The Head That Glows is Key

The party was able to decipher the coded dots into IF YOU WANT TO FOLLOW ME THE HEAD THAT GLOWS IS KEY. To find the head that glows, Beckett put out all of the candles and braziers in the art room. A single metal skull in a cluster of them was glowing a dull red. We detected there was magic in the area but did not see any runes or sigils carved into it. Rivvikyn offered to pick it up and confirmed it was metallic. The skull was hollow and somewhat decorative. Turning it over he saw an inscription on the inside that read, “Poke out my eyes and ring the bell.” Beckett tried slapping it gently with his hand inside of it and it made a faint ringing noise, but nothing else happened. After several attempts, Amos took it from him, hung it from his fingers via the eye sockets, and smacked it with a crowbar.

The skull rung loudly and after a second it's mouth opened so a beam of light could shine out of it, opening a portal. We step through it and come out in a dark place with a tower ahead of us containing lots of moon symbols. The air was very calm and still, with no smell to it. With no other interesting points in sight, the party traveled down the path and up the stairs leading to the temple. As we approached, the building felt oddly pristine. Atop the stairs was a large crescent moon shaped door with a carving of the goddess Kaelthyl, the goddess of moonlight, dancing and lonely spirits. With no handle or lock on the door, we tried knocking which produced no result other than a faint echo on the other side of the door. The only other idea we had was dancing in the moonlight… As we all began dancing in silence, the door began to shimmer as if it was no longer solid.

We entered through the opening to a short hallway leading to another door. Once again we knocked first but receiving no answer, we opened it and walked through. To the right was a door with a large triangular section of keyholes, to the left a plain door. Having no key we went left. The room had a door on the right and was lined with displays going down the middle which appeared to be offerings left at the temple. Through the door on the right was a long hallway lined by 8 statues. At this point we were on edge and expecting a fight as we walked down the hallway to a door at the end. Surprised that nothing happened we entered the next room and see a key hanging on the opposite end of the room and nothing else. Beckett walks towards it and halfway across the room, the floor splits right between his feet and starts moving to opposite walls. He was able to grab the ledge and hang on as Amos threw a rope near him. Just out of reach, Beckett used a mage hand to pull it nearer and was pulled back to safety.

As we catch our breath we hear a faint voice yelling from the bottom of the pit as the floor starts returning to it's original place. There seemed to be a woman down there but we could not understand anything she was saying. We tossed a torch down there as the floor closed completely. Amos walked back out to the middle of the room and the floor started spreading once more. We threw down a rope and pulled the woman up. To our surprise it was Seraphina! After brief introductions, Beckett used mage hand once again to grab the key. On it was inscribed, “Five from the right with three in between”. Excited for this seemingly final clue we rushed back to the door with the odd triangular locks and attempted to unlock it. Several attempts later we found a single keyhole that seemed to partially unlock the door. Sera suspected there must be another key that we all missed.

Back in the display room we searched high and low and found nothing of interest. As we headed back toward the room we found the key in, Rivvikyn noticed one of the statues in the hallway had a chain around it's neck with a key. He grabbed the key to pull it free and the statues all started to move.