"Ugh! Rats!" Gorruum begins ineffectively slicing away at them one at a time with his halberd. "Ubagub, roll on them!" The slurk leaps to obey and begins rolling around on the rats.
Yelling wordlessly in disgust as the mass of rats swarm out of the tower, Wilhelm begins slicing into the mass of fury bodies with his falchion.
"Uhum... I think I preferred the murderous fey or the strangling vines over this!"
Fhârn comments and shakes off a rat nibbling at his armoured glove.
Wilhelm uses his falchion to attack the rats around him, swinging wildly. Despite his mostly ending up flinging blood and dead rat insides over his friends with his wild swings, the swings seem to have done the trick, as the ones around him disperse, flooding back into the garbage filled tower.
The rats around Anastacia and Gorruum continue to bite and tear at their bodies.
Natalie decides to help Anastacia out striking at the rats around her.
Anastacia takes her cue from Wilhelm, swinging her mace into the seething mass of hairy rodents.
"Ugh. Remember that idea with fire? Feels pretty good about now..."Fhârn comments as he steps back and sweeps his poleaxe trough the rats. Munin caws and flies up from his shoulder, dodging another spray of mauled rats.
The swarm of rats breaks apart and floods back into the tower of garbage.
"Did you find the dump in there Wilhelm? It sure smells from inside, I'm not going in there!!" Natalie says with her mouth and nose covered behind a piece of cloth
"Fire. Yes. Fire good on nasty rats. At least gone now."
In a sour mood and covered in rat gore, Wilhelm is none too pleased to discover that the inside of the tower is filled with rotten garbage. "A dump indeed. I think your fire suggestion is gaining more and more merit Fhârn. That said I don't want to be nearby when whatever is in here is burning." He swiftly sticks his head inside, looking around for a moment and trying not to breath through his nose while his eyes water from the stench.
My, what an interesting smell you've discovered...
Choking down a retch with some effort, Wilhelm takes a few deep breaths of fresh air before he nods towards the final tower. "Let's go see to the last one. I hope there's nothing so foul as this one. Keep weapons in hand given the fine reception we've had so far."
"I really don't care for rats. So filthy." Anastacia dosen't really think of Ikit as a rat.
"Disease carrying pests that ruin everything they don't eat. We should ring that tower with a fire and burn that garbage and the rats till none remain."
Anastacia nods deferentially toward Wilhelm. "After we check the last tower, of course..."
Anastacia follows after Wilhelm, taking time to fix her shield on her arm. The mace goes back onto her belt hanger, though. Anastacia needs a hand free to cast spells.
The cleric looks around apprehensively, trying to spot any new threats, as well as keep an eye out for the mad elf and his pet vine.
As Anastacia and Wilhelm lead the way to the southwest tower, Anastacia notices that the under brush has been recently disturbed south of the main tower, as if something large had trundled it's way from the tower to the outside wall (or the outside wall to the tower) recently. The disturbance doesn't seem to extend past the wall however.
Upon reaching the southwest tower, the party finds, after pushing through thick underbrush, that the interior of the tower has completely collapsed, leaving the interior a pile of broken lumber and stones.
"This tower seems just about ready to collapse on its own, might be better for furture travelers to raze the buildings without setting fire to the whole forest." Natalie says while studying the inside of the tower.
Anything of worth saving inside?
"Be careful. It looks like something large passed this way, I don't know if it was leaving or arriving."
"Hmm." Fhârn ponders "The interior is completely crushed - crushed, not rotten or deteriorated. If something big recently came trough here, it might have made this its nest..."
Something bigger than a human moved through, but left no tracks. The dirt is disturbed though, as if someone poked it with a stick repeatedly. Fharn's not sure what caused it.
On the rubble, it's all old, it looks like an internal support column failed and the floors of the tower all collapsed and brought the roof down with them. The walls had better support, and remained. Fharn thinks it probably collapsed sometime in the last few thousand years. Given the internal floors were stone, not wood, when they collapsed the stones crushed everything that wasn't stone.
Gorruum looks around at the rocks, "This nest hurt to sit on."
"Best to check for any magic at work..." Anastacia calls on Pharasma's powers of divination, and looks for magic auras in the area.
No magic in the ruined tower.
"What's out plan for this tower? Do we go in and poke around in the rubble?" Natalie asks the others.
"Hmm..." Fhârn mumbles and checks around inside. After a while he simply scratches his head and shrugs. "... The rubble looks ancient, so might not actually be related to the mysterious creature. But ..." He points to the disturbed dirt ("The dirt is disturbed though, as if someone poked it with a stick repeatedly.") "*Might* - and this is a longshot - be something that walked as if on stilts. Like an really eccentric ogre or a really big spider ..."
"As for a course of action - we should probably settle for keeping an eye on it. The other two occupied towers feel more urgent at the moment. And whatever made this might not return anytime soon."
"I agree with our treasurer mage. I would like to investigate this further, but we have more urgent matters. Let's take a look in the central tower and when it's clear we can deal with everything else."
