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 Recent Posts
While Douena is pleased again not to have tons of rock over her head blocking her connection to Desna, she doesn't look enthusiastic about the plains. "What does M'neri mean?" she questions Shokambe. "'Lots of nothing?' It'll be like being on the Jenivere all over again, only with waves of grass instead of water."
Douena grabs the chalk with a grin and hurries back to the mine's entrance. She looks around for a surface she can write on, maybe the side of one of the dilapidated buildings that's somewhat sheltered from the elements. "Mahjik, pick me up so I can reach the tall part," she demands. With Shokambe's chalk, she draws a stick figure of a happy woman that might vaguely resemble Athyra. Just to make sure, she adds a happy dinosaur by her side, with several arrows pointing toward the hole in the hillside from their smiling faces. Upon consideration, she adds several large butterflies as well, each of them also sporting a wide smile, and then draws a bouquet of flowers in Athyra's hand. The last thing, among the butterflies, she adds her own arcane mark. "There," she says with satisfaction giving the worn-down nub of chalk back to the guide. "Sasha, put the salt and the piece of orb under the picture."
"Ooh, a key!" Douena snatches it from Sasha excitedly. "I like keys. They open things. We'll have to see if we can find the lock it goes to." Douena puts the chain around her neck before asking Desna to consign the departed wights to a more restful existence. "I hope she can hear me all right in here," she sighs when she's done. "Maybe we should have buried them outside."
"Aw, poor evil undead thing," Douena remarks upon witnessing the wight's final gesture to cling to unlife, her sympathy as usual arousing once the immediate threat is over. "I'll preach you a nice funeral. He wasn't Mwangi. What deity do the Sargavans tend to worship, Jask?" She turns to look at the blue orb, still glowing coldly. "Do you think it's safe to walk up and smash it, or should we sit back here and throw rocks at it just in case?"
"Sasha!" Douena calls out in alarm. "Be careful! That weapon won't just hurt you; it will drain your life energy as well. Lorenz, forget the orb for now and stop the wight!" She moves down the narrow dry walkway along the edge of the water carefully and pats Pezock on the back. "Hurry and finish this one, Pezock, so you can go help Sasha with the other one."
Mahjik moves towards the strange equipment in the northeast while Douena moves to the southeast (Pezock follows her), each taking one of the two light sources and leaving the rest of the party with very little light. :)
Douena tries to figure out what the blue orb could be and how safely to shut it down. She uses her message ability to contact Jask. Jask:
"" She grabs hold of Pezock's hand. ""
Starknife retrieved and Pezock healed, Douena tries to get a glimpse at whatever everyone's looking at over in the corner, but she'd have either to swim or to backtrack to the first bridge to get over there. "The banging on the ceiling ought to have summoned all of them in the area, so there shouldn't be any more of them waiting around to jump out at us. Let's go down this way and see how far it goes; then I can say a funeral for the rest of the wights." She points to the southeast passage, where she can walk along the edge and maybe come back on the other side. Asking Pezock to retrieve her light stone, she carries it down toward the bend in the tunnel to see what's around the corner.
Douena hops agitatedly at the edge of the water, eyeing its depths. "I can't get over there!" she complains loudly over the echoing din. Glaring up at the wight pounding on the ceiling, she flings her starknife at it to try to silence it or at least knock it down. Unused to throwing the heavy cold iron weapon, however, she miscalculates badly and her gift from Desna veers off wildly and splashes into the water some distance down the tunnel.
Douena clucks her tongue in annoyance and glances over at the group on the far side of the water to make sure Mahjik still has his torch out for light. "" she calls quietly across the pool, her voice easily carrying in the echoing cavern. "" She points to the rocky spur to her east. Taking out another stone, she makes it glow, and the shimmering reflections on the ceiling fade as the one underwater releases its magic. "" she tells the tengu, handing him the stone and gesturing to the southeast. ""
"I wasn't already wet," she protests, albeit laughingly. "Ow, laughing makes my face hurt," she complains. "And you almost drowned Sir Ralph," she points out, as the chameleon emerges crossly from her dripping pocket. She considers the slain wights for a moment. "Athyra said to return them to the earth, but they've been so thirsty for so long, it seems kinder to bury them at sea. Or at pond, at any rate. They'll still be underground," she points out, glancing up at the rock above her head. "Push them back under the water, and I'll say a funeral for them. Oh, and we need to decide which way to go: the narrow way or the wider way."
