The New Remnant

OK, I flipped everything around so that North is now UP and South is now DOWN.



This is what Arc (and Aizashi) see when they get to the top of the stairs.



They are at the top of the stairs, just to the south (where the "d" is shown for the north-east corner). It appears that the perimeter of the second* floor is just a long corridor around the entire floor, with open archways along the exterior walls mirroring the placements from the bottom floor. The interior walls also have open archways, but there are only two per wall, not four. In both corners you can see, there are also more stairs, but those go up, not down like the one you just came up. Presumably, there is a fourth set of stairs on the opposite corner of the building matching this one. As below, there are lots of cool architectural details present and it is in better condition that it probably should be, but it is pretty empty. You can see that it used to be used a lot as the corridor it obviously is, but that hasn't been for a long, long time.

And Arc was silent in his ascent.

"How's the upper-level looking, Arc and Aizashi? We're still trying to make sense of the story depicted in the statues, but this place is huge!"

Oliver runs around to check the remaining three alcoves, and tries not to miss any detail.

"We are in a long corridor running around the building..." Arc reports to the rest what he sees.

Then, to Aizashi "We should go back down. We can climb back latter, together, to inspect the other floor, but if enemies find our friends, we should be together." And so they go back to guard their end.

Stee will report back "No movement on the north side." He will reach down and give Wreak a good scratch between the ears.

yes, let us go back.

Which three alcoves? Didn't follow this exactly. In the downstairs room you are in, there is only one alcove with the two statues on the inner wall. On either side of it are two tapestries, not additional alcoves. Sorry if my explanation wasn't clear!

Oliver walks around the inner walls, trying to grasp any detail that he might have missed, and reporting any new scene depicted in the statues and carvings to his companions.

Quite Cords moves along with Oliver.

If I have followed everything correctly, the group is now back in the initial room you entered. You will need to figure out which direction you want to go explore.

The carvings and pictures described what I detailed earlier about these two individuals. Yes, the potentially "bad" reading is definitely possible and I wrote it that way on purpose. They were obviously great leaders that were celebrated and memorialized. Whether they were actually *good* is an open question you might never get an answer to. While those reliefs are extensive, that's all they contain. No secret hidden clues or discoveries to make with those. The tapestries start very high and reach all the way to the floor. They are very intricate, but they just seem to be patterns; no stories or hidden meanings. Oliver does notice that the tapestries don't seem to hang quite right, however.

So, where do you want to go? You have not heard or seen anything alarming yet, so you are not under any known time pressure.

Oliver talks into the communication device, while everyone is spread around the temple. "I reckon we need to make a choice."

By then he was close enough to most of his companions, so they could hear without the device.

"We either try to identify these scavengers and see what they're up to, or we go deeper into the temple, and explore it before them, to find out how this remnant came to be here. What do you say?"

I'm not keen on having scavengers at our back without knowing if they are hostile or not. If we go deeper in the temple we might get caught between two enemies. That just maybe paranoia talking but I can't imagine meeting friendly ancestors to the builders of the temple deeper in.

"Considering the damage that the Orcs made to get in this place. I highly expect they will not be friendly and we expose ourselves to them then you we had be ready Kill."

"Yeah, true, I think it might be best to..."

Progressively lowering his voice, Oliver stops mid sentence, and then tilts his head looking at the wall.

"Huh... The tapestries are hanging slightly funny there, are they not?"

"Aye. The orcs won't hesitate to attack if they catch wind of us."

Stee will pull some arrows and ready himself to shoot orcs. You're getting ready to taste orc Wreak. On guard."

Nothing pops out of the tapestry. Do you actually check it in any way?