Shattered Star

"Awesome," Anastasia snorts. "Glad you're happy, Bennett, but we've got more important things to do right now."

Cade awkwardly clears his throat and hastily adjusts his glasses in response.  "Y-yes, well..." he stutters in embarrassment, "of-of course.  Lead the way, Miss Anastasia..."

Anastasia rolls her eyes. "Honestly, Bennett, I'm not trying to rain on your parade. By all means, be excited and geek out, but don't put the horse ahead of the cart."

"No... no, your remark has merit," Cade admits.  "These murals, while artistically significant, holds little relevance to our current situation.  Should we come across any ruins or remnants such as this, I shall refrain from my investigations unless absolutely necessary."

The group moves forward to the next room, where a ledge festooned with old bird nests looks out over a shaft dropping nearly two hundred feet to sea level below. A large coil of rope sits on the ground near the shaft, one end anchored to a large piton driven into a crack near the wall. Opposite the shaft is another ledge with a window looking out over Magnimar's harbor. The ceiling is a mere ten feet above, and crisscrossed by a complex tangle of stone arches that support the roof. Between the two ledges, a five-foot-square wooden platform hangs from four thick ropes that hang from the stone arches. The platform is further anchored by two thick ropes to spikes hammered into the walls near the edge of the western ledge, while another pair of ropes hang from the ceiling above, anchored to a hook driven into the wall near the same ledge.

Anastasia and Ali once again notice a passage forward, a trap door above the platform. Anastasia jumps up to scout ahead and emerges into a passage above. The walls along this short passage bear murals showing strangely dressed Thassilonian priests placing bodies into crypts. Several niches in the walls may have once been burial crypts themselves, but today, the hall is strewn with bones and the niches lay empty.

While scouting ahead, Anastasia finds a room laden with tripwires. Rolling her eyes at the amateurism, she takes a knife from her lockpicking set and starts steadily cutting through them.

The next room has one sleeping guard and one awake. The latter gets knocked out like a bitch, the former just gets knocked out.

With the girls dispatched, the group can take stock of the room. A hooded lantern sits on the lip of a fountain in the west wall. A tinkling rill of water runs from a demon-shaped mouth on the wall into the fountain. A bedroll and several bags of rations sit on the floor just to the north of the fountain.

As the group heads deeper they see a room to the right. The eastern wall of this room is buried under an ancient pile of rubble. Sitting near the entrance is a wooden crate and a dull gray amphora.

Ali takes the Amphora and the statuette hiding in the crate

After looting the contents of the room the group heads forward and finds a stairwell down to the next level. The group comes down into a well worn room with a few emptied containers. Anything useful has been thoroughly looted already.

Anastasia scouts ahead to the south and finds a rather large room. Two tables of planks and trestles have been set up in here, and a large alcove holds the ashes and soot stains of many recent fires, along with a stone statue of a beautiful woman wielding a ranseur. A hooded lantern burns atop one of the tables. Three tower girls are currently sitting at the tables.

The group manages to sneak to the room and get a surprise move in on the Tower Girls. However, the girls are quick and surround Ana as she rushes in. Ana gets cut pretty bad and has to heal herself. Ali and Cade team up on one of the girls and take her out, dead. The other two are also dispatched by Mel and Ana, knocked out.

After the fight, the group begins scouting the floor, finding several empty rooms and the stairs down to the next level. Eventually they do come to an occupied room. A dozen bedrolls occupy this large chamber, and a few pieces of crude wooden furniture have been set up between them, a couple of scavenged chairs, a bench, and a short table. Torches mounted on brackets in each wall burn merrily. Three tower girls stand in the room throwing breadcrumbs at two donkey rats.

After sneaking up on them, the party quickly and easily dispatches the tower girls and their rats. However, they're ambushed from the side by a wererat and her own rat minions (except for Cade who, as evidence of the existence of karmic balance, had already moved further in only to miss all of his spells). They too are quickly dispatched.

The group loots the bodies and the room before heading back to a door they had left behind earlier. Inside they can see several crates, barrels, and sacks stacked in an orderly fashion. Two donkey rats are presently rifling through a spilled sack of rye, consuming a lot of it. When the door opens they both shriek and begin running at the intruders.

One rat manages to find a gap in Ali's armor and bites the gnoll, but then Cade and Meliora move into position to respond. Cade fires off a ray of freezing ice and air to strike one rat, though it remains standing. Immediately after, though, Meliora's bow rings out with two twangs, and two arrows fly forth, each striking a rat and knocking it across the room, dead.

