Getting down to a nitty gritty grid search of the room the party has to get quite messy in the nasty fungus and mold growing in the former library.
After several minutes of canvassing, Tad finally rips the gooey mat of fungus loose from behind the last bookcase and spies a trapdoor in the floor.
The door is quite heavy . Immediately upon touching the trapdoor, an adjacent purplish mushroom covered with white spotty tumors, begins wailing at an ear-splitting level. It wails for several seconds, then ceases likely alerting whatever is below to your approach.
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"Damn Helm, nice pull!" Swayaah slaps Helm on the shoulder after he pries it open. She draws her earthbreaker and crouches low.
She pets Ilvan. "Stay. If we're not back in a day, return to the lodge." Ilvan whines. "I know, but you're a small boy. Grow up so you're big and strong and you can come with me anywhere, OK?"
She turns to the party. "Whatever it is knows we're approaching, but I'd like to prevent it from ambushing us."
Helm grunts and lifts the heavy door open, revealing a circular 10-foot in diameter shaft, that has stone steps spiraling down along the circumference. The steps and walls are quite slippery, coated with ooze from the fungus. It looks to be about 40' to the bottom of the shaft.
The shaft deposits you in the alcove at the far end of an antechamber, free of the riotous growth of fungi and mold that choke the shaft and archives above. The simple, cleanliness of the basement's basalt walls give way here to a disturbing, organic style of architecture that makes it seem like you are walking through the gullet of some monstrous behemoth. At the far end of the hall, a large ornate arch that looks disconcertingly like a beast's toothed maw stands in the wall, covered by a heavy black curtain with sickly green light from the chamber beyond shining round the edges. A plain iron box sits on the floor in the middle of the room.
The basalt here is carved differently, organically somehow and is markedly different from the normal basement above. The passage expands as it extends to the arch, widening from 10 to 35 feet across and ceiling going from 10 to 20 ft high. Dim light spills on the northern 15 feet area illuminating the curtain. The rest of the chamber is dark.
Swayaah approaches the black iron box carefully, her lit-up gem aiding her inspection. Peering carefully at the box, she sees dozens of small, nearly invisible wires running the length of the iron, and is fairly certain that touching it would send an electrical current that shocked one foolish enough to reach out unprepared.
At first the ranger is stumped by the device, unclear the right place to touch it or how to avoid the electrical trap she so carefully spied.
After some fiddling with the outside of the box, Swayaah understands the network of thin wires are fed by a central line. Cutting that line in a few places seems to interrupt the circuit and disable the electrical trap.
With the trap disabled, Swayaah reaches out to touch the box and immediately winces as a high-pitched alarm sounds, loudly announcing your presence to anyone on the other side of the curtain. The ear-splitting alarm cuts off a few seconds later and the urban ranger opens the box, peering inside.
At first it seems to be filled with a dark viscous liquid that swirls around, but as Swayaah and Helm watch in horror, the liquid starts to pour out of the chest and onto the floor, and up the arms and legs of the pathfinders. Turns out not to be a liquid at all, but thousands and thousands of black spiders, pouring out of the iron box, filling the entire area around it in a mindless swarm.
Spider Swarm - Round 1
25 Dvalin
13 Swayaah
11 Helm
6 Spider Swarm
6 Tad
5 Elris
Spider Swarm - Round 1 - continued
Both Helm and Swayaah flee from the wave of tiny arachnids, one drawing her sledgehammer while the other reaches for a bottle of acid.
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Dvalin curses as he realizes he is completely unprepared to deal with a swarm ... then retrieves his caltrop bead and prays for the best ...
Spider Swarm - Round 1 - continued
Dvalin throws his cold iron caltrop bead at the floor and the device explodes in the middle of the swarm, throwing shrapnel everywhere in the area and blasting several spiders in the process.
The spiders rush towards the nearest target, which is Swayahh. The hundreds of spiders crawl over her, biting with their little mandibles for 3 hp dmg.
Spider Swarm - Round 1 - concluded
Elris drops down the rope in a hurry, and takes in the sights of the swarm of spiders covering Swayaah.
Tad Underfoot lands just behind the lore warden and the bomb-throwing halfling reaches for one of his explosive concoctions with a wry smile.
"Clear the way, Swayaah!" he cries, waiting for the ranger to move before tossing the bomb.
End of Round 1
Spider Swarm - Round 2
25 Dvalin
13 Swayaah
11 Helm
6 Spider Swarm (9hp dmg)
6 Tad
5 Elris
Swayaah listens to Tad's advice and hauls herself across the room.
Her move elicits a response from Helm who throws his acid flask at the swarm, but fails to hit the scurrying spiders. Even the acid's slash doesn't catch the little buggers.
Spider Swarm - Round 2 - continued
AS Dvalin looks on helplessly, the swarm inexorably crosses the floor towards him. It overwhelms Tad, who is readying his bomb, the spiders crawling all over the gunslinger, biting at his flesh.
Spider Swarm - Round 2 - concluded
Elris, having no way to damage the swarm, just stays out of the way of the onrushing insects.
