"He did," Irmiel emerged from her inner conversation. She did not mean to withhold any information, just did not think it to be important at the moment. "Without specifics, though, just that "another party" exists and in alliance with drow. Also, revenge was mentioned as a worthy goal, but from which side - we did not discuss." She returned to the conversation at hand intending to ask about the number of patrols as well.

The voice in her head responds, again with a scoff, "PFFAA!! Physical manifestations?!  Ha, your basic theory is a mess and you have no background! Lloth forbid you spread any of this nonsense about!"  He goes quiet for a moment, "My name is Belaern Nirinath, of House Milarn. Ask your hairy friend how he supposes I am to relay any information here while sitting on your finger...without you telling it to someone on my behalf?  Hmmm?  I could know the whole poem and it would do me no good, so he can keep his clever bargains for someone else. Regardless, I'll not betray my kin and tell you anything about their patrols, so don't bother trying. Now, this poem.  Dwarven you say? I wonder if the portal leads to some place related to dwarves. What was the name of this poem?"

Stallock watches this exchange with a raised eyebrow and looks keenly at Irmiel's finger and the ring resting upon it.  He mutters, "I'm going to go keep watch from above..." and he heads up the stairs to the upper level to find a window to peer through.

It seems clear from your interactions so far that apparently the mind in this ring can "hear" what's going on around him.

Sistri makes it over to the cleared off spot, "Look - they called out 'IT IS AN AMBUSH' first. They would never add 'NOT THE SHADOVAR' if they were allied with them."  She tries to inspect the area as she talks, starting with seeing if the vines were cutback recently - or very recently.  "Let's negotiate with the ring later and see what we can do ourselves now. If we give it information, it has incentive to see us killed.  By it's compatriots at least.  When we're dead, the ring goes to the killers, and then they'll know whatever we revealed." 

(Survival, to know about the vines: 17; otherwise general Investigation of the area: 5)

"Oh, you can? That makes things easier. And ..." "Pleased to meet you" did not feel right in the current circumstances and Irmiel tried to come up with a better response to the late introduction. "glad to formally make your acquaintance." She chose to ignore Belaern's insinuation about her knowledge but there was something else she was curious about. "Guess even drow can care about each other, I understand. What about that "other party"? Sounds mighty if you decided to ally with those people."

He couldn’t agree more about Sistri words if he tried. The ring’s suggestion had the scent of a trap all over it. They try to talk to the other drow, have the ring taken and information lost. Terrible idea. This made he think if they would need to worry about what the dead wizard could sense from the jewelry. A question for later, he decided pulling a couple of polished stones of different colors from his bag.

“If his answer carries no new information for us then you can tell us about it another time, Irmiel. For now, if you could send your familiar to scout around, I would be grateful.” He sat at the floor, totem in one hand, stones between both palms. “For the next ten minutes I will look into the future.”

And by saying so he started to chant words long forgotten by most walking the world. It was the ancient tongue of the druids, one that did not worry about modern concepts like races or borders. With the eye of his mind the satyr saw a course of action. Staying on that place before searching for the scouting parties that drow in the ring mentioned. Passed the time of the ritual he shook the stones between his hands and rolled them in the ground.

Notes: Llwyd ritual casts Augury to see an omen about searching the area without going after the drow patrols Belaern mentioned.

That was also a good idea (talking on three fronts at once while searching the area was truly distracting, Irmiel was forgetting about the simplest things). Osrik took off and began his own patrolling around the tree house, watching out for drow or any other danger.

Osrik took flight into the forest to begin watching for patrols.  Everyone was pleased to hear that his initial sweep came up clear. Sistri examines the vines on the ground closely. It is not as if the small cleared patch was cleaned up. The vines don't appear to be cut. It's all too perfect. The slices too clean along a single line. She concludes that magic was involved. Either some sort of disintegration spell that just destroyed anything that was covering the ground here, or some other effect. Either way she figures it definitely wasn't done by hand. 

