Carrakas makes short work of another two zombies, giving Marzela an opportunity to move forward unharmed.
A creature with this ability can nauseate the creatures that it damages. Any living creature that takes damage from a creature with the distraction ability is nauseated for 1 round
Knowing that she can outrun the zombies, Lily moves to help Jaed.
"Oh, sh..." Being surrounded by raised bodies is not a nice place to be. Jaed tries to stay calm and attacks the vetala.
Lily moves away as Jaed attacks the vetala. The form of the zombie falls down, leaving the figure of a ghostly woman looking largely unphased by Jaed's assault. She smiles and reaches out to touch the rogue. Her ghostly hand passes right through his armor as though it weren't there, and suddenly, Jaed starts to feel a lot older. His bones creak and there's a weariness to him, though his appearance doesn't change at all. Smiling sweetly, the ghost disappears into a different zombie corpse.
The zombies surrounding Jaed continue to try groan and try to slam into him, but all miss. The last two zombies then charge Carrakas and similarly miss.
Marzela stops concentrating on the Raging Rubble spell as she is injured, but it continues for 2 additional rounds (yellow square):
Marzela moves and channels to harm undead again.
Lily somehow resists the vetala's horrid presence. She releases another controlled necromantic wreath of complex power, a webwork of violet and black that surges through the zombies to force them into submission, before she backs away out of the range of the creature's terrible gaze.
The zombies surrounding Jaed are all destroyed in a burst of light, leaving only the vetala standing there.
The vetala's hand feels like nothing that Jaed's has felt before but he somehow knows that it could've been worse. Not afraid of the ghost he takes a step forward and attacks the zombie hosting it.
In a general show of bad luck, Carrakas only manages to kill one of the two zombies next to him while Jaed just barely kills the zombie housing the vetala.
The vetala smiles, once more reaching out the touch the rogue before flying upwards slightly. However, this time he seems to be expecting it and dodges out of the way.
The one, non-fleeing zombie tries to slam into Carrakas but bounces harmlessly off of his armor.
Wasting no effort, Lily blasts the vetala with a massive surge of positive energy!
Of course, she misses.
Frustrated at the seeming ineffectiveness of her channelling, Marzela tries Holy Smite.
Before casting Marzela also calls out to warn Jaed, since she isn't sure he is good-aligned. She knows he might not come to much harm since he likely isn't evil either, but she wants to be sure he is ready, so he can move if he wants to.
Lily's spell goes wide as the vetala continues to grin widely at the group. While Marzela's spell does damage it, it still seems to be doing quite well.
Tired and frustrated, Jaed moves away from the vetala to catch some breath.
Carrakas kills the last zombie before moving just out of range of Marzela's spell.
The last remaining foe, the vetala moves and glares at
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Lily withes under the continued punishing attack of the vetala, unable to figure out how it can still be hurting her as she tries to stay out of range.
She launches another spell converted into a positive energy blast, this time scoring a hit.
Marzela takes some massive damage from the Vetala's glare/gaze.
Also taking some Charisma damage.
Marzela moves, getting Jaed barely in range, and channels to heal.
The vetala screams in pain, now looking significantly more wounded even as Marzela further heals the group.
"Thanks Marzela!" With renovated strength Jaed moves again next to the vetala, but not before closing his eyes.
Grunting as he starts to feel less pretty, Carrakas moves close to the vetala and strikes out with his hammer.
He manages to land the blow, and the vetala cries out in pain. It looks like it wants to go after Lily, but instead decides to go after the target that just presented itself.
Lily fires another ray at the vetala, and once again misses.
Jaed takes a step to the side and tries to hit the vetala without opening his eyes.
Marzela channels to heal again.
The party suffers a series of bad luck as both Lily and Jaed's attacks go wide. Luckily, Carrakas is able to do just enough damage to take down the vetala. As the ghost begins to fade she hisses (in Vudrani). "Fools! I'll be back! I will have my revenge!"
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"We'd best talk to the locals and find out the way to put such a creature to its final rest," stutters Lily as she sags, exhausted.
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Feeling strangely empty after the fight, Jaed simply nods to Lily's suggestion while he quietly looks around the corpses for some loot.
Marzela channels to heal people up again:
She also tries to remember if she knows anything about how to lay a Vetala to rest:
Unfortunately, it is hard to remember lessons learned so long ago at the temple and never used since.
