Round 1, Init 5
"Rae, lookout!" Sol says, moving to the front, torch in one hand, drawing her long sword with her other hand. She chops at the beetleslug.
to hit;
damage.
Raella and Solrisa show mercy to the sleepy beetle, as it begins to brew up another blessing of its own.
Round 1: Saving Throw
Tynan easily avoids most of the acid damage from the beetle's spray.
Round 2, Init 22
Seeing that his previous dagger struck home, Tynan leans left once again and hurls another dagger between the sister-wall at the beetle.
Caution outweighs accuracy, and the dagger misses its mark. Tynan takes a step back to make sure he isn't gifted with another blast of acid from the insect.
AC:16(F:12, T:14); HP:14/16; Saves:F3,R7,W1
Round: 2, Initiative: 20
Weapon Equipped = Sling (cold iron)
Cold Iron Bullets (7/10), Silver Bullets (10/10)
Conditions = None
Channel Energy (1/5) (1d6+1)
Amiable Blunder (1/1) (if Diplomacy failed by >5, reroll to avoid worsening attitude)
Ranged Attack: BAB +1, Dex +1 Damage: +0
Spells (Caster Level 2, Concentration +6)
Once per Day: Arcane Mark, Comprehend Languages, Message, Read Magic
Zero (14): Create Water, Detect Magic, Light, Spark, Stabilize
First (15): (2/5) Bless, Cure Light Wounds, Liberating Command
Ascaria, able to see the bug now, shrugs and does his best with the sling. Which is not, as a rule, very good.
(cover, combat)
"Oh did you see that?! Wow, I almost hit him! Boy, on a good day, with clear light and no distractions, that would have hit!"
He then takes a 5' step back to avoid acid sprays in the future and reloads his sling.
As Solrisa steps up next to her sister, she starts to feel the light drowsiness of a warm summer afternoon...
Will Save
Sol smiles sleepily at the giant bedbug, wondering is there is a caterpillow around to complete the sleeping arrangement.
Round 2, Init 15
Mort somehow dodges the abdomen acid, and takes a step back.
"Whenever you're ready, I'm over here Beestle!"
He tries to make a few obnoxious beetlely clicking noises but only manages to bite his tongue.
Round 2, Init 12
Pillette keeps an eye on the back.
Tynan dodges, chucks, and repositions. Ascaria chucks, exclaims, and repositions. Mortimer dodges, challenges, and repositions. Pillette perceives, readies, no need to reposition.
The beetle bites at Raella, intent on making its way pass the intruders. Its sleepy state does it no service.
Round 2, Init 5
"Rae *yawn*, look!" Sol tiredly points to the spot across from her and the beetleslug. "You can stand there to confuse the beetleslug."
to hit;
damage.
Round 2, Init 8
Rae moves into position across from Sol and attacks the beetle, furious that the creature is threatening her baby sister.
"Back off, you gilded roach!"
Solrisa and Raella slip into flank on the beetle. Solrisa steals Rae's thunder, as blonde bludgeons beetle while brunette bruises her ego. The loud clatter of metal on stone floor resounds throughout the sleepy chamber.
The beetle's gurgling almost sounds like the insect is chuckling.
Tynan watches the sister-wall split apart, taking up flanking positions around the beetle. With a clearer shot, he swiftly draws another throwing dagger from his bandolier, and hurls it at the beetle.
Round 3, Init 12
She crooks at half-smile at Ascaria as he raves about his rock. Excitable one, isn't he? That could be handy when a distraction is needed.
The halfling remains ever vigilant, peering over her crossbow down each tunnel, ready to fire at anything threatening.
Round: 3, Initiative: 20
Weapon Equipped = Sling (cold iron)
Cold Iron Bullets (6/10), Silver Bullets (10/10)
Conditions = None
Channel Energy (1/5) (1d6+1)
Amiable Blunder (1/1) (if Diplomacy failed by >5, reroll to avoid worsening attitude)
Ranged Attack: BAB +1, Dex +1 Damage: +0
Spells (Caster Level 2, Concentration +6)
Once per Day: Arcane Mark, Comprehend Languages, Message, Read Magic
Zero (14): Create Water, Detect Magic, Light, Spark, Stabilize
First (15): (2/5) Bless, Cure Light Wounds, Liberating Command
Ascaria again tries his luck with the sling. He doesn’t have any illusions as to his success, but he’s at a loss to help in any other reasonable way.
(cover, combat)
Shrugging, he then reloads his sling and hopes the party can do better.
"C'mon Mort, you've got this bug! Just think of all his little relatives in the other room you killed! He's just one more!"
Round 3, Init 15
"Just think of all his little relatives in the other room..."
Mort's ire and disgust with the creatures gets the better of his judgement. He swiftly takes two steps up and swings.
for
Tynan once again rings the beetle's bell with a dagger stick, almost finishing the job he started. Ascaria tries to complete the task, whisking a stone past the gathering on the other side of the doorway. Mortimer kindly waits for the gnome to sling a stone, then steps up to strike at the almost done-in beetle, only to miss. Pillette patiently waits for deed to be done.
