Fearing for the safety of the dig site, The Group™, or mostly Saramago, decided to build a palisade and bulwark around the entire area, including the few buildings of Bryce's Field. Shifting the work force from the dig to the acquisition of materials and building, it took only five days to erect the basic structure. And quite in the nick of time as the dig was attacked by a small band of goblins on that day.
The group showed their martial prowess by slaying most of the raiding party outright. The ranger-in-attendance flexed his bow string as well, shooting down the two fleeing survivors with ease. How will the goblin commanders react to this? Only time will tell.
Wanting to delve further into the unexplored portions of the ruins, The Group™ decided to send the cleric into Arunum to hire a small mercenary group to watch and defend the dig site. He returned four days later with a force of 10 men, hired at two gold per week each.
Free to descend the inviting blackness of the hidden stairway, The Group™ did just that. Only after minutes of walking into the depths and finding a large stone door flanked by magical pillars did Saramago realize they should have been on the lookout for hidden doors along the stair well. And so they ascended the stairs again, this time under the power of spells to ferret out such things. They were rewarded with a colossal waste of time.
Back at the stone door at the bottom of the stairs, the wizard and cleric pondered over the meanings of the sigils carved into the otherwise mirror-smooth surface of the stone door. A battery of spells and attempts to decipher the markings gave them no clue as to their meaning. Only when the cleric ran his hands over the sigils and saw them light up did the wizard realize the same four symbols from the doors in the gallery above were hidden in the sixteen different markings on this door.
After applying the same order of activation to the new door, it slid silently upward into the ceiling, revealing a room beyond. In the dim light of the much discussed wizard's light spell, The Group™ could make out a small raised dais and four stone figures in plate armor holding long flag-adorned spears at attention. Across the oddly shaped room was another door quite like the one they had just come through.
As they attempted to cross the room, they were halted by an invisible wall. Finding no way around, they decided to examine the two statues situated on their side of the wall. The wizard and cleric only found that carved stone can be sharp while the keen-eyed ranger spotted a fine seem at the wrist of one statue. Further examination of the other revealed a matching seem. In a rare moment of deductive reasoning, they attempted to twist the spear hand of each figure simultaneously and thusly the invisible wall was no more.
Making their way across the room, they found the opposite door to be devoid of any sigils, while the pillars on either side radiated strong transmutation magic exactly as the entry pillars had. Nothing adorned the door save a small horizontal indentation.
How will The Group™ defeat this new puzzle? Is there truth to the rumors of howling coming from the bowels of the broken temple at night? And what might be going on above ground while they explore? These questions and more may be answered in our next episode of The Group™ Stumbles Blindly On.
Journal excerpt Saramago
This place is quickly becoming a task to keep. Recent rumors of a hobgoblin/goblin raiding parties nearby prompted us to fortify the ruins by diverting all the workers to defense. Now, we have a basic wooden fort with earthen bulwarks and archery towers. A small raiding party attacked one night before the gates and towers were completed but we held them off. Hiring a small mercenary company to guard the fort ruins for the remaining two months of workmen contracts enabled us to continue to explore the ruins and the source of the blood curdling screams that are heard from the depths at night.
Finding the great stair, forgetting to detect secret doors along its length, more doors with what is now considered a symbolic language of whoever these ancients were. Opening doors so far proves to be simply supplying the same symbols, and the high level transmutation on the pillars associated with each door seems to only account for the doors sliding upward into the ceiling.
The final room has yet more statues but the hands with spears move and their is a force barrier in the room blocking the other side. Moving the spears allowed us access to the new door but there are no symbols this time.
Time to ponder again.
And so, having completed many small endeavors, the slapshod group of adventurers have successfully set up a command center in the town of Bryce's Field. Where the small town once only served as a stopover on the foot journey from Arunum to the north and Riverwatch to the south, it now housed numberless laborers from nearby villages and Arunum itself, hired to excavate the ruins of an ancient civilization which the group had stumbled upon in their very first foray out of the city.
Found buried under a great hill to the west of the town, great progress had now been made, exposing the entire upper once-domed galleries of the ruin. But some of the laborers are growing fearful of rumors of distant howling and noises coming from inside the ruin at night. No confirmed reports have surfaced though, and the noises are dismissed by most as a ghost story hoax.
The stories of the past exploits of the adventuring group are murky at best. Some suggest the current group involved with the excavation isn't the original group at all. The people of Bryce's Field either feign ignorance or are actually ignorant of such a situation if it occurred.
The four seem an unlikely group. The two human rangers seem diametrical opposites; one an accomplished archer with dubious inclinations; the other a stealthy axe wielder claiming to trace his heritage back to an elf three generations past. The dwarven cleric stands out the most, dressed in holy regalia of Maexa, Goddess of Crafting and his beard often littered with gem shavings. The fourth is a non-descript mage of some talent. Most laborers and townsfolk avoid him, his look dour and often mumbling to himself or grinning at nothing at all. Though the five mage guilds are well-known, he doesn't appear to be a member of any of them.
Having previously explored a good portion of the upper galleries and the lower levels of the ruin, the group now stands poised at the entrance of what may be an even deeper level of the complex, once hidden in a grand statue of a winged humanoid with thin and sharp but subtle features. Will they descend deeper into the blackness or will they strike out west, where a group of goblins and hobgoblins are rumored to have taken up with plans of their own for the newly discovered ruins...
