A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

Twenty First Day of the Fourth Month 293 AC

Digging in the dirt is not precisely how you would have envisaged the trackless wilds of Sothoryos a few years ago, but then again you would not have thought you would be doing the digging with a dragon's claws so you suppose it evens out in the end. A few careful applications of fire had cleared away the tangled underbrush, leaving centuries of soggy leaf-litter and dirt to dig through, not wanting to risk a spell for the sake of convenience alone you had simply raked it aside with your claws to reveal more of the ancient structure.

Quite unlike the weathered fragments that showed through on the surface the stone underneath is still stained dark violet and sooty black in places, giving you some idea of what the main hall of the temple must have looked like in its prime. The shape of it is also telling, following the line of the twisted magic perfectly in an oval some four-hundred-and-fifty feet tall. The hall must once have had at least a second floor, perhaps many more from the width and number of eight-sided pillar bases you found. The builders seemed to have had a fascination with the number eight. The proportions of the structure even hinting at an eight based number system, though it might have just been sacred or magical geometry....

"Come look at this," Lya sounds faintly ill.

Snaking your head over to the others you see that her notion of trying to mend shards of the roof yielded some results, though not ones any sane person would have wished to look upon. The fresco that once adorned the temple roof would not have looked out of place in a demon lord's palace in the vile torments and excesses they depicted.

"We aren't keeping that," Waymar declares a little less firmly than he might have liked perhaps. "Are we?"

"We could sell it I suppose, but I would not wish for the company of any collector who would take that to display," you reply absently, still trying to pick apart the horrific scene for clues as to the place's nature.

"I was thinking more of breaking it back into a thousand pieces," the young Valeman replied.

"That's..." something within you rebels at the thought of destroying any unique work of art however vile, and if one looks past the subject matter there is a rare artistry to the piece.

"Look at the hole in the middle here..." Lya interrupts. "What would have been an octagonal window, that would have fitted..." She takes a dozen steps or so. "About here, right?"

"Yes, what do you have in mind?" you ask, caught up in her infectious excitement for a puzzle.

"Think about it, these.... spider folk built a temple up here, not just warehouses, barracks, houses, and markets that would have done them well for raiding or trading but a house of their goddess. Why? What is it about this place in particular that would draw them?"

"All the spider monsters?" Tyene jests.

Lya rolls her eyes good-naturally. "Those must have come after whatever killed the city. I can't imagine doing any building with something that size and temperament looming near at hand."

"What, then?" Garin prompts this time from where he has been standing popped against a stone, standing sentinel while the rest of you tried too wrest secrets from stone and mud.

"The one thing you are not going to find down a cave no matter how hard you look," she points at the sky. "I'm betting there is some kind of astrological conjunction..."

The movements of the stars, the paths they carve upon the heavens,these things you know but little of for the elder wyrms rarely cared to ponder that which lay higher than themselves, and yet some fractures of lore, some basic principles float up to the front of your mind and with it the answer in a flash of inspiration "Ellipses!" you call loudly enough to scare lizard-birds out of the under brush some three-score feet away.

"I can shout words too, you know," Waymar says with a smile. "Apple pie! Plum pudding! Rabbit stew!"

"Are you getting lonesome for food again?" Tyene asks archly, teasing Waymar about his habit of eating just as much as he ever had even though he needed to no more than the rest of you.

"As I was saying..." you interrupt in a faux offended rumble. "If you take the largest ellipse that will fit in the temple's perimeter, the two foci will be where Lya found that opening and, right over... here."

After a few moments digging your claw scratches something, metal, but soft. Even before you pull it out you know it to be a lead chest, the simplest ward against divination, but also one sure to span the ages. It is quite hefty, some six feet long by three feet wide and deep, it looks to be one solid piece with neither latch nor hinge, though it is clearly hollow. While it is clearly not magical there is no way to tell what sorcery may lay inside.

How do you open the chest?

[] Have Lya shape hinges and a lid then set a minor conjured spirit to doing it while the five of you look on from a safe distance

[] Take it back home so you can open it in the safest of conditions

[] Try to divine its contents first

[] Write in

OOC: I considered moving past this, but some of the choices require significant spell expenditure on your part, possibility as much as a wish to mimic commune with the afferent XP cost. Speaking of XP I'm handing out 600 to Vierys and Lya for passing some pretty hard skill checks, also I'm tempted to hand those 5000 XP for visiting Sothoryos to Lya since she needs it more. Any objections?