The dwarf sniffed quietly and let his senses and his schooling flood his memory. Nothing immediately religious about this struck him immediately, but he thought he'd look a little deeper anyway.

Arcana check: Success

Argumentus burns a surge: +11 HP

Bob calls upon his knowledge of matters arcane, hoping to understand the nature of the runic circle. This is a warding glyph, with a fairly powerful lightning spell clearly bound to it. It's a fairly common form of security for your more powerful wizards, usually enabled or disabled by speaking a given command words. Anyone crossing the circle will trigger the lightning spell, unless the glyph's enchantment is either dispelled or disabled with the command word.

Of course, Bob's mastery of magic (mighty though it may be) has not yet unlocked the secrets of dispelling.

The dwarf, glanced into the room, muttering under his breath before he turned to the others and spoke, rather loudly as he's prone to do.

"So, what we have here is some crazy old wizard obsessed with a word. Salazar, Salami-star, Klattuu, Verataa, Nicktu... no. What was it? Sarathar? What in Kord's eternal favour are we meant to do with a useless clue like Sarathar in a house designed to shock our retard and apparently stump our thinker so much he doesn't speak a goddamn word for days?"

He growled under his breath.

"This isn't a wizard, it's Pee Wee Herman."

The runed circle abruptly flickers and dies halfway through Gabriel's diatribe, leaving only some burnt stones and the smell of ozone to announce that it had ever been there at all.

Well, that was anticlimactic.

The dwarf blinks.

"Huh. Apparently the trigger was a speaking dwarf. That's a weird way to end a spell."

With that Gabriel swung the holy symbol of Kord into his grasp and stepped into the room. If nothing happened and there was nothing to see, he'd leave again. Before someone started throwing levers all willy nilly again.

Argumentus watches from the doorway, biting his lip. Already it's been too long since he's thrown any levers.

Although it is exceedingly well hidden, Gabriel lingers in the room long enough that he eventually notices the secret door in the north wall.

Lucky, that.

The room seemed safe and the dwarf seemed to have found a secret door. I opened it, bracing myself for the seemingly inevitable lethal trap to trigger.

Bob hesitantly swings open the secret door. It opens onto a squarish chamber dominated by a large altar in the shape of a human hand. As the door opens, a coiled-up mechanical cobra lurking behind the altar swiftly uprights itself. The iron snake, nearly 7 feet tall, regards the intruders blankly. In the same halting voice as the statues, it recites a warning.

"Good. Afternoon. Please. Place. The. Keystone. On. The Altar. Or. Leave. Immediately. You. Have. Fifteen. Seconds. To. Comply."

The keystone may be in one of dem other doors. I quickly pull a series of levers in hopes that it will open a door, not shock me, and leave the other door for my companions.

pulls levers C,E,B,D,A

"Combination. C. E. B. D. A. Door. A. Opening."

The door in the northeast of the room slides open. Behind two mechanical guard dogs sits a plain wooden chest. One end of a rusty chain lies on the floor in front of the hounds; the other end leading through a tiny gap in the wall.

The dogs make no hostile moves.

About 8 seconds into the 15 second limit the dwarf wandered out of the room, muttering in annoyance.

"Stupid old wizards and their stupid old tricks."

He then looked into the northern room and saw mechanical dogs.

"O good. More dogs for Slow to play with. I'm sure this will go fine."

At least he'd figured out the lever system.

It may take more than fifteen seconds to kill these suckers so I just see what's behind the other doors

channels the soul of Argumentus and his love of pulling levers
pulls D, A, C, E, B
then, E, B, D, A, C

Not that it mattered, because the little female did all the lever pulling. That insufferable bitch. >8(

I don't suffer the slow. :mad:

"Combination. D. A.... Okay. You. Get. The. Idea. Screw. It."

Both the remaining doors slide open, revealing 10' square rooms. To the north, a large chest sits against the wall, bound with heavy chains and locks. To the west, a marble block with a huge ruby set into the top.

Brigid hurries across the little room, prying the ruby out of its setting. Even as she turns around, though, the floor starts to give way beneath her. She falls uncontrollably into a 30' pit, landing with a bone-crunching thud in a shallow pool of weak acid.

23 damage to Brigid (doesn't die)

Bob and the iron cobra continue their staredown. "You. Have. Five. Seconds. To. Comply. Four. Three. Two. One. I. Am. Now. Authorized. To. Use. Lethal. Force. BZZZZT. Please. Enter. The. Room. So. I. Can. Use. Lethal. Force. On. You. BZZZZZT. Bibor. Fezwig's. Reliable. Housekeeping. Apparatus. Number. 209. Is. Not. Authorized. To. Leave. Its. Station. BZZZZT. You. Are. Making. Me. Very. Cross."

Biting back a scream of pain, I hobbled onto my (mostly) unbroken leg and leaned against the pit walls. Nothing more magical than a false floor, eh? What a crock of shit. And I don't hear any death above, either. The team must be in good enough health to help me out. I call for them, wishing I had the good sense to go for my first instinct, which was the unassuming wooden box in the northern center room. But ain't it usually expected that it would have the good treasure, so all intelligent dungeon-makers usually put deadly traps in the unassuming chest?

Help me :(

Even though the runty cleric threw all his levers :mad: Argumentus lowers his hempen rope to help her up.

I was beginning to think that a nice, simple battle against an army of orcs might have been preferable to all these tricks and traps. I had never done too well in my mystical traps lessons, being more interested in the throwing destructive blasts of ice around lessons.

At any rate, the big metal snake had decided not to kill me just yet which I had to concede was probably a good thing. The wizard did at least seem to have had a fair bit of cash to have set this lot up so I lived in hope of finding some decent treasure somewhere down here. Some magic boots that made me levitate would be nice and possibly some sort of talisman that would let me summon up a nice glass of wine any time I fancied one, I always thought better with a glass in my hand.

Turning away from the door, I rejoined the others. The child seemed to have climbed into a big hole in the floor for some reason, possibly in pursuit of the large ruby she was clutching. Thinking that the dwarves would be able to get her out with all the rope the were carrying.

My attention was drawn to the other rooms. I had never been any good at lock picking so that room was probably out of the question from the start. The chest in the other room looked fairly harmless, not so the two mechanical dogs which if the snake was anything to go by would probably not stay still should someone rush into the room.

I summoned up my mage hand and sent it floating into the room whilst I stood a couple of feet back from the door. I first went to the chain and gave it a very gentle tuck, to see if it was attached to anything through the hole in the wall. I then wrapped the slack of the chain round the legs of one of the dogs then the other (Assuming there's enough slack). That modicum of health and safety precautions in place, I then floated my hand over to the chest and tried to open it.

Argumentus hauls the cleric out of the pit, ruby in hand.

Bob breaks out of his fugue and investigates the other chambers. Seeing an opportunity for hassle-free looting, he uses his mage hand to yank on the chain. Finding it well-secured, he carefully ties up the sentry dogs to prevent their interference and then pops open the chest.

It's full of rocks.

Ooh, the sneaky wizard bastard, this room looked like a particularly vicious trap. Anyway, appearances can often be decieving, so I used my mage hand to lift the rocks out of the chest one at a time in case there was anything else in there.

Bob painstakingly removes each individual rock in search of hidden treasures. Rock, rock, another rock, little rock, rock, big rock, moldy rock, round rock, broken rock, rock, rock, rock... ooh, a magic wand of fireballs!

No, wait. It's just another rock. All rocks. All the way down. :(