As Llwyd seeks an omen to guide the party the group pokes about the area. Stallock is on the upper floor which is perhaps more ruined than the first. A couple of head sized chunks of rock came in and destroyed parts of the roof. With holes in the roof, nature has taken a hand at reclaiming this tree home as its own. The room is full of leaves, the carpet rotted, the tiling chipped and covered in grime. Looters have also had a go at this place and furniture has been trashed and flipped over, and everything that can be pried open or apart has been wrecked. A quick search of the upper floor reveals nothing of particular value. The group returns downstairs as Llwyd completes his ritual. 

The Satyr stands up. A strange while film over his eyes seems to fade away as he focus' on the group.  The sense he has gotten is that taking more time at this place, regardless of the drow patrols that may or may not be prowling the forest, will likely have a positive result.

While Llwyd is reading their fortune, Kris piddles around the edge of the cleared space, thinking about the inscription.  "It can be a threat, a lament, or a promise of what is to come.  Perhaps it is only a trap, since the vines look to have been eradicated at the edges of this space.  If it is a trap, it is clearly guarding something."

Arcana: 25

The world became a distant memory as he connected deeper with nature. His mind repeating the same scenario of staying there, of searching there before looking for the enemy patrols. No thoughts, no reflections, just the mental image as he whispered the words of the spell with the naturality that one breaths. When the stones hit the ground he looked and felt. A good sensation, purely and simply.

“We can take more time.” He said rising to his feet as the others returned. “There are answers for us to find here and the dangers are not close.” The satyr retrieved the polished stones. “I say we not only keep examination on the area around, but search the corpses, look their camp and for a safe place to rest. We could make more than one fire around here, let them as bait and start preparing to weed the drow out before they have a chance to find us.”

They had defeated two patrols of dark elves. Maybe they could deal with the others one at the time. That is, if those patrols were real. There was always the chance that the wizard on the ring was lying to manipulate them. Either way more enemies would come. The escapee would make sure of that.

“I think I need a moment to catch my breath.” Llwyd said looking at the room. “Did you guys find something new?

Kris examined the area of the cut vines curiously. The words of her tutor came back to her suddenly. "Magic and the natural world are at odds. Of course I don't speak of the ways of the druids, or even of the holy clergy of the gods. No, I speak of arcane magic. Of course I am capable of using the weave, and so as your teacher I can tell you, the weave and the world are like two sides of a coin. When someone bends that weave to affect the world, they are changing it as no other way can. Perfection is a thing of the arcane. Perfect symmetry, straight lines, perfect squares...water with not a single imperfection, a piece of cloth with no sign of dirt or stain? These are not natural. The weave loves purity. Nature loves chaos."  Ug, she'd had no idea why her parents had been so obsessed with history and arcane studies...forcing her for summer after summer to sit in the study. But, for some reason, her mind dug this memory up for her, and now here she was. 

Regardless, as she looked at the surface beneath the vines, with the inscriptions, it was clear to her that magic was bound to this spot. It wasn't a trap, or a one-time thing. No, the way the engraving was done, the subtle symbols. The perfection of it all shouted magic....magic bound to this spot in some way.  

Arcana 10

Kris figures there must be some sort of permanent magic bound to this spot. To her, it looks a lot like the symbols and treatment she'd see in the scribing of a teleportation circle, except that this has a lot more complexity to it and seems bound with old elven magic. 

Kris draws her new rapier and draws shapes in the air, idly reflecting on some distant memory.

"Nature and arcane magic at odds..." she muses, staring at the square.  "The vines disappeared.  And these runes, drawn so perfectly, as though not even by mortal hand.  For of course finite mortality is a product of the natural world, while arcanery is infinite in nature...  There is magic here, latent and perpetual."  She studies the markings.  "These... These are teleportation runes!  Something of old, elvish make.  Could it be that whatever is placed in this spot is teleported to another place?"

