Tulinor fires a couple of arrows to the spider but both end up clanging on the webs.
Lionel comes then down the spider and stabs it to death profiting the reach of its weapon. The spider shrieks and fells down to the floor almost hitting the cleric who removes the spear from the corpse impassible.
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Mithrennon wipes his brow at the exertion and pats Lionel on the back. "Excellent work." With the room cleared of its apparent resident, Mithrennon keeps his crossbow in hand as he begins surveying this room, looking for any artifacts worth salvaging.
As he does, a small hawk flies through the entryway and slows, before settling itself on Meeth's shoulder as it eyes the dead spider. The wizard absentmindedly ruffles its feather a bit, earning a squawk and a shiver from his companion.
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"Your god smiles upon you Lionel! Masterfully done."
Draylan takes the opportunity to swallow the potion presented to him earlier.
"That hit the spot, I feel rejuvenated! Since we are here looking for artifacts and valuables, shall we take a look around?"
Draylan searches around for anything of note. Then adjusts all his gear and moves to the door.
"At your command friends. I await the word to proceed."
Mithrennon notices a small cocoon hanging in the webs, holding the remains of an unfortunate dog that fell into the spider’s clutches. The desiccated carcass is still wearing its leather collar, which is studded with lapis lazuli stones and has a silver tag reading “Kita.”
The collar is worth 50 gp.
At some point you venture into the tower’s west wing and find it mostly choked with rubble, but a door in the eastern wall is still accessible.
The door leads to a stone spiral staircase that runs through the center of the tower. Unfortunately, the stairway is also blocked with fallen rubble. It seems you will not be able to climb up the tower through the stair.
The staircase seems to had lead down to underground tunnels, but this exit collapsed from the afershocks, sealing the tunnels. So that path is also unpracticable.
You will need to find a different path to continue the tower exploration.
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"Heh, true that. She does. Say, Captin, do you wager that we can climb from the outside of the tower? At any rate, I think we can toss one of the gnomes to the second floor." Lionel grins at the two gnomes.
"I suggest we go outside for a second and see if we can climb in from the outside. Anyone got rope? All I brought was manacles."
The tower stands 80 feet tall and its exterior walls are amazingly smooth. They are considered superior masonry walls, requiring a DC 25 Climb check to ascend. That said, the ragged remains of the east wing’s walls are easier to Climb (DC 15) but due to the geometry of the crumbled areas, you cannot reach the tower’s fifth foor by that side. Each floor is 15 feet over the other, and climbing speed is 1/4 of your normal one. That means, if you have 30' speed, each floor you try to climb requires 2 successful climb checks.
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"I got nothing. Say, if I give ya lift, Tully, can you manage to grab to something on the second floor? You elves being taller and all? If you lower a rope afterwards, we should be able to climb from that. Unless you get attacked by something while up there. I think that's worth a shot, right?"
"We can also try clearing some the rubble, we can get the mules and all ta help?"
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"Unless someone brought rope there's no freaking way we're climbing up there," Nigel says, watching the futile attempts by the others,"
Nigel thinks about the situation for a moment and has a thought.
"Are you telling me that the people or whatever is in this fortress have no built-in way to get to the second floor of the building? That's absurd. There's got to be a secret door or passage or something back inside!"
Nigel carries his lamp and walks through each of the explored rooms carefully examining them for secret doors or passageways, he also examines the rubble on the staircase to see if a small creature can fit through and to check how dense the rubble is.
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"Apparently your god smiles on you... as long as you stay on the ground!" Draylan snickers at his own wit. "Let me give it a go."
Draylan will take 10 (+8 climb) on the east wing wall (DC15), to reach the 2nd floor. From there he will pull out a 50' rope from his pack. Knot it for climbing and either anchor it or tye it around his waist. Then lower the other end down to assist the rest of the party.
"That should make the climb easy enough for even the gnome! Come on up!"
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The elf watches the various attempts, and scratches his hawk as he considers their dilemma. "Hey, Vanya, think you can fly up a floor and make sure nothing menacing is moving about? No, no, no, you don't have to put yourself at risk scouting the place out. Just up there, a peek, and come let me know if you see anything. Yeah, that's a good girl." With a little coaxing, Vanya takes flight up to the second floor, careful to keep to the outsid of the tower as she takes a look into the floor before returning to the elf wizard.
"Well, what do you think? Is is safe for us to make this climb?"
Mithrenor doesn't feel Vanya scared or feeling in danger at any point during its exploration. Eventually she comes back all save.
Draylan will take 10 (+8 climb) on the east wing wall (DC15), to reach the 2nd floor. From there he will pull out a 50' rope from his pack. Knot it for climbing and either anchor it or tye it around his waist. Then lower the other end down to assist the rest of the party.
With great expertise Draylan clasp to the rocks in the eastern semi-collapsed wall, and starts climbing up, one meter, another meter... he takes his time in order to make sure he doesn't fail at any time. At some point he reaches up and secures a rope for the other members of the party to climb up easier.
The floor is half-collapsed in this area of the tower, but seems safe at this point. Two doors open, one to the north and the other to the southern area of the tower floor.
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"Alright, Savoured Sting, I ask you for guidance. May the luck be in my favour. If we get out of this, I promise I'll spend at least a third of the money on prostitutes. Now, tell me which door to go through." prays Lionel before he flips a coin to see which door to go through.
"Alright, when we're ready, let's go through the south gate. I gotta feeling for this one. Still, cover ma back and I'll cover yours." says Lionel, smiling with a flashing white smile to those who heard his prayer.
