This is a hidden robing chamber. The walls are covered with runes and frescoes of snakes doing highly unpleasant things.
You try to climb back up the pit, but the wall is too sheer and too slippery.
You pull the lever. Nothing happens.
You find a depression in the floor. The iron lid is still open above it, attached to the floor by a huge hinge. The depression is filled with bones and shedded snake skins, but nothing of value.
There is a round metal plate, ten feet in diameter, set into the floor here. You try to lift it to look underneath, but can't get it to budge.
This body still has a few scraps of armor on it. This poor soul was a soldier of Exile. All valuables have been taken away.
There are several sleeping pads in this cavern, along with piles of slith gear and personal effects.
A lot of trash has been thrown into this cavern, forming an ever deeper and filthier morass the farther north you look. It's disgusting.
A bunch of human bodies, much abused and decayed, have been thrown into this cave.
The dresser was trapped. When you open it, a cloud of poisonous gas pours out, choking you. Inside are a bunch of religious vestments and dried snake skins, valuable to the sliths but useless to you.
It's a book on various magical items. Reading it is interesting, but doesn't help you very much.
The book is a learned tome written in human tongue (probably stolen) on magical items. Reading it, your item lore skill increases.
The portcullis slides open before you.
You are at the entrance to a small, grim temple, a much smaller cousin to the grim monstrosity below. The air is heavy with the smell of foul incense and lizard.
The voice booms "Those are not a valid coordinates! Begone!" You back away from the portal before something hurts you.
This is some sort of holding cell for creatures used in the mage's experiments. The cold, hard stone is bare, but for a small pile of filthy bedding. The smell makes you gag. The mages are clearly unkind (at best) to their experimentees.
When you enter, a demon steps out of the teleporter. He sees you and laughs! Then, more hellspawn appear around him and attack.
This room is remarkable and ancient. It is a library, old and dusty, filled with books, a rarity in Exile. Most of them are clearly from the surface world, but some were laboriously created down here. They're all esoteric and all magical.
You recognize this room - this is the chamber the Vahnatai portal sent you to. The portal is still there, waiting for your return.
This is very unsettling - the mages have stored a bunch of captive creatures here, in bare, rank smelling cells. The creatures, feral and hungry, watch you from their cells.
Odd. This book is blank. You flip through it. Well, mainly blank. Someone wrote inside the back cover: 'Owa Tah Ful.'
You very quickly become lost in the book's theological twists and turns. Your head hurts and you get bored. You leave it.
This is a meditation room, and clearly a very guarded and sacred one. It's also very plain - the only furnishings are a small chair and a tome on a pedestal.
This room contains gardening supplies and tools.
You awake well rested. You are brought a reasonable breakfast by a humble and silent apprentice. After you take advantage of the bath drawn for you, you're ready and rarin' to go out and get beat up again.
You search through the mage's desk, and find nothing of value.
You search through the mage's dresser, and find nothing of value.
The guards look you over, and then let you pass.
The guards stop and question you as you try to enter. When they find you don't have Magi clearance, they refuse to let you in. You have little choice but to obey.
Sparks fly off of the portal as you move towards it. Waves of force fly out, trying to push you back. Eventually, however, you struggle in and through, to find yourself ...
The central chamber glows and crackles with power, all of it emanating from a huge glowing portal, twice your height, dominating the room.
This is a narrow passage looping around a central room of black stone. Protective runes fill the corridor, and the air crackles with energy. It's exciting, but it doesn't feel entirely safe - it's no wonder the mages don't spend much time in here.
This is one of the spartan sleeping chambers for the students of the Tower. A pallet and a sack for their meager possessions are all they seem to be granted. It's an ascetic life.
The wide passage is blocked here but a huge, crackling energy barrier. It was obviously created by beings of great power.
There is a desiccated Vahnatai corpse here, carefully laid out and unimaginably old. You respectfully step around it.
When you get close to the barrier it fades away.
You try to pass through the barrier, but as soon as you get close, the magical wall swells and surges, stronger than before. The heat forces you back.
You try to find a way through or around the barrier, but no luck. It's just too powerful.
When you approach the barrier, a tunnel opens through it in front of you. You could pass through single-file.
You have a good rest.
One day has passed. One day remains to catch up with the Vahnatai.
You suddenly receive a magical, mental message. You see a vivid image of the Vahnatai, their hiding place discovered, fighting a large human force. They are doing great damage, but they are clearly doomed. You will have to enter the ziggurat on your own.
The two days are almost up. You had best hurry if you are going to catch up with the Vahnatai force.
The last stragglers are leaving the fort. The attack is well under way.
The cabinet contains a roster of the fort's forces. It doesn't have many Vahnatai, but they are all highly skilled, and many have magical talent. It is clearly a force to be reckoned with.
The fort is still there, but operating on a skeleton crew. The remaining guards peek out warily, hoping an attack doesn't come.
The Vahnatai nod, and return to their preparing.
You pass through the gate of the fortress, and are greeted with many looks of distrust and hatred barely held in check. You cannot avoid the feeling that the orders you carry are the only thing keeping you alive.
