Aria laughed softly, "I'll be sure to point out anything I see; I won't be able to see further than a sunrod anyway, only about a dozen paces in pitch dark, and with no sense of color."<br/><br/>She tied the compass to one of her wrists so its direction could be readily assessed. As they descended, she held her wrist sideways so that they could see the needle's downward angle accurately; it got shallower and, once they reached the base of the stairs, was horizontal. Triangulating this information with that above, it had to be pointing a few hundred feet ahead.<br/><br/>Their present chamber had a strong ozone smell which matched that of the blue dragon, but otherwise it seemed rather dry and, 'clean' in the lack of anything gory or slimy, but quite cluttered. The chamber floor was littered with old bones and pottery shards. Upon the walls, ran more of the Mulhorandi art with its two-dimensional perspective. The room had no furniture save for slabs of smashed-down stone tables and shelves; all crammed against corners, as if the room had been cleared to make more open space - perhaps by the dragon, making room for himself in a place probably built by humans.<br/><br/>For humans the wall art showed: lines of simply-garbed men, and hovering above them,winged and hawk-headed masters who drove the men along with flails.<br/><br/>The back of the line of men seemed to be stepping out of or down from some circular or spherical (the flat perspective always made it hard to judge) place, and at the front they seemed to be being driven towards another. Both circles were mostly blue with some green: and Kass and Aria would both recognize the shape of the green in the latter one - geography; the coastal contours of the three narrowly continuous continents of Faerun in the northwest, Zakhara in the southwest and Kara-Tur in the east.<br/><br/>The origin circle of the line of men had a great green blob of a different yet similar shape within the circle of blue: again, three barely contiguous thick arms of green; the rightmost the largest by far, the lower-left a fat crescent and the upper-left smallest and with its own several jagged peninsulas.<br/><br/>Aria was studying the elaborate old Mulhorandi lettering usually known as hieroglyphics which ran above and below the art. She mentioned, "One of the spells I had rendered permanent lets me understand most languages; I don't understand how it works, really, like an intuition just there in my mind, a silent voice or a knowing. This is, it proclaims a tomb of the Imaskar Empire, for some wizard of station. He brought to this world from another primitive tribes of people referred to as Mulhorandi and the Untheric," Kass would recognize Unther as a neighboring 'Old Empire' of Mulhorand, "...for use as laborers, that the - pharaoh? emperor? - of his tomb might have the manpower to build the greatest works yet seen."<br/><br/>She looked around and continued reading, "The things of this room were to be of use to the wizard in his afterlife. Well, whatever was here before it was looted or smashed..."<br/><br/>Only one stone table seemed unsmashed, midway along the right wall, a great map was stretched out on its, each corner held down by a tome, with more paper and tomes about the slab. Directly opposite, along the left wall, were a set of empty shackles mounted in the wall and visibly much more recent than the ruin itself; a few decades at most. The shackles were empty but the bones near them also looked to be the most recent.<br/><br/>Aria took a few steps forward; the far wall of the chamber came within her darkvision range, and the wide archway leading to the next chamber. The floor was relatively clear in the archway, and in the visible slice of the next chamber, littered with something else: a thin but gradually upward-sloping pile of coins and gems.<br/><br/>"Treasure!" Aria whispered excitedly. "In the truest sense of it!" She crept forward cautiously with much attention to the ground under her own feet, but the next chamber seemed to be of roughly the same dimensions of the first but of far different character: a rather flat but sprawling pile of precious metals and stones,ancient and modern coinage alike and worked gems and jewelry of many levels of workmanship. Sapphires there were in especial abundance; blue gems that Kass would recall blue dragons of supposedly being fondest of all.<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>Stairway is 45' down (and at a 45 angle) and 15' wide; the chamber is 45' wide and 70' deep, the far archway is 15' wide and 5' deep before the second chamber.<br/><br/>oh, I forgot to mention, on Aria's tie-up of the camels, used DC 15 for "Tie a special knot, such as one that slips, slides slowly, or loosens with a tug" with her taking 10 w/ a mod of 10 for 20.<br/><br/>The sunrods is fine (and Aria has a few anyway). A PC of this level could buy a copy of everything in the Goods and Services SRD for a few thousand.<br/><br/>lol. in another campaign the DM just kicked the party's asses by using enemies with 120' darkvision vs 60' or none for the party (although I think that DM has been doing a lot of other negligent things, like totally forgetting our listen/spot checks and giving the enemies ambushes every time, and never telling us much about the spatial layout so that we can't chase down the enemy spellcasters effectively).<br/>I wouldn't worry - with something like Dimension Door or Teleport, you're almost always only one standard action away from a safe escape. And if you're facing foes outside your sunrod range, you can always toss a sunrod in their direction to potentially illuminate them. Invisibility, Fly, and Blink all make good fleeing spells too (blink, aside from the 50% miss chance, lets you try to walk through walls).<br/><br/>Most monsters with darkvision only have 60' range. The erinyes devils are a rare exception: devils have 'See In Darkness' and can see perfectly through darkess (inc. magical darkness) w/ no range limit. On top of that, erinyes devils have continuous True Seeing, which is the only reason invisible Aria couldn't get away. They're archers by default, which combines rather effectively with their vision abilities and wings. (Part of why I chose one as Aria's ancestor was their high Dex; the other was just that they're the most human-looking, and she and her patron diety are Lawful so I chose a devil rather than a demon.)<br/><br/>Oh, and the spell slots reminds me: another epic feat idea is Improved Spell Capacity, to get two 7th level spell slots - one from the feat directly, the other from the high Cha. The feat can be taken again for 8th, 9th, etc. level spell slots. Useable either for 1st-6th level spells, possibly metamagicked, or with runestaves of higher-level sorcerer/wizard spells.<br/>