"Looks like we got ourselves a hidden door, fellas. I'll see if I can check it out." Just before he attempts the climb, "Ummmmm, any o' you fellas got a rope? Mordecai was nearly rock art earlier and I'm really not interested in painting the ground either. Anybody?"
The crevice narrows into a fissure barely as wide as your chest. Beyond the narrows is the shadowed chamber of a cave.
Mordecai pulls out and opens his copper and blood agate locket of continual flame, as a light source.
Tyrrol pushes the door open. Just as it hits its stop, a burning rune flashes on the face of the door accompanied by a painfully shredding wail. Mordecai and Lecian flinch away from the sound but Tyrrol and Lothan face the full brunt of it.
Sonic damage. DC 16 reflex save for half.
Beyond is a short five foot wide section which widens into a broad cavern. Water drips from the limestone walls and ceiling. The cavern floor is littered with a black burnt looking rock. The ceiling slopes upward away from you.
With preternatural grace, Tyrrol throws himself to one side, avoiding the worst of the blast of sonic energy.
With a shrug, he continues forward.
"Perhaps it's time for a little more care." Lecian casts Mage Armor and False Life. "Let me check every door for magic from now on."
The hidden door faced north. The cave is roughly triangular with the west wall running almost straight north-south and 30-40 feet long. The north wall slopes from there to a point 20-30' north of you and about 20' to your east.
There are two passages out of the room aside from your door. They are in the northeast corner and about halfway along the west wall. There is no source of light except that streaming in through your door.
"You fellas hear that? Sounds like we got company further in. And we're fixing to lose our light completely. Hey, Lecian, can you shed some light for us, buddy?"
Tyrrol shrugs, but grips his flail all the more tightly, and squints into the shadows...
"I have light," Mordecai says softly, so that his voice does not carry, gesturing at the glowing pendent around his neck. "Although Lecian's arcane light would also be welcome, so that we are never reliant on a single light source."
He reaches forward to Lothan, intoning a soft word, and uses his wand to stitch up some of his most recent injury.
"Thanks, Mordecai." Lothan pulls out his bow and tests the string. "Alright, if you fellas are ready, let's move."
Your light suddenly dims and you can't see much of the cave at all. Only a small dim radius around you. From across the room there's a metallic slap of a crossbow.
Crossbow at Tyrrol. .. damage
The bolt barely touches him.
Suddenly a remarkable man clad in a chain shirt dashes into your vision. He'd be an elf, but for his coal black skin and demonically red-rimmed eyes. His rapier is leveled over the edge of his shield at Tyrrol as he charges.
"Chetumgo! Chetumgo!"
It's hard to say whether this a a warcry or an alarm.
Initiative:
Initiative:
Init, Round 1:
Lecian, 21
Lothan, 14
Tyrrol , 13
Black Elf 9
Mordecai, 9
Lecian casts Shield before going into the cave.
Once inside, he waits for Lothan and Tyrrol to position themselves.
Lothan's eyes go wide as he pulls out two arrows and fires before pulling out a third one and releasing that one at the dark elf as well.
Attack #1:
Attack #2:
With an unintelligible war cry, Tyrrol charges the elf...
...slamming his flail into the elf's head with a sickening crunch.
"Mae'n eich amser i farw."
Lothan's arrow transfixes the dark elf's heart. He drops to his knees, mortally wounded.
Tyrrol charges forward and pulps the elf's head.
Tyrrol cocks his head to one side.
"Byddaf yn clywed gennych! Dewch allan, yn dod allan, ble bynnag yr ydych yn!"
He then shakes the blood and brain matter from his flail, and looks around the room...
Alas, the rest of the room outside your light is dark.
Lothan turns to Mordecai, a confused look on his face. "Any idea what the heck that gibberish was he just threw out there?" he motions over toward Tyrrol with a nod. "I think I've heard him spew that garble out before. I gotta say, it's just weird."
Tyrrol steps forward, pacing out the room, intent on revealing its full extent...