The beetle, perhaps sensing its fate, begins to exit the chamber, firing off its blast to clear a path down the hallway.
Round 3, Saving Throw
Tynan is surprised to see the beetle break through the wall of warriors, but still manages to dodge most of the acidic blast.
AC:16(F:12, T:14); HP:12/16; Saves:F3,R7,W1
Round 3, Init 5
Sol squeals sleepily as she slices again at the beetleslug.
to hit;
damage.
The beetle barely has a chance to retract its abdomen, when Sol slices it right off. The floor takes on a faint sizzling, and the beetle lurches forward from the imbalance, and rolls onto its side. The beetle is dead.
Ascaria yells with some amount of glee.
"We've bested their bugs, both large and small. Nothing can stop us now."
He walks into the room to check out the dead body forgetting Tynan's earlier warning about a trap.
He tries to determine exactly how the poor man died. He doesn't notice the statue just visible to him as he reaches the body. His attention is focused on the dead creature.
Another set of red leather armor adorns the body, but it seems to have had little bearing in protecting the man's crushed skull. The body's arms and legs lie in a position that would indicate that a sudden, mortal strike downwards, with such force as to collapse the man's face inwards, also caused the limbs to shoot outwards reflexively. Aside from the armor, the corpse also wears a silver ring upon his right hand.
Mort groggily makes his way into the room to get a better look at the statue and its paraphernalia.
"Someone was really into cylinders and the color red."
Weapon Equipped = None
Cold Iron Bullets (7/10), Silver Bullets (10/10)
Conditions = Fatigued
Channel Energy (1/5) (1d6+1)
Amiable Blunder (1/1) (if Diplomacy failed by >5, reroll to avoid worsening attitude)
Ranged Attack: BAB +1, Dex +1 Damage: +0
Spells (Caster Level 2, Concentration +6)
Once per Day: Arcane Mark, Comprehend Languages, Message, Read Magic
Zero (14): Create Water, Detect Magic, Light, Spark, Stabilize
First (15): (2/5) Bless, Cure Light Wounds, Liberating Command
Ascaira stays out of Mort's way as he examines the body further. "Wow this guy got hit on the noggin' by something fierce. Look how it threw his arms and legs wide like that. Total surprise. Hey, what's this?"
Yawn
He casts Detect Magic and examines a silver ring on the man's body, and checks the armor as well while he's there.
"Oh boy am I tired. Man, I just can't shake it." he holds up the ring, "What's this?"
The marble armor appears to be breastplate, the marble's smoothness giving the impression of well-worked metal, as opposed to the leather armor encountered so far. The statue itself doesn't seem to resemble any of the fallen, but it's hard to really tell, what with orange sludge and caved-in topography. The breastplate does indeed have an insignia, in the form of the odd lettering that you've encountered on the strange apparatus in the entrance alcove, but not the star pattern of the red armor.
You encounter Ascaria looking over the body on the slab, where you can study the armor itself, which looks better made and certainly better preserved from the orange sludge moldy armors. The right hand also appears to have a silver ring.
The cylinder-headed greatclub appears to have blood smear and skin still attached to its surface.
Neither the ring nor the armor detect as magic. The ring is well-made, as is the armor. The insignia is the same as the previous red leather armor patterns.
"Call me crazy, but I think the statue's greatclub there is what did the damage to this guy's head."
He backs out of the room.
"I've seen enough in here, I think."
"Oh, sorry beetlebug! I didn't want to do that," Sol coos tiredly at the beetle, feeling some remorse over the killing. "Sometimes life happens," Sol mimes, remembering what the dragon says in her dreams.
Dreams. Tired. Dragons.
Sol watches to make sure there is no more danger in the room until she yawns again and leaves to watch the hallway. She sheathes her sword and only carries the torch.
"I'll wait outside...or over there...Pillette? Pillette? Was it you that said something about the orange stuff?"
She listens to Mort and Ascaria, and considers whether she should brave the danger and give the room a thorough investigation. As Mort backs off, she decides her discretion is preferable to valor, as always.
Upon hearing Solrisa address her, she nods in respect. Not only does she know my name, but she also heard me. Given the Ladies' abilities with a blade, better keep on my toes around them.
"Ma'am, I've tried to keep an eye on it. When we were in the room with the sludge, it appeared to be ever so slowly rising."
Now that the immediate threat of the sleepy beetle appears to be over, Pillette will peer down at the basin-o-sludge one more time to see if she still thinks it's rising.
Tynan enters the room of slabs to retrieve his daggers from the beetle's corpse.
Fatigue once again washes over him as he crosses the threshold. Moving carefully across the room, he examines the marble statue as he retrieves his torch from beneath it.
I've got to get out of this room...
Having retrieved all of his belongings, Tynan makes his way back out of the chamber, and rejoins his companions.
Sol walks over to examine the orange ooze with Pillette.
Sol stares and watches and stares some more.
