Carceri D'Invenzione (I)

Antechamber

All around you are massive stone pillars, arches, buttresses and vaulting. Scarcely any light penetrates from outside. Wooden walkways, some sound and some rotten, cling to the walls and pillars, and precariously crisscross the vast aerial spaces. The ceiling is far above, lost in darkness. Iron lanterns here and there do little to alleviate the gloom. At the limits of hearing, there is the faintest suggestion of low voices fitfully murmuring in the far distance.

Pieces of broken and disused machines of unknown function lie all around. Before you stands a horizontal wooden wheel, rusty iron spikes rising from its rim, its spokes, and its hub. Heavy iron rings hang from the walls. Protruding wooden beams bear pulley-blocks and ropes and chains. Windows in the walls and pillars lead not to the outside, but to further internal spaces: cells, storage rooms, and empty voids.

To the west is a massive iron-bound wooden door. A staircase leads up to the south and then bends east. There are wide archways to the north and east, and in the north-west corner a narrow staircase leads up into darkness.

Suddenly a raven flies past, the clap of its wings breaking the near-silence of these halls. "Raak," it cries, and vanishes into the darkness.

Exits: north, up, south-east, east, north-east, west, knock