Should have replied much, much earlier than I did, but here, better late than never:

"Whilst I once knew the layout of these traps as surely as I know my own hands, I must admit, that was some time ago...still, I suppose it would be possible for me to chart you a safe course. Please, wait just a moment..."

For just a single heartbeat the air fills with a low, quiet crackle...and then the air seems to move, almost unnoticed by any of the champions, pushing down upon the brickwork as light as a feather, too light to detonate any of the traps, revealing the location of all the pressure plates before marking their location with a red cross of glowing light showing where it is dangerous and where it is safe...or so it appears.

"I hope that is of some assistance, but I would rather not do so again - if the structure of this cavern has been affected by the passage of time, then there is the chance that the traps might have been impacted by it in someway as well. Stay cautious."

Feeling his presence seeming to shift towards the ceiling, the eyes of a few champions look to the ceiling where a wisp of blue light illuminates the chamber's highest level...revealing that the tiny crack that had dripped a single drop onto Luther's cheek had grown to thrice its original size after the Lich's collision...even still, it dripped little - a testament to the skill with which the chamber had been built.

"...I do not believe any explaining is necessary as to why you should avoid the remaining traps."

Rolling tomorrow to give people the time to adjust their actions to that post and to give myself time to recover after my birthday.

Mostly the latter.

Alright, and we're done!


Seraphimo/Chas Delaney
[5] You watch for a moment as the others start and struggle to find a safe way through the field of traps, then you simply walk forward at a brisk pace, utterly unconcerned for any of the pressure plates you step on. Safe in the knowledge that your spectral nature ensures you have no need to worry about such primitive forms of protection, you stride through the field and into the tunnel opposite, leaving the others far behind as a new group of braziers ignite for you to follow. Finally, after a walk half as long as the one before, you see something up ahead.

A bright light, tinted with a hint of violet.

The mere sight of it fills you with renewed energy and vigor...not only does it make you feel alive, it makes you feel strong. You know, in your core and in every fibre of your being, that this is the right way to go. A few steps further and you feel stronger still, much so, and warm too.

"It is only a bit further from here, champion. Come."

Like a snake feeling the warm kiss of sunlight upon its scales, you rush forward, towards the source of the wondrous feeling...and find a vast and open chamber five times the size of the offering room. Here, in this great hall, nine tunnels met together, four on either side of the room and the ninth between the two groups, a ramp rising towards the surface world. Besides each tunnel stands a pair of statues, twenty feet in height and completely identical to its sibling, a true marble giant with lifelike features, but their magnificence pales in comparison to that which is in the centre of the room.

A towering spire of purple glass, a monolithic crystal that stretches twenty five feet or more into the air, reaching just shy of the domed ceiling. Smaller growths branch outwards from the base, arcing energy to the center once every now and then, and with each crackle comes a pulse from within the tower's heart that fills you with warmth and energy, with life. You know what it is without having ever seen or heard of it before: this is the Soulstone, in all its majesty. Your eyes are fixed on it for but a moment before you notice, near the mouth of the ninth tunnel, stands a man, a king, armored all in plate aside from the head he covers with the hood of his long, sapphire blue cloak. A staff of twisted and spun metal crowned with a glittering amethyst is held in his left hand, and an old and worn book in his right, whilst in front of him stands an improvised table thrown together from stone blocks and the upturned lid of a sepulcher, covered in a dozen more tomes, a scattering of old papers and the occasional other pieces of a wizard's craft, alongside his helm.

Though the king wears no crown upon his brow, his bevor is proof enough of who he is: inscribed in gold is the lion sigil of his line, his initials placed on either side.

"It is beautiful, is it not?" King Arslan asks without looking as he slowly flips through the book's pages, careful to avoid stressing them more than time already had. "One could spend an entire day looking at it and still be amazed by the wonder of it all."



CaveCricket/Chaikin
[2] Taking a deep breath and looking at each of the marked tiles before you begin, you sprint across the floor, vaulting from one part to the next with fast leaps and faster bounds, jumping over the traps and weaving between them whenever you can't. You feel the eyes of your king watching your every move as you make them, and eventually, as you cross the dais as a shortcut to the other side, you hear his voice, cautious and uncertain.

"Are you sure it is wise to run through a field of traps?"