Kris searches for a rock, a piece of wood, any piece of debris, and throws it onto the bare space.

She tosses the a small branch laying on the ground.  It lands in the spot with a crack....and remains there. It would seem if there was an effect, it's not active at the moment.

"I think we have to activate it somehow. That's the riddle," Sistri says.  "Maybe saying the lines of the poem?  If not the first lines, then maybe whatever comes after?"  She then tries reciting the poem while standing in the middle of it, "At the days of old there was only darkness far and wide."

Irmiel watched curiously for Sistri's manipulations. If the second sentence of the poem did not activate the portal she responded to Belaern's request. "Looks like you were right about the portal. And considering you will hear the poem anyway, why not now? Here you go." She closed her eyes and recited the translation (Dwarvish was not among the languages she knew, sadly).

Sistri saying the second line of the poem did nothing, so Irmiel continued.

"At the days of old there was only darkness far and wide.
And beasts ruled the void, as there was no need to hide.
The beasts, they laughed, giggled and formed their evil schemes,
entrapped and killed each other and madness reigned by all means."

A dim glow begins to form in the air above the clear circle on the floor.

"Yet at one faithful day in a world without time,
from far they could perceive a sound, a soft chime.

The chime grew louder and ripped them apart in a bright flood,
and before them came a being full of light and fun.
Soon they realized they were lost, t'was Armok, god of blood,
who caught them all no matter how far they would run."

What appears to be golden branches begin growing from the floor, reaching out in a wide oval shape, slowly growing up and around with each passing moment.

"He imprisoned them deep in his heart as his veins were filled with magma.
Yet their dark hearts corrupted his and he got filled with rage.
Out of his sad thoughts formed the deities to protect him from any dark age.
And as he cried tears full of water to keep them in he fell down to stay asleep.
And asleep he stayed for a long time as the eons passed."

The circle of golden branches is now complete, sparkling with ancient power.

"The deities formed the humans, the elves, the kobolds and us dwarves,
and all the other fairy creatures you on the land can see.
They lived in peace and harmony and held a party every day.
Yet they soon realized that 'tis not how it shall always be.

There were monsters coming onto the land coming from his dark dreams,
and oh they changed the world, raided city after city full of screams.
And in this chaos the beasts knew that his heart had cracks.
So they escaped to the world and enthralled their own packs."

Sparks of golden energy begin alighting in the center of the golden brand ring.

"'Tis the world how it is today and how it shall ever be and we can only hope,
that stands strong the halls of our fathers may, for ten thousand years."

The sparks stop....the branches seem to wither and fade and evaporate into nothing.

"Amazing!" Irmiel saw enough wanders of magic (especially of late) but every new one still managed to surprise. "It almost worked!" Result-wise, here was a big difference, though, between "almost" and "worked", so, she tried to put aside personal admiration (really, it felt like a miracle - the ancient text, the portal in the place abandoned centuries ago!) and concentrate on the opening the forest wonder.

"It's like the ending has to be rephrased or was different, to begin with." Her eyes suddenly opened wide. "Ooooh! I know! The note!" She recited the poem from the start but instead of "ten thousand years" said "twelve thousand years" at the end of it.

Irmiel tries again.

A dim glow begins to form in the air above the clear circle on the floor.  

Golden branches begin growing from the floor, reaching out in a wide oval shape, slowly growing up and around with each passing moment.

The circle of golden branches is now complete, sparkling with ancient power.

Sparks of golden energy begin alighting in the center of the golden brand ring.

Then as she completes the poem the golden sparks fill the center completely and the middle of the bramble hoop is filled with a shimmering golden fluid hovering vertically in the air.  It dips partially into the ground at the base, and fills the space that was bare.  The twig Sistri had tossed there is gone. 

"Great work!" Kris says to Sistri and Irmiel.  She peers into the portal, keeping a safe distance. "So, I guess we should... enter?"