The First Expedition: The Alchemist's Vault

Earl dutifully and silently pads past the rotting, unbarred doors to the south. He darts down a wide stair that eventually descends beneath the onyx stone of the tower and into the limestone foundations of the World City. The drag marks scrape down the whole length of the stairs and further, into a wide entrance to the Pod Room, which he explored yesterday.

This cavernous room is overtaken by dense, thick-stalked plants that have crept across every inch of wall, floor, and ceiling. Dozens upon dozens of man-sized, fibrous pods hang from the plants like grotesque, oversized fruit, with dark shapes shifting and writhing within. They smell of over-ripe fruit and mould, and he can see the casings are starting to split. The air here is especially humid, and a thick, suffocating miasma clings to everything. Like yesterday, he notices clusters of pods which have split open and are empty.

At the front of the room, closer to Earl, the scrap lines lead to the guardian constructs, both the inert one shut down when that Trix removed its command card, and the one expedition destroyed. They are about 20 feet into the room. Six fungoid hoodlums are ripping apart the broken one, repurposing its metal shell and clockwork innards into scraps of armour for themselves. The inert construct watches dispassionately, its red eye searching.

In addition, Earl sees that the fungoids have repurposed the heavy bar from the doors above into a kind of swinging log trap, rigged up with segments of vines to the ceiling. It looks like it is designed to swing right into the doorway to hit anyone trying to attack from that entrance.

At the back of the room sits the idle repair construct that was trying to fix the wall before Trix snatched the copper command card from its chest. The ancient limestone bricks have since cracked even further, the mortar between which is hopelessly crumbling. Adding to the stress of age, the vines upon which the pods grow have punctured straight through the wall, and the stone bulges around those stalks.

Subeen ventures down the east passage, drawn by the faint, otherworldly glow radiating from the bottom of a short stair. At the bottom she discovers a doorway, but no door—only a shimmering blue barrier that thrums with arcane energy, its surface crackling softly. Just in front of the threshold lies a grisly remnant: the lower half of a skeleton, lying in front of the barrier, the top half seemingly disintegrated.

Through the barrier’s translucent haze, Subeen glimpses a library beyond—a room filled with bookshelves and reading desks, their edges softly lit by the barrier’s eerie glow. On the far wall, indistinct in the dim light, she spots what appear to be command cards, dangling from hooks. The symbols on them remain obscured, lost in the shadows and distance.

It appears the crackling barrier extends beyond the physical plane. As Trix attempts to make Earl reappear on the other side, the poor spirit instead impacts with the barrier. The blue arcane energy crackles violently and Earl disintegrated on contact! Not even dust remains of the gnome's familiar.

Like with Earl, the barrier prevents the mage hand from materializing beyond it.

Both the leg bone and the wind-up bird completely vaporize as soon as they move into contact with the glowing blue barrier. It seems as if this barrier can instantly destroy whatever it touches.