++Round 4++
Racing back and forth, the frenzied wyvaran loops back and rushes Arianna's final opponent, lunging with reckless abandon.
Round 4
Taking a step back after seeing her comrade fall, Lorien channels again this time to heal the wounds of her comrades.
Controlling the battlefield seemed to be more useful than trying to hit things - at least at them moment. Rhiannon gestured again, and summoned up a second wall right to the north of the second enemy, interrupting the space between it and Zatinya. The more they were forced to move, the easier it would be to catch them off-guard and strike while they were vulnerable. ...Hopefully.
Geez, one of these days she really had to learn how to shoot into melee messes...
Round 4
Another round of healing washes over Gren making him consider how different this feels than the extracts he usually uses...kind of like a warm blanket covering his wounds. Once again focused on the battle, he steps up next to his fallen ally swinging his borrowed weapons at another foe.
As Arianna moves around the column to get a better position to attack from, the skeleton's rusty blade slices another wound, this one on her leg. The blow breaks her rhythm for the first strike, but the second is much less clumsy and once again lands with the crunch of bone under iron. A sensation of warmth washes over her as her wounds close up a little, but she knows that if the skeleton before her manages to get another couple of hits in, she wasn't going to be on her feet much longer.
The single remaining skeleton closes in with Gren, and swings its sword at the man.
The lone skeleton poses little threat to all of you combined, and you quickly bash it down into its constituent, inanimate bones.
You seem to have made it.
Landing amid a swirl of dust, the wyvaran leans a bit on his glaive, breathing hard. "Well, that was bracing!" he laughs, straightening. [b]"This land's grim reputation is well deserved, if our juggler's roughed-up appearance is anything to go by!"
Eyeing the two temples suspiciously, "I suppose we should finish investigating, if something else nasty is about I'd rather find out now than after we've made camp. Same goes for the lake I think."
Keshokkar circles over the temples. Both roofs have partially caved in, seemingly by a powerful burst of flame.
He can see a statue of a humanoid standing in the center of the western temple, its left arm ending in a stump of broken stone. The floor and the statue is covered in the same dark scribbles and runes as the outside walls. Even the rubble fallen from the roof has been painted over.
He can't see the center through the hole in the southeastern temple, but the stretch of floor he can see is covered in the same marks, where it isn't blackened with soot.
Eyeing the symbols with distaste, Keshokkar's lip pulls back in a silent snarl. "This place as been desecrated. Better to raze them to the ground. Even if free of more undead I'd just as soon sleep elsewhere."
"Or, y'know, clean them out and fix them." Rhiannon said, basically always hesitant at the idea of destroying stonework people had put so much time and care into. Heck, she'd repaired worse things herself. It was a job, sure, but far from an impossible one if you had the funds for it.
She did, however, slowly start to tap on the floor, putting her ear close and listening. Places that had solid ground below and places that were open were a bit different, and she'd long since gone through the training to distinguish the two. Was there anything else to these shrines, or was the surface it...?
As she sees Rhiannon searching the place, Arianna calls out.
"Wait! There's traps. One of them went off and burned me some. That's what brought out the skeleton's I think," she says quickly, hoping to prevent someone else from inadvertently triggering the one she set off or another one.
Gren sits down next to Zatinya's prone form and checks her pulse.
"She's knocked out but I think she will be fine. I don't have any way to help get her back on her feet though. Do any of you?"
With that, Gren drops his pack, and retrieves a small alchemy kit in an ornate wooden box. He proceeds to mix very small amounts of different colored powders in three small vials. He then removes his waterskin from the pack and adds a small amount of water. Finally he corks the vials. As he grips the bottom half of each vial, it is unclear whether the palms of his hand are glowing around the vial or if the vial itself is glowing. In an instant, the light is gone.
He looks down at Zatinya and says "If only I could give one of these to you..." With that he downs the contents of one of the vials, grimacing as it goes down.
He puts away his alchemy supplies, stands up and shoulders his pack, returns the aspergillum to Lorien and grabs his rapier. He moves off towards the northern shrine, checking for traps as he goes.
