Struggle for Paruhapta II: In Xam's House There Are Many Rooms

As the party approached the large wooden doors of the Khufu gasped at the sight of two ornately carved sunken reliefs of women kneeling arms outstretched and facing each other from each door. He described the woman with dark skin and glowing eyes as Rusat and the woman with alabaster skin and eyes so dark they seemed to drink in the early morning light as Nisat and then began an interminable list of honorifics in a more ancient version of Khemian than he normally spoke. Kegho looked at Alex who shrugged "He's mostly listing pairs of words on an increasingly cosmic scale: dawn and dusk, birth and death, etc." Theo chimed in "paired goddesses who sit at points of transition. These wayward pagans have some beautiful if wrong-headed beliefs." Khufu scowled at he wound down his litany and Alex and The Jiam took a moment to listen at the large wooden doors, but heard only the eerie silence that pervaded that end of the valley. Theo attempted to take Kegho's interest in the doors to talk about the Ouranic faith but Kegho had already become irritable as soon as Alex and Theo had discussed goddesses and shoved Alex and The Jiam out of the way to push open the doors and hopefully fight something. He almost fell as the giant, heavy-looking doors slid parted effortlessly and the Keb cousins tittered "mm Keb craftsmanship at its finest" back and forth at each other. As light filtered into the entry way it fell upon a giant statue of the Xam.

Kegho swallowed some choice Ashkuz curses as his eyes were drawn to a trail of blood and a corpse that appeared to have been dragged.

He held up a hand, but Riven and Mitra were already sniffing around the body. The Jiam and Theo quick behind. Alex noticed more double doors to the north of the room and after doing a quick check of the Xam statue to ensure there was nothing of interest moved toward an odd looking door covered with ancient Khemian glyphs. The halls were also covered with text and Khufu and Herk joined him in studying the door pointing out the spiritual meanings of the symbols while Alex attempted to sound out words.

After Mitra had thoroughly sniffed at the blood and Riven was struggling the drag marks, Theo shifted the body into a position of repose and mentioned that it seemed to have been foul play and dead for a few weeks, but the heat and humidity made it hard to be sure.

The two halves of the party reunited and decided that the solutions to both of their issues were likely deeper in the manor. They headed through a door to the south and found a series of hallways and rooms, arcades, courtyards and pens for animals.

In one room Theo picked up a jar that Khufu identified as canopic in style, but missing the top that would be used in funerary rites. One had the glyph for two reeds next to each other which had been on the rotating door lock. Something rattled within it and Alex pulled cloth tight over his face and made sure his gloves were secure before they opened it. There were two ancient Khemian gold coins inside. He set them in a separate pouch and noted the room, the jar with markings and the two coins and they continued on. They moved into a storage room further south and found a door with a simple lock made with exquisite Rusati craftsmanship. Khufu and Alex jockeyed for position to explore its inner workings with their picks, but neither was able to defeat the mechanism. Riven stood behind them silently holding up crowdaddy waiting for them to give up, but they bickered and said shockingly unkind things about each othes' parents as they fiddled with the lock. Kegho took the bar from Riven and pushed the two small people out of the way before breaking the lock. Alex palmed it before Khufu had the same idea and would take it apart later and restore it and sell pale copies of it to rich people in the next big city they were in.

As Alex counted the money he would make from selling fine locks, Kegho pushed the door open and they saw a familiar cloud of yellow mold spores engulf them. The party members who had been previously afflicted held there breath but it was Antonious and Khufu's first encounter and their lungs filled with the wicked spores .

The other members leapt into action knowing the deleterious effects of the spores. Alex lifted the bag of drystone in Theo's sack to begin lofting the powder into the room, in his haste substantially missing the giant field of it making up almost the entirety of the room. They grabbed Antonious and Khufu and pulled them further away to attempt to save them from the spores, and Kegho closed the door.