Bosh drops his crossbow into the sand and starts weavering his hands,
"Ég ætla að fara að mylja þig" he chants while some arcane force gathers around his hand, pointing his hands in the directions of the green eye skeleton Bosh unleashes its power in the form of a big magic arrow,
[dice=Magic Missile]1d4+1
The bolt hits the skeleton with shattering force, knocking loose its joints and old sinews and making it collapse to the ground.
Holding his bleeding sides with one hand, Oleg steps toward the final skeleton with mean intentions. With an exasperated cry mixing pain and anger, he lashes out with his cestus and then attempts to split the creature's skull with a headbutt.
Your fist slams into the creature with deadly force, and it shatters backwards under the impact.
As your labored breathing slowly subsides, those of you with eyes to see beyond a short distance see nothing else moving on the horizon. It once again appears to be completely still and silent in this eerie desert cavern.
If you spend time looking, you can see two darker areas on the far eastern wall - one to the northeast, and one to the southeast.
Recovering her breath and calming down Scarlet begins to take stock of her gear, others gear and situation and the surroundings.
"So? We go and buy holy water and stuff to maybe add more punch to dealing with these undead? How is people? We need to break off for healing?" Scarlet continues to scan the surrounds for any more undead 'coming in'.
Oleg sits down miserably in the sand, hands wet and sticky with his own blood and declares in a melancholy voice "I'm dying. Mama always said I'd die exploring these types of places. " Oleg takes out his mead bottle and chugs it down. "It's getting darker, I'm bleeding out aren't I?" Oleg seems to be not quite in as much danger of dying as he is letting on, but is badly wounded. He says to no one in particular "Don't let me turn into one of those things! Tell Helena I love her."
It takes him a little while to snap out of it before he comes to the realization that he's not getting worse. Slightly embarrassed, he grunts in pain as he stands up, and takes a longing look back the way they came. He finally states "If we're going forward, I say we follow the trail"
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Cinder shakes, upset at how she seemed to be all but useless again. "Oleg, friend, you aren't dying. Come here. Let the Dawnflower's light heal you."
"Haha, it takes more than that to take us down, Oleg" Bosh laughs and pats Oleg on the back, he too tought they were done for, those skeletons looked fragile but were resistant,
"Good thing we got Cinder with us" Bosh comments while looking around and inspects one of the green eyes skeleton,
"If we follow the trail it be more likely to encounter the survivors"
When the skeletons with green glowing eye sockets were broken apart, their illumination went out.
Scarlet stares off into the distance/darkness for a moment,
"Is that... a camp fire....?" She points in the direction (Southerly) to something that she can make out.
"Thank you Cinder, thanks Bosh" Looking southward in the direction Scarlet points, Oleg confirms her deduction. "Yes, I see it too. Whoever it is, we should let them know the way is clear from these unnatural creatures."
Oleg begins making his way towards the glow, assuming everyone else is coming along too.
You walk through the eerily quiet desert landscape, following the path towards the cave opening. It is a small rock depression, perhaps just five feet wide and twenty feet deep. A crisp glow of light shines from the northern wall of this cavern, although no obvious source of the light is apparent.
Scarlet pauses,
"That's..... no camp fire...." She hesitates looking at the,
crisp glow of light shines from the northern wall of this cavern
Oleg looks at the stone carefully trying to figure out how or why it is glowing. "This is very strange rock, I have never seen anything like it."
Thinking back to his merchant roots, Oleg has a brilliant idea. "We should take some back to the town with us. It might be a type of ore for the smiths, or it might be magical. Worst case, we tie it to a stick and sell some magical torches, yea?"
Oleg will then try to use the spikes and hammer from his climber's kit to chisel a sample for later.
Oleg steps up to the wall, and begins happily chiseling away. He seems to be making good progress, and even cuts a small chunk of stone away after a time, but when he holds it away from the wall there is no illumination coming from this separated rock.
Scarlet creeps closer and reaches out to feel the glowing rock. Trying to determine some of its properties. She also looks further into the space.
"Undead? They don't like light, right?" She asks.
To Scarlet, it feels just like the rest of the stone in the passageway - you aren't sure how exactly light is being shed from it.
Scarlet puts her back to the glowing wall and covers the darkness behind.
'Are we staying? Or are we going?" She asks.
"Heck, finding some where with a door just to rest up for a while might be nice..."
Oleg looks over at Scarlet and nods. "There is that other cavern to the north, the one without light. Perhaps we'll find something of use there, even though it seems that the tracks lead to this place. Perhaps everyone else saw the light too and came here to investigate, even those strange dead things that attacked us?"
"To the north then? We can come back here if we find nothing elsewhere." Cinder doesn't look to care much about the wall, looking at the footprints and what she can see of the cavern.
Scarlet nods, reflexively checks herself and gear down then moves out with every one else. Her gaze and x-bow scanning into the darkness.
"Natural illumination perhaps?" Bosh inspects the wall and asks Oleg for the piece of rock he just picked up to look on it,
Maybe he remembers something from his books, or his experience in the caves could refresh his memory about something alike to this. Bosh puts teh rock very close to his eye, he touches it very smoothly, hits it with his fingers and last when the others are discussing about the other cave, he licks it.
"Hey, you should check this out, this thing is an illusion!" Bosh tells the others, as he tries to go through the wall.
As Bosh walks through the wall, it flickers and dissipates into nothingness, and you a pair of translucent door panels slide into the wall as he gets close.
Beyond him, you see a metal room, brightly lit by glowing panels in the ceiling above.
To the left and right, complex machines consisting of spiral tubes and nozzles twitch and hum on each wall.
