Planting 21, 593 CY, Valor’s Vault, continued

The Vault looks pretty much like what one would expect to see– tunnels with niches containing collections of bones. We started down what appears to be the center passageway, trying to get a feel for the layout of the place, when in the distance I saw something move– shamble, really. Undead! And the only thing worse than undead, is goblin undead! There were at least ten of the little zombies shuffling towards us. We easily hacked them down and piled them together on the floor, then continued on– only to come to room with a pile of dead zombie goblins in it. It was too strange to be a coincidence, so I used a piece of chalk to draw a symbol on the floor of the room to mark that we’d been there. We continued on, soon coming to a room with a pile of bodies and… my mark on the floor.

We went left next, after determining that going straight through was going to keep bringing us back to the same room. We encountered a most foul creature– a large tentacled centipede called a carrion crawler, and had to dispatch that before we could move on. And of course, continuing on lead us to a room with a dead carrion crawler in it.

Now, whenever things became too repetitive, we would switch directions as we wove our way through the catacombs. We came to a room with four broken open sarcophagi, each containing a very dead person holding a rusty weapon. Then we found it again. Interestingly, the next room with four broken sarcophagi appeared to have different weapons on each body– and then we found it again. We’d established a pattern, at least.

Finally, we found a room with four unopened sarcophagi in it. I checked one for traps, and then asked Wölfel to open it. Apparently, there was a spell on it, for we were instantly assaulted by three mindless devil-creatures. Thankfully, these too were easy to dispatch. This sarcophagus held something more interesting than the last few: a heavy mace that was in good condition, and a secret compartment. As I was opening the compartment though, we discovered we weren’t alone– a large lion-like creature with a man’s face had entered the room, and began to question what we were doing.

It didn’t seem prudent to lie, and luckily, the creature, a manticore, seemed satisfied by our answers, though next it asked a very strange question: “a carp has scales on which side?” I blurted out “the outside” before anyone had a chance to answer otherwise, but thankfully, this too satisfied the creature. It said we now had the key– and sure enough, the compartment I’d just opened contained a fish-shaped silver key, as well as three vials (one red, one blue and one black). We were also left with another riddle of sorts:

Wisdom is the key.
Strength is only the path.
Valor will open the way.

I have no idea what this could mean, but those things all describe my companions better than they do me.