The etuvian smiles and holds out the cup of dice to Horek.
"More talk for more hair? Although you'd have to offer someone else's now, I believe."
Horek chuckles and rubs his scalp. "I would like to hear the rest of the story, but as you say, I have little more hair to offer - and I dare not part with that." The half-orc actually manages to blush a bit at his own words, a chagrined look on his face.
”Eh. History’s nice and all, but I want to know about recent events.”, Tollo says.
”Unless you want to continue your streak of beginners’ luck, Loges, I say we let the talking roaches enjoy their treasure trove of hair that we didn’t need anyways.”
Loges produces a parchment with words in quotes.
My most sincerest apologies, but, you and I bet all for all.Now, please answer our continued line of questions. Thank you.
Zuberi points at him and nods "He wrote things down, you don't want to upset a Wizard who takes notes!"
The etuvians laugh at the wizard's comments. "Silly mortals. You only dally with magic, where we are made of it!"
They continue their laughing as they begin collecting the hair they won in order to leave.
Loges puts his notes away. The wizard shrugs his shoulders.
Well, they are fey.
The youth smiles.
Shall we continue exploring?
Bolgar shrugs. "Is e'eryone shorn tha' wants to be? Good, lets be off then."
Leaving the strange fey, the group continues down the corridor and find that it ends soon after turning a corner to the left. Three small earthenware jars about two feet in height stand at the end of the hallway, and a closed door leads further east. One of the jars has sand in it, while the other two look empty.
According to the inspectors, the door does not seem to be trapped or magical. Nothing can be heard coming from the other side.
"What would ye need a jar full o' sand for?" Bolgar asks.
He takes out a dagger and gently sticks it in the sand, probing to see if anything might be buried within.
"Maybe it's transporting something, like packaging."
Tollo loads his crossbow and opens the door.
The room seems empty and quite small; no more than 10' by 10' and has not visible exits.
Well, that's not quite the case. There is a break in the ceiling that's about three feet long and a foot wide. It seems to lead to some narrow hollow area above the room. Too small for a human or dwarf, it could accomodate a halfling, however.
Loges does his thing as they march. He seems perplexed about the--seemingly-- useless jars.
The wizard glances into the room with detect magic.
Tollo shrugs.
”Guess I’m going up there unless you boys have slimmed down while I wasn’t looking. No? Alright.”
He tosses his grappling hook to the opening in the ceiling and climbs up there.
It takes a few tries to get the grappling hook to grab onto something above, but Tollo eventually manages to secure it to ... something. He then deftly climbs the rope and hoists himself into the small crawl space above the room.
The crawl space is only a foot or so in height, but it soon opens up into a large space, some kind of room sealed off from the rest of the pyramid located directly above the room his companions are in. Tollo moves his light to get a better look at what is in here and freezes when he catches a glimpse of the ceiling. Almost all of it, along with much of the walls, is covered in a dull-green slime. Before he can react, the entire ceiling of slime comes loose, dropping towards the halfling ...
... who dives for cover back into the crawlspace, slamming his head into the floor in a hurry to get away from the green slime.
Horek moves instinctively to help Tollo back to his feet, casting an uneasy look at the ceiling as he pulls the halfling clear, considering the haste with which he was getting out of there - unless he simply fell? "What happened up there? Was it another masked creature of some kind?" The half-orc asks in concern, his gaze still on that crack even as he draws free his greataxe.
Tollo retreats from the crack in the ceiling.
”Green slime! All over the walls and ceiling, in a room sealed off from this one! Probably seeping it’s way after me- almost got me too, but I’m too bloody quick!”
”TOO SLOW, SLIME! YA HEAR ME YA GOOP THING?!”
"Green slime? Tha' sounds rather revolting... but wha' is it exactly?"
"It dinnae sound like we would want any o' tha' stuff. Unless there's something in here, looks like this e' a dead end."
Bolgar does a quick search of the rest of the room.
Zuberi gives Tollo an encouraging pat on the back. "So it's seeping after you. How comforting, I'd be thinking it was some kind of excrement otherwise."
The rest of the room seems completely empty. There are "glopping noises" coming from the crack in the ceiling but so far no sign of any green slime.
”Maybe we shouldn’t stay in here then,” Timbur suggests.