"Now, what is the deal with those runes?"
Gren examines the runes on the pillars and outer walls of the northern shrine. It soon becomes apparent that the runes are in fact in infernal - they're excerpt of holy texts, describing praises and ritual sacrifices to the demon prince of the undead.
One of the characters on the northern wall flares up as he passes by, and he's hit by a gut of flame.
He has now swept the outside of the temple.
Although the severe burns from the rune throw him into unconscioussness, he does realise one thing before the darkness takes him - he knows what the trap is; they're glyphs of warding.
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Moving forward Lorien starts to pray.
"Sarenrae, mother of warmth, bring your healing light in this fallen body."
Her hands start to glow in warm light and touch the worst of Zatinyas wounds. Convert Command to Cure light wounds.
She than holds her holy symbol high and another warm light envelops her comrads. and once again for good measure.
Eyes flying open with a start, Gren shouts, "Glyph of Warding!".
Then much quieter "Oww..."
Gren makes it to his knees, squeezing eyes closed through the pain. His face is beet red from the blast and blood has started to seep from the earlier head wound as well.
He grabs another vial from his belt and pops the contents in his mouth.
"Thank you Lorien. I think I need to start being a bit more careful."
Then to the rest of the group, "So where to next?"
Gren checks the skeletons to see if any of them left a blunt weapon behind.
The skeletons were uniformly armed with longswords and light wooden shields. All of them are covered in dried blood, but otherwise perfectly serviceable.
In her examination of the floor, Rhiannon wanders into the northernwestern shrine.
The central chamber is dominated by a large marble statue, featuring a sternfaced man seated on a throne. Both his hands have been broken off - his left hand lies nearby, holding a chalice. The left hand has been reduced to unrecogniseable rubble. A barely legible inscription sits at the base of the statue,
The walls, floor and cieling is otherwise covered in infernal runes, and black smears of soot.
As Rhiannon investigates, she does indeed find what sounds like a hollow perhaps a set of chambers beneath the flooor behind the statue.
She also sets off another glyph of warding, this one placed on the back of the throne.
the worship of him and his twin deity, Muir, has largely evaporated since the great battle war at the gates of Tsar. In their place has come several other deities that share his domain, such as Abadar,
Iomedae or Sarenrae.
The broken off right hand of the statue traditionally holds Thyr's Rod of Kingship.
Rhiannon came out of the temple looking rather singed and burned. "...I don't like this place." she said. "How long do you guys wanna poke around here for? If I've got two hours or so, I think I'll just take a nap..."
Mostly healed up from the trap and the fight, Arianna lets out a sigh at the two rapid-fire explosions and asks, "don't any of you have one of those spells that lets you see if something's magic or not? That might help avoid the words that like to go boom."
---
When Rhiannon sounds like she's going to leave, Arianna nearly panics.
"But we just got here! I... I can't leave without my sister," she blurts out as her ears and tail droop.
Kesh stands by, idly observing the efforts of the others and doing his best to conceal a wry amusement. As Rhiannon stumbles out he cocks his head. "Find anything? Unless I miss my guess, those magic runes are expensive, so there must be a reason they're here. I've a little experience with real traps, occupational hazard. Never messed around with a magicy one afore. If one of you wants to tell me what I'm looking for, I'll take a poke around."
When Lorien looks inside, aside from recognizing the statue as a depiction of Thyr, she also finds that she understands the runes at the base of his statue.
They go "As you obey the commands of Thyr so does this figure obey your COMMAND." in celestial.
Gren is standing over Lorien's shoulder as she quietly reads the runes on the statue. "Fascinating. Do you suppose there is some sort of key word or phrase to get to whatever is beneath it? The way that those runes are written and the emphasis placed there can't be coincidence."
Hearing the confrontation between Rhiannon, Arianna and Zatinya, Gren stands and walks over to them. "Look, I'm feeling a bit burned out myself...pun intended." He smiles at the women. When he doesn't get much of a response he continues,"Anyway, while I hate the idea of sitting down when we are just getting started, I do believe we will be more effective in the morning. Truth be told, we may have some time on our hands anyway since we still need to get past the statue over the opening."
