceed single file, but you eventually come out into a room that's lit by a small hole in the cavern's roof, far above. The hole looks to be no more than a foot across, and its positioned in the very center of the ceiling. It is probably not there on accident, for the dim shaft of light falls directly on a statue of a voluptuous naked woman, all at once regal, sensual, and grotesque. Something about the curves is wrong, but you're hard pressed to say what exactly it could be. It stands nearly twice as large as life, hip cocked to one side, arms outstretched, and balanced in those arms is a sword, very similarly shaped to the ones held by the less-armored warriors in the previous room.

Opposite the statue there is another passage.

"I think I recognize her.." She closely examines the statue and nods to herself. "That's right now I remember..."

Tatianna spouts lore...

The two of you remember different stories, but both center around the same woman - naked in both stories. In one, she is the mother of the older races - mythical races as far as everyone you know is concerned. In the story, she was the goddess who became the willing vessel when the gods wished to create life. All the peoples of the world came forth from her loins. The story gets darker after, as many of the people turned on each other, causing the woman to hide herself away from the world that she'd helped create.

In the other, she was is a murderer on a grand scale, a goddess of wanton war and destruction, decimating populations that no longer pleased her, and prayed to by every army to preserve them and bring her wrath on the other side. She carried monsters within her loins that would burst forth on those that failed to curry her favor.