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Oh, my. Have I mistakenly opened a channel to Mur's mind? If not, then he's not the only crazy one down here...
Keeping her eyes close, Grace continues to concentrate on the voice, whispering to herself in a quiet, fearful voice, "Imrizade, is that you? Where are you, and what is happening here?"
Taking a moment, remembering the initial words spoken in her mind, she whispers, "Are there others with you? Who is this 'we'?"
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Circling around and stepping into the room from the west, you now see the creature that has been communicating with you without words. A veiny, swollen bulb that bears a disturbing resemblance to an oversized brain squats atop five ropy legs, haphazardly encrusted with fungal shelves and bearing folds that resemble gills. A wide orifice with chitinous, teeth-like ridges gapes at the top of the creature, fringed with waving filaments and two long tendrils that lash the air. Its form seems overlaid with a confusing welter of rapidly changing, flickering images, making it difficult to see clearly. Despite it's alien and vicious appearance, you do not detect anything harmful or aggressive from it. Waves of chaos and madness can be felt touching your mind being so close, but it is neither harmful nor even undesirable. for most of you. Another thing you notice is that once you get within sight f it, your eyes all slowly turn back to their normal color. Except for Grace's, whose eyes now almost glow a soft green color.
"What is an Imrizade?" it asks with an intense desire to learn.
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Virgil takes a glance through the library and squints at some of the moldy documents sitting on a shelf. One volume catches his eye. Flipping through it his eyes get wide for a moment and a smile spreads across his face.
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"We have felt no Imrizades here, but below is a wilting sadness. The darkness flies on darker wings. Do your nails sing when they pass? We filled the stone-cyst as it burst" it points with a thorny tentacle towards the east (bottom of the room on the map) to hold the demon of men away, and none but you elflings have come to talk with us since. Are you hungry?"
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Morvius dispatches the organic security alarm, then as you head down the hidden staircase, you notice a backpack lies in the central northern corner of the archives, dropped by Imrizade and forgotten in her eagerness. Half overgrown with mold, the backpack holds a collection of canopic jars, jeweled death masks, gilded ushabti, and other valuable Osiriani relics worth a good 500 gp easily. Also inside is a scrap of paper with the phrase “The Eye is always vigilant” written on it in common Taldan. Emptying the backpack, you notice a pair of scrolls, a sort of windchime, and a charm bracelet.
The stair deposits you in an alcove at the far end of an antechamber, free of the riotous growths of fungi and mold that choke the shaft and archives above. Not far, you notice a large hole in the ceiling of the chamber, the top filled by a thick of fungus.
The simple, clean lines of the basement’s basalt walls give way here to a disturbing, organic style of architecture that makes it seem like you are walking through the gullet of some monstrous behemoth. At the far end of the hall, a large, ornate arch that looks disconcertingly like the beast’s toothed maw stands in the wall, covered by a heavy black curtain with sickly green light from the chamber beyond shining around the edges. A plain iron box sits on the floor in the middle of the room. Attached to it, as if affixed by magic is a 2lbs square of stone.
As the sickening green light hits you through small leaks in the curtain, you see that your eyes have once again become solid black, but in as the light hits it, small spectral black tentacles, only an inch or two long are beginning to protrude outwards like small worms. It only lasts for a second as the light them, a slight wind pushing the lip of the curtains aside here and again. Then it dawns on you. What if they are instead burrowing inwards. . .
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Kurvast bristles as the alien sensation washes over him, his breaths coming heavier and his steps less sure.
"Ha... who?" he mutters, eyes flicking this way and that, desperately seeking some unequivocal reality that might anchor him through the swarming shadows.
As they stop at the bottom of the stairs, he notices the rest of the party looking at him strangely, their eyes once more smooth and dark as pitch. Kurvast puts a hand on the wall to steady himself, but the stone buckles and shudders beneath his palm.
He turns back to the group to ask for aid, but they have all gone. In their place stand abyssal simulacra, humanoid shapes with the same cold ebon gaze. The monk watches in horror as their eyelids begin to peel back, exposing more of the same dark mass beneath. The two widening gaps meet in the middle of their faces, and now five great black spheres stare unblinking into the Shoanti warrior.
