Leap of Faith

[Ginrai]

Ginrai warily hands the staff to Bjorn.  "Before you take this, can we compare the size of this with that of your scabbard to see what sort of advantage you'd have using my staff?"

[Bjorn]

Bjorn stares pointedly at his scabbard, no more than two feet long, and then at Parthipan's man-height staff, and then lifts his eyes to look at Parthipan.

[Ginrai]

"Ah... right.  Use it carefully, Bjorn."

[Bjorn]

Taking the staff from Parthipan, Bjorn stands well back from the doorway and studies the precise pattern of the cobblestones near the entrance.

[Brian]

The cobbles are about seven cm across, pretty much square (though, they do bulge upwards in the center, as they're slightly rounded and radiate in an arc away from the center of this room.  The cobbles all (pretty much) seem to be arrayed in circles, or maybe a spiral, from there.  You're not close enough to be certain.  Either way, there are six fairly tightly packed spirals, alternating between white and black between you and the center.

[Bjorn]

"Stay back from the entrance, and get yourself flat along the walls or the floor," Bjorn advises the others.  Once he's sure they're going to follow his suggestion, he stands to one side of the entrance, as far back as he can manage, and carefully pushes at a cobblestone in the closest white spiral.

[Brian]

The cobblestone appears to be safe.  At least, it doesn't spring any traps you're aware of, or feel loose.

[Bjorn]

Muttering under his breath, Bjorn edges closer to the entrance, and tries to see if he can reach the second white spiral with the staff.

[Brian]

At the wall, since the chamber is forty meters (or so) across, and has six equal sized spirals running to the outer edge, you would need to clear a gap of about twenty one meters.  That's quite a reach.

[Bjorn]

Bjorn grunts.  "Okay.  The white spiral seems to be safe, but we can't bet on that.  Follow me, and try to step on the exact same cobblestones."

Saying that, Bjorn tentatively starts following the white spiral.  Tap the farthest white stone he can reach with the staff, then the one he's going to step onto to make sure, step forward, and then repeat.  Ideally, the idea is to trigger any traps there might be as far away from him as possible; and then, to make sure he hasn't lost track, doublecheck the near ones.

[Brian]

It's slow going, but it is going.  What you find is that there's a 'safe path' through the traps that doesn't actually quite match the curve of the spiral.  Iff it did, it'd take you to the center.  Instead, it curves across the room, an aisle about a meter and a half wide with no traps.  The cobbles on either side of your aisle are suspect, but it carries you across the spirals rather than along them, to the far side.

From the middle of the path, you can see the the central stone is a block about two meters across, gray, and marked with something you can't make out from the 'safe' area you're tracing out.

And, as it turns out, the staff is resiliant enough to only get knocked around, not actually chopped in half. In fact, when you look at it, it's not even chipped or notched from the metal sheets that popped up and hit it.

[Bjorn]

Taking a pause for a second, Bjorn induldges in a stretch and some deep, relaxing breaths -- but without moving his feet.  "Tiring," he observes.  Squinting at the centre block, he asks, "Can anyone make out what that is?"

[Brian]

No one else is in a position to reach it, or see better than you (Ginrai actually does adjust his glasses to try and peer at it), but the result is the same.

"This room looks much like one of the chambers in the inner sanctum of the temple of Hamar," the lady reflects.  "Perhaps it served a similar function long ago.  The capstone is usually a repository for a sacred relic ... but it would appear that thieves, or perhaps even the original maintainers took this one away."

[Bjorn]

Bjorn grunts, thoughtfully.  "Is it worth trying to get to the altar?" he asks, thoughtfully.  "It might be possible to do, but it's probably foolish -- seems the most likely place to be trapped."  He shrugs.  "But then, I don't know what they were thinking when they built this place."

[Brian]

"I don't know," the lady says, frowning.  "The colors are for the temple of Aestock, not Hamar.  But they are companions against our foe."  She seems uncertain.  "It would be a risk.  It is right there ... but at the same, we do need to make haste."