This room is in the process of being converted from a chamber with Vahnatai sleeping coffins to another barracks. The are several of the large blue crystals to the west, most of them empty and being dismantled.
Delrin-Bok's crystal shatters. His spirit rises up from it, freed, and then dissipates. Hopefully, his tragic tale has now come to an end.
Done.
You enter the alcove and see a large lever. However, before you can reach for it, you hear a loud cracking noise. You turn and see that the stone has fallen from the statues behind you, revealing tall, vacant looking, and heavily armed figures...
When you open the cabinet, a large, delicate crystal ewer falls out. You try to catch it but it slips through your fingers, crashing into a million delicate pieces on the floor below. Several small glowing beings fly away from it, and then disappear...
The walls to your right and left glow oddly as you walk by. However, they don't harm you. You get past.
Suddenly, bolts of fire and lightning begin arcing across the hallway in front of you! Fortunately, you leap back in time to avoid getting more than minor burns on your face and arms.
You look behind the pillar and find written: "Goosenargh hates the word 'fish.'"
You hear screeching laughter behind you. "Surprise!" the creatures about to try to kill you shout gleefully!
You carefully enter this, the highest room in the dome. There is a huge brass throne nearby, but nobody sits in it. In fact, the whole place seems rather empty.
You don't feel like stepping here. You move back.
You start feeling very sleepy.
When you get close, you see that there is a sheet of paper wedged between this bed and the wall. You read it - "Look at the outside wall to the northwest. When you go, stay close to the wall."
As you start to leave, your head clears. The rank smell of the dome wakes you up quickly.
How pleasant! Someone has placed a rather nice bedroom here! Six cozy looking beds line the walls of the room, and a highly relaxing lilac smell fills the room.
You've never experienced a smell as bad as this. This pen is the home of the dome's hordlings, the lowest and filthiest of demonkind. This is where they spend their time, thinking evil thoughts and wallowing in their own sick.
There is the much-abused corpse of a Vahnatai here. Everything of value has been stripped from it.
This is a round stairway, climbing in the clockwise direction.
Most of note are a series of rooms circling around the wall of the dome, each at the top of a spire of stone, each higher that the one behind it. The lowest is at the northwest end of the done, and the highest is at the southeast.
You stand at the entrance to a huge, basalt dome, lit by glowing veins in the stone above you. Inside, the smell of sulphur and the distant howls of the damned make you feel somewhat faint.
You find that the filth here is actually not too deep. Clearing away a little bit of it, you notice that there is writing on the floor underneath. It says: "Search the northeast bed."
Cringing and wincing, you dig through the indescribable pile of filth. You find nothing of use. You also feel rather ill...
You look at the device in amazement - it's a magical teaching crystal! You can't help but wonder what marvelous knowledge is buried deep within the stone, waiting for someone who knows how to let it out.
You look at the words, and some of them make sense. They are clearly describing some sort of ritual. However, your magical knowledge isn't sufficient to decipher them.
The doors set into this black wall are huge, steel, and entirely without handle or latch. Whatever spell or ritual opens them, you don't know it.
You walk though a small gate set into the fence.
This ancient room is all that is left of whatever ruins this fort was built over. Dust hangs heavy in the air, and coats the ground in a smooth, undisturbed sheet.
This is a practice area. Interestingly, not all of the wooden weapons are Vahnatai. There are mock-ups of human weapons as well.
This is a food storeroom. There are enough provisions stocked here to maintain this fort through a long siege. Some of the food even looks good for humans...
You all bend forward, and read the words as they pass. You miss most of them, but after a while, they start to repeat and you can try again. After a few passes, they make sense. You now know the spell "Wall of Blades."
You have to look twice to believe what you're seeing. Human furniture, human clothing, human food over on the tables, human weapons and art on the wall. But what are humans doing with the Vahnatai?
You try first picking the lock, then smashing it. Neither approach affects it. Probably magical.
The key you found in Avit unlocks the door. You can open it now.
This is a narrow, graceful, natural stone bridge, arcing over the chasm here. The pit below inspires a rich sensation of vertigo.
This cabinet contains Vahnatai magical paraphernalia. None of it makes any sense, let alone seems valuable to you.
This must be where the seemingly endless supply of mages and priests in this place do their training and work. You see a large crystal surrounded by chairs - must be a Vahnatai thing. There's also the traditional pentagram.
There is a statue of a mighty Vahnatai warrior here, the same warrior depicted at the other end of the room. You look for signs of who this mighty figure might be, but find none. The statues, however, seem very old.
You find a variety of papers, some written in human, some in Vahnatai, mainly records of the goings-on in the fort. There is nothing, however, addressed from the Vahnatai to the humans or vise versa, and definitely nothing about the Crystal Souls.
To the south is a chasm, miles deep. To the north is a cliff, which stretches upwards and curves outward over the chasm. Above you, you see thick stone walls set into the cliff face. Someone has created a considerable fortress here.