The false skin continues to melt away. He senses their monstrous hunger.
"STAY BACK!"
Kurvast recoils into a corner of the room, both hands on his weapon, ready to strike the first cyclopean phantom that dares approach.
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@ Virgil, nothing really happens. The bolt hits but bounces off, not getting past it's natural hardness.
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Oh, dear, this is not good at all. Is this all it takes for the Society to crumble? A few words spoken in the mind?
Grace takes a step back into the darkness, and casts Detect Magic, concentration on, in order, Kurvast, the chest, and then the items found in the backpack.
Perhaps there might be a charm to aid those not strong enough to withstand the voices...
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The two scrolls are magic (Gaseous Form and Detect Secret Doors), as is the Handy Haversack itself, a Chime of Opening, and a Whip Feather Token charm. You also notice that the Stone is magic while the chest is not. Nor is the party outside of any magic gear they may have.
-Posted with Wayfinder
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Concentrating more on the stone, Grace tries to determine the type and strength of magic on the stone attached to the chest, a faint blue light radiating from her eyes illuminating her features within the darkness as she chants the magical incantations.
I pray that they can talk sense to him before something horrific happens. I thought he would've been the last one to fall to madness, but I must have been mistaken...
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Tearing apart the curtains reveals a grizzly scene. The walls and ceiling of this chamber bulge outward, continuing the grotesque architectural style of the antechamber, as if you were standing in the leviathan’s stomach. Queer, glowing nodules protrude from the walls at seemingly random intervals, bathing the room in their sickly green glow. A tall, free-standing, almost organic-looking archway carved from a strange, glowing blue-green stone stands atop a low dais in a wide alcove at the far end of the chamber. The center of the arch is empty, revealing the wall behind it, but the space occasionally flickers with curtains of starry darkness, as if somewhere else lies just beyond the portal. A susurrus of ghostly whispers seem to issue from the gate, their language and meaning unclear, but fraught with a sense of wrongness.
Laying in grotesque mockeries upon the floor are the remains of the servants and night guard that Nigel had sent to find the child, Imrizade, who can barely stand at the edge of some great portal. Massive shadowy-black tentacles pierce her flanks, her shoulders, and her skull. In severe pain, she continues to resist, but you can plainly see she is on the brink. Seeing you, she steels her resolve once more.
"Please. Just kill me and end it. The pain. The things he made me do. Just end it. I beg you."
Suddenly, she screams. For a few seconds, the entire room ripples with energy, and you see standing beside her a ghostly form. It comes more into phase with this reality, and now you see the silhouette of a man. An ancient man, bald, his features vaguely Osirion, but from a time long past, long gone. He glares at you all, locking eyes, and you can sense his power, even weakened as it is, his sheer hatred, cutting into your soul. Arcane, divine, other, you can't be sure. Looing from you to Imrizade, his demeanor becomes even more cruel, if such is possible, and he steps into her. She tries to scream again, but her torment is too much, and she collapses, causing the tentacles at her flanks to draw blood.
. . .
Then "she" rises once more. This time with his cruel smile. "Sheenok-al im anolla Anatole!" he commands in a strange language that sounds similar to modern Osirioni, but in your mind you can understand it perfectly. "Die, and join my horde, !". Her mouth moves, but the voice is different. Powerful. Male. Cruel.
Group 1
Grace
Imrizade
Group 2
Virgil
Morvius
Kurvast
Mur
Darvan
Imrizade begins to chant, but nothing happens just yet.
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Grace finally sees the source of the pleading voice in her head, "Don't you dare give up yet, Imrizade! You can fight this!" Turning to her companions, she informs them of the jar's importance, "Destroying the canopic jar will close the portal and free her. Please, we must destroy that jar before it is too late!" Rushing towards the jar, her eyes flash with blue light as she mutters the incantations for an Acid Splash, grimly focused on the target of her fears.
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Imrizade takes her readied action to disrupt Hraces Spellcasting flinging 2 small energy balla at her.
Folowed by group 2.
One of the dead does arise but I cant alter the map just yet.
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