The group advances into a largely empty room. However, the eastern wall of this room depicts a fresco of a tall, redheaded woman with a ranseur standing over a short, hunch-backed man. The ranseur is impaled in the man's belly, and his twisted demonic hands clutch at the shaft as black smoke wafts up from his face and wounds.

Cade squints at the mural and adjusts his glasses, attempting to piece together fragments of trivia and history in his head.  The woman depicted in the painting looks just like the statue from earlier, and the depiction of the impish man feels unfamiliar.  "...So the woman must be the Runelord..." Cade mutters to himself as he nears the mural for closer inspection.  "The Runelord of Wrath..." he continues, glancing back to the corridor then back to the mural.  "...but then who--?"  All at once, Cade sees the missing link and his eyes widen in awe.  "--Alaznist!  This depicts the last known Runelord of Wrath, Alaznist!"  With that, Cade unpacks a few sheets of parchment, sets them against the cover of his spellbook and furiously begins taking notes.  "I've read depictions of her, but an actual portrait and statue depicting her likeness!  This is monumental!"  Looking up, Cade scans the mural again, but pauses when he sees the impish man.  "But then, who is the man?"  An eyebrow raised, Cade once again considers his research--and makes a startling discovery.

"This... th-this is," Cade stammers, his inkpen quietly clattering to the floor.  "Thybidos.  It's Thybidos!  Thybid--!"  Cade brings a hand up to his face and bites one his knuckles, restraining himself to a quiet squeal.  "This is depicting" Cade explains frantically, "the moment when Alaznist claims the title of Runelord from Thybidos!  We've found an actual depiction of Runelord Thybidos!  There's no records of his appearance and accomplishments aside from Alaznist's murder, none but this one!  A preserved version of his appearance!"  Turning back to the group, with stars in his eyes, Cade declares "This is a breakthrough in archaeology!  This mural alone holds an account of two Runelords of Wrath!"

Anastasia just raises a single eyebrow in Cade's direction.

"Wow, that's amazing!" Meliora says excitedly. "What else do you know about the Runelords of Wrath?"

Anastasia immediately turns the eyebrow in Meliora's direction.

"We can nerd out about nerd things later, for now we should move on to the lower floors" Ali grumbles.

Retrieving his inkpen, Cade replies "Only that they were unparalleled in their mastery of destruction.  Most accounts of them involve destruction and elemental chaos. However!" he interjects, raising a finger into the air.  "I believe that these works of art have given me a theory.  Consider," he proposes, "that these artworks are here as a monument to the previous occupants!  That the previous Runelord of Wrath built and commissioned them to furnish her newly-acquired base of operations with testaments to her achievements and accomplishments.  My theory, as of now, is that the Crow was occupied by none other than Runelord Alaznist!  Therefore, if such theory is correct, then it would be logical to assume that the Sihedron shard hidden herein once belonged to her!"  Finishing his notes, Cade determinedly adjusts his pack and pushes his glasses back onto the ridge of his nose.  "The Shard of Wrath!  That would be our quarry."

Mel nods excitedly. "Let's go then! We've got to find it before Flynt does!" she says, eagerly lifting her bow at the ready again.

The group heads down the stairs to the next floor. They exit into a hallway which heads directly into a large room. A massive pair of double doors dominates the western end of this spearhead-shaped chamber. These doors are made of a silvery metal decorated with images of burning eyes that look inward toward two sets of runes carved onto the face of each door. The walls bear the remains of complex mosaics that once cove red much of them, but which has crumbled and collapsed in heaps of colored tiles and debris around the edges of the room.

Upon the silver doors, Cade recognizes two sets of magicked runes flickering on their faces.  "These doors," Cade points out. "resemble the puzzle box from before.  Perhaps it is another arcane lock that can only be opened by rearranging the letters?"  Putting a finger to his chin, Cade squints at the door to read the inscriptions.  "'LISTEN' and 'THE EYES'," he reads.  "The door itself must have a clue as to what anagram these letters represent."  Seeing Meliora's confused look, Cade explains the puzzle box Sheila gave them the day before and how he managed to solve it by rearranging the letters to form a related word.

"Oh! Maybe this will work?" Meliora says, reaching out to rearrange the letters on the door. She pulls away, scalded by the extremely hot metal at first, but with a grimace, moves the letters to spell out SILENT and THEY SEE, casting a quick spell to get rid of the burns on her hands afterwards.