alhoon wrote:At Benn's words Raen turns to the archivist. "Really? Such a thing in my homeland? Did you kill it?"
Giving a sigh, Raen shakes his head. "Very well" He says. "It's not that I have been such a useful "archmage" today."
He moves to the trapdoor. "Kat, be ready please. You too friend... "
And he opens it.
STORAGE ROOM
The mage opens the trap door, taking no special precautions but showing evident wariness...
A puff of pink-brown dust rises a foot or so above the gap as Raen jerks upright and hops backward to avoid being dosed again by the strange mold-like growth in the cellar. It seems to settle or dissipate quickly.
The door falls into an open position.
Alain and Kat, move ahead a bit so that they can peer in without getting too close.
Many tiny stalks quiver and squirm in the layer of reddish-brown mold that coats the three chests and covers a good part of the floor, but otherwise nothing appears to move down there in the shallow underground chamber.
Alain attempts to burn away the weird fungus-like organism with flames from his hands.
He sees that his spell charred a strip of unvarnished wood along the bottom of the trapdoor but did no harm at all to the infestation in the cellar. The stuff's not even discolored by the flame-gout.
Conjured acid, though,
works very well indeed. Using up more of his remaining store of magic power, Alain scours the cellar as best he may without entering it.
Kat double checks the space with a light.
No moldy stuff she can see...
After waiting a little while for the acid splashes to do their work, Kat steps down into the cellar, ducking her head to avoid bumping it.
Crouching, face covered with her makeshift cloak, she examines the chests. What mold remains, mostly on the farther sides of the three chests, shrivels as acid drips down onto it from the lids. The hardwood panels hiss and sizzle. Even the heavy brass furniture shows pitting and discoloration. A sharp, unpleasant odor fills the air, reaching her nose through the damp cloth pressed over it.
But there are no spore clouds that she can see.
All three chests appear to be locked.
The keys the party recovered, which open the cells, do not open these chests.
PART TWO:
Kat opens the locks on two of the chests, but the third lock is stuck fast.
She tries forcing the third chest, but even with help from the others and with the minor corrosion from acid, the lid will not budge.
Solid carpentry!
This job might require an ax.
In the two chests she did pop open, Kat finds:
1)
a waterproof oilskin liner that folds over the items stacked within the chest
a clay jug filled with loose, granular steel-blue stuff
a little tin box containing what look like the 'tinder-twigs' alchemists back home sometimes sell
four tubular, hollow things of bright-colored paper, each about a foot long, with conical caps and vanes that combine to give a somewhat arrow-like appearance
a brown glass jug containing silvery-white powder
six phials, each filled with a different hue of fine metallic particles
2)
eight bottles of spirituous liquors, labelled
a bolt of green silk
an ornately carved wooden puzzle-box/trick case---
Kat, adept at working with such mechanisms, gets it open and uncovers a stack of thin ivory plaques inside, like cards or tiles used for some sort of board/table game.