Ema nearly cheered when the destrachaun fell into the pit followed by the stalker. She moved up as she saw simon step closer to the pet and called out, "Be careful Simon, you'll risk falling in from there too!" With that she tore open a portal near the pit and an earth elemental rose from it. She looked at the elemental, pointed to the pit, and said in it's language, "Jump on the creature crawling from the pit!"
The elemental looked down, saw what was coming, and rumbled as it jumped atop the climbing destrachaun, all seven hundred and fifty pounds of rock.
Calamity laughs anxiously, as if she cannot believe the occurrences; she tosses a card at the creature as it climbs, coating it with a thick slime.
Victrix and Simon each hit their respective foes once, wounding them but not taking them down. The half-orc's target is sickened by his strike.
Calamity arcs a card down into the pit to hit the destrachan, but it manages to resist the slime. It's unable to handle the weight of Ema's elemental as it falls and grabs a hold of it. With a bellow, it loses its grip and it plummets back to the bottom of the pit, taking the elemental and the ugothol with it!
Injured and angered, the creature lashes at the offending elemental with its teeth and claws. The stalker in the pit attacks as well.
The other faceless stalkers refrain from flanking so as not to fall into the pit. One slices into Victrix!
Victrix briefly flinches before continuing her assault.
Victrix's attacks kill one stalker and wound the other!
Ema could feel when the elemental was destroyed. Between the fall and the flurry of attacks from the pair in the pit it simply couldn't maintain cohesion any longer and dissipated back into the aether. Still it had valiantly done what was needed and bought at least a little time for them to fight the stalkers. Ema smiled wickedly as a new plan came to mind and cast another spell and when she was done grease coated the area .
As Ema coats the sides of the pit with grease, Simon executes the faceless stalker near him with a studied strike! He sheathes his sword and steps away from the pit's edge.
Calamity keeps up the nervous laughter and throws another card at the thing in the pit, trying to trap it even further.
The destrachan resists the shadow trap and manages to keep its balance through the grease. It maintains a firm grip on the spikes as it starts clambering up the walls of the pit again, desperate to escape, the ugothol clinging to its back once more.
Victrix drops her axe, draws her glaive and prepares to hack up the first creature to emerge from the pit...
Ema called out, "If anyone has acid flasks or alchemical fire you might want to chick them down the pit!" With that she cast one more spell as the hardest part of the fight was still to come so she cast another spell, this time on her friends, before retreating back up the hall a ways.
Calamity keeps laughing nervously, attempting to tether the creature yet again.
The destrachan resists the shadow trap again. The wasps poison it but fail to distract it. Bloodied from many wounds, the monster finally makes it out of the pit. The ugothol clinging to it jumps off to attack Victrix,
Undeterred, the aasimar slices at the destrachan, hitting once.
Seeing that the creature had finally mad it out of the pit Ema cast a spell and sent a flurry of magical bolts at it.
As Ema's missiles slam into the destrachan, the tough beast finally falls! Only one faceless stalker remains.
Victrix roars and turns her anger on the last ugothol standing.
Victrix's second swing bisects the ugothol across the waist. As it teeters on the edge of the pit, Simon shoves it in. Its two bloody halves separate and bounce off the walls of the pit before becoming impaled on the spikes at the bottom!
Victrix comes down from her rage high and laughs. "Well. That'll do!"
Ema was relieved to see that the last stalker got cut in half and dropped down the pit. She moved closer and said, "Stand back from the pit." Once they were back from it Ema focused and first dismissed the grease she'd conjured and then caused the pit to go away. The bodies shot up as the pit dissipated and they were orced back to reality before thudding back down to the ground. "There, that's better."
Ema smirked at Simon's compliment and said, "Why Simon, a compliments? I might die of shock!" She tried to keep a straight face at her comment but ultimately broke out into a giggle. She looked at everyone and asked, "So how badly hurt are we?"
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Suddenly remembering that he got stabbed in the back, Simon drinks an extract.
"I'll survive."
Looking down the hallway and realizing now that the other entrance probably goes right back to the stairs on the other side of the statue, Simon slaps his forehead.
"We could have simply avoided this entire encounter. We were already in and past the thing. Oh well, at least now we don't have to worry about it coming up from behind us."
"Knowing our luck, they'd have shown up as reinforcements later." Victrix shrugs.
She looks over at Ema. "Took a couple of hits. They're not that bad--nothing I haven't felt before."