As Pillette and Solrisa pause to study the orange sludge, they routinely see several lone beetles working their way across the sanddune-like surface of the mountain of paste. Eventually, the beetle movements become sporadic, then non-existent. The lip of the basin proves to be the most obvious location to notice that the level of sludge does indeed continue to rise, then fall over the edge like molasses pouring in the dead of winter.
The marble warrior appears to have an insignia on his breastplate, similar to the symbols decorating the strange apparatus in the entrance hall alcove.
For those waiting in the intersection of the halls, the northern branch seems to lead to a set of stairs, which head down, and out of the light's touch.
She turns to Sol, wide-eyed. "What in the name of the ArchLord is that?"
She calls back to the others, urging the group on. "We'd better figure out what's down here relatively quickly. Unless, of course, somebody knows how to stop slowly oozing, rising, spreading, and, well, possibly engulfing sludge."
Sol doesn't know, her head shakes to answer Pillette, but she knows how to find out.
She grabs the cow-beetle corpse and dips it in the goo, then lifts it out. She looks to see if the beast is acidized or sticky.
Tynan studies the insignia on the statue, to see if there might be a linguistic quality about it, as well as a symbolic one.
He tries to note if there are similarities between the markings on statue and those on the armor on the bodies.
Ascaria watches Tynan investigate the statue.
He waits, ready to the, should the club come down on his forehead...
The insignia on the statue's breastplate doesn't yield a meaning in your study of it. The insignias seem to differ, the breastplate more a linguistic representation of something, while the red leather armors use a more symbolic representation of a star.
"Ascaria, would you want to draw a sketch of the symbol on this statue? We might be able to learn something about it back in town."
"Ascaria, would you want to draw a sketch of the symbol on this statue? We might be able to learn something about it back in town."
"Oh, OH! Yeah, I can totally do that." Ascaria walks up to the statue and refreshes the light on his hairpin as he gathers his drawing materials. He has some difficulty finding his pencil stub as he has lots of charcoal and chalk in the way.
He starts drawing, "You know I never thought my little hobbies would be so useful in delving like this." he can't help but draw the dead man too, and pays special attention to the symbol on his armor as well... for future reference.
"This is fun!"
He turns the drawing and shows Tynan, "Look at that, see the sweeping action as he clobbers that poor guy in leather? Didn't think I'd pull that off, but it does feel right doesn't it?"
"Look at that, see the sweeping action as he clobbers that poor guy in leather? Didn't think I'd pull that off, but it does feel right doesn't it?"
"It feels about as right as a crushing head wound can be." Tynan looks nervously at the statue. "Yeah, let's catch up with the others.
---Joining Pilette and Sol near the orange ooze room, Tynan ponders aloud. "I wonder if the orange lantern being lit above has anything to do with the orange ooze rising down here."
She grabs the cow-beetle corpse and dips it in the goo, then lifts it out. She looks to see if the beast is acidized or sticky.
The beetle's mass is quite significant, so it displaces a goodly portion of orange ooze. As it comes out, the shell appears sticky, but not acidized. The basin appears to settle its contents, now significantly lower as a result of the dipping. The orange ooze within the basin appears to be a purer orange than the overflow.
Sol puts the cow beetle down, out of the way.
"Neat," is the only word that comes to Sol's lips, unless what to think.
She looks at Pillette and shrugs.
"I wonder if the orange lantern being lit above has anything to do with the orange ooze rising down here."
Calling down the hall Mort says "It's easy enough to see if the lantern chamber has anything to do with this sludge. You guys wait here. I'll be right back."
Ascaria's drawing is almost photographic in its ability to capture the insignias, as if he performed a rubbing of a raised surface. The corpse is represented in near perfect ratio to the slab.
The climb is an interesting one for those first 20', but it becomes easier once past its acidized surface. Making the surface, the sarcophagus yields soon enough, repositioning around the tunnels. The Violet cylinder arises, and remains open, demonstrating the thoroughness of compression on the wolf's body. Had you not seen the wolf's corpse placed within it, you would not be able to recognize the contents of the cylinder at present.
As the sarcophagus clicks into its position, pointing at the Orange tunnel, the whisper comes, the hairs on the back of your neck rising as your right ear is targeted. "There you are..."
Mort calls down the Green shaft, indicating the repositioning of the sarcophagus. Those observing the basin have a harder time observing rise, but after several minutes, the rise is detected. Gauging its rate, the basin must fill to capacity over the course of two days' time.
Tynan calls up the shaft. "Try removing the torch from the orange lantern, Mort."
"Got it!" Mortimer calls down.
"You need them all... wait, you didn't have them all...? Well, that wasn't smart..."
With several minutes more to observe, the Orange Lantern's snuffing seems to have no impact on the orange sludge's production rate.
"No, apparently the lantern isn't what's making the orange goo rise. Thanks for checking that out for us Mort."
Mort decides to relight the orange lantern after hearing the report that snuffing it had no effect. He pauses a moment before heading back down.
"You need all of 'em..." For the time you wait, the voice doesn't elaborate.
Mortimer returns to the bottom of the Green shaft, having lit the Orange Lantern once more.