D&D Gamer

No need to roll any knowledge on the pattern, it's purely decorative.

Door is the same as the ones you walked into the initial room, a bronze door with a ringed handle and an uncoloured Dumathoin symbol engraved on it.

If you try the handle, it'll move slightly but there is surprising resistance when you try and push the door open which moves only a small degree. You try and give it a bit more oomph, and it starts to give. Doing so, the slightly acrid smell starts to become more prominent. Evidently, something is amiss on the other side of the door and is consequently interfering with your efforts.

Thaddeus reckons a well placed kick or shoulder nudge to the door edge with the handle should do the trick.

There's something eating Thaddeus. A growing impatience that only rarely takes him.
As Dunbar encounters resistance with the door Thaddeus plants the boot and thrusts it open.

Str check

Not quite enough. The door shudders as your boot connects with the door with a loud dense "THUD" which creates a reverberating echo in the tunnel. It's stubbornly remaining closed. Nevertheless, the top of the door gives way a bit more, leaving more of a gap. The acrid smell is also becoming a lot more prominent.

The thought occurs to Thaddeus that perhaps both kicking at the same time could be enough.

"I feel a sense of urgency, friend Dunbar. Come, assist me."
He kicks again.

I'll roll str, you roll assist.



edit: feh, never mind.

"What the hells are these doors made of?" Thaddeus groans.

"Something has it seriously stuck." Dunbar says. He gives it another shove. "My guess is it has something to do with that smell."

STR:

ooc: Well, I suppose if we go at it long enough, it would qualify as a take 10 or take 20.

Series of Strength checks:

If that 15 doesn't go through, we'll have to take 20 and accept any potential consequences for the delay. Was kinda hoping to just blast it open on the first hit. XD Oh well. Them's the breaks.

OOC: Admittedly, I wanted to see you squirm just a little bit, being trapped in an enclosed space with a strange smell xD However, that 15 will do it. I was going to offer a take 10 which would also do (I checked your STR stats).

There's a snapping sound as metal tears from metal and the door eventually falls forward, landing on the ground with a loud CLANG that echoes in both the room and the corridor. The acrid smell washes over both of you like a wave, and you both recoil as your noses struggle to deal with this fresh infusion.

After taking a moment to cover your noses and peer into the room, in which some of the sconces in the room lights up, however various other ones fail to do so. The light sources that have remained intact are just enough to light up the room to give sufficient detail, although there are some shadows cast in the upper echelons of the ceiling. The room is same in shape, size and general layout, minus the large statue.

The scene that is illuminated before you is, for lack of a better phrase, a complete mess. In stark contrast to the pristine cleanliness of the first room (excluding the pillows), what you see is carnage.

There are burn marks covering more than 75% of the room, with the walls, pillars and ceilings being covered in black soot and scorch marks. What once may have been more paintings, are now severely scorched and damaged beyond recognition (aside from one on the far wall). In the floor nearby to the right, where a collapsed pillar lies, there's a deep crater that appears to be the epicentre of the damage due to largest concentration of scorch marks. The aforementioned pillar as brought down a bit of the ceiling, and it has fallen towards the middle of the room crushing one of the marble benches and the central feature (a small open top pillar) which lays askew and shattered. The other nearby marble bench has cracked into two. The two nearest pillars also appear to have cracks in them.

The sconces within the damaged area are melted and severely deformed, having dropped their glowing orbs to the ground long ago with glass fragments scattered. The chandelier at the top of the room is also extremely deformed, with a significant majority of it melted and singed and parts fallen off. Only a few glass orbs remain, albeit covered in soot.

There are two other doors, on the right of where you came in, on the immediate right two wall panels, both of which are also damaged. The bronze one (2 panels away) is somewhat melted, the details of the symbol of Dumathoin looking almost unrecognisable (think akin to Dali's Melting Clock). The marble one in between has a large amount of burn marks on it and looks to have a giant crack in it. The only part of the room that's remained relatively unscathed, the far wall from where you came, contains another painting depicting a battle of some kind (although a lot of the detail is hidden by burn marks).

The acrid smell appears to be a combination of the melted bronze, burnt walls and paintings, and the heavily burnt skeletal remains in the blast zone. Scattered around are what little remains of some sort of humanoid, which appears to have been at or near the centre of the explosion, along with what looks like the burnt remains of a small quadruped which is just on the cusp of the explosion.

The purpose of this room looks unclear given the extent of the damage.

Diagram (not to scale as I haphazardly did this and Paint isn't great):

Spoiler

Dunbar lets out a whistle as he takes in the sight of the carnage. Equal parts amazement and dismay. He casts another detect magic, and carefully peruses the room. He also carefully checks the bodies, trying to figure out what they might have been (size, shape, etc). "The wrath of Dumathoin? Or something else?" he ponders aloud.

"The other intruder, perhaps?" muses Thaddeus. "We'll have to ask Wemmer if he's missing one man and his... dog?" he says, peering at the quadruped remains.
"I admit, friend Dunbar, if there was some clue to warn that this passage was unsafe and the other was fine then I'm at a loss to discern what it might be. Unless his mistake was simply being not of Dwarven blood. Perhaps we should examine the other route to be sure?"

