Indeed, he is! So alert for slide-traps, in fact, that he almost misses the trigger for a different trap built into the wall! It is a testament to Drew's luck that he recognized the feel of the stone under his sliding fingers as being off before hitting the trigger, not after. Stopping cold, he s-l-o-w-l-y pulls back his outstretched hand, waiting to feel the fire of pain in his outstretched arm at any moment. That pain never came. Breathing a quiet sigh of relief, Drew examines the long, narrow crack that divides the stone blocks - a crack far longer than it needed to be, and almost an inch wide, which is much bigger than necessary. Clearly this is some kind of slicing-blade trap, built into the wall in a way to render it almost invisible to the eye. It takes Drew a moment or two to locate the actual trigger, which he carefully marks with a circle of chalk...
Shiro braces himself next to Izema. He could hear the approach of the rest of the party, but kept his full attention on the darkness below while concurrently looking for any other traps that they may need to circumvent before proceeding. He notes mentally that the number of traps is interesting. Almost as if there is something being protected below...
Drakk cautiously follows Drew down the stairs avoiding the trap triggers that Drew finds. This was going to be a heck of an adventure....
Shiro felt a bead of sweat forming on his head... The tension in the passage was slowly building somehow. Unwilling to make more noise he tries to catch Izema's eye to see if he is perceiving the same. What was taking the rest of them so long?
[DM So, Wisdom check Nat 20 (+2). Nice.] Pausing in his tracks, Shiro realizes something important. Most of the traps? They're kind of... angled wrong... to trigger for going down the stairs. Oh, they'll trigger, but someone going up the stairs would trigger them much more easily! That means the traps aren't there to protect something below, they're to keep something from GETTING OUT...
Meanwhile, the rest of the party makes their s-l-o-w way down the stairs, with Drew and Wisdom carefully scouting out more traps and marking the trigger switches. In 60 feet, they mark a total of fifteen traps...
Drakk carefully watches as Drew marks the traps and takes great care to avoid them. Once they reach the bottom of the stairs Drakk waves to Izema before saying "You scared the scales off me when you two slid! I thought you guys were goners! Lets try to be extra careful so it doesn't happen again! Anyways i'm ready to proceed when you are"
Unfortunately, it takes the kobold a moment to realize that they are not, in fact, at the bottom of the staircase. Just on a landing about 1/5th of the way down if Wisdom's gauge is correct. Looking at the next flight of stairs makes the kobold cringe. After all, there were about fifteen traps JUST in the first 60 feet of depth, and Wisdom seemed to think the stairs went down to about 250 feet or so. At this point, there are a couple of options. As Shiro and Izema noticed, falling down the stairs using the slide-traps will bypass pretty much all of the other traps on the way down, as long as you're reasonably acrobatic. If someone had the levitate spell, an agile character could pull them down the stairs like a bunch of party balloons. And of course, there's always "Tenser's Mage-on-a-stick-sled..."
Drakk begins to inspect the stairs for traps when he suddenly notices something peculiar! There appears to be an earthworm wriggling in the stairs. Leaning down Drakk picks it up to inspect when suddenly he notices that there is a large crack in the adjacent wall that needs inspecting. Peering closer Drakk notices a small patch of moss, but how could there be moss here? Is there a source of water or moisture to let it grow? Did someone plant the moss? Where did moss come from? What type of moss is it? Is it edible? When castles are built is moss planted to make it look fancy? Or is the moss a result of poor maintenance? Finally Drakk snaps out of it to realize Izema has been talking about some plan that he was going to do. Drakk just smiles and nods pretending to have heard. Suddenly, Drakk notices a very shiny piece of obsidian on the next step. Drakk likes shiniest very much so he reaches down to grab it. (Rolled a 1 on perception check so wanted to make it funny)
As the others discuss options for bull-rushing past the traps and Drakk is his typical distractorated self, Ohmen and Wisdom examine the staircase landing a little more closely. There is, indeed, moss on the walls. A closer examination shows one section that looks a little like... a door? Examining it carefully with Drew's help, mage and slayer uncover a section of wall about a foot square that, when carefully pressed on in a specific direction, slides (stiffly at first due to age and the moss) into the wall about an inch before sliding sideways seven inches, revealing a small compartment built into the wall of the landing! The compartment is a foot deep, seven inches wide, and about eight inches tall. Inside are two 4-inch long levers made from some dark metal (left side), an odd fork-switch (like you'd see in a mad scientist laboratory in an old movie), and another lever that seems to be gold-plated (right side). There is writing carved into the stone above each switch and lever. Looks... duaervish (dwarfish)?
