Deeper Underdark

There are a total of 12 doors that leave the room, including the one you used to get in. As you search, you find that two of them are broken outright. One has one of the doors hanging askew; the other is just missing the doors entirely. In both cases, you can see that on the other side of the doorway is just a smooth vertical stone surface. The other ten appear to be intact (including the one you used).Brewner finds that there has been zero movement on the doors at all, with their handy work completely untouched. He is not hearing any movement or sounds on the other side of the door. He is quite sure of that. Stee, Ealdwig, and Oliver search the dead bodies and various stuff in the room. You find a total of 4 gp, 31 sp, and 83 cp lying about. Digging a little more, Ealdwig finds a very old looking coin purse. When he tries to open it, the material partially disintegrates, spill out the contents. There are 25 ancient coins. They are very odd, though, as they have golden centers with a silver rim around the centers.

In addition, they find a dozen relatively intact clay tablets and six scrolls that are in good condition. One of the scrolls appears to be in too good of condition. Finally, there is an amulet and a ring, both in surprisingly good condition. There are many other items scattered about, but these are the only ones that seem intact or of any likely value. Unfortunately, it will take an expert to see if these are of any value or possibly magic.

The morlocks bodies have nothing of value on them other than one knife each. While they fight with their fists and claws, they use the knives as tools for skinning and cutting and such. Their clothes are ... not desirable.

Felix and Grin check out the animals. Unfortunately, whether caged or not, they are likely doomed unless they can find a way to get them back up to the surface. All of them are hungry at this point, so freeing them all at once is asking for a small bloodbath.

Brewner is going to unlock the barred door and open it, does it lead to the place we where before? When Brewner opens the door is the any change in the lights on the circles?

The coins are just normal sized coins. They just are oddly made, with unknown script and imprints on them. They are probably from before the Shattering. You try to match them to the circles in the truant, but they don't match and don't trigger anything.Brewner removes the rope and crowbar, and tries to open the doors, but he can't. They are completely locked in place and won't budge. The lights on the circles doesn't change, and there are no flashes of lights at the doors.

The King says, These are likely magically controlled doors. They probably only open when active.

"Friends, I believe these doors are some kind of portal that needs to be activated somehow... the path that brought us here is blocked" Brewner says frowning at his discovery

Grin is bent on freeing a goat. He will not leave without a goat friend on a lead rope. He will feed one and free one. He will discuss what they can do for the other animals with Felix.

Hey, maybe there’s a portal to somewhere that’s safe for these animals?

Before freeing any goats, he walks over to the circles and grooves in the wall and pokes his fingers around in there.

As Grin recklessly poked the circles, nothing reacts. Likewise, jabbing at the longer groove under the circles provokes no reaction initially. However, when he touches the groove on the far left side, he finds that a blue light similar to the blue lights on the three circles on the left side of the triangle appears under his finger. He pulls his finger back quickly, but sees he took no harm, though the light quickly disappears. He touches the groove in the same spot and the blue light immediately reappears. He the slowly moves his finger to the right, and the light extends from the left side to under wherever his finger is. After playing with it for a couple seconds, he does a complete swipe.

The moment he finished the complete swipe, the light in the bar gets momentarily brighter, then returns to its initial intensity, but stays lit. Simultaneously, the circle in the middle of the bottom of the triangle lights up, while the three on the left side remain lit, giving a total of four circles that are lit up.

At the same time as Grin sees the momentary flash and the new circle light up, everyone else notices that some of the doors show a momentary flash between the double doors. (All of the doors are double-doors like the one they used to enter the room.) This includes the door Brewner has been examining.

One other thing: I failed to answer a question from earlier. It looks like five of the doors have had more activity in their little corridors. The two with broken doors and five others show no activity, to the point that they have been cluttered as they were apparently used to store stuff. Three more show some signs of activity. Then the one you came through shows recent activity, and the last one shows the most use.

Hey, the lights on these holes are changing! Hopper, you see any portals?! He’ll explain what he did to anyone who asks.

After Stee goes around checking if the ancient coins fit into the triangle, Ealdwig says, Oliver, let's grab the stuff we found and we can sort it later after we get out of here. Whadya think? With the help of Oliver he gather the items they found, very much including the ancient coins, and the current coins and pack them away.

Uh, oh. Oliver? What is Grin doing now?

I will move to the closest set of doors to me with activity that showed light and check to see if they are unlocked and I will try to move them a bit. And see if I can sense anything out of the ordinary

OK, this is a crude map of the cavern. Each of the little rectangles represents the side corridors that lead to a set of double doors. The circles and numbers are so we can identify each set of doors. So, before you begin, you know that door #8 is where you came in. It was the door you had barred, but that now Brewner has unbarred. Door #12 is the other passage way that shows the most use. It is the most "clean" due to having been used a lot, even more than door #8. Doors #5 and #11 are the broken doors. They obviously aren't going to work. As you experiment, you find that doors #3, #6, and #10 open to other locations. These had the unused, but uncluttered passageways. Doors #1, #2, #4, #7, and #9 had the cluttered passageways. When you open these doors, they simply show a smooth stone wall on the other side of the doors. Marker #0 shows where the triangle of circles and long groove are. (I'm gonna call it the control panel, since you have figured that part out now.)

As you check each of the doors, you do a quick open, then close of each one. In this particular case, the working doors (3, 6, 8, 10, 12) all open to cavern areas that don't seem to have anyone in them. Once the last of these has been closed, the crack between the doors of flashes a brief light and you can no longer open any of the doors. When you look back at the control panel, the long groove is no longer glowing. However, the four circles that had been lit before are still glowing.

At the end, the control panel looks something like this ...

Grin tells the others about this.

Well let's pick one door to open. Then Grin can do the slide thing and we go check out that area. I vote for one of the lesser used set of doors at first. That would be #3,#6, or #10.

Grin nods, abandons the controls and goes to free a goat.

Post roll- it didn’t work!

Oi, Felix - can you help me open this cage? This goat is going to be key in helping us make decisions here. Maybe we open all the doors and let the goat smell them and lead us to food - and freedom.

Ealdwig just watches everyone open and close doors and play with the "keypad". He considers the gem he received to use the matrix nodes. But if he remembers correctly, it was a one time use and he isn't sure if everyone wants to go back to the base yet. So he doesn't say anything. If our struggles prevail and we don't get anywhere, Ealdwig will mention it. At least it should get us out of here.

Ealdwig wonders around the space, are there any hidden doors or cubbyholes?

Grin didn't really need to roll to open the cage, but we'll go with it. Felix, confused on what stumped Grin, just opens it simply, letting the goat out.

Ealdwig finds no other doorways or cubbies. The area isn't perfectly oval, the passageways are all slightly different and have different lengths and angles. The "map" is just to give an idea of how the important stuff is arranged. However, these are all of the passageways and doors. It occurs to you that the only way in is through one of the magic doorways.