With a thundering screech Ghirrak, impossibly, punches his way through the wall of iron. A section approximately three feet in diameter is rent, looking like it had been peeled back by giants.
For a long moment everyone just looks at Ghirrak.
When you duck through the opening, your light shows a large arched chamber.
This chamber bears a strange resemblance to the previous one, in that the floor consists of a stone scale model of an ancient city.
Yet whereas the previous model was terribly damaged, this chamber seems relatively well preserved.
The layout and style of the city is quite different, with four wide canals converging upon a large lake in the center, from which rises a great stone pyramid some nine feet high at your scale. Mighty temples rise from the low angular buildings, while the stone walls of the chamber depict lifelike depictions of leering bats, lizards and snakes.
Professor Forol is tremendously excited and dashes forward.
Bryson-Cat grabs at him to keep Prof. Forol from rushing into danger.
Grab
Acting almost at the same time, Annie also reaches for the impulsive Professor.
"Ho! Wait there! I think it's best to be mindful of what we do in here. Fires and man eating bat pictures and magical iron walls all tell me we need to a little careful, don't you think, Professor?"
"At least let us look for more magics and look around a moment before we set something else off here. That wall was put up for a reason."
Professor Forol's legs keep spinning as Bryson-cat picks him up by his backpack.
The gnome glares around at the rest of you, bursting with impatience.
"Well? Who IS going in then?"
Annie smiles and shakes her head. "First I suggest we see what we see from here. Let me see if anything close looks magicked first."
"Ghirrak, Bryson, what do you see?"
Bryson-cat puts Professor Forol down behind him. Then after a moment to inspect the scene before them
Phillip chuckles softly at the Professor's eagerness and the alarm of the others. The ability to get themselves blasted to bits because of a simple lack of caution seemed to be a rampant disease among the educated. Maybe it was the way the gods thinned the heard. Phillip thought as he raised his own light to see if he could spot any danger.
Dgrim takes point and moves a couple of steps into the room. "You see anything?" he asks the others.
Ghirrak's keen eyes scan the room, missing nothing.
All is still and dark beyond the circle of your light sources. The chamber is larger than you can see.
The chamber is larger than you can see, about to the 60 ft line. You can see the near wall and part of the left wall.
You thought you saw a flicker of motion behind you back in the room you came from, but when you look, there is nothing. A trick of the mind?
The chamber is larger than you can see. You don't scent any living creatures; in fact the air is dry, and reminds you of a tomb. Old death.
Bryson-cat pads out to the edge of the light to the right of D'grim, keeping him within 30'.
Annie, seeing the darkness is an issue as Ghirrak and Bryson peer ahead offers her lighted stone to Bryson, holding it near his mouth if he wants to take it from her hand. She'll hold it out toward Ghirrak if Bryson seems uninterested. "I didn't want to make us too much of a target, but I can give this to one of your or toss it into the room if you'd like," she says softly.
Annie does her best to stay alert as well.
Bryson-cat will take the offered stone
Bryson-cat moves through the oversized model of the city cautiously.
Stealth
Perception
Quickly, Ghirrak and Bryson clear the large chamber. It is some 100 feet square and the floor has a marvelous model/illusion of what Professor Forol swears is the capitol of Tamoachan at its height, millenia ago.
Professor Forol is running around like a Halfling who's had Haste cast on him, furiously making notes and sketches in his journal about the symbology, iconography, the statuary and anything else he can get to.
The central pyramid is actually a fanciful sarcophagus. The top can be moved aside when unsealed.
Detect Magic
Perception
Bryson-cat will let the others know that there's something odd about the pyramid.
He'll get Annie's attention and let her know of the stairs (read the spoiler)
Annie looks around in interest as Bryson and Ghirrak confirm the city replica appears unoccupied, and smiles as the Professor darts about the room looking at things and muttering to himself. When Bryson tugs on Annie's sleeve, she follows him, muttering a surprised exclamation as Bryson's head appears to go through the wall without effort. She closes her eyes thrusts her hand through after Bryson, and after feeling around for a moment, also places her head through and then opens her eyes and looks around.
"Interesting..." she whispered to herself as she looked around at the religious symbols in the stairway.
