Chapter One: Bones and Ashes

Jathus moves into the hallway to begin looking and spots two hidden doors. He opens the first and peers in.

This room’s walls, floor, and ceiling are caked with a thick layer of dark soot and ash. A five-foot-wide, two-foot-tall slab of red stone stands in the middle of the room, its top etched with the image of a seven-pointed star. Surrounding it stand five more slabs of red stone. These red pylons and the central stone are curiously devoid of any ash or soot, and occasionally seem to shimmer with faint fiery energy.

There are also three piles of ash and bone in various parts of the room. It seems that some people were in here when an explosion went off.

Catacombs Map

There is definitely magic in this room. Powerful magic. Upon closer inspection, the glow coming from the pylons seems to be coming from thousands upon thousands of glowing Thassilonian runes. It's impossible to know for sure what they mean as a whole, but further research is probably warranted when time permits.

Catacombs Map

Perf's cursory inspection gives him a near-instantaneous headache, but he presses on despite the dull ache in his head. The runes are woven together in a manner so complex that he can scarcely understand the most rudimentary aspects of it. He catches a lot of mentions of fire and some sort of trigger. One possibility is that it's a weapon of some type, which is consistent with the damage you see in here and down the hall outside of the room.

The tunnel to the west is collapsed, barring your efforts to explore more deeply into this complex, but there is yet one door remaining that you haven't explored.

The walls of this room are adorned with unsettling carvings in an eerie-looking alphabet. To the east sits an even more unsettling sight—a five-foot-wide egg or plant bulb carved from dark green stone. Stony tentacles or roots radiate out from the sides of the egg, making it appear to be clinging to the eastern side of the room.Catacombs Map

Winona recognizes that this room is a shrine to the qlippoth* lord Yamasoth. The carvings on the walls are prayers to this foul entity in Chthonian.Both Winona and Perf notice small fissures around the edges of the egg-thing in the room, which could likely be used to open it.

Catacombs Map

Catacombs Map