Randall:

Moving into the room, Randall looks down the staircase.  If he sees nothing of interest, he check the stairs for traps and starts heading down (passive perception 20).

Zenodor will follow Randall down the stairs (and remains invisible). From behind Randall, you hear the disembodied voice of Z grumbling "Curious. So much fuss over a room with crumbling statues. Let's hope it gets more interesting down there." [Disembodied voice as he's invisibible. If you have some feature to see invisibility, you just see him grumbling)

Randall:

”Ah, good idea,” says Randall, reaching into his pouch and getting some ungent for his eyes.  Casting a spell (True Seeing), his eyes focus on Zenodor, “This should help me to see anything hidden.”

Pepin follows aswell, hopefully ready for anything, not sure what to make of this place.

The stairs come down into a 30 by 30 room with bits of arcane writing on three of the walls, one of which has an iron banded, locked wooden door. The last wall has no writing but has a 2 foot by 2 foot metal hatch about 2 and a half feet from the ground.

Randall:

Waving the others down so they know it is clear to enter, Randall asks, “Can anyone make sense of these arcane writings?”

Pepin has a look but can't make much sense of them (rolled a 12 on Arcana in gamelog)

Zenodor looks at the arcane symbols and searches his memory in case he has come across something of this type before.

18 Arcana Check

From what you can gather it is either a fragment of spell or a magical formula of some kind. It is something that would normally be on a scroll or in a spellbook, not scrawled on a wall.

"The only thing I know is, that it's a weird location for such writings."

Looking back at the plinth, and the crumbling statue, "I suppose, time rules all eh?" Tempe, follows the group, down the stairs.   

Randall:

”So, do we try the hatch or the door?” asks Randall, sizing up both options.

"Let's start with the door" Pepin suggests "hatches are normally not the most likely course of action"

The door is an iron-banded, locked wooden door. Part of the arcane scrawl of formulae overlap onto the door.

Randall:

”This could be an arcane trap of some kind that triggers when the door is opened—or perhaps it was meant to seal something in and failed, now only showing up as a partial spell.  Regardless, if we open the door we should be careful and do it from a distance if possible,” suggests Randall.

Zenodor suggests: "Maybe we should start with the trapdoor? We can carefully lift it up and peek down. I agree with Randall, I think we should stay clear of that spell for the moment." 

The trapdoor it is, as Pepin moves towards it and slowly starts to open it.

As you open the hatch an orb of darkness appears to float into the room. It seems to be levitating and moves slowly toward the stairs, not reaching them this turn.

(Z has Devil's Sight: "You can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical, to a distance of 120 ft." His familiar Irraxan has the same but slightly differently worded "Devil's Sight. Magical darkness doesn't impede the imp's darkvision." Do either of them see anything inside the orb?)

Randall:

Looking uncertainly at the globe of darkness, Randall has a bad feeling about it, trying to remember any old stories he has heard about such items.

Arcana:  9

Religion:  20