"What are these things, anyway?" "They're salt wights," Douena repeats impatiently. "I said that. They're made when a person dies from getting all dried out and their husk keeps walking the world trying to satisfy its unquenchable thirst." She punctuates the explanation by taking another drink from her waterskin. "They reproduce really quickly; it's not like ghoul fever where you have a couple of days to get treated. You can go from fighting one to being one in a matter of seconds." She shudders at her own proximity to that fate. "So it would make sense that whatever happened in the mine was so fast and catastrophic instead of drawn out like an epidemic. But what the blue orb was that started the whole thing, I don't know. Whatever it is, if it's still down here, we have to destroy it." She squeezes past Jask out of the alcove and onto the end of the bridge, lights up another stone as the one in the water beneath her goes out, and tosses it ahead into the center of the pool, both to light up more of the cavern ahead and judge the depth of the water.
"Sasha!" Douena calls, stepping over the the fallen wight. "Are you all right?" Now that she's no longer fighting for her life, her sympathy for the people the undead once were is reawakened. "Poor things," she says, glancing down at the dessicated husks. "They were probably some of the miners, or some unfortunate people who stumbled in here afterwards. Like the log book said, it would have been very quick. They're desperately thirsty so they draw the water out of living creatures' bodies, but it doesn't satisfy their thirst and when a person gets all dried out ... they join them, right away." She touches the dry skin on the side of her face and retrieves her waterskin for a drink. "Jask," she says, "I can't see my own face. Will it get better?"
Douena sees the approaching legs of her friends behind the salt wight with a sense of relief. "I think I'm claustrophobic!" she shouts to them. "Or Desna is! Either way, I don't think we should go into any more caves!" She remembers the starknife Desna hid for her back on the Shiv, draws it, and stabs at the wight.
Douena cries out in pain, which only makes the dry patch of skin on the side of her face pull and crack. "They're salt wights," she calls out, trying not to move her mouth too much. "They'll pull all the water out of you if they can. You live in a pool!" she tells the menacing creatures angrily. "There's more water under that bridge than there is in me!" Presenting her butterfly with an anxious glance at the rock ceiling above her, she pleads, "Desna, help!" before withdrawing further into the alcove.
Douena picks up some small stones, sets one alight, and drops the others in her pocket for later. She sidles past the others quietly, watching the water for telltale ripples, and edges up to the curve in the passageway. With a nod across the water at Sasha, she tosses her lighted stone just around the curve so Sasha can get a glimpse of what lies ahead from the other side of the pool.
Unfazed by Pezock's frustration, Douena is pleased to see him regain his mobility. "Apparently they're like ghouls," she tells the others. "Remember the ghouls under the lighthouse? I wonder if they're some kind of undead ooze. C'mon, Pezock; Mahjik and Makoa, you too. Anyone else hurt? We're close enough to the entrance; we should go back out there before I try to get Desna's attention. She didn't like it last time I was underground." Retreating to the cave entrance with anyone who was hurt by the oozes, Douena presents her butterfly with an anxious glance up at the open sky. "See?" she asks with satisfaction. "It works better without rock over my head."
Douena dashes around Lorenz's and Shokambe's legs to get a better view of what's going on. "Pezock!" she cries in alarm when she sees the tengu partially enveloped by the ooze. "They're crystal oozes. They live in the water, and they can see in the dark," she explains needlessly. "Ishirou, get it off of him!" She reaches out and infuses the Tian with a bit of luck.
"Oh, the Pathfinders," Douena sniffs dismissively, her face growing cold when the group's name is mentioned. "I suppose they would be the kind to find dozens of people dying horribly very interesting. Seems to me the pages would be of more interest to the families of the innocent men who died because the owner was greedy." At any rate, she seems to have lost interest in the book and leaves Makoa to deal with it, trotting over to join Pezock looking into the mine entrance.
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