Tad stands calmly by as the spiders skitter around him, and underhands his explosive bomb at the square nearby. The explosion is deafening, and as the smoke clears, the spiders are either all dead, or scattered to the far corners of the room.
End of Combat
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Helm, who had been about to retrieve another acid flask, drops his hands.
"If that was meant to alert someone as to our presence, the trap certainly succeeded at doing just that," the samurai states matter-of-factly.
"It appears we only have one option going forward," he says as he prepares to advance.
The swarm defeated Swayaah moves to the curtain, and cautiously pulls it aside. The walls and ceiling of the chamber beyond bulge outward, continuing the grotesque architectural style of the antechamber, as if you were standing in the leviathan's stomach. Queer, glowing nodules protrude from the walls at seemingly random intervals, bathing the room in their sickly green glow. A tall, free-standing almost organic looking archway carved from a strange, glowing blue-green stone stands atop a low dais in a wide alcove at the far end of the chamber. The center of the arch is empty, revealing the wall behind it, but the space occasionally flickers with curtains of starry darkness, as if somewhere else lies just beyond the portal. A susurrus of ghostly whispers see to issue from the gate, their language and meaning unclear, but fraught with a sense of wrongness.
The archway is 15' tall and carved from a strange blue-green stone. A strange metal cylinder is attached at the apex of the arch. A girl stands before the archway. She is half-Osirian with long dark hair and light brown skin, wearing a weathered explorer's outfit. Her eyes are completely black, with no whites or irises showing. Five, disgusting fleshy fibroid umbilicals are attached to her hips, shoulders, and the base of her skull.
The animated corpses of several of the museum guards stand near the girl, whom you take to be Imrizade Blakros, awaiting her commands. As you watch the thing that used to be a Blakros gives the command for the zombies to attack the interlopers.
The Dark Tapestry - Round 1
24 Imrizade
23 Dvalin
18 Blue Zombie
17 Helm
16 Green Zombie
14 White Zombie
13 Red Zombie
13 Tad
12 Elris
12 Purple Zombie
7 Swayaah
The strange-looking Blakros daughter, a wand in her hand, readies an action.
The Dark Tapestry - Round 1 - continued
Considering the horrors beyond the curtain, Dvalin calls up on his patron deity and spreads that blessing out among the party members.
Blue Zombie follows it mistresses orders and moves to engage the enemies. AS it moves you note how speedily the zombie actually moves, unlike most of the staggering corpses you have seen in the past. It is able to move all the way to the curtain where it slams a meaty fist at Swayaah, who remains flat-footed, horrified by the sight momentarily. The swing from the fast zombie is still clumsily aimed and the ranger is able to avoid any damage.
The Dark Tapestry - Round 1 - continued
Helm draws his katana and rushes to stand shoulder to shoulder with Swayaah, but his first swing catches in the heavy curtain and misses the zombie target.
Following the commands of their strange mistress, more former guards (now zombies) rush to engage the interlopers. Green Zombie strikes at Helm, but it also misses.
White Zombie also swings at the orc samurai, tearing down the heavy curtain, but his fist misses the nimble swordsman.
Red Zombie bursts through the doorway, trying to get in on the attacks. His movement provokes an attack from Helm but his meaty fist smacks the samurai hard, rocking him back on his heels.
The Dark Tapestry - Round 1 - continued
Helm, swinging from his heels with both hands, uses his katana to great effect against the onrushing Red Zombie. As it moves to his left the blade meets the undead monster, and cleaves it clear in two, ending the fight in it.
The Dark Tapestry - Round 1 - continued
Moving up to get a clean line of sight behind Helm and Swayaah, Elris fires his longbow into the White Zombie. The bolt sticks right in the neck of the undead creature, wounding the zombie severely, but not downing it.
Tad steps up and fires his pistol at the same target, but the bullet ricochets off the stone doorway with a high-pitched whine.
Purple Goblin follows right behind his fallen brethren, moving around Helm who can only watch him squeeze past and slams his dead fist at the samurai from behind. Even with the advantage of a flank, the latest zombie cannot strike the canny Helm.
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"Wait, what?" Swayaah stands there dumbfounded. "Oh! Zombies! I love fighting Zombies!" Swayaah drops her earthbreaker, grabs her wand of cure light wounds with her tail, then brandishes her claws.
Swayaah tries to identify the creatures, and whatever happened to the Blakros woman.
Blue Zombie is her first target. She'll tear into the Green one if this is enough to stop it.
The Dark Tapestry - Round 1 - concluded
Recovering her wits as her allies come under assault from the zombie guards, Swayaah tears into the nearest zombie with her claws, shredding decaying flesh and tearing into bone. Blue zombie falls under the fierce onslaught.
Swayaah's experience and knowledge of undead, lets her know these creatures are fast zombies. They can move more quickly, and attack faster than their normal slow-moving brethren. She has no idea what is going on with the thing that used to be Imrizade, but it's apparently not good.
End of Round 1