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Demario lets out a breath as the spider falls to the floor. He looks at the collar, and swears about its price. Look at that work. It's exsquisite. It must be 150 gold piece easy.
Demario will then climb up the rope, albeit shaky and not very coordinated. At the top, he gives a nod to the burly man Draylan.
He watches Lionel go towards the southern door. He gets a giddy in his step to stop the man before getting too close.
Hey, Lionel let me check the door. I heard stories as a youngster about doors and floors being trapped with all sorts of vile things. My poppa told me about an axe coming from a door frame once, can't say I beleive him thou.
Demario then goes over to the door, and slowly and methodically gives it a once over. He starts at the bottom, and works his way around the frame, then to the handle. Being careful not to turn the handle in anyway before he is done with his examination.
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Meeth shakes his head at Demario's assessment of the collar. "I'd be surprised if someone gives you more than a couple of golds for it. Besides, it's clearly not a proper artifact of the Fortress worthy of our job."
The elven wizard tugs at the knotted rope, making sure it's secured, before making his climb up to the second floor. "Oomph. There's got to be a better way to get up the tower than this." Mithrennon dusts himself off before moving about and taking a look around the room. As he moves about, he keeps the crossbow handy and calls for a bit of light upon the bolt.
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In that case, he casts Mage Armor on himself after climbing up the wall. He then relights his lamp and joins the party on the second floor.
Thanks to the rope the party eventually does it to the second floor.
Demario doesn't find anything of interest within the door or past to it, so at some point, for some reason, he decides to open it.
On the other side lies an abandoned room, for clearly a long time. It is octagonal and covered in a fine layer of dust.
You find faint reptilian tracks in the dust in front of the northwestern door.
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"Your god has not failed us yet. I'll go along with your intuition." Draylan follows to the south door.
Draylan tries to stop Lionel before he enters and warn him of the creature inside.
If Draylan is able to stop him, he will alert the rest of the party as well. If unable to catch him in time, Draylan will try and run ahead of him and attack the creature.
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"Oh. That ain't nice. At least they ain't here no more. I'd say the reasonable thing ta do would be to go cautiously until we know what we're facin', but that ain't the Pathfinder's path, ain't that right, Mitran?" Lionel smiles and gives the wizard a friendly shove.
"Ey, Tully? Ya think that you can track them things? I don't like lizards, but there sure as hells be better than giant spiders? Did they leave through the wall or that door ova there?"
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Mithrennon, having surveyed the broken down eastern room, follows the trackers into the southern room, where he continues to look around at the ruins for any artifacts worth salvage.
The wizard pauses at the mention of tracks to the west, and he looks over in that direction as he strategizes with the group. "Shall we move to the western room and take a peek to see who has managed to enter here ahead of us? Does this mean there's another entrance into the tower we're not aware of, as I did not see an obvious way to get to the upper floors without climbing?"
Careful to stay behind the meatier allies, Mithrennon tries to herd the group toward the western room.
Draylan has no time to analyse the door, because as soon as he steps in front of the wooden thing, the tile goes lower and a javelin is fired at him from the wall in the side.
The javelin stabs in his right shoulder causing a considerable wound.
Draylan doesn't hear any sound but perceives certain odd smell.
When Nigel ends his spell, the door suddenly opens letting a horrible stench to go inside the room.
As Draylan and Lionel smells the horrible stench, they find it almost unbearable and start feeling dizzy.
Nigel and Demario also perceive the horrible stench, but they find inner strengths to resist it.
As Nigel's lamp light pours inside the next room, you see a couple of startled reptilian humanoids. They seemed worried and then surprised as they just hear the door open and see you.
The lamp only pours dim light inside the room, so those without low-light vision are affected by concealment . The creatures are flatfooted.
The enemies are young troglodytes. They are small sized versions of their bigger parents. They have bite and claw natural attacks, a small combat maneuver defense, and the most horrible about them is their stench aura that rends enemies 30 feet around sickened during 10 rounds.
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Mithrennon moves by the door, and is overcome by the obnoxious fumes. The wizard spies the creatures in the other room through his watering eyes, and fires off a bolt in greeting.
However, he fails miserably in his poor state.
Blight the hawk wisely stays out of the fumes, and squats on the floor by the first entrance as he waits for the gas to dissipate.
The bolt doesn't break and so the light spell holds providing enough light to properly see the two reptilian creatures.
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During the surprise round: Nigel simply will move forward into the room with his lamp to provide light to his teammates.
During the standard round: He'll cast Acidic ray as his standard action on the lizard directly in front of him. (five acidic ray casts remaining)
Afterwards, Nigel will draw his mace for his move action. Then hope everything is killed before he has to swing it.
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Draylan hunches over and vomits onto the floor as the smell overcomes him.
"Oh my! I've never experienced the like. I hope these things' smell is more potent than their fighting skills!"
Surprise round: Draylan moves into the room.
Round 1: Draylan will attack the red foe, then hold steady waiting for either to advance. If either (or both) move closer, Draylan will attempt to trip them with his reach AoO's (he has combat reflexes).
-2 is for smell
glaive is x3 on crit
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-2 is for smell
-2 is for smell
Draylan slashes over the foe shoulder, the big lash, combined with the acid still burning in his belly due to Nigel's acid ray, is enough for the young beast that crumbles into the floor still trying to guess who and how unleashed such a pain over him.
The lizard-like retreats some meters while yelling something in his language and drawing a javelin from his back.
"What are you saying surface wanderer?! Ah! What are you doing in the Master domains?! Go! Kus has to fight you, ah!"
And he sends flying the javelin forth towards the fighter standing in front of him, Draylan.
But the hit is too mild and ends in the floor just in front of the offending party.