The Well, Room 5: Altar of the Eye

At the end of the eastern hall is a lozenge-shaped room, approximately 15 feet wide and 20 feet long, with rough, rounded corners. A one foot wide trough, hewn from the stone of the floor, crosses the room from the northern to the southern wall about five feet from the eastern wall. To either side of the door, torches in sconces with beaten-bronze mirrors shed light on a Chaotic chapel.

Bas relief carvings along all the walls seem to have once depicted more gnolls and elves, but these carvings have been thoroughly defaced. In their place, much newer, cruder carvings abound- massive eyes, human figures with eyes for heads, human faces with eyes in their mouths and mouths in their eye sockets, and the like.

The trough appears to be filled with a dust-covered pool of oil. A brazier with cold coals sits against the northern wall, with flint and steel and several bits of tinder beneath the brazier.

Beyond the trough, a heavy chain descends from the ceiling, suspended by a hook fastened to a ring on the wall. At the end of this chain is a chandelier-like figure- a metal central body with a paste-gem eye, and ten twisted wrought-iron arms ascending from this central mass. The ends of these arms have the decaying remains of human eyes impaled on six of them, and another bizarre, non-human eye with a strangely shaped pupil decorates the last. (This is an ibixian eye, a devotive offering from one of the Servitors of the Bleth on level 2B.)

Kneeling before the oil trough are six human cultists (use the statistics for brigands or bandits). All six of the cultists have shaved heads, long, wild beards, and do not pause for even a moment before leaping to their feet and attacking strangers in their (un)holy place.

Four of the cultists wear dingy white robes, their open fronts displaying crude tattoos of multiple-eyed beasts on their chests. Three of these men kneel next to long-handled axes, while the fourth possesses a massive, multi-headed flail.

The last two wear equally poor robes, dyed a rusty reddish-brown. One of the men has an axe, and one a flail. Beneath their tattered robes, these cultists wear studded leather armor. These red-robed cultists are missing their left eyes, scarred sockets empty and unhidden. On the backs of their heads are further crude tattoos, depicting lidless eyes with triangular pupils. These cultists also possess the chest tattoos of the above men, beneath their armor.

If the room is searched, the paste-gem eye of the beholder figure is revealed to in fact be a grime-covered pearl, worth 250 gp. The cultists each bear 1d6 sp, and one has a pouch with 5 gp and a wooden holy symbol of an open eye.