Hills of Kron

In the morning, we all explore a small cave. Pertherditeis explained that she’d visited here a couple of days prior to this, and exterminated several rats, and that this is a ruin, not just a natural cave. Once we’re into the cave, and down the stairs, there’s a thirty foot hallway with two doors on both sides and a door at the end. She’d explored the first room off the right. The first room off to the left had six Giant Rats and some electrum. The second on the left had four Giant Rats and six Kobolds, a floor trap I discovered, and some more electrum. The second room on the right had no creatures, but no treasure either. Now for the room at the end of the hall. Here, there was a virtual swarm of Kobolds and Giant Rats. Thanks goodness forCarolin’s Sleep spell.

This leaves us in a very interesting room. A sizable square room, say 25×25. There’s a door in the far wall, off to the right, obscured by heavy wavy blue lights. It looks dangerous.

There’s a figure in the center of the far wall that has three flat spots that hold small bowls of varying sizes and this inscription above it:

My centerweight is cubic, my sides are squares, fill us exactly if you dare to enter my lair.

There’s a second inscription near a wheel-like graphic.

The sky is opposite today, the bottoms make lava. The Spirit is imprisoned between Water and Earth.

There’s a marker on the wheel that is moving… slowly. The wheel looks weird, everyone thinks we should try to figure out the figurine first. Actually, looking at the figure, it seems to vaguely resemble a picture of Archmage Belphianor. Wild. Anyway, I stop Slade from just rushing the blue magic stuff in front of the door as suicidal. Slade argues “Yeah, but this is going to kill brain cells, I just know it.”

Pertherditeis explains what ‘cubic numbers’ are and what ‘square numbers’ are to Carolin. They come to a list of 1, 4, 9, 16, 25 as being squares, and 1, 8, 27, 64 as being cubic. Looking at the choices of sizes of bowl, they figure the center has to hold 8 units, the left and right have to hold 4 and 9 units. None of the bowls are exactly the right size, but by pouring fluid scooped from the pool back and forth, they get 4, 8 & 9 units in bowls. Then place them. Click, Click, Click go the counterweights, and we hear a gurgle back at the pool. The liquid is draining! And in the bottom we can see 4 stones spaced as if they were four points of a pentagram. Red, deep blue, light blue, and a striated brown.

Hmm. Carolin notes that the wheel could be a weird clock, the hand is moving about the speed to make it to the next section at midnight. “So,” she says, “let’s put the light blue rock into this wedge.” For the line ‘the bottoms make lava’ I get the brown and red rocks ready. Pertherditeis notes that spirit’s spot has to be on the right side just above ‘the bottom’, which means that the earth rock has to be right next to that. And then the fire rock would be the other bottom rock. So water goes into the non-spirit spot that’s left. But… nothing happens. Carolin reaches into the empty fifth spot in the pool and comes up with a nearly invisible rock for our last spot! Excellent! The lightning-like blue bolts stop zipping around the door! Slade opens the door onto a bizarre sight. A pentacle set into the floor. A small chest rests between the two nearest legs of the pentacle. And a tapestry that mirrors the room… almost is on the wall near the door. Four keys hang on hooks near the door. Wild. But we’re going to nap before touching anything in here.

All told, this ends up being 22 Giant Rats and 14 Kobolds. I show Carolin and Pertherditeis a couple of ointments. The Figwart for reducing the chances of infection, and the Woundwart to help slices and nicks heal more quickly. Watches set, we sleep.