The elemental walks down into the center of the room. Just as it's nearing the pedestal, though, a rattling can be heard - all six of the skeletons have suddenly animated and charged to the furthest reach of their chains. They can't get any further than the second black ring, but the elemental appears to be trapped.
It picks up the sword from the pedestal in two hands of living water. "Bglub slupp burlblubl."
Juno follows Nesica's lead, trying to remember what she knows about undead. Will her longsword do anything to them? Her musket? Does she want to waste her precious six shots on these, or save them for later?
The water elementals begin blubbing aggressively. They're not very good at fighting when there isn't water on the ground. They begin swinging tendril arms at the skeletons in a blind panic. The one with the sword attempts to...swing the sword...
Nesica pinches the bridge of her nose. She forgot the water spirits are hopelessly silly...
She prepares to bring in more reinforcements. This time, she's calling in...
Ruchon.
Juno's got no idea what hurts undead skeletons good, not having faced them before. She's pretty sure that someone versed in religion, like Ilisa, could tell her, though.
The skeletons, though unarmored, are incredibly agile, and easily dodge the clumsy tentacles of the fire-quenching elemental and the even clumsier swings of the door-opening and sword-holding elemental. The latter burbles, "Labd sshurb!"
Juno elbows her way over Nesica and stands in the entrance to the hallway, pulling out her musket. She fires at the skeleton on her right.
The skeleton was about to lunge for Juno, but gets a chestful of metal shot instead - it explodes into pieces. The skeleton behind it flings a rib at Juno's eye, but hits one of the ricocheting bone fragments instead.
The water elemental near the hallway then faces a frenzy of clawing from the skeleton it engaged.
As the elementals gurgle their farewells, Nesica completes her spell, bringing forth RUCHON.
It seems to come flying from the corridor into the room, letting out a deep droning noise and firing lasers from its eyes at the nearest skeleton. It sits readily between the skeletons and the party.
Nesica, meanwhile, casts another spell.
A flurry of light beams sends bones rattling around the grey stone walls of the chamber, immediately destroying the skeletons at 5, 7, and 8 o'clock. Nesica's second scorching ray doesn't hit its mark, due to Juno getting in the way at the wrong moment, but there are only two skeletons remaining - one on the left, and one further away on the right.
Juno draws her sword. She's not the best with it, but the skeletons are bound and she needs to conserve ammunition. She brings it crashing down on the closest skeleton.
Juno turns to the left and brings her longsword horizontally in a slashing motion, but the skeleton gets out of the way too quickly for her to connect, then lunges for Juno's throat with both bony hands. She manages to dodge, though.
The skeleton on the right throws an arm bone at the archon, which zips out of the way as well.
The ruchon is entirely unperturbed by these launched projectiles. It continues its laser assault.
Nesica launches a series of small air bolts towards the last skeleton, striking unerringly.
The archon flies around the room. The skeleton on the right explodes into bones under its concentrated fire, while the bones of the one on the left just disintegrate under Nesica's eroding bolts of air. The clattering noise ceases as soon as these bones hit the floor.
"Hm. A fight we win without me being nearly killed? A nice change of pace." She looks down at the ringed steps, and says, "If your archon has some time left, could it float over these and get the sword? I don't trust these rings." She doesn't move, but she readies her musket, figuring expending her remaining 5 rounds is worth staying alive to get some loot back to the city so she can afford to replenish.
With the situation thoroughly under control, Nesica instructs the Archon to scout ahead while she inspects the area for magic.
The archon drops an aid spell onto Juno before wisking away to grab the sword.
Looking towards the center of the room, Nesica discovers four auras. One of them is strong.
The archon drops a literal bubble of golden light on Juno, causing her to feel more inspired and stronger. As it grabs the sword, the archon remarks in a green-glowing whisper, "There is writing on the pedestal."
Nesica can tell that the outer black ring and the inner white ring have faint abjuration auras. The green ring has a faint aura of some type. The golden sword, which the archon now dangles by the hilt near the staircase, is a +1 defending longsword.
The floor slopes downwards in rings of steps, each ring being colored differently - the ring closest to the entrance is gold, while the next rings are white, black, white, green, and black.
"Thanks Ruchon. Now, roll down the stairs and hit each ring!" Nesica pulls Juno from the room and closes the door partially.
"They have wards. Could blow up."
Ruchon teleports to the gold outer ring and drops to the ground with a bit of horizontal momentum. It has difficulty rolling while holding the sword, but it manages to at least hit each step with a consistent force. Nothing blows up, even as it comes to a rest in the inner black ring.
Nesica pokes her head out and says "Neat, wonder what the wards are then...oh well, head on over Ruchon. We're outta here.
"Why does it have to hit the rings?" Juno asks. "Are you TRYING to trigger the traps?"
"Maybe. Hang on, I'm forgetting something. There is the writing on the pedestal...and the summons had no idea what it said..."
Nesica pats her chin with her finger as Ruchon drops the sword in her hand. She is immediately toppled over from the weight.
Juno helps Nesica up, and holds the sword up for Nesica to read it. "What does it say?"
The archon disappears just at the moment it relinquishes the sword. As Nesica passes it off to Juno, she feels a little twinge of avarice - as if that should be her sword. But she manages to quash the strange feeling.
The sword itself has no writing on it.
"Oh, the writing was on the pedestal?" Juno hands the sword back, if Nesica can carry it. If not, she suggests that, since she's already overencumbered, a few pounds extra weight isn't going to slow her much more, but warns that she's approaching heavy encumberance if they pick up any more.
