Story I: The Rift

Given a minute or two of torching each section of the trough, Pyrrah eventually burns away the entirety of the strange sludge.

Forgive me. I had just awoken to an awful scent. Such could put many in a foul mood.

Now really, what smells... Like smoke, and sin?

Zubie departs momentarily, slipping through the doorway that opens into a long, dark hallway. He reemerges some time later, holding a squirming rat in one of his claws. He begins speaking Common in a scratchy, light tongue, "Hallway bends left. Big rubble blocking the way. Can squeeze past. Door behind it." He eyes the rat a moment; the small creature squeaks and squirms in his grasp. "Hallway is broken, like the one over there," he gestures to the western door briefly, "It starts to tilt further downward closer to the door." He seems to solely address Ameera, barely acknowledging the presence of anyone else in the room.

The door comes open and the party enters. The hallway here is broken and crumbling. The stones are chipped and crushed between one another as the weight of the land surrounding them seems to be pushing in ever so slightly. In certain areas the stones are missing, revealing a depth of rock and soil behind, with much of it spilled across the cobbled floors. The hallway bends left before long, and seems to take an uncomfortably steep descent after that. The slope here is not a natural part of the architecture, but rather it is likely a shifting of the structure within the ground. It is steep enough that caution must be taken to not lose balance. So long as you are not under pressure, you feel, it should not be an issue to stand upon.

Shortly down the slope, just 5 feet after the left-hand bend is a cave-in of sorts. The ceiling and right wall have collapsed and a large mass of stone and dirt have spilled into the hallway, nearly choking the entire space. The torchlight, however, shows the area that Zubie said one could "squeeze past," and he apparently meant those words literally. On the left side of the blockage, closer to the ceiling than the floor, is a small gap that looks like it would lead behind the cave-in. It is only perhaps two feet wide; three at most.