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An adventuring party recruited from Osirion teleports into Azir on the 8th of Desnus. Rahadoum's recruiting contact in Osirion wrote ahead to note they were expected. Couple of guys he's known a long time - a wizard, a ranger - and a new guy, sorcerer, probably to replace the cleric they usually travel with. They spend two days in Azir getting oriented and head out to the front. The ranger wears an unusually high quality amulet of Nondetection; the sorcerer wears a headband for intelligence, which is a bit unusual as sorcerers usually don't need it to cast, but some variants do; they are otherwise unremarkable. Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, no reading, which could mean neutral or 'hiding it'. They work quickly and effectively, manage resources reasonably well, get recommended to higher-ups for a closer look on that account.
"Er, maybe don't knock on the doors or near them, but," quick mage-sight scan, "floor should be safe. Honestly Urtho sounds like the sort of person who might make his fortress full of secret passages, so."
"We can go in two groups. Moondance and I will go with Karna, then we will have two mages and both of us are Mindspeakers. If your group stays with Vanyel, he is a Mindspeaker and also several of you have magic. I think we ought be reasonably safe."
"Usually I'd want healing in both groups but we can get to you pretty fast, probably, if we need to."
" - right, sorry. Those seem like good groups, then." They're also the people who serve this goddess and people who don't, but he is not going to make a fuss about that, it's their territory.
Vanyel can try to help Hagan look for secret doors? If there are any, they're totally non-magical, so mage-sight doesn't help.
Yeah, you usually search for secret doors by pouring water on the ground and seeing whether there are seams it runs in, and running your hands along the walls and floor searching for cracks, and tapping everything for the sound of hollowed spaces or hidden mechanisms, and using Goggles of Minute Seeing to look closer at anything that looks off.
There are, in fact, some minute cracks in the floor! An octagonal section big enough to fit a person through, and arranged around it, four round coin-sized pieces of stone, all the exact same colour as the surrounding white marble and exactly flush with the floor. The octagonal bit sounds maybe hollow underneath.
"Maybe we press down on these little ones? If I had to guess it'd be an order with some sort of significance, hmm... Could be East, South, West, and North, I remember that being a ritual thing for the Shin'a'in."
The stones are too far apart for a single person to reach, but Vanyel can move to crouch by one of them, and they've got four people in total here.
If pushed in that order, the stones do allow themselves to be depressed into the floor. There's a loud creak from somewhere but the octagonal bit of rock doesn't actually move.
"I could give it a shove." He does so with Fetching instead of his hands, in case it tries to bite back or something.
"I think it's just really old. Maybe if we pour water here again it'll lubricate it a bit..."
"Or rust it." He tries to see if he can get a view of the mechanism. "I guess if it does rust it'll be after we leave, so worth a try."
One side of the shape has sunk deeper than the other, and has maybe slid a bit sideways into some sort of slot under the floor; the crack on the opposite side is a few millimetres wider.
Sure, if their party is sufficiently prepared that they have grease on them too, that does seem like a better idea.