Prologue - Death House

Taniwha moves like a shadow out front of the group, he stops upon Amalthea‘s enquiring to rest. He examines the area and says, "I am good to carry on."

Amalthea shivers a little at the darkness and remembers the strange creature they encountered earlier.

"Whelp, let's move on then. This particular area is giving me the creeps."

She readies her shield and warhammer, taking the rear guard.

Narissa nods her consent to move forward, keeping up her mage hand to help look for traps. She stays close to the people near her, the feeling of… unease making her very glad she’s not alone.

Without further ado, the party descends down into the shadowy depths below even this subterranean dungeon. The walls hug your shoulders as you move deeper and deeper, and the chanting grows louder until it feels like you're right on top of the source of the voices. After some twists and turns, the stairway opens up onto a wide hall (about 20x15 ft). Like in all the rooms, the walls are carved earth and timber supports hold up the ceiling every 5 feet. The walls are also full of niches containing weird curiosities: a mummified goblin's hand, a folded cloak made of ghoul skin, a dried frog lashed to a stick, a shrunken halfling's head, and more oddities.

After taking in this weird sight, the next thing that hits you is the thunderous chanting: countless voices, all in unison, saying, "He is the Ancient. He is the Land." The chanting seems to come from the very walls of this chamber as it soaks into your skulls, as if the words are being spoken with foul breath right beside your ears.

In the south wall of this chamber are two passages. One turns sharply west into darkness, while the other slopes sharply downwards into murky, ankle-deep water floating with refuse, mud, and dead leaves. The flooded passage ends at a rusty portcullis. In order to see past the portcullis, one would have to step carefully down into the water.

Narissa's hand, while still affected—or perhaps infected—by the evil of this place, detects no traps along the floor.

Amalthea covers her ears with the echoing of the chanting. She is curious about what is in the niches, but walks down to the sharp turn in the darkness to see what is further beyond.

Still happy to lead Taniwha moves slowly towards the t-junction as he visually examines the trinkets within the walls. Turning down the tunnel which ends in water and portcullis Taniwha stops a few feet short of the waters edge, he takes his spear and tests the waters . . .

Amalthea peers down the hall and comes to another bend. Beyond this one is a narrow, five-foot hall lined with prison cells. The cells are doorless, being little more than alcoves with manacles hammered into the stone walls. In one of the middle cells, Amalthea finds a dusty skeleton in a tattered black robe.

Taniwha eyes the relics. The full list contains: a mummified goblin hand, a knife carved from human bone, a dagger with a rat's skull set into the pommel, a varnished green orb with a black slit pupil, a bone aspergillum, a cloak of pale ghoul skin, a desiccated frog lashed to a stick, a bag of bat guano, a hag's bony finger, a wooden miniature figurine of a mummy, an iron pendant with a leering devil face, and a shrunken halfling head. While he doesn't have proficiency in Arcana, Taniwha feels like some of these objects may be quietly magical in nature or be used as components in spells.

The water is harmless albeit dirty. Taniwha can begin to see beyond the portcullis with his darkvision. On the inner wall of the room beyond, just out of reach, is the wheel to raise and lower the portcullis. The room itself is cavernous, and Taniwha's darkvision fails to reach the other side. What he sees are impressions of a huge temple-like space with marble pillars surrounding a central dais.

"My mage hand could open the portcullis, but it might be loud." Narissa whispers to Tamiwha.

If Amalthea can do so stealthily, she whispers back to the group what she has seen, then she tiptoes further in to take a closer look at the dusty skeleton. She keeps her shield up as she has been trained to do.

Taniwha stops poking the ground and squats down as he peers into the darkness. "I’m not sure if we should go that way. Not keen on walking waist deep in dark waters. Maybe we check out the other way." He answers to Narissa‘s question. He will stand and check out the dagger with rat’s skull for traps before removing from it’s cubby hole.