He walks back to Lorien and double checks the rest of the area around the statue just to make sure there are no other ways to the area beneath it.
"I said nap, not leave." she noted. "It's no magic spell, but I heal fast when I'm sleeping. Anyway, I know stones, and it does sound like there's more down there. The fact that the entrances haven't been torn open and wrecked like everything else suggests they're really not that easy to find or open, though. Could need anything, really, from pulling a well-hidden lever to some kinda priestly juju. Case in point: What she just read." The kineticist indicated Lorien.
Kesh will accompany Gren, carefully scrutinizing the writing and asking questions in the search for more glyphs.
You're fairly certain that there's a microscopic gap between the statue and the floor around it. Whatever mechanism is supposed to operate the supposed secret door, well, that's not obvious.
"Now I don't know how to cast a spell...", he glances knowingly at Lorien, "...but I do know and enjoy speaking in Celestial. Did you know that there are actually three separate and distinct ways that I can think of to say something along the lines of 'Command' in Celestial?"
With that Gren goes into a short aside on how there are different words for commanding a person to do an act, on being commanded to do an act, and on the command for the act itself. During the process of this lecture, he does in fact say the three variations. "...and that doesn't even get into different tenses nor with regards to potential synonyms." Seeing that his companions' eyes have glazed over he returns his focus to studying the runes around the statue.
Saying the three variants of command doesn't accomplish anything. Not even the variant implied by the inscription.
Kesh stops listening to Gren after a few seconds, instead glancing about uncomfortably at the writing smeared all around, as incomprehensible to him as the Celestial on the pedestal. "Does it even matter? Sounds like you have to be a servant of Thyr, and isn't he...you know, kind of dead?"
"Well, I am able to cast the spell command, but alas, I have not memorized it anymore. But let me have a thought what are the commandments of Thyr!"
He's the god of justice, sometimes styled 'the God of Kings', and he bids his followers (mostly rulers or lawmakers of various station, but also sometimes those who enforce the law) to rule justly and evenhandedly, and abhors corruption of all types.
As for commandments, Lorien isn't able to come up with much else than what's implied by the above.
"I see two options - either we go check out the other temple, doing our best to avoid the glyphs that are likely all over it - or rest up and let Lorien work on the Command spell. Regarding the other temple, I may be capable of disarming any glyphs of warding as long as I see them in advance. My vote is to rest up because if I don't see a glyph in time or I fail to disarm it then I could get knocked out again and then you will have to scrape me up off the floor of a temple again. This brings up a question though - does anybody have the ability to DETECT the MAGICal essence of a glyph to help me out? Would that even work?"
"I'm up for rest, too." Rhiannon noted. "Best to be safe when dealing with magical traps, and it should be doable as long as we don't get greedy and rush in."
Looking at the temple from a distance, Zatinya picks up some magical vibes, and after a few moments of concentration, she narrows it down to above the doorway.
Circling the temple from a distance, and stopping to concentrate every so often, she finds an additional magical aura on a pillar to the south.
Gren can't control his excitement "You can actually see that? That's fantastic."
He walks carefully up to the south pillar first, studying the runes for signs of another glyph analyzing the text to see if it is similar in content to the other temple.
"Let's see what we have here..."
It's the same story as on the other temple. There's scribbles in abyssal, this passage in particular seems to be a poem, and a seemingly random character has been invested with power. The glyph promtly blows up in his face as he tries to deactivate it.
Rhiannon had been standing well back when Gren moved to go examine things. "You, uh, want me to throw up a wall or something next time you try that?" she asked, looking at his rather singed body.
"I'm starting to think we're going to get ourselves killed at this rate," Arianna admits after another explosion goes off. "Can't we set them off somehow without cooking ourselves?"
She can indeed throw rocks at the symbol above the temple entrance.
However, it doesn't seem to activate the trap.
"Maybe we should move back some and make camp, then we can figure out what to do about the magicy-trappy thingies," Arianna sighs when she sees that Zatinya isn't setting the runes off.