Drakk stops admiring the area around him and notices the group uncovering a set of levers with some inscription. Leaning closer, Drakk recognizes Dwarven and quickly tranates for the group. Drakk says "The lever on the left is labelled Stairs 2, Spring-Traps. The lever on the right says Blade-Traps. And this fork switch here says power. I think the levers deactivate the traps! And the fork switch enables them again. Should I pull the levers?"
Peering into the newly revealed compartment with interest sparked, Ohmen swats away the dust before wiping away the coating of grime which had come to cover the number of dwarven runes. Scanning the writing for a handful of seconds, the wizard then turns to Drakk in agreement through the form of a nod and slow spoken words “It would appear that way, I reckon we should.” Meanwhile, Wisdom likewise parts the dust with his wings before perching on the rockface to intrude upon the switches, the bird poking them with its beak before looking up to see Ohmens approval, in response to which the raven gently lifts up one of its talons, gripping the rust covered surface of the power switch before striking it down in a sudden motion, looking accomplished with itself as it does so.
Something does happen. You didn't realize it before, but there was a kind of low-grade buzzing feeling in the background that has stopped. However, a quick test reveals that the stair-slides, both going up and going down, are still active. Nobody slid down them during this test, and after about three minutes or so they start to reset back into stairs, starting from the top step and working their way down. You assume to the next landing. The trigger for the step going down does NOT turn the stairs going UP into a slide, so it looks like the landings might be section-breaks for the traps? Dwarven trap-making is highly technical, and few remain that know how it works...
Shiro watched Ohmen closely as he manipulated the levers. He glanced down to the next landing. There must be another bypass switch down there. Signalling Izema to keep an eye out, Shiro casts Fly on himself and glides down to the next platform keeping his eyes peeled for anything and everything without going near any entrances.
The next platform is about fifty feet down and around a corner. Now that you've been clued what to look for, you notice several trap triggers as you pass, but as you're flying magically and not touching anything, you don't trigger any of them. Once at the landing, Shiro starts looking for an access panel like the one on the previous landing...
Shiro looks intently through the area of the landing, trying to find the controls (rolls 18 on perception (7 + 11)
Knowing what to look for, it doesn't take a lot of work to find the access panel. Inside it looks the same as the other one on the landing above. 3 levers, one switch.
(I'm going to speed this up for the sake of plot device and my sanity) Ohmen flips the lever marked 'stairs,' just out of curiosity. There is a loud clunking sound from under the stairs going DOWN. A quick test reveals that the slide trap is no longer active on the downward stairs.
Following instructions relayed by Ohmen, Shiro deactivates the next set of traps. Once the rest of the party has caught up, Shiro and Izema edge towards the entrance. Fully aware that any element of surprise has gone with their clattering descent down the stairs nonetheless they approach the entrance warily and prepare to enter the room. "Ohmen," Shiro whispered, "what did your familiar tell you of this room beyond?"
It takes you a couple of hours to deactivate all of the traps leading downwards (and please remember that the traps on the topmost set of stairs are still active). Beyond, Wisdom recalls that the room is roughly octagonal, with more than one exit, and that he got a feeling that he was being watched but could not see anything.