Kenji and Viv are both blasted by the horrible miasma!
Shalelu lets fly with two arrows from her trusty longbow.
The first arrow hits, but the second rebounds off the thing's leathery hide.
Spivey says, "Oh, this thing is like a nightmare! Desna, help us!"
Kenji rushes to the edge of the nearby ledge and tries to leap down.
He rolls as he comes down and manages to absorb some of the force of the fall.
He then unleashes his signature fan of flames with a kick.
The creature seems barely fazed by the intense arc of fire.
Viv staggers to the side of the cave and tries to climb down.
She slips and tumbles to the floor below.
Kelda tries to clamber down from her side on the south.
She manages to get down to the ledge below and advances near Kenji.
The monstrosity rises slightly and bobs up and down, then produces a wand with one of its many tentacles. It shakes the wand and shouts some kind of aberrant gibberish, and a lance of fire blasts out of the wand toward Kenji.
The beam of fire strikes Kenji and blasts him, engulfing him in flames! He hits the floor and lies very still, not even breathing.
Lyraesel quickly fits one of the serrated arrows to her bowstring, firing at the monstrosity and reaching into her quiver for another.
Lyraesel hits with her arrow; the creature shakes and rumbles, but the arrow doesn't seem to have any special effect beyond being a magical arrow. At least it does something!
Just die already!
Bernard fires a pair of arrows at the monstrosity.
The creature bobs in the air and Bernard's first arrow misses, but the second one glances off through the mass of tentacles and causes the creature to screech angrily.
Morgrym steps near the edge and activates Sacred Weapon.
[ooc]Swift to activate Sacred Weapon gives +1 to bow
PAK! Morgrym takes a shot with his bow but it glances off the beast's tough, rubbery hide.
Shalelu fires again with grim determination.
Crack! Pow! Her arrows fly true.
Spivey flies over to Kenji and stabilizes him so that he's not in immediate danger of dying.
Viv moves to the edge of the precipice and calls upon her divine connection to heal some of her wounds.
Kelda lets out a blood-curdling scream and hurls a javelin at the creature.
It slips from her hand and clatters to the ground below. Her grip must still be a bit weak.
The monstrosity roars as it's peppered with arrows and turns its wand toward Shalelu.
Shalelu is blasted with a gout of fire!
Growling in the back of her throat as the creature hurts Shalelu, Lyraesel selects the magical fire arrow from her quiver, sending it streaking towards her enemy.
Growling in the back of her throat as the creature hurts Shalelu, Lyraesel selects the magical fire arrow from her quiver, sending it streaking towards her enemy.
[dice=+1 flaming burst arrow]1d20+4
1d8+1
[dice=Fire]1d8
Lyraesel's arrow hits, but the fire seems to just flicker along the surface of the strange creature and fall away without harming it - though the arrow remains impaled in the beast.
Does anyone know what this is? How can I kill it if I don't know where to shoot it?!
Bernard launches his 5th and 6th durable arrows.
Just shoot it anywhere
Morgrym doubles down on another arrow streaking its way down towards the creature.
He then Burns a Fevour to hit himself with some healing.
Bernard plants an arrow dead-center, somehow making it past the mass of waving tentacles. The odd ululating collection of voices rises to a screech as the thing shouts horrid utterances in whatever dire language it babbles.
Morgrym follows up with another perfect shot, against all odds!
The creature waves its wand again and launches a beam of fire at Viv.
The blast hits the gnome paladin but does not fell her... though she is bruised, scorched, and tired.
The creature then flies slowly to the southwest, around a corner.
Shalelu turns and points her bow toward the door in back. "It must be trying to flank us," she says.
Spivey converts a spell to healing for Kenji.
His eyes flutter open, but he still looks to be in a bad way
Or it is running.
Morgrym growls slightly under his breath, as he quickly unslings his pack, and fishes out his Grapple hook and rope, throwing the rope end down to the rest of the group.
If it's trying to flank us then we could do the same.
Bernard moves quickly back the way the party came, hoping to catch it coming around the other side.
Racing after the creature, Lyrasel moves to stand astride Kenji's body, even as Spivey starts healing him, sending another shot streaking after the abberration.
Lyraesel wings the creature as it's heading around the corner. Morgrym anchors a grapple and line so that he can climb down if needed, while Bernard turns toward the back door - though it doesn't seem to be a fast flyer, and may take a while to get around behind you.
Kenji remains down as Lyraesel stands over him.
Shalelu keeps her bow trained toward the back, just in case.
Viv moves next to Spivey, who provides her with some healing.
The creature continues to bob along slowly but it wiggles its tentacles and a sphere of darkness appears behind it, blocking further attempts to target it.
Bernard runs around to where the thing will be fleeing to and hides behind a door to the room it will be fleeing to.
Bernard moves back out the door and slips quietly into the shadows.
Viv concentrates for a moment, then says, "Its evil is powerful and palpable! It's some kind of fiendish... horror, an abomination driven by a tainted soul!"
