Nomen Infernale XIX: A Man Is Right in His Own Eyes, But Yanob Weighs the Heart

The crypt terrors were defeated, but La Compagnia had paid a steep price for the stalwart Keb, Nuruhotep se Ka, now lay desiccated on the crushed mosaic floor of Tel Jumrah. Teleptyon and Asbjørn both looked gaunt and pale, much like their lich-entangled companion, Alexandru. Asbjørn stripped his former retainer of any armor and valuable possessions as Kegho, Asbjørn, and Alex began dismembering Nuru's corpse and the fallen crypt terrors.

Asbjørn noticed a faint blood-red glow emanating from Lullaby's blade as he cut into the flesh of the Arevenantes in the low light of the tomb, and he was delighted that it matched the red behind his eyes when he communes with Modar Hegge in the heat of battle. Kegho expected to be the most efficient with Skullcleaver when it came to butchering, but he noticed that Alex was keeping pace with a calm–almost beatific–demeanor and precise, swift cuts with one of his obsidian daggers. The skin on the nape of his neck crawled as he brought down his axe on the hip-bone of one of the unfortunate crypt terrors.

The gruesome work done, Brother Theo took time to tend to the wounds left by Lullaby on Kegho's flesh. He then assessed the damage done by the crypt terrors and communicated to Teleptyon and Asbjørn the gravity of the situation. Teleptyon and Theo exchange notes on theurgic and arcane understandings of a crypt terror's ability to drain anima, the lifeforce that animates all living things. However, Asbjørn was only interested in knowing how the Southmen and their gods could return his strength.

Returning to the chamber's northern doorway, Alex offered to enter first by passing through the small opening in the door they had managed to create prior to being ambushed. By the light of Theo's lantern, he was able to see a narrow swath of the room, including several dessicated corpses lying on the floor. Before Alex went through, Asbjørn grunted in his taciturn manner, as he handed him Lullaby. He glowered as Alex took it and the Oameni rogue nodded to signal that he knows to return it to the Rhenish barbarian.

Alex clambered through the passage as quietly as possible and maked sure there were no enemies nearby before he lit his lantern as he slowly crept into the center of the room. In the flickering light of his oil lamp, he found himself face to face with a crude stone altar covered in the rusty brown of long dried blood. In a circular depression carved into the middle of the stone are what appeared to be the scattered bones of a small human. As the light of his lantern shifted, he was startled by the sight of a large statue of a ram-headed Khemian god, 25 feet high and 7 feet wide. On closer inspection, the mien of the deity is diseased and grotesque instead of noble. Returning to the doorway, he called for Riven and Elissa to enter and after they successfuly crawled into the chamber, the two women begin searching the nooks and rooms as Alex examined the bloodied altar further. He slowly came to the horrific realization that the bones were the remains of a small child.

As Riven searched the rooms, she found more corpses that she assumed were cultists who had hid when the Paladins of Aelos burned out the rest of their group. She eventually came to a room with a wardrobe, a bed and a red Shayrid carpet. Turning back toward the center of the chamber, she observed Alex meticulously searching the edges and decorative elements of the altar. She took a deep breath and holds still, knowing that a wrong move could bring fresh chaos, but a small pop and a drawer slides out from the base of the stone. Despite its rough construction, the drawer had been flawlessly set flush with the piece. With no dead rising and no explosions, Riven exhales and resumed her exploration. Elissa stood in front of the western alcove and found that something on the wall was covered by a sheet of oilcloth. She cautiously moved the sheet using her spear to find nine levers arranged in a three-by-three grid. Elissa turned to inform Alex of her discovery, but he was deep in thought, looking between Lullaby, his staff, his gloves and the leather-bound scroll of papyrus. After some deliberation, Alex tentatively reached out with a gloved hand to pick up the scroll. He was tempted to unfurl and try to read it, but he knew that few of La Compagnia could search this chamber and even fewer could decipher the Ma'abar hieroglyphs. He asked Riven to run the scroll back to the party and to inform the cleric and the mage of its discovery. Alex then moved on to check the alcove opposite the one Elissa was standing in.

On the other side of the breached door, Asbjørn and Kegho were itching for a fight and unable to do anything to help. Exhausted from entering the state of battle fury, Asbjørn made a great show of taking a nap. The rest of the party were startled when Riven's face suddenly appeared in the hole they created in the stone doors. She spoke to her compatriots in her usual strange and monotone manner, abstemious in description or context: "Scroll. Figure it out." She handed the scroll to Teleptyon through the hole before disappearing back into the chamber.

Teleptyon carefully removed the thong from the ancient papyrus and unrolled it to see a single rune which he is unable to decipher. He then handed it to Brother Theo as he might recognize it. The young cleric was horrified to realize that he did, as he was familar with the infernal script of the imprisoned demons of Abythos. Before he could avert his eyes from the hypnotic allure of the scroll, a single syllable - "RHO" - cracked like thunder in his mind. As he recovered from the stupor of his horrible discovery, he became aware of an increasingly intense burning sensation over his heart. He gazed down at the papyrus and observed the glyph fading before the scroll turned to dust in his hands. He scrambles to open his robe and on his hirsute Rexan chest, the glowing glyph faded into a scarred brand upon his flesh.

