Too deep, too fast, too soon, no sign of the moon

The room beyond is a luxurious bedroom with coordinated accessories.  On the bed are two panthers that unfold themselves and charge towards us.  They take a liking to Bryan, since he looks (and smells) like a mouse, and start playing with him and Oin.  Oin swings and actually hits with his axe.  A second stroke almost decapitates the panther.  Bryan also hits the second panther, and kills it with two strokes.  Pavel and Titus join in but both miss. After some more vague fencing with the second panther we decide to stop playing with it and put it out of its misery, which Titus does by repeatedly bludgeoning it.

In the room we find two secret doors.  One leads into a study that also opens into the original corridor – on the table we find 3 sketches of elven maidens – one is Rahasia, and Hasan identifies the other two as Marissa and Silver, who were kidnapped by the Rahib from the elven village.  There is also a plan of the village, and a scroll with a word of opening for the secret door in the bedroom.

Armed with this new-found knowledge, we say the word to open the door. There is a click as the lock releases.  We push the door open.  Beyond, a narrow corridor slopes down into the darkness.  We proceed down the corridor, which finally opens out into a vast cavern.  At the far side of the cavern is the ruins of a tower, crushed by the collapse of part of the roof of the cavern. Only the lower storey appears intact.  Ruins of the tower are scattered across the cavern.  Oin mentions that this looks like the abode of a darker evil, and so we beat a hasty retreat, given Akbar’s warning about getting the story from the dragon guard.  The question is how we get through the steel door.  Or maybe we need to check out the kitchen?  We obviously need to clear each level before proceeding lower, and facing something we can’t handle.

We return to the octagonal room and take the last exit.  This opens into a corridor that ends in another octagonal room, with alcoves at the cardinal points (other than the one the corridor enters from).  The three alcoves are barred with gates of heavy iron bars.  The north one says Kesini and the other two say Kasana.  These names match the alcoves that we saw in the dining hall in the first basement (although that only had one Kesini and one Kasana) – maybe these are the other ends of those teleportation points.  Or maybe Kesini means In and Kesana means Out in Siswan.

We check the north door and hear nothing, so open it.  There is a bare 20′ square room beyond, with a rough cut tunnel entering on the far side.  In the centre is a large snake.  We close the door rapidly.  Then we stop and think, and realise that this must be the dragon guard.  Good thing we didn’t charge in and try and kill it.

Hasan talks to the dragon guard, as the sort of almost son-in-law of Akbar.  It answers Hasan, and tells us a story:

Elias was a nice wizard who helped the elves long ago, but was attacked by three evil witches, seeking the Black Opal Eye which would make them invincible, who dropped a mountain on his tower – Grey Mountain.  Elias perished, but trapped the three witches in the tower under the mountain.  The elves built a temple in his memory (which we are in – hence all the statues of an old bloke with a beard).  The dragon guards the route to the tower, but fears that the Rahib has found an alternate route (which we know he has, because we found it).

We ask the dragon about the ring and the medallion.  He tells us another tale:

I fought the Rahib and his panthers in this room and fought him back, although he was sorely wounded in the process.  Akbar found him and healed him, and entrusted him with his black jade ring, which is hidden under a paving slab.

Hasan recovers the ring.  We return to the upper level and find the medallion.  On the way, we are ambushed by the gelatinous cube, which attacks Baik, but fails to paralyse him.  We slice and dice it like jelly at a children’s party.  We continue, having grabbed Schrodinger’s Treasure from it.  We insert the ring into the medallion, and remove it – the writing on the back now just says ‘Rahasia’.  We return to the dragon guard.

The dragon guard tells us more:

The medallion is a pendant of protection, and ‘Rahasia’ is the trigger word, and it will protect us from evil magic in an area around the medallion, but it will only work three times.  Three is the number. Not four.  Five be right out.  Two means that it will work once more.

The dragon allows us to pass, and we proceed down the corridor towards Akbar’s treasure and the tower.  There is a rockslide at the end, which turns out to be a concealed door.  Beyond is the treasure vault, with a steel door in one corner.  There is much treasure in here, including a sword, a snake headed staff, a ring, a vial of potion.  The ring has little carvings of animals on it.  The vial appears to be a healing potion.

We find the other secret door of which the dragon spoke.  The door opens into another narrow tunnel descending into the darkness, although this one seems more travelled for the floor is smoothly worn.  We emerge into the cavern which we have already seen.