After burying the old dwarf Torm Stonebreaker you take his stuff and head back to the ship to decide on the best way to get the vault off of the chains and someplace where you can figure out how to open it. You take your ship up and over the island and park is just outside of the air envelop surrounding the island and directly above the suspended vault. Bantu climbs down to inspect the vault and finds that all six sides have runes engraved into it's edges with symbols that Norro later determines to be Dwarven Runes of Heritage - each rune representing a way of life for the clans, such as mining, brewing, masonry, gemcutting, forging, etc. There are some 20 different runes represented and the pattern they are engraved into the stone vault is the same on each side. You discuss the possible combinations, making trips down to the vault to get a better look at the runes.
You then realize that you have piqued the interest of the various parasites that crawl out of various fissures along the back of the Gargantua. You start to figure out how to unhook the chains when you realize that the key that you were given unhooks the chains from the end that is looped around the creatures spines, so you take the ship out over the first spine and Leikner climbs down to unlock the chain. With winds buffeting him and parasites crawling up the spine towards him, Leikner manages to unlock the first chain and the crew pulls it up to the ship and attaches it to the hull. You move the ship over to the second spine and repeat the process, again avoiding the parasites. Attaching the 2nd chain to the ship causes the last spine to shatter and release the chain, allowing you to leave the island as the Gargantua momentarily stirs then settles back down.
You take the vault to another island thinking that you'll set it down to inspect, but you realized that doing so would hide the runes on the bottom, so you decide to take the vault away from the Gargantua and to an island where it can be inspected without danger of waking the monster. You fly into the aether for a few hours and find a small living island and you suspend the vault over it, climb down and begin using different combinations of the runes that you saw on Stonebreaker: the warhammer heirloom that was Torms and that Leikner decided to use for the time being. The warhammer turned out to be magical and has properties that are suited for smashing stone, but its surface runes included 4 of the Heritage symbols that represented the Stonebreaker clan's heritage, which were Mining, Stonemasonry, Brewing & Gemcutting. You start trying those 4 runes on the vault and eventually figure out the proper combination which causes an opening to appear at the top of the vault with a stair leading into it.
With Bantu in the Spelljammer helm and only 3 charges remaining in your incarnum crystals, he decides not to disconnect, leaving Brahm, Norro and Leikner to explore the vault. The three of you enter the vault to find that the interior is much larger than the exterior could possibly contain. You go through a couple of doors before triggering a flame trap that burns Norro, but leaves Leikner unscathed. You figure that the clan's warhammer protects the half-orc, so Norro and Brahm hold onto the weapon and pass through the room without triggering any further traps. You wind through a few chambers before finding a room containing a forge and some items associated with forging. You pass through a nearby door and find a lever in a small triangular room. You decide not to move the lever and go back into the forge room to its other door, only to trigger the activation of the forge golem that was disguised as the forge. It moves to attack...
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