On the far wall, you see what appear to be two opaque sliding door panels. There are no handles or latches of any kind that you can see.
Cinder smirks, "Never try to fool a Dwarf with stone." She walks up beside Bosh. "I bet that this is the way to discovery. After all, why hide it if it wasn't important?"
"Curiosity is what motivates my mind, sometimes doesn't have a good result" Bosh looks excited at the machinery he just found.
Scarlet blinks as she works to over come the illusion. With a quick, deep breath she follow s Bosh and Cinder 'through' the wall. Coming to the well lit room she frowns at the humming and active machines.
She glances from where the party was to here.
"What is it, d'ye s'pose, they do..?" She asks, even as Bosh edges closer to try and determine.
"Strange thing to have on a door step..." Scarlet continues to try and ponder the purpose of the machinery.
"Well, in my experience, there is only one thing to do.." Bosh moves slowly to the door panels ready to jump back if anything happens,
"Hello?" He says with a loud voice, "привет" he repeats in androffan, then in draconic "Hej", celestial "مرحبا"and dwarven "Sveiki".
As the three of you step into the room, you can hear a low hum emitting from the wall protuberances. Bosh's words do not elicit any movement from the door panels, but he recognizes that these look very much like those you encountered earlier.
Scarlet eyes the humming devices warily, x-bow trained and ready. Though she seems unsure of shooting at a wall...
Oleg looks absolutely stunned as Bosh walks through the solid wall. "Ahh..by the gods, why didn't you say you were a wizard of such immense power!" When the section of wall disappears, Oleg looks to the rock he chipped off to see what happens to it, amazed either way.
Then, eyes still wide with wonder, steps forward along the rest of the group into the metal room. Oleg looks at the lighted ceiling and the machinations on the walls in amazement, unable to keep himself from an audible "Whaaaooooow..." of amazement.
As Bosh is attempting to speak to the machine-room, Oleg is also looking over the room carefully, particularly to what he fears might be a trap on the walls from the protuberances, and the amazement of the glowing ceiling, and especially any handles, knobs or switches that might be present.
As Oleg's eyes settle to the door panel that Bosh is trying to open, he remembers the strange brown-striped cards they found. Oleg takes out the "access card" and smiling broadly to Bosh, announces "Don't worry, master wizard, I think we have a key!" Then Oleg, tongue out in concentration, looks around for a suitable "keyhole" for his strange looking key.
"A key! yes, yes, yes! We need a keyhole" Bosh joins Oleg searching for anything that looks at a keyhole or a place were they can insert those things.
As for the illuminated panels in the ceiling, they give a bright white glow, constantly emitting, and no flickering as torches do.
You see a number of things that could be switches or buttons on the nearby panels, but none of them have obvious writing to indicate what they are.
As you poke and prod around the door to find a keyhole, Bosh inadvertantly lays a hand on the door itself, and at your touch each panel slides back into the supporting wall, revealing a long passageway with similar illumination panels in the ceiling.
Just then, the humming quickly intensifies for a second, and a sudden burst of electrical energy fills the ten-foot room!
"Sparkles!" Bosh yells as the electrical energy fills the room and he tries to jump back with his short and heavy body,
"Aug!" Cinder flinches from the sound and fury.
"It's a trap!"
Scarlet, still watching from the entry door-way blinks as the electricity surges.
Only Oleg is able to dodge out of the way of the worst of the blast of electricity that surges forth...
...staggering Cinder, sending Bosh and Scarlet's hair flying, and charring a bit of Oleg. Worse yet, you hear the humming - which stopped for a moment after the blast, beginning to rebuild...
Cinder immediatly tries to heal herself-
-and then step back out into the cavern, away from the door.
Oleg backs out of the room, helping Cinder along, who looks particularly hurt by the blast of electricity.
Bosh shakes the energy from his body and sprints back into the cavern, trying to put off the little flames on his beard and hair,
"That hurt.." He complains feeling his body ache all over.
Now that you've passed through the illusion of the stone, it falls away from your sight, leaving only the small room and far hallway. Over the course of the next few minutes, you see the room spark full of electricity several more times. There is no apparent pattern to it, but you think there is at least a twelve second delay between one blast and the next, and the far hallway appears to be clear of such interference. One could run through the electric room without harm and get to the far hallway, if they moved quickly.
"There's enough time to get past without being electrocuted again. I say we go through and continue. Its more likely we'll find what we're looking for in metal halls than this desert."
Still straitening herself out after the blast Scarlet continues to mumble under her breath....
"Gon'a need a bath just to wash the stink of me burn self off...." She nods,
"Aye, lets DO this!" So saying she runs across the room between the 'gaps' of surges.
You time your run just right, and each of you are able to pass through the electrical jolts without further damage. You are in a hallway that turns a bit after twenty feet, before ending forty feet later in a pair of double doors. Between here and there, there is a set of doors directly in front of you, and another along the right-hand side of the wall.
"Let's see what's in there" Oleg points to the double doors in front of the group. "But this time, let's try to avoid getting fried!" Oleg advances as quietly as he can toward the door, then looks it over for anything he might recognize as dangerous.
Before attempting to open the double door, and assuming he noticed nothing dangerous, Oleg listens to see if he can hear anything inside before proceeding.
Bosh getting back his breath after the sprint back on the other room, concentrates on his arcane senses to feel for magic around the room, specially the doors Oleg is checking.
Scarlet moves to the 'corner' so as to cover the group and keep an eye on both approaches.
Cinder moves up to investigate the doorway directly ahead, seeing if she can find a way to open it.