"I suspect this may be the other intruder." Dunbar says. "Though there were no indications that I saw of a four-legged friend in the front room. We can try that other door, but it was stuck. Or we can try these."

ooc - waiting for the results of the detect magic before proceeding elsewhere.

OOC: Not feeling super well, so will do an info dump tomorrow.

IC: Please roll me a flat Intelligence check for more information about the remains and the damage.

Thaddeus gestures to Dunbar with a sweep of his arm. A very clear, indication that he has no intention of going first, given the circumstances. XD

Int:

Not sure if you want int from me too so will just roll one.

Detect Magic:

The usual auras spring up (light sources, cracked marble door). The onyx crystal for said door is just behind you as you came in (in the 'corner' of the room). Room appears to be as you see it.

Intelligence:
Quickly discussing amongst yourselves, you cover the following points:
Given the scatter pattern and the damage, the unfortunate individual was standing right next to the explosion when it happened. What little remains of the humanoid is too badly damaged and scattered to even begin to guess what race it was. The quadruped remains yield more information, as the skull and overall structure looks cat-like which indicates the quadruped was some species of feline. Given the lack of footprints in the dust earlier, there are two suppositions that come to mind after a moment of thought (either it was already here (unlikely) or the mystery figure brought it in (more likely)). Could it have been a familiar, or just a pet the mystery individual brought on their travels?

The general characteristics of the crater look similar to the shallower crater at the entrance of this tomb, although the fact it's deeper means that the explosion must have been several degrees higher in intensity. Given the care and attention that has gone into the interior of this place (compared to the exterior), such wanton destruction seems odd. Possibly some other reason for it?

The small shattered pillar in the middle leads some information to the room's purpose, as it possibly held some sort of item or artifact to which the paintings in the room relate to. If so, it wouldn't be too far of a stretch to assume some sort of protection over the artifact, although what remains of the artifact is hard to tell from the rest of the rubble. If you look through the debris, roll me a spot check (you can take 10 or 20).

From what you've seen so far, the crater would look to be the most logical evidence in relation to said protection, except for the fact that it appears to have been behind the collapsed room pillar. Said pillar remains are outward of the explosion not inward, which could indicate a potential secondary source?

One silver (or I should say golden) lining in all of this is if the individual has perished here (and despite the potential artifact in this room destroyed), what remains further in looks to have remained undisturbed.

"Maybe we should search through the debris.." Dunbar suggests.

Take 20 would be 23. The first several would include the remainder of the detect magic spell.

My search ain't any better so go with that.
Haven't got any actual search ranks so can't even assist. XD

Thaddeus ponders, "So our friend here placed something on, or took something from the pillar? Didn't the thing in the entryway say something about offerings for Dumathoin? Perhaps his offering was insufficient."

"Hmm." Dunbar ponders the idea from Thaddeus as he searches. "Not sure if we're going to be able to tell. The crystal by where we came in should open the marble door. Other than that, I don't see any magic. If that was some sort of wizard, damn near anything could have happened here. I can't imagine anyone putting enough protection on something that it would destroy what it's protecting though."

It doesn't take you long to find a couple of things of interest amongst the rubble. You find a few pieces of broken ceramic pottery that aren't smashed to smithereens or stuck in melted gold. Wiping away the soot yields an earthy brown with a faint whirling pattern. It's hard to discern the full shape, although the parts you find (including part with a flat bottom and a part with a thin extension, indicate it could have been some sort of container.

The other thing you find is a spent Onyx gem, with it's classic Vantablack colour, stuck in a small bit of gold that's dropped from the chandelier. Evidently, part of the protection for whatever the container(?) was. It takes a moment but you are able to break it away from the small sprue of gold. You can roll me an appraise for it.

The though occurs you could try and salvage some of the melted gold, but a significant amount of it has melted to the floor and would take some effort to chip it away.

Dunbar puts the Onyx gem in his pocket for safekeeping. Someone on the guild may want to examine it.

He says to Thaddeus "If you want to salvage some of the gold, we can, but later. Bronze door or marble door?"

Appraise (not a class skill for him, but here it is anyway - add 2 if the gem qualifies as stone):

Thaddeus looks at the melted slag.
"I'm no metallurgist. How easy is it to separate the bronze from the gold?" he shrugs, "We'll worry about it later, if we're still alive to do so. I think old Hatheral's slung our nuts on the fire here, high risk, low reward."

He looks over the doors. "The crystal is still here for the marble one. Might as well try that first? I'm guessing our friend there chose bronze."

"I think he fussed with whatever was on the pedistal." Dunbar says. He locates the crystal, and peers into it to activate the marble door.

OOC: You have to touch the Onyx crystal not look into it.

IC: As your hand touches the crystal, the marble door struggles to move inward as the silence is permeated with loud cracking sounds as marble tears from marble. The cracked piece gets caught on something behind it and starts to fall outward into the room.

If you're standing within 2 feet of the door, please roll a Reflex saving throw.

ooc: Unless the crystal was within 2 feet of the door, Dunbar would not have been that close. It was fairly obvious from the crack that something like that would happen.