Forgotten Secrets
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Cartography: The room is 20 feet from east to west and 50 feet north to south. The southern wall is rounded into a semi-circle, encompassing the southernmost 10 feet of the chamber. There is a door within a 10-foot wide, 5-foot deep alcove centered on the west wall. |
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Room Details: The ceiling in this room hangs low at 6 feet. The air quality is nominal. The volume of the room is approximately 720 cubic feet. The elevation of the room is -100 feet. This room is included in Dungeon Zone 1. |
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Landmarks: This room has no landmarks other than tiny indecipherable text carved into every surface of the chamber. |
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The low ceiling presses in, its height barely enough to let a man stand upright. The walls curve inward, the southern face smoothly rounding into a semi-circle with a curvature that seems almost unnatural in its perfection. Tiny, indecipherable text has been carved into every surface of the room, each glyph seems slightly unique, suggesting the words were etched by hands unskilled, though their meaning seems lost to time. |
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The runic characters etched into the stone shift whenever read, preventing any translation. Once the room’s puzzle is solved, the inscriptions reveal detailed instructions for constructing and operating an “Engine of Souls”. Though fully deciphering the text would take decades even for the most skilled scholars, the fact that this dungeon is one such engine and the essential function of it can be understood. Among the writings is a musical scale of 13 notes intended to “open the mirror.” Any character skilled in reading music can hum or play the scale correctly. Doing so causes a highly polished and lifelike solid steel statue to materialize in the curved southern section of the room. The statue depicts two forlorn maidens arching their slender bodies around an ovular mirror. The mirror reflects the chamber perfectly but omits the adventurers’ presence; it is actually a portal to a an identical, though reversed room elsewhere in the dungeon (Room #33). The portal provides passage between the two rooms instantly as if walking through a normal door. |
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To read the shifting runes, three conditions must be met: a successful DC 15 Intelligence (Arcana) check, an active Comprehend Languages or similar effect, and viewing the text via reflection (e.g., a mirror). When all conditions are satisfied, the inscriptions become decipherable. |
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