September 20, Year 3488 (SE 118)
Past the eastern door is a short passageway that ends in a tee intersection. There are doors on both the north and south walls. The party creep forward and look down both directions of the tee, but only see another passageway that extends to the north and to the south to the limit of their lantern light.
They listen at the two doors in the passageway; they hear nothing to the south, but they hear faint scuffling sounds to the north. Searching the door for traps, they find nothing, so they decide to burst suddenly into the room, hoping to surprise whatever is inside that is making the noises.
The door is made of heavy stone, so it is difficult to open quickly. The group elect to have Arik take care of this, but he struggles a bit, alerting the creature on the other side of the door before getting it open. Through the door is a smallish room that appears to be a bedroom, containing a desk, a bed, a chest, and various other simple furnishings. Emerging from underneath the bed is a monstrous lizard creature, pale blue in colour and about the size of a man (although quadrupedal). Zedlyn and Arik move forward and attack it, and dispatch it in short order.
With the immediate danger taken care of, the party search the room more thoroughly while Zedlyn stands guard. Adokas searches the creature for poison that he can salvage, but finds nothing. The rest of the party search the room proper, and for the most part it seems empty. There is nothing of interest in the chest, on the desk, etc, so it seems that either the room has already been looted, or whoever once lived here took everything before leaving. They do find one thing of interest, though - underneath the bed is a partially-eaten corpse.
The corpse is of a human, but very pale skinned and fair haired, possibly an albino. It is dressed in an elaborate, brightly-coloured bird costume, including a gold inlaid bird mask. It looks valuable, so the party take it.
Moving on to the southern door, after checking it for traps as well, the party once again burst through, hoping to take any occupants by surprise. The room beyond turns out to be another bedroom, very similar to the previous room, but unoccupied. They search the room, but the only item of interest that they find is a small, wooden holy symbol depicting a balance. It seems to correspond to the balance held by the bearded statue they saw at the top of the pyramid.
Heading to the tee at the end of the hallway, they decide to explore the northern branch. The hallway goes for about fifty feet in this direction, then ends - a dead end, apparently. They search the hallway thoroughly for a secret passage, but discover nothing.
Returning to the tee and heading south, they find that it goes for sixty feet before ending, but unlike the northern passage, it contains two doors on the western wall and a golden statue at the end of the hallway. The statue is of the same bearded man depicted by the statue on the top of the pyramid, again holding a balance and a lightning bolt. They search the statue for secret mechanisms of any sort, but find nothing.
Turning their attention to the two nearby doors, they listen at both, and from beyond each they hear muted conversation. They pick the southernmost of the two doors, and as before, burst into the room in the hopes of surprising the occupants. Inside is a bunkroom containing six beds, and six occupants who are standing around talking to each other. These occupants are men wearing chainmail with blue tabards, each wearing a steel helm with a golden mask that matches the statue outside. They are the right size to be human, but since they are showing no exposed skin, none of the party can say for sure.
The men are taken by surprise, and Zedlyn leaps into the room with his trident drawn, demanding that they drop their weapons. One of the men, evidently the leader, instead steps forward and demands to know who the party are and what they are doing. The man speaks a very strange, barely-intelligible dialect of the Common Tongue, and most of the party cannot really understand him. Similarly, it seems that the men can barely understand the party as well.
After several attempts at communication mediated by Iriellis, eventually both groups become accustomed to the others' manner of speech and are able to basically converse. The men identify themselves as members of the Brotherhood of Gorm - Gorm being the name of the bearded deity depicted in the statues - and the leader identifies himself as Kanadius. The party explain that they are in the area searching for signs of a demon. Upon hearing this, Kanadius responds that his group, too, opposes a demon, and begins explaining their situation to the party.
He explains that he and his brothers come from a city located deep below the pyramid, ruled over by the demon Zargon. Ages ago, his people once lived in the city above and worshipped Gorm, god of war, storms, and justice, Usamigaras, god of healing, messengers, and thieves, and Madarua, goddess of birth, death, and the seasons. However, the water in the city dried up and people were forced to relocate underground, where sources of water still existed. There, they encountered the demon Zargon, who enslaved the people, and still controls most of them today. He keeps the people under control by feeding them various hallucinogenic substances, and most of the worshippers of Zargon can barely distinguish between fantasy and reality any more.
His organization, the Brotherhood of Gorm, seeks to restore the worship of Gorm and break the hold that Zargon has over the people. Evidently, there are corresponding organizations that worship Usamigaras and Madarua, but the three groups cannot agree on most things and do not usually work together. Kanadius asks if any of the party are willing to join the Brotherhood, but only male warriors are allowed to join, and none of the group who qualify are willing to take up worship of Gorm.
Kanadius is reluctant to offer any concrete help to those who are not members of the Brotherhood, and the party are unable to get much more information out of him. He does reveal that the Brotherhood is run by the Grand Master, who can be found in the group's hidden headquarters in the city below, but he is not willing to reveal their exact location. He does, on their request, provide them with a written note explaining to other worshippers of Gorm that they might meet that they are basically trustworthy.
Kanadius having explained that the other nearby door leads to another room occupied by the Brotherhood, the party decide to back off and return to the central room where they fought the fire beetles and explore another path. This time, they take the northernmost of the two western doors. The door leads to a winding passage which they slowly traverse, on the lookout for traps. They find nothing of the sort, but Iriellis notices a concealed door along the southern wall. The group listen at the door and hear a buzzing sound coming from beyond. As usual, they prepare to burst through the door and charge into whatever is beyond.
Arik pulls the door open and reveals the room beyond; it is a mid-sized room that appears mostly empty, apart from a large pile of dust and debris in the center. Flying about the room are seven insectoid, blood-sucking creatures, about two feet long each. Adokas charges in to attack, and in response four of the creatures attack him, with two managing to latch on and start draining his blood. The rest of the party charge into the room and attack as well, except for P'hla and Sharla who stay back with missile weapons. The rest of the creatures target Flossaria.
Eventually, the party manage to dispatch the creatures, with both Flossaria and Adokas taking moderate wounds. The clerics patch both of them up, and the party move on to searching the room. They find two features of interest. First, there is a small hole in one of the corners of the ceiling, from which sunlight is streaming in. This is apparently how the creatures got in. Second, among the pile of dust and debris are four valuable gems, which the group take.
They return to the passageway that they were following, which continues west, turns north, then turns back to the east. At the end of the eastern passage it turns south, but there is also a door on the south wall. They listen at the door but hear nothing. Bursting into the room, they find that it's an ancient storeroom, containing crates of food and bales of cloth. However, all is long decayed to a state of uselessness. The party find nothing of interest in the room, so they exit and continue to the east.
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