The Sigil of Rho by Lleij Schwartz via Midjourney

Meanwhile, inside the chamber of the diseased ram-headed god, Alex was interrupted from his translation of the heiroglyphics carved on the walls of the alcove by a blood-curdling scream that sounded like Brother Theo, but also not like him at all. He tried to determine what had happened but did not hear further commotion. Alex then continued to work on deciphering the text, which read:

Only the most pious, who know what lies within the hearts of the gods, may go forth to pay homage to Adom-Shai, Lord of the Ma'abar, Defender of Yumrah, and Holder of Nudjat! Yamunat's heart is wrapped in leather phylactery once a month to hide its brilliance; it dwells beneath Usri's heart of wood. Aman-Ri's papyrus-wrapped heart lies between Sipteh's heart of stone and Yanob's heart of bone. Kh'api's heart of the reddest clay is beside Sakhmit's heart of brass and below the heart of glass. The linen-wrapped heart lies right above the heart wrapped in sedge. Sha's iron heart is in the center and Yanob's heart is to the right of Aman-Ri's. The heart painted black is to the left of the heart painted white. The hearts of bone, stone, and clay are not adorned in any way. The heart painted black is on the top and the one painted white is above the one linen-wrapped heart. Sakhmit's heart is at the bottom and Sipteh's heart is beside it. All hail, Yamunat's heart of glass, that travels the night sky to signal to Kh'api to give us life-giving clay. Two hearts are golden and shall open the way.

After assuring himself of the correctness of his translation, Alex quickly confirmed with Elissa concerning some of the details of the grid of levers before approaching the chamber's entrance to inform the rest of the party that the Ma'abar had left another intricate puzzle trap to protect Nudjat.

Brother Theo and Teleptyon put their learned minds to solving the puzzle; however, the typically physical Asbjørn proved himself to possess a keen wit as well. Nevertheless, the party argued amongst themselves for almost tweny minutes over the correct interpretation of the riddle, with Alex running back and forth between the two alcoves and the hole to confirm details. Eventually, they came to a consensus as to the solution, and fairly certain that they understood, Alex and Elissa volunteered to return to the alcove to pull the levers representing the two hearts of gold. Alex was unable to reach the levels and was forced to climb onto Elissa's shoulders to grasp them. He reached for the middle right lever and feelt Elissa's shoulders tighten as he wrapped his fingers around the stone handle. Pulling it down with some force, they heard a distant *klunk* and, after a few moments of silence, caught their breath. Alex then reached for the top center and pulled it - another distant *klunk* followed by silence.

They return to the hole in the door in a celebratory mood as Kegho opens the door effortlessly. The party enters the temple chamber and fanned out, searching the four rooms in the corners. Both Teleptyon and Brother Theo took particular interest in the large idol of the corrupted ram-headed god. Teleptyon decryed the desecration of such a handsome deity as pious cleric was scandalized by the apparent sacrifice of the child. Brother Theo began lustrating the altar and statue with oil in an effort to cleanse the evil from this place, which caused the RHO sigil on his chest to burn more intently. Despite the pain, Brother Theo continued to perform the cleansing ceremony through gritted teeth.[/p

At the same time, Riven showed Asbjørn the room with the bed and rug, which they immediately roll up because it goes so well with the sofa. Fearing that the wardrobe might be trapped, the two adventurers worked together to devise a way to open the it in the room from a distance using a coil of hempen rope. Fortunately, the wardrobe was not trapped, which left the two free to begin collecting the fine robes from it. The inscrutible Palesian Scout acted on a hunch, as she is wont to do, and began to search the dresser more carefully for hidden drawers. Her instincts guided her correctly as she found a false bottom filled with a scandalous amount of coin, so much that even Asbjørn admitted he could carry it all. The two gleefully scooped up the coins from the hold; Asbjørn decided to use a sack that belonged to Nuru to carry the coin in as an homage to his retainer's sacrifice.

Across the chamber, in the northwestern chamber, Kegho discovered the cultists' storeroom. Filled with crates and barrels in various conditions, he split open a large crate that caught his eye. The Steppelander found that it was filled with bars of a metal that he did not immediately recognize but intuited were valuable. Continuing his search, he eventually finds a melon-sized sack which he opened to find it filled a glittering golden powder that he recognized from Eknopolis as Golden Lotus powder.

One room over, Alex searched what appeared to be the cultists' library and scriptorium. He was highly annoyed to find the scrolls were labeled in Eknonese. He asked Elissa to call for the mage and when Teleptyon entered the room, he handed him a bundle of twelve scrolls. Scanning the tabs on the leather thongs wrapped around each scroll, Teleptyon was beyond overjoyed to find that they are the Principia Arcana, the base of any learned mage's library. Alex continued rooting through the shelves and tables for more valuables.