IC Story Thread: Ch.1, Ad.3 - Black Hand

Aside from it's general advanced state of decay, the door seems rather unremarkable now (though 100s of years ago, it was no doubt very formidable looking), and Duinhir hears nothing on the other side.

The door is no longer able to serve it's purpose of keeping anyone out. The heavy wood paneling is brittle and mostly hollowed by insects and rot and time. And the metal bindings of the door are corroded and the nails which once held it all together have nothing substantial to hold on to any more.

So although you are all tired, it's really just a matter of knocking things completely loose and prying an opening apart. For the door itself is unopenable - the metal of it's bindings corroded and become one with the metal and stone frame that was installed to make it impenetrable in it's time - but a hole can relatively easily enough be made through the door itself.

On the other side of it, there is a narrow hallway that cuts perhaps 10 meters into the stone before ending in a small circular room with only enough room for maybe 9 men to stand in it (and only then if they were packed shoulder-to-shoulder-to-shoulder). There is also a steep spiraling staircase, only wide enough for 1 man to move up or down at a time, that goes up into darkness.

The steps are covered in a thick layer of dust that demonstrates that no one has walked up or down them in a very, very long time. The air is stale, and the walls have water-marks and accumulating whitish-yellow sediment running in rivulets down the walls from centuries of drainage from the veins of the earth here.

They spiral up for... it's hard to say how long... each stair is nearly a full foot tall, and you figure you must have taken nearly a hundred of them by the time it stops it's upward climb. Which, in fairness, is probably not as far as you figure you had to descend the mountain to find the bottom of the peak-cliff and the hidden door.

So, you estimate you're somewhere in the heart of the mountain peak, but likely still below the stronghold itself. You arrive at a landing that is very similar to the one at the bottom.

The room is barren and appears to have... no normal door or exit. The only indication of anything is a small, square-shaped seam in the stone wihich has a rather uncorroded steel ring mounted in the center of it.

You can hear nothing on the other side.

Upon investigation, the main thing that jumps out to Eothain is that while the stone of the small square "door" is cut from the same stone as the walls and steps around them, there is definitely no attempt to conceal it from this side. The workmanship is excellent, the seam couldn't fit a piece of parchment if you tried to slide one in, they certainly could have concealed it if they wanted to.

But they apparently didn't want to. This perhaps indicates that you are all coming at this from the reverse direction from which it was most likely anticipated to be used.

There is nothing further concealed around the room.

Pulling on the ring, the stone block doesn't seem to want to move at first, but once an adequate threshold of force is exerted upon it, something gives and you're able to pull it fully within the circular vestibule landing.

The room on the other side is dark, and soundless, and initially nearly completely obscured, by the flat backside of... some additional stone ... something?

Only incrementally smaller than the opening - just enough for fingers to squeeze through - is another flat, standing stone panel. Gentle experimentation reveals that this obstruction is more easily moved than the great block you just pulled out of the wall. It can either be pushed aside within the room, or tipped backward and pulled into your circular vestibule.

Doing either reveals the obstruction was a statue, an artistic depiction of... perhaps some hero or other glorious figure, and the stone panel was the back of it's mounting.

As you emerge into the silent, black room on the other side, you quickly realize it appears to be some sort of crypt.

The statue sat on a ledge at the head of a stone sarcophagus, and it is onto the narrow ledge upon which you initially emerge.

As your torchlight fills the room, out of 5 apparent burial places, you see one has been disturbed. The wooden panels that once sealed the corpse into the long, flat nook of stone have been broken and pried out. Exposing the body, which is now nothing but brittle rags and bones.

As you all move fully into the catacomb chamber, the light of your torches shows that there is another room beyond this one - it's floor littered with debris, and there is a stair ascending beyond that.

As Duinhir and Cirion move up to inspect the disturbed grave, you see lacquered writing fading on the broken boards indicating that this is the resting place of a soldier who died defending this stronghold from orks. If the date is to be believed, they died well more than 1,000 years ago.

The other tombs in this room bare similar writing.

As you get a full view of the interior of the opened grave, you find that its occupant is missing a skull, and the body has been disturbed. It's bones and dry-rotted tunic all collapsed and jumbled.