Following in the first exploration team's footsteps down into the belly of the Shrine, the team soon finds themselves subject to the same relentlessly oppressive atmosphere. Otherwise, Tony (and anyone who read the provided paperwork) will be able to confirm that the state of the temple is largely unchanged from the first incursion into it's densely dark, unnaturally quiet depths.

Following the (extremely rough) schematic provided will eventually find them travelling the faintly downward sloping 'bladed corridor.' The passage's elaborate images, depicting Dumat's legacy in all its blood stained glory, are writ in shapes so sharp-edged that they threaten to slash open anyone who makes the mistake of brushing too closely. Not to worry though; that blood won't go to waste. There are channels carved into the walls and floor to capture anything spilled.

About halfway down this chamber, the team will discover the grotesquely-twisted and tainted corpse of a Venatori mage where he was skewered on a particularly prominent series of carvings by the original exploration team as they made their hurried escape. The walls and channels have done as they were designed to do, and a great deal of the passage about and below the corpse are marred with tar-like black and blighted blood.

When they move past the corpse and eventually make their way to the great ritual chamber beyond, the team will find that void-dark rift waiting for them. With no one alive left to assault them, if they make a thorough search of the massive pitch-dark chamber they may also find:

• A stack of about a dozen bodies arranged so neatly to one side of the room they must have been put there by someone still living. Though several months old at least, they appear to be mummifying rather than decomposing naturally. Presumably this is some effect of the room's unnatural qualities. Several are in Venatori robes and appear to have died from injuries consistent with some sort of explosion. The rest are dressed in plain black robes and while they may also show signs of having been impacted by an explosion, they also appear to have suffered fatal deliberate cuts to various major arteries.
  
• Around the rift in the center of the room there are channels in the floor which appear to form patterns similar in concept to glyphs but not forming any glyphs anyone's seen before. The outermost channels begin at 8 curved depressions in the floor, essentially bowls. It will be easy to detect the remnants of dried blood in them.
  
• The rift is perfectly centered over the pattern in the floor, and directly beneath it is a sort of grating. Getting close would be ill-advised, but there appears to be a small pile of debris/sand/ashes sitting atop it. The scorch marks on the floor also appear to radiate outwards from this spot.
  
• A large chest against one wall of the room may be recognized as dwarven in design. A dwarven coat of arms is stamped into the metal bindings.
  
• There are some bits of burned papers here and there around the room and among the corpses. Most are quite damaged and in the extremely lightless state of the chamber it won't really be possible to effectively examine them on site. At most, it can be discerned that most seem to be in Tevene or possibly Ancient Tevene, and only a few in Trade.