Simon's inspection doesn't reveal any traps, but his keen eyes spot a well-concealed secret door in the wall a few feet south of this door.
The normal door opens onto a spacious office adorned with finely crafted but timeworn marble furniture. A locked strongbox is set on the desk. Simon is able to pop the lock. Inside, he finds an extend metamagic rod and a pair of fine silk slippers that turn out to be slippers of the triton.
The secret door opens up onto a small storage room, crammed full of jars and scientific equipment, smells of salt and slime. The storage room contains a fully stocked alchemist’s lab as well as the following alchemical items: three vials of antitoxin, one vial of alchemical glue, three vials of armor ointment, 5 doses of bloodblock, and four sunrods. There are also 15 full jars of aboleth mucus extract in the room.
This jar contains 6 ounces of alchemically preserved aboleth mucus. When 1 ounce of the extract is applied to a living creature’s mouth, nose, and throat (a full-round action), the target loses its ability to breathe air but gains the ability to breathe water for 1 hour. An unwilling target can attempt a DC 14 Fortitude save to negate the effect. If additional doses are applied to the same creature, the duration of the effect extends by 1 hour for each ounce used, to a maximum of 3 hours.
"...alright, what's all this then?" Victrix steps into the room and looks around.
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"Various alchemical objects. None of it is all that useful, but these jars of slime are actually prepared aboleth mucus.
They will allow someone to breathe water for an hour, though they'll lose the ability to breathe air. They could be useful if we have to spend a long time underwater.
My armor allows me to breath water, but I'll hold on to one in case I get separated from it. The rest of you should take at least one. We can put the rest of it into the bag of holding."
Victrix stares at the bottles of mucus, her face paling.
"...ewwwwwww."
"...maybe Calamity should have the slippers? I mean, I've already got my water mobility covered, really."
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Looking down the hallway to the submerged portion of the temple, Simon thinks that the water breathing items might be useful pretty soon, though he wonders what state the colonists will be in if they are in that temple.
Heading to the open doorway at the end of the hallway, he cautiously takes a look inside.
Battered steel chests lie scattered across the floor of this vault, their contents strewn throughout the room. The thick stone walls are reinforced with steel bars and look nearly impenetrable, but the door to the vault has been torn off the hinges. Simon doesn't see any creatures in the chamber.
The submerged stairs lead down to a large set of doors. Beyond the doors, a row of caryatid columns divides a long, flooded corridor. The sculpted figures are covered in spiny yellow coral and tentacled pink polyps, partially hiding their facial features and intricately detailed hairstyles, and giving them an eerily inhuman quality. An opening in the east wall leads into another hall.
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Simon scans the figures with his deathwatch eyes to see if any of them are constructs.
Popping his head back above the water, he reports to the others.
"The first room seems clear. There are statues in the middle covered by venomous coral. Don't get too close to them."
Ducking back underwater, Simon hugs the wall as he swims slowly toward the opening past the statues.
Victrix watches Simon enter the water with more than a little trepidation. She then takes one of the jars of aboleth mucus, winces, and chugs the whole thing down before racing after him.
The effect is almost immediate--when she tries to breathe on land, there's... nothing. When she inhales in the water, it feels like cool air.
She doesn't spend too long appreciating it before getting after Simon, deftly swimming through the water.
F$!$ it, I need some more practice swimming with arms and legs instead of a tail anyway.
Victrix slips the eyepatch on with a nervous chuckle and a half-hearted "Arr!"
The rest of you hang back for now while Simon scouts ahead. He carefully pushes open doors at the end of the hall and peeks through. This domed chamber has multiple exits and large niches in its northeast and northwest sides. Three openings in the south wall lead to a ruined and submerged courtyard, and a staircase on the north side of the chamber leads down to a larger chamber.
A group of five skum stand guard in this chamber. Four are unarmed, while the fifth wears a chain shirt and grips a longspear. None of them notice the stealthy investigator.
Simon also spots several traps in the room, designed to impale victims with spines of glasslike coral.
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Returning to the group once again, Simon pops his head out to talk to them.
"The second room has guards. Five skum, nothing that is worrying, though one of them looks more capable than others we have encountered. There are also traps, so keep to the left when we enter the room. I'll try to disable the one right in front of the doors before joining the battle."
Simon waits for the women to decide who will wear the slippers and what other precautions will be taken.