Before he can continue, the group feels a warm breeze blow through the tunnel. It smells a bit of cinnamon, and mint, and a bit of apple....a fragrant lovely smelling scent.  As you smell it, you feel a sense of joy seep through your body, and even Mal, in her downtrodden, defeated mind, feels the slightest touch of hope. 

YOU MAY EACH LEVEL UP.

Looking about, small smiles quirking at each others mouths, you feel like a solid group of friends suddenly.  The moment hangs there, until Badger turns and crawls down the crawlway.

Badger gets to the section of the crawlway that should be blocked off, but instead finds the tunnel continues. However, he notices a fine seam in the tunnel at this point...and figures that the tunnel ahead can move.  He thinks through it. It is probably weight based, near the center.  But....is there another tunnel above this one...and this will sink and rotate again and trap them both...or will it cause it to rise and rotate and free the man, but trap Badger?

"You all feel that just now?  Something warm and refreshing?  Like the first reality from Auril's frozen grasp " Grenk says to the group.

(If he's allowed to use his new ability immediately, Badger will use Third Eye to see invisible creatures and objects within 10 feet)

Badger instructs Hopkins to hop down the tunnel. Since Badger can still use the eye to see the dropped section, he will guess the distance and instruct Hopkins to go that far.

The radius of the rotating section is about 15 feet. Hopkins crosses the whole section without setting off any sort of trigger, finding the seam on the far side. Either he’s not heavy enough, or it’s done once it’s triggered once. Oh, sorry, DM mess up. There’s a body in the middle of the hallway here. It has a bag and equipment. Hopkins checks it out, but without thumbs can’t unbuckle the bag parts. 

Oooh! Badger will drag the body toward himself using Mage Hand and take a look.

(This isn't the peasant though, right? Badger can still see him alive with his Eye?)

Mal feels the fog lifting from her clouded brain a little bit and stands back up and moves over to the hole Badger is in and waits, her spirits lifted just a little in this dark place.

(oops)

 Silas has strange feeling as if his connection hid deity had grown stronger as they wait for Badager's report of what is to come.

[OOC: hehe, at least it aint always me doing this, wrong campaign Shodai? ]

His hand slowly drags the skeletal remains closer to him. (For sure it's not the commoner. He's still stuck, and wailing away in his stone tomb...)

The skeletal remains are dragged free of the rotating part of the hallway. It wore no armor but carries a magical +1  Yklwa, a dungeoneer's pack, a pouch containing 8 gp, an ivory back scratcher shaped like a dinosaur claw (25 gp), a holy symbol of Bahamut (25 gp), and a red crystal eyeball measuring 1 inch in diameter.

Badger would guess that the crawlway, based on how it curves on the far side, probably comes out in the northern section of the wet hallway. 

Sickle will call down to Badger, “Need help friend?”

It's a bit hard to hear with the peasant crying so loudly, but Badger gets the idea from Sickle and calls back: That depends. The human is trapped. Do we want to go to the effort of freeing him? I'm not sure how yet.

Badger looks at the skeleton to see if there are any identifying features. Perhaps this was another member of the Yellow Banner group. Badger will keep the valuables, then use Mage Hand to push the skeleton back down the tunnel. If that doesn't activate the rotating tunnel, then he will try again after adding the dungeoneer's pack and his own two-man tent to the pile of bones.

Badger, thankfully, can't hear the moaning of the peasant, him being stuck between several feet of solid stone, as long as he doesn't focus on the arcane eye..****y hearing a thin quiet drone from where he is.  His hand can only carry 10 pounds at a time so he slowly pushes the skeleton, and then pack back into the middle of the hallway.  He pushes his own two man tent...and as is nears the center of the hall there's a loud grinding "clunk" and the hallway before Badger begins rising up and rotating, quickly vanishing from view while he sees solid stone sliding past the hallways mouth before him.  A few moments later another hallway rotates into view, filled with light and a moaning man who looks around....he looks back at Badger, and says, "AFALDFKJF ASDFSL!! ADFKSDJLS!!!"  He then begins crawling quickly back towards Badger, relief plain in his eyes......as he crawls as fast as he can.

Ah, Silas! Crazy human incoming! This is your department! Badger crawls quickly away from the approaching human, not wanting to catch any local germs. Once out of the crawlway, hoping Silas or someone else can calm the man down, Badger will ritual cast Comprehend Languages.

Hearing Badger yelling wildly and then seeing him scramble out of the tunnel, Mal puts away her crossbow and then will grab the human as it comes out of the tunnel and lift him up so he can't move. "What do you want me to do with him?"

STR: 8

[OOC: sigh, lol, why do I even bother.]

1  (lol)

As Mal pulls the man up, the attempt to manhandle him turns into an unexpected hug, as he grabs her in an embrace, while nattering on incoherently. He takes a bit of a step back (helped by Mal), and then grabs her shoulders, and kisses both of her cheeks.  His face is streaked with tears and he seems relieved, and quite happy.  He continues to babble onto them, throwing some questions at them once in a while.

"I do not believe he is a danger but he is quite happy about being released for sure," Silas comments as he watches the man speaks in tongues as far as he's concerned, "Should we make another day as it were, I may be able to speak with him or allow any one of us to speak with and understand him but I do not believe here is a good spot and he does not know where he is doing I think,"

You're right, replies Badger, let's keep moving. The wizard abandons his intention to cast a spell of language comprehension, figuring the human has little of importance to say. Where to now? There is a room back down the corridor, or we could see what is ahead.... Oh, by the way, I found these in the tunnel... and Badger shows the items he gathered from the skeletal remains.

(a magical +1  Yklwa, a dungeoneer's pack, a pouch containing 8 gp, an ivory back scratcher shaped like a dinosaur claw (25 gp), a holy symbol of Bahamut (25 gp), and a red crystal eyeball measuring 1 inch in diameter.)

Badger will keep the ivory back scratcher.

How many crystal eyeballs is that now? Wasn't there eyeballs in the slime further back? Eyeball themed dungeon? Any guesses what's coming up? Mike Wazowski?

Mal pushes the human away from her so her arms can be free and places her hand over his mouth signaling him to be quiet.

Then she absently remembers once Badger shows the crystal eye, "Oh yea, found this thing behind the illusion wall back there." Bringing out her glass eye and tossing it to Badger. "Here you hold on to it."

Now that you're standing here, there are three things of interest at the end of this hallway, in addition to the crawlway. 

The first is a door off to the right. It is open, but quiet. When anyone looks that way the man natters a bit.

There is also obviously a passage to the left, blocked by a heavy stone slab, on which is painted a seven-foot-tall jackal-headed humanoid with a circular gold medallion around its neck. All around the figure are carvings of locusts. The "medallion" worn by the jackal-headed painting is actually a 6-inch-diameter gold disk engraved with the face of a homed devil, its mouth agape. One of the carved locusts appears to be a button.

The last is a hole in the wall that you saw this man looking through, which is just around a short bend in the hallway. The hole looks through to the slab that is painted with the gold medallion, however it's distorting the view somehow and you can actually see hieroglyphs BEHIND the gold medallion embedded in the stone slab. Lodged behind this gold disk is a clay dial etched with eight hieroglyphs. One hieroglyph (a vulture) is visible through a hole that forms the devil's gaping mouth, but the dial is locked in place and its remaining seven hieroglyphs are hidden from view behind the medallion.

Badger suggests checking the open-door room first, and suggests Grenk go first.