"Nothing magical in nature around here..." Anastacia shrugs. "We might check outside the wall. Later..."
Anastacia turns her attention to the central tower. Her eyes follow it up to its top.
"Maybe from the top levels of that tower, we can pelt that feral elf, and nasty vine, with bolts and arrows. Drive them down to fight us, or make them yield themselves.
"That sounds like a sound plan Anastacia." Natalie says turning to look at the central tower "It looks tall enough, only question then is if the elf is hiding in the canopies or have moved on while we walked around!"
Natalie looks for the entrance to the central tower and hoping to take a peek inside before opening the door.
Gorruum helps Natalie search out the entrance to the central tower.
The keep’s central tower is an elegant spire of ivory colored stone, draped with a riot of vines and other plants. The most complete structure in the entire fortress, its 5-foot-thick walls climb 70 feet to a multi-pointed stone roof.
There are archways both on the north and south, each big enough to walk a small elephant through. As the party steps into the doorway, they see the interior through the dim light that enters through the archways and those windows that aren't completely coated in vines.
This wide chamber has an impressive vaulted ceiling. Though obscured in places by earth and undergrowth, the hall’s floor is crafted of smooth stone tiles in multicolored pastel hues. The walls of the chamber are decorated with faded frescoes of sylvan life, showing scenes of beautiful elves engaged in hunting, feasting, dancing, singing, and a bewildering variety of other idyllic pursuits. To the west, a graceful, filigreed stone staircase, garlanded with flowering vines, climbs to the level above.
"Impressive tower this fort must have been impressive when it was still caretaked. Does anyone know the meanings of these ilustrations?" Natalie asks the others.
"Pointy ears like to play. Steps?" Gorruum looks for anything moving inside the central tower, then proceeds toward the stairs.
"Aside from the obvious as Gorruum has pointed out, I'm not enough of a student of history to say. Upstairs it is." Wilhelm holds his falchion as he makes his way upstairs, keeping a wary eye on their surroundings.
Wilhelm looks at the stairs as Gorruum reaches them, and is about to mention that the tile at the bottom of the stairs looks funny when Gorruum places one heavy boot on it.
Anastacia is standing in the arch of the doorway, taking in the frescoes. She had actually considered the thought that the staircase might be trapped, then dismissed the idea. People don't usually rig booby traps in their own living space. On the other hand, if the traps could be turned on and off easily, it would be good to have such defenses.
Anastacia puts the theoretical reasoning aside, and concentrates on the task at hand. She calls on Pharasma's power to see magical auras, while she studies the area.
"Hmm. Interesting! I haven't heard of any elven outposts in the River Kingdoms, not since ... uhm ... ever. So pre Starfall? That can't be right! Can it? Hmm. Hmmmmmmmmm!"
Fhârn examines the frescoes closely and carefully, trying to determine their origin. A marvellous find indeed, but today their beauty was lost in comparison to their history.
The large amphibian foot comes down on the panel, and there is a click sound. Natalie's gut twists, as the sound makes her look around. Her keenly honed rogue skills make her look up, as a bottle is released from a hook hidden in the curved columns of the ceiling. Unfortunately, seeing the bottle is of little use in stopping it as it drops into the center of the room.
Upon hitting the ground, the bottle shatters, sending glass shards spraying over the area. A few bounce off Wilhelm's armor, doing no damage.
Unfortunately, the billow cloud of sickly yellow fumes that roll out from the shattered jar don't just bounce off, they fill the entire area, even puffing out the doors.
Eyes widening as he realizes too late the danger of the step, Wilhelm barks a warning, "A trap on th-" The shattering of the bottle interrupts his shout and he stops speaking, reflexively covering his eyes against shards.
Hearing Wilhelm, Gorruum takes another look at the floor, just as his foot depresses the panel, "Funny? What is funny about tile?" Moments later as the bottle smashes, Gorruum has just a moment to add "Trap not funny..." before his lungs fill with gas.
Fortunately, just outside, Ubagub is quick to hop aside from the gas leaking outside the doors.
Anastacia hears the click as Gorrumm's foot depresses the trigger-plate. There is no clue as to what it triggered, until the crashing sound of the breaking bottle, and the expanding cloud make it clear.
Anastacia ducks back outside, barely in time to avoid breathing the noxious fumes.
*Cough*
At one moment, Fhârn was admiring a great historical find. The next, he was coughing and trying not to fill his lungs with poisonous gas. He greatly preferred just a moment ago to right now. Greatly!
"Ough... Outside!"
Taking his own advice, he quickly follows Ana and Uba outside. As soon as he can taste the sweet fresh air he draws a deep breath and grunts.
"Well. Can't say I expected *that*..."
Natalie turns at the sound and looks up towards the ceiling as if expecting something to come down the stairs and notices the bottle to late "Watch out the c... *Cough* *Hark*"
"Cough... Sounds good, fresh air!" Natalie says while running outside again to breath some uncorrupted air.
The cloud takes only a second or two to disperse inside the tower...