Outside, Ghushmaya, the leader of the Kurrim, the Mountain Folk, in the temple above had travelled with companions to talk to Harvan as leader of the group. Finding a wounded Jose, much battered, she uses her healing talents to heal Jose, but the inflammation has hit his stamina.
Ghushmaya guides Jose back to the group, but she hangs back at the top of the stairs as she hears the combat going on.
José sees, barely, that something is going on, he has to approach to see Duran firing diver tipped arrow after silver tipped arrow at these slow moving animated corpses. Unfortunately the one he concentrates on is that one who is under control of Gunion.
Farshad and Jushur confuse the undead, the Mabasu as they later learn it is called, battering it between them and destroying it. Outside Utana bravely holds his own, though eventually Jose and Gunion come to his aid, and tackle the second Mabasu that is coming for Utana. There there is a bit of disaster as Jose, using a silver sword borrowed from Dhran, fumbles it through the Mabasu, where it is picked up by Gunion, who also fumbles it where Jose, having fallen to the ground, picks it up again.
Gunion’s Mabasu fights another one, until it is hit soundly by a shot from Dhran, which breaks the spell.
Coming back into the main chamber, Jushuur tries to leap and slide over the mummification table, which he partly does, except he fluffs it, sticking in the remains of the last victim, but he is able to recover and do great damage, aided further by Farshad. And eventually the Mabasu are dispatched though Jose was gravely wounded to near death.
Ghushmaya comes down from her hiding place, and heals Jose at great cost, though not greatly as Jose was so badly wounded.
The chambers are explored, one of which was not finished, and they find the rotted rich robes of councillors and servants, grave goods rotted with age to piles of dust but among the rot and litter several items. Gold and silver wire used in embroidery as well as semi-precious stones. A shortsword decorated with script, claimed by Farshad. A decorated ivory rod of authority, carved with scenes of submission after battle, a silver fillet, three clay tablets in a copper box and an amulet of white stone, slightly green, similar to the jar found before. Ten of the silvered arrows were recovered, five were taken by Jose, five by Dhran.
They proceed through a door and down stairs that lead to a corridor lined with stone sarcophagi, tightly packed and pinned shut. Gunion had a glimpse of , of something, Fearm despair, horror and death.
The group were loathe to open any, but a collapsed wall, spilling down a short scree slope leading to a chasm, was explored by Farshad. He found one remaining sarcophagus that had been on the collapsed wall, but had not slid into the chasm. In that was a corpse in an attitude of trying to escape, seemingly have been immured alive in these sarcophagi.
Proceeding on, the next chamber,, it was large, with bodies on the floor, strange spiral carvings inscribed with symbols possibly from Hao, far to the east, Farshad thinks, having seen coins from that far land.
The room is dominated by two things apart from the strange circular symbols engraved on the floor arranged in a triangle around a central different symbol.
One is a large, perfectly blank bronze slab, obviously a door, though with no sign of hinge or handle. The other is a stone altar, with more carvings, groves in arcane patterns and symbols, Those on the top, at points, lead to funnel shaped holes leading deep into the stone block.
At he back of the altar were statues of the three gods, but now towered over by another statue of Gathpaxpes, crowned with a crown of real gold, set with rubies, arms holding an axe and a sceptre and crossed in the attitude of a king. The sceptre and axe were halted with unblemished iron, free of rust after centuries, but the axe head was solved and the sceptre was topped with gold and more jewels.
Rather than look to the door, the group carefully avoided the symbols carved on the floor, and boosted Farshad up to divest the statue of Gathpaxpes of axe, sceptre and crown. No sooner had he done so than the symbols on the floor burst full of light, then symbol after symbol winked out, starting from the end of the spiral and working in. The group mostly reserved to the door they came in but the last light flared and went out, before the door opened.
Relieved, the group proceeded, finding another corridor and stairs going down. This had a stone ribbon frieze down each side, depicting events from the life of Gathpaxpes our, at least, alleged events. Gathpaxpes was a man, but the events depicted are those of a divine being, strangling monsters in his crib, speaking to monsters as a child, defeating men in combat as a boy, as a teenager subjugating nations aided by spirits.
The corridor at the end of the stairs head back in the direction of the chasm, though further south, and ended in well fashioned edge, some 3 metres or so above a flowing river. A similar edge was four metres away and, backs from the edge a way, was a bronze gate, a slab priced by holes in some pattern that could not be made out.\n\nA cursory look revealed no mechanism or levels, and the group pondered how to bridge the gap, as both sides had been smoothly shaped as to deny purchase to any climber.
Eventually they thought of using the gate as an anchor point, they had ropes, and oils and weapons found in chambers above were made into grapnels. It took about an hour but they were ready.\n\nEach cast a rope, but failed, until Utana cast it true, and it caught. Jose was lowered with another rope, and he managed to ford the icy water. At the other side, bracing himself against a submerged rock, Jose pulled on the grappled rope.
At that point he found that the gate was not a gate, but a drawbridge, his attempt to pull himself up instead pulled the drawbridge down on its hinge. As it came down about 50 degrees down another section sprang out to complete the bridge across the gap.
Managing to catch himself, Juan José was hauled back up to his companions.
And there we left it