<In any event...>

An impatient roar emanates from beyond the door at the end of the hall, "Kelek! Where is that blasted cake?!" The voice is quite loud, not quite human, and somewhat feminine.

Correction: the door at the top of the spiral staircase is not locked, <the description refers to the one on the lower floor that opens to the room with the dragon. I mosread this.> there is an opening to the adjacent hall. <Sorry for the oversight.> 

Said hall contains 5 doors along its lenght (4 to the left, one to the right) and one more at the end (right). The hall ends at a curved wall to the left. None of these doors bear hart or lion symbols. 

Further, the door at the top, which you opened with no difficulty, opens onto...

A balcony overlooking an open rectangular courtyard beneath the twilit sky. It has no visible floor; instead, a vortex of dark clouds churns below. A marble tower rising from the maelstrom is encircled by seven turrets. Four stone staircases extend from the outer areas of the palace to the tower, each one part of a buttress that spans the void and stabilizes the tower.

*one is the staircase I mentioned in #6979

Trisk will enter onto the balcony and say, "Hmm, four stone bridges lead to the tower Tesservett, what do you think about checking it out?"

Taking a moment to judge the distance between the balcony and the nearest stone bridge Trisk will cast Major Image to create the illusion of a smaller connecting bridge between the two and then right after use Illusory Reality to make it real for a minute and cross over to the actual real bridge.

"Hurry Tesservett, it will only last a minute."

(Ooc in theory it is a musical version of 

Ascending rhe stairs, Triskellion arruves at the northwestern turret. An enameled green coffer rests on a wrought-iron pedestal in the middle of the room. The coffer contains a faintly glowing, plum-sized jewel of green crystal.

Psi mind (Gem Dragonborn)

<@Drain and @Uriel are probably also either in thst balcony Trisk made a bridge from to tje stairs or they might be exploring the hallway with all those other doors, in light of the correction I had to make.>

@Brian_Avery: the stairs you climbed using a spwll and an ability are the same ones you passed in the hallway, requiring no resources to access. Do you want to retxin and say you just walked up there earlier, did whatever you do here, rhen walked back down?  If so, yiu coukd instead use the hridge to reach the hole in the central tower. (I may have only described this to one player earlier and missed describing it in your view ttom the balcony)

Part of the central tower wall has exploded outward, and its stony fragments are hanging in the air as though time around them has stopped. Among the debris, suspended above the stormy vortex, is an armored knight with a sword in one hand and a shield on his other arm. He looks like he was thrown backward through the exploding wall before being frozen in place.

The bridge you made could extend right past thus knight and reach the hole in the tower

< I'm just gonna go ahead and green light that I'm not removing agency. I'm just facilitating>

[Roll]1d24-1[/roll]

< I'm just gonna go ahead and green light that I'm not removing agency. I'm just facilitating>

0 

(Sorry, i looked a the updated picture and assumed the pool was the blown hole in the wall that I had seen from above - my mistake for not reading description carefully enough.)

Drain:

At this point Drain will make like he is going to enter this door to the room with the pool, however he will pause as he begins to enter and look back to Uriel.  "Should we join the little one?  I feel we are spread thin here and should stay together."

(OOC: Fair enough, I completely agree, I would think 30-60 feet, after that, they would just hear the music but the telepathy would not work).

Uriel:

”It would seem wise to consolidate, given the possibility of additional lethal threats here.  Yes, Drain, let us work together,” responds Uriel.

Drain:

Drain will head to the long hallway in the direction they saw Piccolo travel.  when he sees here near the door he will cast message directed to her.

Although Piccolo may be able to speak in a message spell from Drain, she raises her hands, then plays some notes on her tiny wooden instrument

Drain gets an image of something grumpy behind the door.

Piccolo will examine the door, and if not locked, will open it, standing to the side.

Yes, that sounds good. Trisk will have the bridge go right past the knight and up to the opening in the tower.

"What do you think Tesservett? Gather the others before exploring the tower?"

<Hmmm. I'm just going to post what's there.  

Just out of curiosity, is the bridge right under the knight or does it go around him? It's your bridge, so it's up to you.>

Splinters of wood, along with some loose papers and two halves of a shattered blowing horn, are suspended in the air. Whatever caused this unfortunate scene also punched a hole in the north wall on the landing between two staircases, one leading up and the other leading down. The stony debris from the blast is frozen in midair outside the tower.

A human knight with a thick mustache and a look of surprise on his face was apparently thrown backward through the jagged hole and now hangs in the air amid the debris. The knight wears a helm adorned with feathery wings, and he is holding a longsword and a shield.

Within the tower, three grotesque cackling women are mocking the helmed knight as they avoid talking about their present troubles. “He seems to be taking his present situation rather lightly,” says a short, thin, gnarled woman swathed in a tattered dress with petticoats. Cracked white face paint plasters her features, with crimson splotches on her cheeks and thick mascara coating her sparse eyelashes. From her back seems to protrude a large metal key.

“Time has been rather cruel to him,” the second, her emaciated form hidden under the layers of her elaborate costume. Part dress, part mechanical theater, the outfit makes her look frighteningly tall. She shrouds her wrinkled features behind a gauzy “theater curtain” veil.

“If we still had the unicorn horn, we could make him plunge to his doom,” bemoans the third, with a toad-like face and bulging eyes that move independently, constantly scanning her surroundings. Stained and moldering patchwork garments hide much of the leathery, mummified flesh that stretches over her compact frame and extraordinarily long, spindly limbs.

Strange objects stand beside the laughing women: a child's rocking horse,  a large contraption, looking very much like a bird, with a wingspan of 14ft. and a 10ft wide leaf with long tendrils hanging below it.

Quote from shimshon123 >>

Although Piccolo may be able to speak in a message spell from Drain, she raises her hands, then plays some notes on her tiny wooden instrument

Drain gets an image of something grumpy behind the door.

Piccolo will examine the door, and if not locked, will open it, standing to the side.

 Opening the door, you find a dining hall. Paintings of fey creatures and the mounted heads of majestic elk with golden horns decorate the walls of the space. In the center of the hall, a deformed giant squats at the head of a table piled with food. The grease-stained tablecloth is tucked under her chin, and she washes down each slobbering mouthful of food with a gulp from a barrel of beer.

A tea cart in one corner of the banquet hall has an iron kettle and a tureen of steaming soup resting on doilies atop.  

"Minions!" demands the giantess, "bring me the cake that dastard, Kelek, promised. 'Eight tiers high,' he said, 'lit with blood-red candles, and icing white as snow.'" She emphasizes her words with delicate movements kf her large rough hands, as she imitates Kelek in a sing-song falsetto.

She looks at Picollo and licks her lips, hungrily. "If thou shoulds't leave and return without my cake, I think I shall gobble thee up, instead.  Then we'll see if you taste as sweet as you look,” she warns.

Piccolo bows to the giant and then leaves, closing the door behind her.

(ooc has she seen a kitchen area?)