Phillip casually peruses the room, but finds little of interest. While Bryson and Annie scout the southern wall, Phillip follows up on the cat's interest in the central pyramid. He walks over once again summons the ability to see if magic is hidden within the room. Concentrating on the pyramid he spends several minutes trying to determine the objects hidden secrets, if any.
After a few minutes pass, the elf whistles softly and then says to the others. "There's a bit of magic emanating from the pyramid, or sarcophagus really." A look of extreme curiosity passes across the elf's face as he turns back to the rather elaborate stone coffin. "Hmmm...I wonder how easy it would be to open this thing?"
Annie gulps as she interprets the symbols, and her hand involuntarily tightens on Bryson's fur. "This stairway is priests of these people's animal gods during funerals - the only time non priests enter here is to be sacrificed. Mayhap we want to leave this stairway for later..."
The builder of the sarcophagus was clearly more of a priest than an architect or locksmith. You can see the catches disguised by the carvings were more designed to be unlatched in an elaborate ceremony, and barely presents more than a modest problem for you. Once unlatched you can just slide the top of the pyramid aside.
Dgrim follows Phillip to the sarcophagus. "Let's find out, then," he says, and motions to open it
STR:
Annie turns around from the hidden stairway to see Dgrim and Phillip messing with the pyramid in the center of room, and holds her breath, expecting something awful to happen as she reaches for her rapier.
Dgrim muscles the top of the pyramid aside in a grinding of stone and a puff of dust. Revealed is a hollow within occupied by a mummified Olman priest, bound in a fetal position by lengths of brittle leather cords.
The priest is quite dead, but the heavy golden ceremonial necklace around its neck looks valuable. You pause a moment, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but nothing else happens.
= Mummy Rot
= No effect
When Dgrim shoves the odd sarcophagus aside Phillip slips a vial of holy water into his hand. Just in case, he thinks to himself. Cautiously, he peers inside to see what they uncovered. The smell of ancient mold and dust is strong and he sneezes loudly before pulling a cloth over his face to block out some of the smell. Noticing the necklace he points it out to Dgrim.
"Now that looks like something worth while." He says. Focusing his gaze on the object it becomes clear that this is the source of the magic he had detected earlier. "It seems to be imbued with some sort of priestly magic. Probably not of much use to me, but Annie might want to take a look at it." With that he reaches in and tries to remove the necklace from the corpse.
"Powerful priestly enchantments on a dead body in this place of magics is unsettling, I think!" Annie responds, cautiously approaching the coffin. "We've had one nasty trap already above us, and there's some reason that great big wall of metal was placed just so, blocking our entrance to this place. Let's looks carefully before we disturb abything too much, that's my thought on the matter."
Annie casts Detect Magic and looks carefully at the body as she gets close enough for her magically enhanced sight to catch wind of the enchantments on the necklace. "What do we have here?" she mutters to herself as she looks it over.
The necklace... is clearly a Strand of Prayer Beads with a Bead of Blessing and a Bead of Healing.
"Interesting..." Annie muses as she slowly moves forward. She lowers her sword as she moves, obviously a little more relaxed. "These carvings seem to protect against this poor fellow rising as anything nasty. He's an older fellow...and that necklace..." Annie can't resist an low and impressed whistle. "...is powerful priestly magic indeed. Appears to be prayer beads of blessing and healing." She turns and smiles at Phillip. "It's good you found this, my friend. And grateful I am it's not standing up and taking offense at our intrusion here! What do you think, Professor?" Annie asks Professor Forol.
Bryson-cat prowls around the base of the pyramid keeping a vigil against any danger.
Professor Forol stops sketching a section of wall into his notebook, and comes over to peer at the tomb.
"Marvellous example! This was a High Priest, or even Pontiff! I cannot tell for sure, I've never seen any other examples, and neither has anyone else."
He throws his head back and shouts with joy.
"Eckstrome will eat his beard that I discovered this before he did!"
Phillip blushes a bit at Annie's praise and returns her smile with one of his own. "Well, it wasn't anything really. Just poking around." He gives her a quick wink and adds with a nod toward the enthusiastic professor. "After all, that's what we're here to do."
With another smile he hands the necklace over to Annie. "Since it's priestly and healing magic. It seems you'd be the best one to look after it."
[npc]Annie takes the necklace, putting it in a pouch. Professor Forol Hrumphs in disapproval.
