Shadowdim 18: The Warden

The heroes return their focus to the Salt-Sealed Door. Dorn’s hand is on the latch. Aele’s mental shield from the Silken Oil is humming in the back of his mind, and Dorn’s blade, Swift, illuminates the fine white powder on the floor.

Dorn’s grip tightens on Swift. With the party now perfectly in sync, he looks to Aele, who gives a solemn nod, his mind bolstered by the Silken Oil.

Dorn doesn’t bother with a gentle nudge. He knows that once the salt seal is broken, the protection—or the containment—is gone. He shifts his weight and delivers a powerful front kick to the center of the door, just above the latch.

The wood groans, the lock clicks open, and the door flies inward. The fine white powder at the threshold is scattered into a chaotic cloud by the sudden rush of air.

As the dust settles, the light from Swift reveals a room that looks more like a mummification chamber than a living quarter. The walls are draped in yellowed linen bandages that hang like weeping willow branches. In the center of the room, three stone slabs are tilted at 45-degree angles. Two are empty, but the third holds a figure wrapped tightly in grey resins and salt-caked cloth.

There is no “hum” here. Instead, there is a low, wet sound—like someone trying to breathe through a sponge.

Aele’s Detect Magic flares blindingly. The necromantic haze isn’t just a leak; it is a thrumming tether connecting the ceiling to the wrapped figure on the slab.

The figure’s head slowly tilts toward the door. Two pinpricks of baleful red light ignite behind the linen wrappings.

Cabe feels the blood-bond throb with a sudden chill. “It’s not a specimen,” he hisses. “It’s a sentry.”

Initiative! Dorn has a +1 bonus from his Fleet knack.

Initiative Rolls:
Dorn: 8 (+1 Fleet) = 9
Cabe: 7
Aele: 4
The Wrapped Sentry: 3

The door has been kicked wide, the salt seal is shattered, and those baleful red pinpricks of light are locked onto Dorn. The wet, spongy breathing sound grows louder as the figure on the slab begins to strain against its resin-soaked bindings.

Dorn readies Swift, the blade’s light pulsing in rhythm with his heart. Aele raises his holy symbol, the Silken Oil keeping his mind clear and cold. Cabe tenses, feeling the hunger of the room’s necromancy trying to gnaw at his blood-bond.

The party has the jump! The Sentry is still partially adhered to the stone slab by the hardened resins, giving our heroes a precious moment to strike before it fully detaches.

Aele’s mind, steeled by the Silken Oil, slices through the instinctual terror of the red glare. He focuses his Detect Magic and his deep knowledge of Thothian funerary rites, looking past the resin and bandages.

As the figure strains, Aele realizes this is neither a classic “undead” mummy nor a simple corpse. The resins are still tacky in places, and the “wet breathing” sound isn’t an illusion—it is coming from a throat partially preserved by magical salts.

This is a Living Mummification. The individual is being held in a horrific state between life and death, preserved by the necromantic tether in the ceiling. The baleful red eyes are likely the result of the soul being compressed and forced back into the meat of the brain.

The energy flowing from the ceiling is “feeding” the body. It isn’t just a sentry; it’s a Warden in Stasis that has just been forcibly awoken.

“It’s not dead, Dorn!” Aele yells. “It’s being kept—a living anchor for the room’s magic. If we sever the tether or the resins, the shock might end it, but while it’s connected, it’s drawing power directly from the Archive’s core!”

Dorn’s instincts as “The Bastion” shift from slaughter to surgical precision. He recognizes that the figure on the slab is merely the terminal for a much larger power source. Lunging forward, he ignores the grasping, resin-coated fingers of the warden and brings Swift upward in a shimmering arc, aiming for the thick cluster of salt-caked bandages descending from the ceiling.

Dorn’s +7 to-hit (including the ‘Great Strike’ bonus) bites deep. Swift lives up to its name, the +1 magical edge singing as it passes through the necromantic tether.

The blade shears through the resin-hardened wraps like a hot wire through wax. As the last strand snaps, a discharge of dark, violet energy erupts from the ceiling—a magical “short circuit.” A wave of cold force washes over the room.

Dorn must make a Saving Throw vs. Spells. Without the tether, the baleful red glow in its eyes flickers wildly. The “wet breathing” sound turns into a dry, rattling gasp.

The “Defensive” fighter’s training kicks in; he ducks his head behind his shield and leans into the blast. The cold, necrotic frost coats the rim of his buckler and the sleeve of his chainmail, but his iron constitution allows him to shrug off the soul-chilling effect. He stands his ground, breath misting in the sudden cold, but unharmed.

The creature collapses back onto the slab, no longer “powered” by the Archive’s core. However, it isn’t dead. The severance has left it in a state of Necrotic Shock. It is twitching, the resins on its body beginning to crack and flake away, revealing gray, withered flesh.