She then says
To cure everyone the rest of the way, I will have to pray for spells that can restore our abilities. Perhaps we should retreat to the village again for now. As Lily said, we need to ask them if they know how to remove this threat permanently, and it would be unwise to continue in our weakened state. What do you all think?
"I uh... I uh... darn it!" says Lily, frustrated, as she can't seem to get the words out .
"Yes! Yes. We need to recuperate and... and... get more information. About this thing. Undead. Whatever! And finish it before it comes back and finishes us."
Jaed's cursory glance does not reveal anything of value on the nearby corpses. Many of the bodies seem to be for rather humble, villager-type bodies. If they ever possessed items of value, they were surely already removed before being unceremoniously dumped in this mass grave.
Find the original body... wow. Well, might as well get this over with. We can't let that thing return to life.
Marzela thinks about what the vetala looked like, sighs, and begins to methodically look through the corpses, looking for similarity, and working to keep track of the ones they have already looked though.
It takes about an hour of shifting and sorting through disgusting, rotted, smelly corpses, but eventually the group is able to find a body that looks like the ghost fought earlier under a pile of other bodies. Oddly, it's not nearly as decomposed as the remains around it. A quick search of the body reveals a wooden disc with an open palm on it, which Lily immediately recognizes as a symbol of god Irori. She recalls a prayer to the god of perfection that she believes will set the spirit to rest and begins to solemnly recite it. When she's done, there's a moment where it looks like nothing has happened. Then before your eyes, the body starts to decompose until nothing is left of it save dust.
The group then retreats out of the valley to rest and recuperate. Nothing of note happens during this time, and they wake up refreshed and ready to continue their journey.
Lily lets out an audible sigh as the funereal rights have the desired effect. She starts to speak...
"I... I didn't... I um..."
... but then just stops, drained of her meager ability to talk.
In the morning, Marzela has prepared spells to eliminate the damage that the Vetala did to them.
Marzela casts Restoration on Jaed and herself.
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Zamanda just casts Restoration on Lily as well, and then casts Lesser Restoration on Carrakas:
Twice. :)
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Having rested at an odd hour, the group continues on through the night, feeling much prettier than they were earlier. Near dawn you find the path dead-ending at a steeply sloping cliff face on the western side of one of the tall mountains. The cliff is roughly 900 feet tall.
As most of your group searches around the base of the cliff for secret doors or passages, Carrakas uses his climb speed to quickly scale the cliff face. After a few minutes, he jumps off the top, allowing his constant feather fall to take him safely to the ground.
"Nothing much of note except there's a decent sized crack about half-way up. I'm guessing that leads to the cult's HQ."
One by one, he ferries you all up. You find yourselves on a barren ledge set into the jagged stone of the cliff face. It provides a magnificent view out across the rocky foothills. At the rear of the cavity, two basalt pillars guard the entrance to a dark, narrow opening that leads inward into the depths of the mountain. The pillars and the lintel of the entrance both have twisted runes carved into them.
Jaed looks at the runes and he notices that they probably are Vudrani symbols. With Marzela's help they translate them: they describe annihilation, darkness, and the unknown, as well as verses from Dhalavei's holy texts.
"Not a nice welcome. I suppose all these cults like to scare people away," he says before carefully leading the group into the mountain.
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"Cult probably animated that undead thing we fought," mumbles Lily.
Could be. I sure hope they don't have any more of them. We seem to be in way over our heads in this.
Among the various Vudrani runes on the pillars, Jaed manages to spot two rune traps and attempts to disable them after indicating that everyone else should step back.
He manages to disarm the symbol of pain trap, but the the foreign language makes it harder for him to disable the glyph of warding, and there's a very loud explosion.
In single file, the group squeezes through the narrow stone passage. After not too long, the rough, natural rock gives way to smooth, paved stone. Bright orange flames illuminate a sharp turn in the worked passage. The flames issue from the upraised claws of a carved, two- headed gargoyle statue that squats in the corner. Each head stares down a different passage.
The worked stone hallway quickly widens to be 10 feet wide and the group quietly moves forward. You all go around a couple of bends before you reach a short hallway ending in a thick, full-length black curtain. Slight gaps around the edges of the curtain show a faint radiance, indicating there's light on the other side of it.
Marzela listens to see if she can hear anything going on beyond the curtain.
Jaed realizes that the second trap just in time to move away and cover his ears. "That's their doorbell, I suppose."
Once near the curtain, he waits for Marzela's fine hearing to catch any noises. If she does not hear anything the rogue will, very carefully, peek around the curtain.