Loges points up at the ceiling.
Don't stand under it. Where now?
The wizard explauns what he knows.
You have reached a dead end; there are no further ways to go.
Tollo runs for the door.
”C’mon! C’mon!”
Once the party is in the hall, he slams shut the doors and dumps the sand from the urn across the floor. He kicks the sand to block the crack under the door.
”Maybe that will, uh, slow it down... more?”
Timbur watches as Tollo kicks the sand. ”Tollo, I think you got some slime in your hair,” he says, already heading towards the way back.
Loges claps his hands.
Well done, Tollo of the Green Slime!
The youth winks at Timbur.
Horek chuckles at Timbur's jest, but the half-orc is glad that they were able to avoid the green slime. From Loges' description, it's not something any of them would want to have any sort of contact with, and it seemed likely his axe would have done nothing against it.
As the party heads toward the stairs, Horek guards the rear of the formation, keeping an eye out behind them. It doesn't seem likely that it could move very fast, and the closed door and the sand should surely slow it down. Right?
"There may be secret chambers here. We should check these areas," Bolgar points to two dark areas on the map. "They are large enough that a hidden chamber might be there."
Bolgar's dwarven intuition steers him right, as he finds a hidden latch in the northernmost western hallway. After having it checked by Tollo and Loges, he pulls it open to reveal a small room.
Inside this room you see four bird-like creatures with long beaks like tubes. A faint glitter catches your eye from the center of the room as the bird-like creatures fly toward you.
These are stirges, nasty little buggers that drain you of your blood. Don't let them get attached to you.
Loges steps forward, as he casts a spell.
With Loges going in to color spray the stirges, Tollo backs himself into the corner next to the doorway and fires at the fourth stirge not caught in the color spray.
The three stirges in the corner wilt under the intense psychedelic light show Loges throws on them. They drop to the floor nearly lifeless.
Tollo's crossbow seems a bit off and misses the last of the stirges. Either that, or the little critters are too damn small.
Zuberi has no problems with going over to the down stirges and trying to cut one in twain with his greatsword.
Zuberi splatters blood all over himself and the walls as he ends the life of the fourth stirge.
”Is anyone going to be pissed that we killed their stirges? Do we want to just grab what we can and close the doors?”
Loges smiles at the successful confrontation.
Been wanting to try that one in a live combat situation. Seems effective.
Timbur draws his sword and moves in, heroically dispatching the unconscious stirges.
The glitter you noticed earlier comes from something sparkling in a pile of dust and debris in the middle of the room.
There is also a small hole in the northeastern ceiling. A slight wailing sound, as if from wind being funneled through a small space, comes from it.
:
There are four gems here. They are worth 100 gp, 100 gp, 500 gp, and 1000 gp.
"The only people we know here that aren't interested in hair are upset over bees... so those are some very expensive rocks for now. If we can find someone willing to trade for it might get us some useful equipment."
Tollo rubs his hands together.
"Finally something to show for the trouble... once we get back to civilization... which is days or weeks away..."
He sighs.
"Well, good find Bolgar."
The half-orc does his part in killing the rest of the stirges, his eyes opening wide as Tollo suggests these might have been 'holy pets' as well - like the bees. "We should move on quickly, in case those masked cultists come to accuse us of more sacrilege."
These are stirges, nasty little buggers that drain you of your blood. Don't let them get attached to you.
"Ach, I hate those things. Good to pu' them dain so quickly."
He sighs.
"Well, good find Bolgar."
Bolgar shrugs, and smiles. "If wair looking for secrets, ye need a keen eye. We should check the walls of passages as we travairse them." He examines the gems fondly.
After disposing of the remaining striges and collecting the gems, the group heads to the staircase where they first encountered the woman wearing the dog mask. She is nowhere to be seen, so the group heads down the spiral stairs, which ends in a closed door. After Tollo and Loges do their usual checks and discover nothing, the group moves on to find a long corridor that at first heads south for 30 feet, then turns eastward for 60 feet, and then northwards for 60 feet, ending in another door.
There is a button with a strange symbol next to the door, approximately four inches across. The symbol looks like a "plus" sign with two diagonal branches coming off each of the four ends, and doesn't look like anything you've ever seen. According to Tollo and Loges, it is not trapped and non-magical.