Chapter Nine: the Ragged Man (inside the Temple of Kharad)

This room smells of dust and decay, with an acrid stench of embalming spices. Against the south wall is a fresco of a humanoid figure with spread wings. His head is a skull with living briars twisting through it. Beneath this is an open pit in the floor that looks like it was once hidden but is now stuck open. It drops down ten feet, to a mass of jumbled bones and rotten debris. You cannot tell how deep this is. Just inside the entrance are the smashed stumps of two similar pillars to those outside. On the floor by the stone block are the cracked, smashed fragments of a crimson wax disc.

The heroes inspect the room thoroughly discovering some strange, ancient script on the wall beneath the fresco. Kettle is able to decipher the script as follows:

XIOLOCHE	Man'ak 13	Hekolosh 22
NUNANNA	Relethen 18	Man'ak 2
KREESHA	Abriolon 30	Shenn 6

Casey looks over Kettle's shoulder and helps him out. She manages to determine that the first column represents names while the other two columns are dates . . . in some ancient elven language.

The heroes search the first level of the pyramid thoroughly. Kettle and Seebo manage to find and disable pit traps in a couple of corridors leading from the entry room into what they call the "statue room" where they find nine statues:

This silent chamber is lined with alcoves to the north and south; five in the north wall, four in the south. The floor of the room is marked with a pattern of lines and rectangles. In the centre of the southern wall is an archway fashioned from stone carved to look like tangled vines, or vines magically transmuted into stone – it is impossible to tell which. There is a shadowy figure in each alcove, eight feet tall and immobile.

The statues are actually a mechanism to open a secret door behind the central statue on the north wall of the room. The statues include the four animal totems from the Swamp Elf villages. The first experiment in opening the secret door results in Dinah losing her face . . . literally. When she turns the wrist on the blank-faced statue in front of the secret door her face melts away . . . eyes, ears, mouth . . . leaving only her nose. Her face appears on the blank-faced statue. The heroes retire to the entry chamber of the temple to rest and recover spells. Neil hopes to remove curse on the morrow to help poor Dinah.

The next morning Neil's faith in Old Heakun proves strong enough to overcome the curse and Dinah's face is restored. Afterwards, Kettle and Seebo work to disable the trap on the statue and the team manages to get the secret door open without further mishap.

The secret door leads into a passage of stairs going up. The next level of the temple is a single massive room filled with webs and a spiral stair case leading up. Spiders and Ettercaps attack and the heroes make quick work of the creatures. Rygorh's burning hands spell makes quick work of the webs.

Seebo determines that the staircase is not safe to climb. Tilk and team rig up a grappling hook and rope to climb to the next floor. Tilk, Seebo and Casey go up and find a flesh golem on the next level. Initially the creature just sits in a pool of green goop staring towards them. It then rises up and begins to move towards the heroes. Confusion sets in. Tilk charges the beast while Seebo calls for a retreat and Casy stands about trying to decide what to do. The rest of the heroes make their way up the rope slowly while Tilk trades blows with the golem. Tilk gets the worst of the exchange. Once all of the Starborn make it into the room a flurry of blows from the fighters and some healing magics lay the golem low and bring the wounded warriors back on line. Alev discovers that most of his magic is ineffective against golems.

Another room on this level of the pyramid appears to be a "charging" cell for the golem:

There are four cucurbits of cloudy glass in this room, each one the height of a man and filled with murky liquid that bubbles furiously. Rods of some dark substance are half-submerged in them, with metal hawsers trailing from them through supporting frames to a central wooden cradle. This is fitted with a metal crown or headband.

Following the only passage on this level the heroes find that it narrows down to a two-and-a-half foot by two-and-a-half foot crawl space. The halflings can enter reasonably well . . . everyone else is forced to crawl. Seebo and Neil take the lead while the others stay behind. Some twenty minutes later the halflings return to report that the crawl space is about two or three hundred feet of turning corridors that opens into a temple like area on a higher level. In this temple there are about half a dozen or so demonic baby skeletons.

Rygorh and Alev set out to vanquish the beasts with Seebo leading. Alev hits the creatures with fireball spells while Rygorh turns them. Seebo cracked a couple in the face with his magical undead bane mace. The heroes pursue the creatures into the room but are attacked by another guardian . . . a black pudding. Luckily no one is hit by the ooze and the heroes retreat back down the crawl space.

The Starborn gather in the flesh golem room to determine their next course of action. They decide to "camp" another night in the entry way to the temple and attack the pudding the next day.

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