"Yeah. And I suppose we can't reach it...I have no way to deal with the traps, if any." Nesica looks down at the sword and holds it up again.
"I can't hold it. And this is a pretty powerful blade. I'd rather you hold onto it. I'll take your old sword if you can't carry it." Nesica, whether Juno takes the sword or not, walks back into the burnt office and pulls out her grappling hook.
"I think we're unprepared here. We nearly died. Lets get the scraps we can and magically repair them later, then send some of the explorers to have a look through here. You know, the ones who are actually trained for dealing with trapped madhouses. That we hired."
"You don't know how glad I am to hear that." Juno accepts the blade. "I can carry my old sword, but I can't carry much more."
Returning to the smoking, steaming ruins of the office, Juno and Nesica can't find any scraps of the robes or paintings, but they do find that the suit of armor is (apart from scorch marks) entirely unharmed. The chest has stopped burning, and is now a pile of embers.
"So, I guess we're going back?" Juno says, as she puts her old sword in her pack and then sheathes the Sword of Defending into the scabbard where her old sword was. "Do we want to pop in on the hobgoblin before we leave? Let her know that the anticore is dead, that some of these rooms are magically trapped?"
"I'm a bit worried she'll sick the bison on us...maybe we should just leave a note in the room the others are resting in. I'd rather not disturb her more than we have."
Nesica gets out her rope and preps the grappling hook, handing it over to Juno's more accurate hands to put into place. She stuffs the very heavy armor into her backpack. "We'll need to pull this up by the rope and drag it back. I hope Sunt can carry this in her hipposhape."
While Juno does that, Nesica pulls out some chalk and draws a small diagram on the wall pointing towards the pedestal room, demonstrating which steps have what auras. The one she didn't get she simply puts as a question mark. She adds a note "was filled with skeletons, now they're skeledones.", snirking to herself at her dumb pun.
She also puts a big 'whoops' in the burned room.
Juno manages to lodge the grappling hook on one of the rungs, and it is easy enough for her and Nesica to climb up. They squeeze themselves into the narrow tunnel and walk the half-circle. The smoke up here is rather thick.
Nesica, seeing the smoke, summons up a breeze around her.
The smoke gets into her lungs never the less. She holds her breath.
Juno coughs a bit as she helps Nesica up, but it's not as bad as she expected.
Nesica and Juno climb down out of the smoky shaft, severely burned but still alive. They see Whimsy in the doorway, lying with all legs splayed out and rapidly panting. Adi is sitting with her back against the wall and oiling her lockpicks. She looks up when she hears the grappling hook dislodge. "Ah, you're back. Sunt went down the hill to refill our waterskins. Did you find anything?"
"We found some magical items and a pretty nifty sword," Juno says, unsheathing it to show the golden gleam. "There's more back there, including some hellknight plate armour, but there was an, er, accident involving some alchemists fire that damaged some of it. We're returning another day to finish searching and looting the heavy stuff. Preferably when I have more ammunition to deal with anything we may face here."
Nesica nods. "We're going to need to find a trapbreaker."
Adi nods. "Sounds cool. I'm a trapbreaker, you know."
Whimsy goes up to Nesica and licks her face.
"Trapbreaking is useful, but more useful? Being able to actually CARRY the stuff we find, and right now we can't. At the very least we could look at buying a horse to carry it."
Adi shakes her head. "Well, I can't help with that. I suppose we could get Sunt to carry some stuff. She's barely got any armor."
When Juno says the word "horse," Whimsy growls.
Otherwise, they take no damage and remain simply fatigued.
The halfling, half-elf, gnome, and dog leave the gatehouse and head towards the skeleton treeline. Just before they reach the trees, they see Sunt fast-walking up the road to meet them. She's carrying a few waterskins and has shaped a dome-like spot on her head to carry additional water. She gladly takes the plate armor, if Nesica offers it.
As the party gets onto the road and begins the hike downhill, the sun comes out from behind the clouds again and beats down on all exposed skin. Juno is doing fine, but Nesica has a killer headache to complement her scorched-out throat, and her muscles feel weak and heavy.
"I'm telling you, Nesica, a horse. Something you can ride, and carry plate armour so you don't have to rely on the generosity of friends," Juno says, gesturing to Sunt as she does. "We call it Jape, to go with Whimsy."
"Nothing stopping you from getting one Juno..." Nesica rubs her temples and groans a bit. A few people feel rain drops spatter them despite the current lack of clouds.
Adi catches a few of the raindrops and rubs them on her face. "I wouldn't mind a small horse. Ooh, or a wagon!"
Leaving the black-boughed and leafless trees to their buzzing cicada denizens, the party enters the ring of sparse forest around the bottom of Krane Hill. Now and then a bird calls, but the terrain is still very quiet, as if waiting for the sunset. In the distance as they trudge downhill, the party can see the deep blue of Desperation Bay.
Circling around to the south (), the party loses sight of the sea. A bit over an hour after sunset, they arrive at the grove and stream where they heard galagos calling two nights ago. However, the grove is quiet.
"Well, it'd be handy for guild business. If I'm buying a horse, it's for me, I decide what to call it, what to use it for, and so on. If the guild buys a horse, we all get a say in what it does."
Juno realises that, somehow, her sleeve has caught fire, and hurriedly puts it out.
Nesica seems to be weathering the heat thanks to the cool breeze. Which only seems to be affecting her.
"That's fine...it's just that we don't have a stable to house it in...or somewhere to put the cart..."