Bryson-cat will take the lead up the stairs.
Seeing little else of interest in the area, Phillip shrugs and follows Bryson and the others up the stairs. Just before disappearing beyond the illusion, he pauses and turns to make sure the Professor is actually coming. "Come on Professor. We'd best be moving on. Wouldn't want you to get left behind and stuck down in these ruins." He says with an easy smile as he waves the academic onward.
Slowly the Bryson, Annie, Dgrim and Ghirrak walk up the ceremonial staircase some fifty yards. The passageway then opens up into another chamber. Dominating this new chamber is a huge circular disk of stone taking up most of the floor and rising to waist height, its face carved with dozens of concentric rings of Olman hieroglyphs and shapes. Oddly, a filthy nest of bones and rubble sits on top in the middle.
Down in the pyramid chamber, Professor Forol is rapt with sketching out features of the room, and Phillip has trouble pulling him away.
There is no warning as a man sized demonic bat swoops down on rotted leather wings and breaths out a cone of fire on both of them.
It's glowing red eyes gaze at you, it's aura paralyzing your limbs with fear.
Can we hear the screams from the lower chamber?
Perception
The people in the Calendar Stone room can hear the hideous yowling, and the shouts of Professor Forol and (I assume) Mr. Pharlan.
It will take them one round of flat out running back down the stone stairway to get back to the Pyramid Chamber; but it is unsafe and you need to make an acrobatics DC16 to avoid falling (four footed types can add +4 to the roll).
If you want to play it safe, take two rounds and no need to roll.
Bryson-cat bounds back down the stairs.
Acrobatic
Annie turns and follows Bryson down the stairs as quickly as she can manage.
Completely focused on getting the professor out of the room, Phillip doesn't spot the creature diving down upon them until it is too late. While shouting for the others, the half-elf pushes the professor toward the opening and safety, sacrificing himself in the effort. As the flames blister skin and curl hair, he draws his blade and turns to face the creature, easily shrugging off its attempt to scare him into submission.
With smoke curling from his reddened face and lips he offers the creature a grim smile and says, "You're a sneaky little bundle of demonic scum. Now that you've ruined my shirt, I'll need to make a new one out of your hide."
He then mutters a few more mystic words and a pair of aqua colored darts leap from his hand striking the bat creature. Then with a shout he moves in toward the creature hoping the professor can escape.
,
Dgrim takes two rounds moving down the stairs.
The bat-thing darts down to scoop up the professor in spite of Phillips maneuver, lifting him bodily into the air.
It laughs a disturbingly human laugh as Phillips first dart dissapates in a slurry of orange sparks, then squalls in outrage as the second one tears into its hideous flesh.
The professor twists out of the creatures claws in a spray of blood and drops heavily to the ground.
Annie, having run down the stairs, moves into the Pyramid room now.
The others stumble and skid, or move more carefully, but are still moving aways behind Annie.
Drawing an arrow, Phillip quickly sends one streaking toward the bat creature. He then dashes over to where the Professor is sprawled on the ground and tries to see if the man is still alive. As Annie pops through the illusion and back into the room he shouts, "Watch out! There's some kind of demon bat on the loose. It apparently hid itself until only a few of us were left in here."
Phillip's arrow skips off the creatures unnaturally hard hide as it dives on professor Forol again. This time it misses as the gnome tumbles behind the pyramid. "Forget me! I'll be alright!" Professor F calls out. The creature hisses in rage at the arrow attack and turns to Phillip with murder in it's eyes.
At this point Annie comes into the room.
The creature's eyes snap to her, and you can feel the rage (and fear) as it hisses.
It surges across the room towards Annie like an arrow to attack with a screech.
for a possible points of damage.
for a possible points of damage.
for a possible points of damage and Fort save DC16 to avoid taking Dex damage immediately and another Dex damage a minute later.
After this attack, Dgrim, Bryson and Ghirrak hustle into the room near Annie.
The creature is twenty feet from Annie and turning to make another flyby attack; it's about eight feet off the ground.
Dgrim, Bryson and Ghirrak are twenty feet behind Annie on the other side.
Phillip and Professor Forol are twenty feet from the creature on the other side, and have the pyramd tomb as cover.
It's your turn.
Bryson-cat casts Call Lightning.