You shake off his uncertainty and take another breath as you walk past the vampire, watching as he grins and plucks a single golden coin from the altar and its offerings, then, seeing a veritable wall of traps on the ground ahead, you take a few steps back and run, planning to leap over them all and into the safety of the hallway. Your armor rattles with your every movement, complaining at your haste...and the noise drowns out the sound of a water drop splashing against your helm.

Then, as you move as quickly as you can in such heavy armor, you slip on a small puddle of water, your momentum carrying you off of the dais and onto the hard masonry below where the traps lie in wait. Pain shoots through your back as you land with a loud thud...but nothing else happens...and after carefully looking around to make sure you aren't at risk of setting off any of the traps, you slowly rise to your feet with the aid of another champion and continue, entering the tunnel at last, safe and sound after having made your way through the traps without dying, if barely. Sighing a breath of relief, you make your way through the tunnel just as the spectre had, travelling until you see a great glow ahead.



CrazyMLC/Bodnakin
[5] Whereas the other knight bursts into a sprint as they run through the field, you stay calm, watching where they step and following along at a slow, relaxed pace. You watch as they and the vampire climb onto the dais, hoping that its height will be enough to help them leap over the last line of traps, but you simply look around and find a gap in the corner of the final row, no doubt the same path that the builders used, and easily walk through with ease. From there, there are simply no more traps for you to find a way through, and you walk over to the where the other knight has fallen and lift them back to their feet before heading through the tunnel.

Here, the stones seem to be both stronger and older than they were in the tombs and in the offering hall, more closely matched together in size and certainly made with more care - the masons were able to take their time with them, that much is clear, whilst the ones further back were made with haste, even if they had still been hewn by men with years of practice and hard earned skill. Still, you find yourself looking to the side walls and seeing that there are no tombs here, merely walls of stone and columns wearing the guise of sculpture to help hold up the ceiling, and you stop for a moment to admire the craftsmanship on one: though the inscription at the base is hard to read in such lighting, it depicts a fierce and bearded warrior holding a great axe over his shoulder and with some kind of stone clenched tight in his other hand. The stone looks familiar somehow, but it seems as if the mason could not quite capture the detail of it, and it leaves you puzzled for a moment as you continue down the tunnels...

...and stop at the sight of a purple light.



TheKebbit/Tsunnarad
[6] Refreshing yourself quickly as to the state of your body - that you are alive and completely restored - before looking towards the trap that struck you down and seeing a thin plume of grey smoke, rising from a square hole in the ground where the pressure plate had been before your unfortunate demise, you first look back towards the altar...and there is the book, floating still despite your second death. Your burnt mouth twists into a charred mockery of a smile as you reach out and take hold of it, bringing it close as you lean onto your staff for support and use both hands to open the book wide, looking into its depths.

But there are no sentences, no words, not even letters.

Instead, there is only black. The ink is so dark that it looks akin to a hole in the world, and covers the entire page. You flip to the next...and it is the exact same as the one before. It is nothing but darkness. Going through the pages quickly, searching for any scrap of knowledge amidst the void, you feel as the ink begins to shudder and move, flowing off the page and into the air, a spiralling black mist darker than night. It circles about you...then pours into your eyes,

It circles about you, as if considering who you are...and then it dives towards you, towards your face, towards your eyes.

You cry out as it bores through flesh and bone and mind, clawing at yourself as flashes of the life before life flood your mind. Books. Battle. Defeat. A trench. An axe. Death. They are all but a blur, a slurry of incoherent moments strung together in a nonsensical manner, but they are your memories and as quickly as they came they disappear again, falling back to the recesses of your consciousness...but they leave something with you, a spell you learnt early in your life, not long after you first learnt of your abilities. Clutching your staff with your left hand, you close your right tightly.

When you open it again, the room is lit by the shining brightness of the light you have made. Closing your hand once more and snuffing out the brightness, you return to the task of navigating the minefield with renewed energy, easily making your way past all of the traps now that they have been marked out for you and your comrades in arms. With every step you feel an immense power growing closer and closer, and before long you see a sign of its presence.

A great violet light, shining down the tunnel.