Shalelu says in hushed tones, "Lyraesel, come on! We need to get back and support Bernard if it's coming around behind us." She then moves quickly into the hallway past Bernard, but has to jog at speed to do so, leaving her no time to get her bow back up.
Kelda angrily jumps down and chases the thing, and flings another javelin at it!
The javelin hits, but seems to have minimal effect - it practically bounces off the creature.
Spivey waits to see what she should do.
Hearing Shalelu, Lyraesel focuses for a moment calling on the wolf within before racing back the way she'd come.
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Lyraesel manages to scramble back up the wall behind her.
Morgrym looks at Lyraesel as she climbs back up So where are we going now??
He then gets ready to either chase it, or run back, dependant on which way Lyraesel goes.
"Back the other way!" She yells back as she climbs.
The group moves back toward the door as the creature flies off. You hear an odd clicking noise echoing from the caves in the distance.
The creature does, in fact, try to come around from behind. It lets out a shrieking, wailing babbling noise as it approaches from the back of the room, through a secret door.
The creature doesn't seem to notice Bernard lurking behind the door, and it floats lazily into the middle of the room.
Falling behind due to his short legs, Morgrym runs as rapidly after the others as he can.
Lyreasel races back to where the others lie in wait, holding her attack until the creature enters her line of sight.
Bernard takes a deep breath and fires his two arrows.
After the arrows begin to fly he ducks back around the corner.
Bernard centers himself as the abomination comes around the corner, then lets his arrows fly from the shadows.
Both hit, landing solidly in the mass of twisted flesh amidst the flailing tentacles and the stubby wings. The first arrow wounds it gravely, and it points the wand at Bernard - but the second arrow hits just in time and sinks far enough to knock the creature into a flat spin.
The roaring voices in Abyssal reach a fever pitch, babbling insanely. The creature tries to right itself in the air, but falls to the ground, flailing aimlessly. Ichor pumps out of holes in its body and onto the stone floor. Slowly, its squid-like beak opens and closes and then finally stays open. The tips of the tentacles continue to twitch while the voices subside and the monstrosity seems to deflate and lie still like a waterskin that's had half of its contents emptied.
With the beast defeated, the caverns are still and quiet. You regroup and Spivey releases a burst of healing energy.
Shalelu checks with Lyraesel and says, "For a moment I thought you were going to try to go hand-to-hand with that thing. Glad I was mistaken."
Kenji gets to his feet, wobbly, and says, "I don't know what that was, and I don't much care!"
Kelda says, "Perhaps some kind of evil oracle that the other monsters consulted? Or perhaps it came up from below like the bird-men?"
Viv says, "It was clearly a minion of evil. The world is a better place with it destroyed."
You reassemble in the cavern where the creature lurked. The floor of this vast cavern descends in two twenty-foot drops into a large, eerie grotto. The walls drip with moisture and bear strange and disturbing cave paintings of towering four-winged humanoid shapes. Tiny motes of glowing light drift and bob in the air, giving the place an almost nauseating feeling, as if the cavern is viewed through a dreamlike haze.
The creature clutched a magical wand which, having blasted you several times, you recognize as a wand of scorching ray. It also wore a strange woven circlet about its misshapen head.
In a small cavern in the south is a small hoard of treasure on a flat rock at the far end of the room, almost like an altar with offerings. The hoard includes:
• A light steel shield (magical) bearing an image of Castle Brinewall
• A starknife (magical)
• A pearl (magical)
• A ring (magical)
• A wayfinder
• 1,320 gp
• Assorted jewelry and gems
• A darkwood-and-silver disc decorated with an intricate etching of Brinewall under the midnight moon - a match to the sun disk that you found earlier
• A stone statuette of Pazuzu depicting the demon lord as a bird-headed, four-winged humanoid with his right arm raised (magical)
Viv says, "The statuette bears an aura of malice and evil."
Then let us have nothing to do with that and destroy it right now.
But do you mind if I take a quick look.
Morgrym then finishes stowing his rope and goes to take a quick look at things.
Well the shield will help with protecting a person from a dangerous attack.
The pearl will help recover a spell used, which would be best for me, unless someone else wants it.
The ring produces a Rams head of force for battering things open. But there is very little of its energy left.
Shalelu checks with Lyraesel and says, "For a moment I thought you were going to try to go hand-to-hand with that thing. Glad I was mistaken."
Lyraesel smiles. "I'd be lying if I said I did't consider it....but it didn't look like a dagger would do much, and I definitely wasn't going to bite that thing. Are you alright? I saw the wand get you a few times."
"Singed but whole," says Shalelu. "That could've been worse, like poor Kenji."
"Hey!" says Kenji, then ruefully, "All right, yeah, it was pretty bad." Then he brightens up and says, "But we have this moon disc - the second key, now! We can get into the vault!"
After Bernard gathers his arrows and nods to Kenji.
Yeah, that's almost the whole building we've explored too, so if we're going to find any answers ten they're almost certainly there.
