Túrante's blade is safe, although it develops a thin layer of frost on its surface. She hurts the massive ooze some more, but it's just not enough.
In retaliation, the ooze begins gurgling and heaving, and then vomits forth fully formed and animated, ooze covered human skeletons.
The skeletons scratch at our heroes, namely Túrante and Moira.
They are equally ineffective.
Selja tries to finish off the giant, skeleton-spweing ooze before it can make more!
;
Selja cuts into the huge ooze and it gurgles and slowly sputters out, sinking back into the mass of bones it emerged from.
The skeletons still remain though!
Moira takes a well-aimed hack at the nearest skeleton.
She unleashes Chill Touch to try to get it to back down...
Moira slashes out at the skeleton dripping in frigid slime. She hits, but, as we all know, swords can't cut through bone. However her spell is discharged and appears to have been effective, as the skeleton seems to be shaken as well as stirred.
Since her sword is still in-hand, the princess lashes out wildly but fails to connect with one of the skeletons.
There's very little Fench can do from where she is, but Liamae fires a heat ray at the skeleton threatening her dear princess.
The ray sizzles against the far wall.
Moira's foe flees and cowers in the far corner of the room.
Túrante's foe continues to claw away.
Bony hands scratch deep into Túrante, and the frigid black goop covering freezes her flesh. But, Mage Armor protects her from further harm.
Icy magic flickers up and down Moira's longsword as Chill Touch lingers on the blade. Knowing that the magic is more likely to help than the edge itself, she switches to a one-handed grip and moves up to the other skeleton while yelling, "Bad skeleton! Down! Play dead!"
Selja drops her glaive and moves toward the fleeing skeleton as she draws her morningstar.
Thinking better of braving the pit as her clumsy self, Moira moves into a corner and starts singing instead.
Túrante lashes back with her sword, making a significant strike against her skeletal foe.
Turant'es blade cuts straight through the skeleton's spine, and it tumbles to the ground a heap of cold and slimey bones.
The second skeleton cowers helplessly in the far corner. Selja runs up to it and smashes it with her morning star.
The room with the mass burial pit falls silent, safe.
As the threat subsides, Selja heads back to pick up her dropped glaive. "Wasn't as horrible as I'd thought," she concludes. "Whatever that was." The half orc seems to have no desire to walk in goop, however, and watches to see if it'll drain away before they explore. She tries some Detect Magic.
Nothing in the bone filled burial pit detects as magical. The ooze theoretically may drain to the bottom, but is in no rush to do so. Thankfully, there is no need to walk upon it.
Moira wanders over to the door and gives it a look.
"Looks safe to me."
She gives it a tug.
A hard tug.
Selja offers a blessing on Moira and tries to help with the tugging!
There is no obvious trap, but the ancient stone walls around the door are broken and crumbling, and the door is stuck in place as a result.
Moira pulls at the door, with Selja pulling Moira, it looks like it's about to give. Fench grabs Selja by the waist and pulls too!
With the final bit of leverage, the door pops open, but then the crumbling ceiling above collapses.
Once the dust settles, Moira is met with a frightening sight in the room beyond. The back wall has collapsed in leaving a pile of dirt and rubble nearly filling the room. Seated upon this rubble is the corpse of another enormous spider, this one animated from within by swarms upon swarms of tiny spiders spilling out of its carcass like drops of blood and swarming across the floor towards the now open door.
Fenchurch is the first to act as she brushes the dust from her shoulders and moves past Selja and Moira and into the room, bringing her axe to bear (bare?).
Her axe chops into the pile of dirt beneath the monstrous spider creature.
As she steps forward, the swarm of spiders spilling out of the large spider husk crawl up her legs and beneath her armor.
Although the thousands of bites are painful, the stout Fenchurch staves off any secondary effects.
.
Whatever these things were, they seemed extremely dangerous! She prays to Shelyn, and as the holy symbol of her goddess glows on her chest, purifying light bursts in the room.
She then sidesteps out of the way.
Hundreds of thousands of tiny shrieks fill the air as the animated spider husk recoils from the burst of light, a bunch of spiders fall from its form, but many, many, many more remain. The good news is, it seems greatly disoriented.
The ranger backs away from the confrontation as she has no area-effect weapons or spells with which to deal with a swarm.
Moira says, "Not again!!"
She digs out an alchemist's fire and chucks it into the heart of the swarm:
...or as close as she can manage. Never been much for throwing things.
As luck would have it, Moira nails the spider husk, the flask of inert liquid suddenly combusts, burning off more of the spiders animating the husk from within.
Burning and blinded, the giant reanimated husk of a spider rears its fangs and forlegs, then kicks at Fench with all of its might.