Cabe steps into the room, his hand on his dagger. “The tether’s gone, but the ‘anchor’ is still kicking. It’s like a fish out of water, flopping around, but those claws still look sharp.”

Aele, sensing the shift in the room’s mana, sees the Necromantic haze dissipating, but a new aura is forming around the creature—one of Agony. “Cabe,” Aele says, “put this creature out of its misery.”

Cabe’s predatory grace shifts into a somber, swift mercy. He ignores the flailing, resin-caked limbs and steps into the creature’s reach, his weapon finding the gap in the salt-hardened wrappings at the base of the skull.

Because the creature is Prone and in Necrotic Shock, Cabe strikes with ease. There is no resistance; the withered flesh parts like dry parchment.

As the blade strikes home, the red light in the eyes doesn’t flare in anger—it expands for a brief second, reflecting the first bit of natural light (from Swift) it has seen in an age, before winking out entirely. The “wet breathing” stops instantly, replaced by the sound of crumbling salt.

Aele stands over the remains, whispering a brief prayer to Thoth to guide whatever remains of the soul to the Hall of Two Truths. “You’ve done a kindness, Cabe. That wasn’t life. It was a sentence.”

As the body collapses into ash and brittle linen, Dorn uses the tip of his blade to sift through the remains. Aside from the salt and bone, two items remain intact. There is a key, much larger than the copper one found earlier. It is stamped with a numerical ‘1’ and a small cogwheel.

There is a ceramic cylinder, about the size of a scroll case; it is sealed with red wax. Through his Innate Detect Magic, Aele can see a faint Abjuration aura on the wax—a “Security Seal” to prevent unauthorized reading.

Dorn picks up the key, wiping the grey ash onto his tunic. “Another key for the collection. And this cylinder... it looks like a message that was never meant to be delivered,” he says, handing the ceramic tube to Aele.

The other two stone slabs in the room are cold and bare, but they bear deep grooves in the stone—tracks for the same kind of necromantic tethers Dorn just severed.

Cabe looks at the ceiling, where two other clusters of bandages hang loose. “There were supposed to be three of them. If the other two slabs are empty, that means two of these ‘Wardens’ are already out there... or they were moved to a different post.”

With the XP updated and the “Warden” laid to rest, the chamber feels heavy with the weight of ancient secrets. The flickering light from Swift casts long, dancing shadows across the bas-reliefs on the walls.

Aele holds his light source close to the stone, tracing the deep, sharp lines of the Thothian craftsmanship. “These bas-reliefs are not merely decorative; they are a chronological map of what we might term the Overseer’s Mandate.”

The carvings are divided into three major panels, read from left to right. “This first panel depicts three figures—identical to the one we just laid to rest—standing in a row. They are labeled in Thothian as ‘The Breathless Vigil.’”

Below them, a carving of a floor plan shows this very hallway. “Ah!” Aele exclaims, “these carvings confirm my fears: one warden was assigned to the salt-sealed room we just cleared, one to the archive entrance, and the third to the Overseer’s private sanctum.”

Cabe joins Aele, who is now studying the middle panel. “It shows the Pump Station we passed through earlier, see?” Aele points out. And look here, ‘Specimen Hearts’ (like the Shaman heart mentioned in the lstone tablet log) being placed into a central machine to ‘purify the air for the scholars.’”

“Fascinating,” Cabe breathes. “And look here: a secret maintenance crawlspace connecting the Pump Station directly to the Grand Archive, bypassing the hallway doors.”

Dorn joins them as they turn their attention to the third and final panel of engravings.

It depicts a tall, slender figure wearing the Silver Signet Ring and holding the Crystal Tuning Fork. This figure is shown standing before a massive, circular vault door that has no visible handle—only a series of crystalline teeth. Even Dorn seems taken in: “Well, now we know the tuning fork and the signet ring can be used together.”

Aele points to the second panel. “Look here. The ‘missing’ sentries aren’t wandering. They are anchored. One is likely standing right behind the Archive archway, and the other is guarding the Overseer. They are stationary until their threshold is crossed.”

Dorn narrows his eyes at the map of the Pump Station. “That crawlspace... if we had found that earlier, we could have come up behind the Archive warden. But we’re here now.”

Cabe touches the carving of the circular vault. “That must be the ‘Sanctum’ behind the double doors at the end of the hall. The ring and the fork aren’t just jewelry; they are the literal ‘keys’ to those crystalline teeth.”

“Let’s hole up here, eat, get some rest, then we can press on,” Dorn says. He passes the ceramic tube to Aele. “I know you’re dying to open this. It doesn’t have any physical trap that I can find.”

Dorn’s suggestion is met with a collective exhale of relief. The mummification chamber, though macabre, is now the safest place in the complex—the “leak” is plugged, the door is defensible, and the “Breathless Vigil” of the other two sentries keeps them anchored to their specific posts elsewhere.