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Search (DC 15): The Castle Gates have a number of what are, descriptively enough, called 'murder holes'. The majority appear to be designed for the convenience of human defenders, but some at least are for less sentient defenses- perhaps acid, fire, or other baleful substances.
Awareness (DC 20): Along the darkened, heavily mosaic-covered gullet corridor, about thirty feet in, a hunched man in the ink-stained robes of a dedicated scribe appears to be beckoning to you and hissing softly through tea-stained teeth.
A group of armored men, carrying the bills traditional to underpaid guardsmen everywhere, are also scanning the crowd, though not beckoning- yet. They don't seem to have seen you.
Both man and guards bear the symbol of the Yuran faith on their clothing.
Knowledge (Local, DC 20): The king's old palace is the subject of widespread betting in the undercity, and widespread wagering in the upper city, which is similar to betting but higher-class. The subjects are twofold; first, which of the factions within the castle will hold it this week?
And second, when will the damnable thing fall down?
Knowledge (Architecture, DC 25): The Palace is a wonder of engineering, in that it should have collapsed a considerable time previously. That it hasn't is testimony to the fly-by-night addition of buttresses, support columns, emergency weight shifts, reinforcements, and props. A team of engineers must be working around-the-clock to keep it standing.
The building is, for all that, well-designed in its component parts- they just don't look like they're made to fit together.
You recognize the styles of a variety of prime material worlds in the construction- apparently the architect was well-traveled.
You also notice that some portions of the structure are metallic- pipes, likely for conducting the warming gasses of the swamp that underlies the city itself and the palace particularly. The 'torches' on the battlements are actually outlets for excess effluence of this gas, accounting for their emerald flame.
The castle has only a few entrances that are doors proper, most being intended for flying vehicles or persons; if one is, however, willing to risk clambering balcony to balcony, the architectural outcroppings form a rough ladder, its steps nearly thirty feet apart. A prodigious leap, but not impossible- and it conducts one eventually to ground level from any visible point in the castle.
Knowledge (Arcane/The Planes): You recognize some portions of the castle as being formed of a very rare material known as astral driftmetal, known to block astral travel. The teeth of the gate by which you are entering, moreover, is formed of gehennan morguth-iron.
Some of the 'molding' you noticed earlier appears to contain fragments of summoning diagrams, words of power, or other magical paraphernalia, but nowhere are the patterns complete- its as if someone made confetti out of a pile of scrolls and then converted the result to wood and masonry.