Fenchurch laughs haughtily as the hairy leg kicks wildly in the thin air.
"Hang on!" shouts Liamae as she rushes around the corner and positions herself just so behind Fench's bulwark.
Another gout of flame bursts from her outstretched hand, but the giant spider husk avoids the worst of it.
"Back to dust with you!" shouts Fenchurch as she hefts her gleaming green axe.
A sickening crunch and squish is heard reverberating the dungeon halls. The giant reanimated spider husk yet stands!
Fench then steps back out of the spider swarm.
"Kill it! Kill it with fire!!"
Selja takes a step backward and prays for healing of the party's wounds!
It burns, burns, burns, the alchemists fire.
Túrante stows her blade and prepares to move away if the swarm can get too close.
Liamae is left exposed as the blinded spider husk creeps down from its mound and toward the door. It bites blindly with fanged mandibles.
Her skin is saved by Selja's blinding spell.
In return Liamae unleashes another gout of flame.
Then she hightails it out of there.
"Let's finish this once and for all!" shouts Fench, bolstered by Selja's healing font. She charges forth past Moira, axe gleaming in the light of the bard's glowing hat.
She cleaves the mighty reanimated spider husk swarm thing in two with a mighty swing. The spider swarms spill out and disperse into the cracks and crannies of the crumbling masonry walls, having lost the safety of their home.
"Praise Shelyn that thing's dead," says the half-orc in relief. With falling masonry having hurt most of the party, she prays for more healing and calls upon a healing wand to make up the remaining health.
Selja lets some time pass for all the creepy spiders to really disperse. Then she's ready to look around and ahead.
There’s nothing here other than a pile of earth where the walls have caved in.
The hallway to the north slopes down, deeper into the earth. The walls are crumbling here too.
"Floor here heads downward. There could be a whole other level down here."
Selja moves into the room and turns the corner.
The downward sloping tunnel descends further into darkness. It eventually ends. An altar depicting a twisting snake eating its own tail is carved out of natural stone, unlike the masonry above. Directly to your right is a stone door. It is carved in the likeness of a serpent’s skull, crowned with a crescent moon.
"Can't believe this place keeps goin'" says Selja in surprise. She wonders for a moment if they should have left well enough alone and not pushed through the stuck door. What other dastardly creatures were down here?
Reaching a new, intriguing area, Selja looks around and searches for magic.
"It's quiet. A little tooooo quiet." Moira laughs. "[b]I've always wanted to say that."
She looks around, too.
"I suppose that they wanted the temple to really be a temple," says Túrante. "With places for many functions, and secrets."
"A temple for cultists, worshippin' an evil god," remarks the half-orc.
The door to the inner sanctum of the lower levels of the ancient serpentfolk temple opens. A narrow hallway makes an immediate sharp right turn. Rouding the corner, Selja sees the hallway make a sharp left. Two doors appear on the wall immediately before her.
Selja starts checking out the doors.
Moira looks on, offering helpful advice as she can.
The doors seem safe, no noise or indication of movement coming from within. As Selja turns the corner to stand next to the eastern door, she gets a glimpse of another room beyond. The narrow hallway snakes around and opens up into a larger, high ceilinged chamber, illuminated with the flickering light of torches on the wall. Selja can see a set of stairs along the northern wall leading up to a raised platform, ontop of which she can see stands a statue of a serpentfolk priestess holding a longspear.
"Another room this way," notes Selja, pointing northwest. "A priestess statue on a platform."
Having had some bad experiences with weird rooms lately, Selja searches for magics and looks around before entering.
"How about the one right by the door where we came into the room?"
"Think we oughta go here, before openin' any doors," suggests Selja.
If she doesn't detect magic or otherwise get warned of a threat, she'll lead the way in (with Fenchurch).
Selja does not detect any magical auras from the room around the corner, and so leads the way in, Fenchurch close behind. Moira, Liamae, and Turante remain in the tight corridor just around the corner.
As Selja rounds the corner, she sees the raised platform to her left continues, with two more statues of serpentfolk priests. To her surprise, perhaps, she finds the room is a large ceremonial hall that extends some 100ft to its furthest end. The hall is lit with torches and braziers along the walls. Ancient, tattered tapestries hang from the walls, faded with age. Coiled, serpentine columns rise upwards 30 feet to the high vaulted ceilings. Most concerning, standing along the walls, a total of 12 serpentfolk skeletal warriors stand as sentries. Selja must freeze in place as she notices them, however, they do not move an inch in response to her presence in the hall.
Several doorways and hallways lead off from this central hall. At the far end, another raised platform sits in a large niche, upon which sits an elaborate stone carved throne. The throne is currently empty.