Maart3n/Luther
[2] Seeing as the others work to try and make their way through the traps and watching as the lich fumbles with something that is not even there - which makes you think for a moment whether his sanity is as badly damaged as his body. Waiting for them to make their way through the first scattering of mines, you carefully trace their movements...but rather than cross the field to try and make your way to the tunnel on the other side, you instead head to the dais and to the altar in the room's heart. On its white surface are a dozen bowls, perhaps a few more, surrounded by the wax mounds that are the remnants of candles, and for a moment a pang of guilt goes through you as you look through them for something that could be of use.

"Do not worry, my champion," the king soothes, "You were one of our honored dead, after all, anything placed upon this altar is yours to choose from."

With the king's words echoing through your mind, you take a closer look at the altar : most of the offerings must have been of flowers or of food, since there is a thick layer of rot and dust upon the altar...but after a while, your fingers find something cold, hard and round. A coin. With a little digging through the dust you pluck it out at the same time one of your plate armored companions slip and fall off the dais, but your eyes are focused entirely on that familiar glimmer of gold. It is an Alarandisian sovereign, a coin struck from an electrum sheet nine tenths gold and one tenth silver, the highest form of currency found inside the kingdom's markets. A single sovereign had been enough to buy a harness of plate armor from a master smith or a horse of good breeding, and ten of them could get you the services of a one hundred man mercenary band for a fortnight of patrols or for a single battle, perhaps two if the loot was good.

"It is not often that someone places gold upon an altar...I doubt it would be worth more than the value of the metal itself now that our kingdom has fallen, still, you never truly know. Perhaps it might still be worth something close to its old value."

Putting the coin into one of your doublet's pockets, you continue rummaging before giving up, having found the only thing of value, then turn to follow the other champions out into the tunnel. The lich toys with his newfound ability to make light, irritating you slightly, but it is nothing you cannot handle - no matter how bright he makes it shine, the irritation refuses to grow with it...but before long, you see a much brighter light down the hall, shining and violet, and it does not weaken you, no, it makes you stronger.



TorrentHKU/Captain Brynhildr Kindaustein
[3] Taking a path of caution rather than one of haste like your companion chose, you carefully step between the traps as you maneuver through the field. Every move is measured and precise, every move is exact and only made after a moment's deliberation, the echoes of a life spent on the battlefield where a single misstep could be your end. That is not to say that caution should be one's approach to everything, merely that there is a time and place for it over brash action...and this is one of those times. You easily make your way through the traps without any real difficulty, stepping over the ones that are positioned to block your path and between those you can't, till you reach the tunnel's entrance not after the other death knight slips up and makes his own way through.

From there, it is a short and quiet walk through a darkness removed only by the brazier's blue flames. It is entirely uneventful, a good thing, but before long you feel...something, something different, an ageless strength that fills you with a might far beyond that which you had before your approach or before you died, for that matter.

A few moments later, you see why. A great purple light, shining down the halls.



Whether one by one or as a group the champions make their way through the dark and dank tunnels before coming to a halt near the main chamber, having overcome all the traps placed before them without much difficulty. A great light shines across the stones, its reflection carried away by the smooth masonry, but every single one of them feels it before they see it: strength. Newfound and greater than it had ever been in life, every one of them feels stronger, healthier, more agile, greater than they had been before they had seen the light, and heading towards it only intensifies the effect as they grow nearer and nearer the source...till, at last, they enter the main atrium and see it.

The Soulstone, a tall and towering monument of the Alarandisian mastery over magic and sorcery and your key to immortality.

It pulsates slowly, like the throb of a living heart, and every beat restores your vitality, the fire of your existence growing brighter in its presence. Here they find the spectre, who had simply walked over the traps and into the hallway, and it is here they find their king, armored and dressed as he had been on the night the kingdom fell.

He gently sets his book down on the table, then walks towards the group with a warm smile. His words are soft and well spoken, with all the weight of a leader who truly cares for his people and his realm behind them.

"We meet together at last, champions. Were it under better circumstances, perhaps I might have held a feast in your honor, but alas, the worst has come to happen. I will not mince my words with pleasantries nor try to make things appear better than they are. Our situation...is grim. Our armies were crushed and our people slaughtered, our cities sacked and our coffers pilfered. I admit this freely because I am certain in your abilities."

"If you have any questions before I give you your first task, say them now. I will answer honestly and to the best of my abilities."