"I speak Goblin, so I'm fluent in gibberish." Mordecai mutters back. "That's not gibberish..."
Mordecai casts a light spell on Lothan's blade, and then steps forward after Tyrrol, his own continual flame locket ablaze upon his breast.
Lecian casts detect magic in the direction of the fallen elf.
"I speak Goblin, so I'm fluent in gibberish." Mordecai mutters back. "That's not gibberish..."
"Good enough for me." He shrugs.
Tyrrol steps forward and the darkness rolls back from him. After a couple steps there's another SNAP of a crossbow from the right.
Crossbow at Lothan. .. damage
Footsteps patter away to the right.
Init, Round 3:
Black Elf 22 (delayed from round 2)
Lecian, 21
Lothan, 14
Tyrrol , 13
Mordecai, 9
"You have a light. Go meet it face-to-face." Lecian taps Lothan's shoulder, granting the elf a measure of precognitive ability.
"You got it, buddy." Lothan moves as far as he can before firing at the dark elf.
Lothan charges forward but finds that after eight steps, his light dims and the darkness deepens as the north-eastern corner of the cave narrows into a rough passage. He draws abreast a side passage barricaded with wood and stumbles on rocky rubble.
Ahead he hears a scuffing sound of leather and steel scraping stone and the chink of small rocks sliding ahead of him. In the shadowy light, he sees movement, a figure in the shadows, and fires.
Dim light miss chance 1-20:
His arrow strikes the rocks near his foe's leg.
Tyrrol rushes off after Lothan, hoping to find whatever it is that he heard...
Mordecai steps forward to behind where Lothan has entered the darkness, and calls upon Urgathoa. "As lights flicker and dim, so let life's flame gutter and die." The sound of buzzing carrion flies and the stench of rotting flesh fills the air as he grips his unholy symbol in a hand that grows pale and withered.
Tyrrol moves forward. Stepping past Lothan he can make out the form of a second dark elf. His mace is not fooled by the shadows and the elf's chest caves in leaving him helplessly sucking for air.
Mordecai arrives and the darkness rolls away from his torch-like locket. His negative energy attack leaves the dark elf completely dead, lying on a rockslide which blocks further progress down this passage.
The flaming amulet also illuminates the wood barricaded side passage and reveals symbols written on the wood.
"If I could find a place to study for fifteen minutes, I could read these symbols. Otherwise we should just break open this barricade."
Tyrrol stares at Lecian for a moment, shrugs, and then begins sizing-up the barricade for dismantling.
"I will begin now, then. You should save your magic."
"The language is unknown to me as well, I leave it to your arcane scholarship." Mordecai says to Lecian, as he winces at the racket Tyrrol is making.
"It may be more conducive to study to move back a bit..." he adds, grabbing the strangely hued elf by the boot and dragging him back across the room, so that he is not so close to Tyrrols arcing flail.
He then thanks the goddess for stealing the life of this creature, and begs her indulgence to open his eyes to the glow of the arcane as he begins to search the dark elves bodies for swag.
detect magic
"You know," Lothan starts as Tyrrol smashes away at the gate, "he sure makes a lot of noise. If you think about it, though, I guess that's a good thing. Instead of us having to go look for these dark colored elves, they'll just come to us! Clever, I gotta say."
"I need a light." Lecian sits on the ground and pulls out a spellbook, then begins studying.
Tyrrol shrugs.
"This is the only way forward. I doubt there is a quiet way for us to get past... It is loud, but the faster we get through, the better. I doubt that we had the element of surprise, in any case."
The barricade appears to be no obstacle of substance and proves so when it collapses at the first blow.
As you peer inside, a ghostly bird-like creature with the head of
a beautiful woman forms in the center of the rough-walled room beyond the barrier. She cries out in a woeful voice, “Where is my Yaris? What has happened to him?”
You guys came in via G1 and G2. Fought in G3. Chased the 2nd elf to G4. Broke down the barrier into G5. And are currerntly strung out in the passage from G3 to G4.