The Earthmote

…Inserting the device T’Sai found into crescent-shaped cut out on the door, the party heard a soft click, and the handle turned, revealing a short hallway. Once the entire party member stepped into this hallway, the door closed behind them. Peeking into the 80-foot square room at the other end of the hall, Thaminor saw a large cauldron in the middle of the room.  An eerie green flame burned inside the  cauldron, illuminating the room in an emerald glow.  Having encountered a green flame before, Thaminor immediately glanced around for Bob. While there were no aberrations, the elven fighter did see a door in the center of the right wall and four pedestal stands, one in each corner. Each pedestal consisted of two cylindrical pieces of flinty rock, stacked on top of each other and were coated in what appeared to be lamp oil and fine metal shavings. An iron rod that ran from floor to ceiling impaled each pedestal vertically through the center, supporting a large 5-by-5-foot black mirror that was facing away from the cauldron.

T’Sai inspected the doorway on the right wall, but it appeared magically sealed and he could find no way to open it. Thaminor and Molish attempted to lift the top cylinder of the closest column before attempting to turn it, but it was too much for them.  Instead, Thaminor very slowly rotated it, until the mirror reflected the cauldron back on itself. Once in place, the shade of luminescence filling the room shifted slightly.  While Thaminor moved on to the next mirror, Pix took the opportunity to run a little experiment himself, and blasted the turned pillar with arcane fire.  The resulting explosion burned away all of the oil… for a minute.  Then, the oil began oozing out of the stone again.  Thaminor finished rotating the final mirror a short time later, and the light of the cauldron morphed into a deep purple.  As this violet light filled the room, a new doorway illuminated on the side opposite their entrance. This door opened freely, and the party quickly left the room behind.

The walls, floor, and ceiling of the chilly next room were painted black and covered with purple writing and symbols, seemingly at random.  There was a double door with a large handle on the wall opposite their entrance.  Small holes, 1-2 inches in diameter, were equally spaced around the frame.  The doors were engraved with pictures of 60 scrolls painted the colors of precious elements, ten each of copper, silver, mithral, gold, platinum, and obsidian. The symbols painted on the schools looked arcane, implying that they were meant to depict spell scrolls. Inspecting the walls, each member of the party discovered hidden amongst the random writing a sentence written in ancient Netherese:

The Dark shares;
The Key is not hidden;
The Tool shall suffice;
The Art is the key.

The room was getting colder by the minute. Pix took the lead, and decided to try something: he slid the party’s fragment of the Rod into one of the hole surrounding the door, and the party was immediately blasted back as a cone of cold erupted from the hole. When their eyesight cleared, the party saw that the objective was reached: the door was open. T’Sai couldn’t help but wonder if there was a better way to have achieved that objective, however. Before continuing on, Pix had Thaminor pull the Rod fragment out of the opposite wall, where it had embedded itself during the explosion. The party left the cold room for the warmer hallway beyond, and decided that it was wise to take a short rest before continuing on.

The next room was unlike anything they had ever seen: interlocking gears, coiled springs, and other gewgaws covered the walls in a dense mass of clockworks that sprang to motion as they entered. Throughout the room, dozens of small handled drawers were inset into the largest cogs. Six vaguely draconic contraptions, three to each side, flanked the approach up to a gray metal pedestal with a large red lever protruding from it. Several keyholes could be seen on the pedestal. As they watched, with a tick that matched the click of the massive clockwork machine, the lever dropped one third of the way to the floor.

Thaminor entered first, doing his best to quickly make his way across the rotating cogs of the floor and to the nearest drawer. T’Sai and Molish followed suit, while Pix went invisible and moved to the pedestal. The doorway closed behind the last member, as a large cog rolling in to place. Pix took on the job of pushing the lever back up as it continued to click its way down with each tick and tock. The various drawers opened to reveal a few keys, knickknacks, switches and even empty spaces. Two of the draconic contraptions sprang to life, like clockwork wyverns, and attacked Thaminor and T’Sai. Not all of the keys fit the keyholes on the pedestal, and not all of the keyholes had keys that fit. When the last drawer opened without any remaining matching keys, Pix followed a hunch… and pulled the lever all the way down. As soon as it finished its descent, a giant cog on the opposite wall rolled to the side and opened another hallway. Quickly moving away from the wyverns, the party left the clockwork room behind…