Journal of Miyara Kyosuke (80)

    We stand a while deciding what to do about the large hallway stretching to the north.  We have reached the bottom of the stairs, at least.  I see that there are several large exits from the hallway at the other end.  This end of the hallway is rectangular, and the other end is rounded with four exits.
    I step onto the lava and start walking towards the end.  I feel an irresistable urge to stand and stare at one of the petrified dwarven bodies.  I am sure it is a ghost again trying to take someone over, which would probably be a good thing.  Goru stands and stares at a different one, as does Carimera and Baraku.  You know, if I stood here long enough like this, I might become petrified too.  After a minute or so, the others manage to coax us away from what we were doing, and the urge fades.
    We continue along the hallway.  Four hallways exit from the other end, each about 10' wide, scattered evenly about the semicircle.  We can see the remains of hinges here, as if once there were doors which were forcibly blown off the hinges.  Door number 3 (from the left) the hinges were blown into this hallway, and the other three were blown out.  Perhaps that way lies the lab.
    We see what was behind door number 3.  This heads roughly NE for 30', then turns straight north.  With this much blasting, physical traps are likely to have been disrupted, and Hosei can try to detect magic of any magical trap.  While the whole area reeks of disturbance, there are no local peaks.
    We continue another 30' after the turn, where there is a doorway to the west opening into a large room (about 25x25), with the clear sound of chirping coming from it.  The corridor itself continues a long way ahead with other doorways, eventually opening up into a much larger room about 100' from here.
    The chirping is a strange noise, like a large number of mice or rats.  Getting closer and looking in, I can see a huge pile of pieces of paper and cloth and other soft thing, about ten feet high and covering a lot of this room, and the whole pile squirms.  Despite that it might contain a useful piece of paper, and the temptation to burn the whole pile, we walk on across the uneven pumice.
    Another ten feet and a doorway to the west.  It's a similar size, but rectangular, and seems to be empty.  oth rooms so far had their hinges blown in, so they do not lead to the blast site.  I stare into it a while from the doorway, looking very carefully.  I am fairly sure that there is nothing in this room.  We continue.
    20 more feet, and a doorway to the west, again 25x25.  It is largely empty, although there seems to be a collection of broken debris in the far southwestern corner., whereas the previous room was completely empty.  Unless I see anything that looks like it might possibly be a clue, I don't see a reason to go into these.  Ashu goes in and pokes around in the debris, using one of Hosei's pebbles for light.  As he walks into the room, a very large snake attacks him from behind.  He parries it with an axe in each hand.  The beast is vast, howerver, and the parry does nothing.The snake hits him hard, but he remains standing.  They exchange blows for a while.  The snake is about a foot in diamater, and proportionatly long.  Ashu is definitely getting the worst end of the fight, but he is striking well.
    I join the fight, and as I come in it backs into the corner, and Goru joins me.  Ashu pulls back and concentrates on something.  Suddenly a pillar of fire comes down upon the snake, turning it to cinders.  It ricochets off the floor, reflecting and blasting around the room and out of the door, burning everything in its path.
    My clothes burn instantly into flame, but I am completely unharmed as I watch it burn.  I pat out the fire as best I can.  Apparently we cannot be hurt by fire, presumably the effect of the stones.  My clothes burned, but my hair is not even singed.
    Sun shows us that further up the hallway, a room on the east side has smoke coming out of it, with fire there.  I run up to it and see that there is a large pile of something on fire, with lots of singed rats running out.  This is an even bigger pile than the last one, and the one we left behind us is also on fire.  The rats run away.
    I run into the room and visualize the fire going out.  A ring of fire appears around the large nest, and it fries the rats running from the pile.  My visualization didn't work, and the rat nest is reduced to ashes in a big blast of fire.  The same is true for pretty much everything in this hallway.  I am naked but unhurt.
    I first aid Ashu's wounds, and then Rabena treats him while we wait for the smoke to clear.  As Rabena begins her healing, it starts to rain gently.  The rain stops after five minutes or so.  We rest for half an hour for everything to die down.  Ashu's eyes, as well as my own, are glowing bright red.

    We continue onwards, trying to follow the original blast path.  The hallway ends by opening into a room, the hinges of which were blown out.  The lava flow also seemed have seethed in this direction originally  The rooms is roughly rectangular, but with the corners cut slightly making it octagonal.  It is about 40-45 x 60-70 feet, with lava splattered walls.
    As I reach the room, I started to feel a terrible sense of frustration and anger, and that a terrible mystery hangs over me and all is lost if I don't solve it.  I look around with an alien sense of mistrust, and notice that everyone else is doing the same.
    I enter the room.  As I do so, it goes from being empty to having other people in it  Ghostly figures and props appear.  Four figures, dwarven, but grey and ghostly.  One shakes its arms at a second cowering behind a broken table.  Another sits in a corner quiet.  A fourth faces the wall, and occasionally pounds on the wall with its fist.
    I am frozen in fear.
    Only Ashu can do anything, it seems.  He observes the figures re-enacting.  The one shaking his arms crosses behind the table and grabs the one cowering behind it, who jumps over the table but does not get away, and the other catches him and knocks him down.  He hits the edge of the table and shatters into a cloud of dust and hair.  The other two ghosts begin to go after the first dwarf, who backs away.  They trap him in a corner, gesturing angrily at each other.  We hear no sound ourselves, of course.  While they do that, a much smaller figure coalesces out of a thin layer of dust on the wall.  It grabs a broom and brushes the ghost dust into a pile, which reforms into the original ghost.
    The figures begin to work themselves back to where they started when we entered, and then the scene repeats without a break.  Each time the fifth ghost coalesces from the dust on the wall, faded back into the dust as he's swept up the one into the pile.
    After a few minutes, we all recover and watch it repeat for a while.  Ashu suggests sweeping the dust in the real room into a pile and seeing if it forms into something.
    This is clearly where the explosion happened.  Here pumice is splattered up on the walls, and with some examination we can tell that the lava came up and out of the floor here.  First an explosion, then a fast flow filling this room and out into the hallways.
    Ashu brushes off the walls looking for decoration or marks, but finds none.
    I walk up to the ghosts, which seems to have no effect on their scene.  As I get right next to them, it's obvious that they aren't just ghostly, but that they are formed from dust and hair and cobwebs, held together by ghostly forces.
    I touch one -- the one cowering in the corner.  I have a vision as I pass my hand through.  ((insert vision here))  Next, the one who was slammed into the table.  Next the haughty one, pounding on the wall.  Next the most important one, the one sweeping up.  I save what I believe to be the Tzeentch-possessed Wizmag for last.  The effort has hurt me badly, but I tell Miyara the visions.  She tells the others.
    These do not notice us.  I step right in front of Wizmag where he must walk into me.  He does so, and I have another vision.  Olgrald the Odiferous perhaps has the mark of Tzeentch in his notes.  He must be the one who messed this up, so I touch him again (the one behind the desk).  This hurts too much, and I tell Miyara to touch all the others again until there are no new visions.  Then I pass out.  Rabena works on me.
    Miyara touches the sweeping boy, Ingmeld.  Hosei next, touches Bergmal Cleftpate, the cowering in the corner one.  Miyara touches Friethoff, the haughty, the last one for the second vision (-4 points).
    Hosei's turn for round 3, Wizmag (-1).  Miyara, Olgud.  I start first-aid, which helps.  Hosei, Bergmal.  Miyara, Friethoff.  Hosei, Egmeld (and Hosei is in trouble).
    As Hosei pulls his hand away and finishes relating the vision, he begins screaming.  Just... screaming.  And then he starts to laugh.  We know that laugh.