"Then we may as well get to it. This place makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end." Lyraesel says softly.
You move quickly and quietly through the castle, returning to the vault that you found before, where Spivey had slipped between the bars but was unable to give you much useful information. As suspected, the two circular discs fit into the impressions outside the gate, and when places inside they cause the portcullis to grind down into the ground!
Oddly, none of the strange hauntings that you encountered before trouble you this time. Any sign of the phantom soldiers and bloody walls is gone.
The walls of this room are of smooth stone, spattered with ancient bloodstains and deep, violent gouges. Deep drifts of dust lie on the floor, while immense stone doors hang open to the southwest, revealing empty vaults beyond.
As you enter the room, the dust in the floor swirls about, then it forms into a vague, humanoid shape. The man-figure takes a guard pose, and a ghostly katana forms in his hands. As it does so the spectral outline of its face forms into an old Tien man.
I haven't been back in years, and it's not like I've ever met the man, but isn't this Ameiko's grandfather?
"I've seen a picture of him on her mantle." Lyraesel adds, looking at the ghost in surprise, then turning to Kenji.
Kenji haltingly says, "Gran... grandfather? Grandfather... Rokuro?"
Then he stops and says something in Tien.
The wraith pauses. Then it says in an eerie, echoing voice, "I... know... that... naaaaaame..."
The insubstantial sword in its hands wavers. Shalelu's bow remains trained on it and Spivey looks like she is about to call upon Desna to channel holy power against the undead.
"Graaaandson... we sold everything for the family to survive... I... have... a... graaandsoooooon..."
Dust runs down his incorporeal cheeks, and the shade suddenly lets out a hollow howl, then says, [b]"Take the Seal away from here—take it to my child—it is no longer safe—and I am no longer worthy of guarding it..."
He points to the eastern wall, then suddenly flies apart into ash and dust.
~~~~~~~~~~
Silence settles on the chamber after the wraith flies apart, then Morgrym notices the faint outline of a secret door in the stonework where it pointed before it flew to pieces.
"Whatever it is, It's important. Bernard, can you check the door?" Lyrasel asks.
Bernard looks over the door carefully poking and prodding.
Bernard's careful examination of the secret door doesn't turn up any traps. He does note that if the wraith hadn't pointed it out, it would be highly unlikely that anyone would've found it at all.
After his quick once-over, Bernard thinks that the seal on it is so tight that it couldn't be trapped, though maybe the craftsman was more cunning than he is.
I doubt they would have trapped it, just hoping that the door would be too difficult to find (I think they were right) and if they did I doubt Rokuro would send his grandson to a trap. I'm going to open it. Stand back just in case.
Bernard attempts to open the door.
Bernard has to get one of his thin prybars to search around and find a niche where he can press in a clever part of the wall and get a grip with a few fingers, but once located, the slide mechanism moves easily and readily, as if the door is perfectly counterbalanced on a hidden track.
Beyond is a short, smooth hallway that ends in a chamber.
This chamber appears to be only half-excavated—the eastern portion of the room remains a rough cavern wall. Three identical darkwood chests bound with bronze sit against the base of this rough wall.
Bernard immediately goes and opens the middle chest.
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As soon as Bernard touches the middle chest, the lid silently opens, as if it has simply been waiting here for years for a warm hand.
Inside is a stone statuette of a dragon, carefully packed inside of a soft depression of cloth padding.
There's an uneasy moment looking at the dragon, then vertigo overtakes everyone...
A rapid series of visions flashes before your eyes. The first is an army of terrible fiends with burning skin, glaring eyes, and sharp tusks, wearing strange armor and bearing exotic weapons as they emerge from a storm in a vast forest and descend upon a village of Tien people. The vision quickly melts away and turns into a vision of a young man dessed in royal robes standing next to a well with a friend at his side. His friend suddenly grows three times his normal size and becomes sheathed in a suit of jade armor, draws a sword, and strikes down the royal man before raising his bloody sword in triumph. Next, a young Tian man appears against a gray snowy background, holding a beautiful sword and handing it to a richly-dressed Ulfen man in exchange for a sack that bulges with coins. Finally, the vision fades and you see a vision of Ameiko awakening from slumber, but on a throne of jade while wearing imperial robes.
Somehow you know that the land you saw invaded by fiends was Minkai. You know that the man with the sword was Kaijitsu Rokuro, the wraith that you just encountered, bartering the family's legendary heirloom for the funds to continue their travel in exile, in the city of Kalsgard to the north. You know that Suishen, the sword, is intelligent and can tell you more of this story. You know that Ameiko and, after her, Kenji, are the last scions of the Amatatsu family - their true family - the last rightful heirs to the throne of Minkai.
And you know that the dragon itself is a seal of the Amatatsus, and as long as the box is open, the demons that hunted the family across the world can sense it.
The dizziness passes in a few moments. Spivey looks concerned and says, "Are you all right? A bunch of you just... blanked out there for a moment."