The group presses on, emerging from the secret door. Yet again they use the magical platform to ferry across some more grey slime and head down the dark passageway away from the writing in blood.  

(Yes, this can count for stone camouflage.) 

The hallway goes for 30 feet, turning slightly right before opening into a room. A pungent stench fills this pentagonal room, the walls of which are covered with riveted sheets of iron. The air is strangely moist here as well. A wild garden full of sickly plants and rotting compost takes up most of the interior, and a narrow path hugs the walls between the hallway you're entering at, and another exit 30 feet to the left. Jutting from the middle ofthe garden is a six-foot-tall rusty sprinkler. In the ceiling above the sprinkler, a ten-foot-wide shaft leads straight up. The ceiling is 10 feet high.  The room is roughly 45 feet across. At the entrance to the room, just a foot or so down the hallway, there is a strange seem around the whole hallway. The floor, ceiling, and walls, as if the hallway here can somehow shift or move.  

Crouched in the greenery is another of those strange skeleton creatures.  It doesn't seem to have noticed you yet and is 30 feet away.  

Mal will sneak up behind the skeleton and take it down.

Stealth: 24 (+10 if Pass without trace is still going)

Scimitar #1: Attack: 18 Damage: 11 Sneak Attack: 7

Scimitar #2: Attack: 21 Damage: 11

Auto Crit Damage: 9 Auto Crit Sneak Attack: 10

Mal chops the unsuspecting skeleton into bits of bones with two fierce slashes of her scimitars. As before, the skull falls apart from the rest, in a strange key shape. 

When badger investigates, he sees where the first skeleton 'key', the bone was in a triangular shape, this one is in the shape of an octagon. 

Since Mal seems to have safely entered the greenery, Badger will venture to the centre and look up the shaft. Perception: 10

Sickle will walk in and examine the greenery, trying to identify the plants and how they got here (something Sickle is oddly not particularly good at).

Nature: 6

Badger looks up. The shaft seems to go up 15 feet through solid stone, and opens up into...oh yes, that appears to be the bottom of the grand staircase. He can just see the backs fo the large gargoyle statues from down here. 

Sickle examines the plants. They are a variety of plants from all over, but they are sickly. They clearly are in the dark, so how they grow without sunlight is beyond Sickle, but they are not healthy, all partially decaying or blemished with rot, mold, or fungus. However nothing here seems overly dangerous. 

"I do not believe this will be advantageous location for rest" Silas stets as he comes in, assume rest of the party joins in. 

Badger walks over to the far-left corner of the room (the one with the opening) and looks through without entering. Besides seeing what is beyond the opening, he also looks to see if there are any more 'seams' in the floor.

Mal will start walking along edge of the room to see if she notices anything, and why the room might seem to spin.

Perception: 13

Investigation: 20

Badger looks down and sees a short ten foot hallway, with a seam halfway down. The hallway opens up into a room with an acidic stench filling the pentagonal chamber (same shape and size as this room), which has an exit on the far side. The walls are covered with riveted sheets of iron, and the pockmarked stone floor has a large puddle ofgray slime in the middle of it. Friezes along each wall just beneath the ceiling depict five black dragons.  

Mal doesn't seem any other seams, except in the very center where the sprinkler head juts out of a hole. Why it or how it spins isn't evident from within this room, but if it turns, the mechanism much be huge and complex...an impressive feat of engineering.

This is clearly a trap of some kind, thinks Badger to himself. Well, he announces to the others. We came, we saw, we confirmed there are no monsters down this way. Perhaps it's time to check the other corridors...

“Ok...just a thought.  What if the grey slime isn’t sentient so much as it’s some sort of cast off...like a slug trail.  Also, black dragons...acid smell...definitely trap.”

[OOC: Int check or another roll, let me know, on the possible engineering of this place.]

Mal Int check: 9

[OOC: sigh, nevermind, dang it.]

Badger heads back into the hallway and takes a closer look at the slime, prodding it with Mage Hand and seeing how it reacts to Fire Bolt. Nature: 18

Grenk scratches his head.  "Do ya think those skeleton key things actually unlock something.  Should we be draggin them with us in case we get to a big skeletal lock?"

Mal might not have mentioned it but she has been keeping those key shaped heads with her.

Badger pokes it with the mage hand. The hand moves the slime around without much effect. The flame seems to do nothing to the slime strangely. The flame just burns around the slime without the slime reacting at all. This makes badger think that it’s a highly unnatural material. He figures it may not be even of this world. Something outside nature. Something produced by some sort of aberration. 

You guys have the last key still. 

Dark thoughts start to fill Badger's mind, images of nameless shapeless horrors stalking these halls, leaving blobs of slime in their wake. A chill runs up his spine and the hair stands up on the back of his neck, causing him to continually look behind him every few moments. He doesn't know if he wants to return the way they came after all. Contradicting his previous statement, he says: Perhaps we should keep moving. I don't want to tarry here. Let's check the next room. He then stands there waiting for someone else to take the lead...

Sickle looks at the gnome, deciding whether to trust the wizard’s wisdom or question it as the result of a dead god’s possessive thoughts.  Slowly he nods.  “Press on then? I’ll take the lead.” Sickle will pick his way carefully around the grey ooze in the dragon portrait room.