Clang!
Crunch!
Kthunk!
CRASH!
The caryatid column falls in shattered pieces. Among its remains is a fist-sized black opal.
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"Fabulous!" Rhoswen exclaims as the shattered pieces of the statue tumble to a rest on the floor. As she sheathes her sword she asks the group, "Did anyone else feel a weird vibration from your weapon when you hit that thing?" She shrugs her shoulders and reaches down to pick up the opal.
"Shiny," she gasps a little.
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Brewslee fumbles around in his pack or a few moments. Squinting his eyes he finally produces a long thin piece of wood. Ah here we are! He momentarily taps it against himself where he was scraped up by the stone creature.
Hmmm. It sheems that I was sold a broken wand. Anyone else know how to use thesh things.
The man holds the wand out to anyone that knows how to use it as he places one arm against the wall as it catching his breath. And make this room stop spinning.....makes it really hard to beat up statues.
Since it isn't locked, Stag's kick opens the door easily. Beyond is a dark, vaulted chamber. Bare wooden shelves, empty except for some extra writing supplies (sheets of parchment, bottles of ink, and quills), line the eastern wall, and three desks with high stools stand in the center of the room between six columns. A small sign on the southern door reads “Archives—Private.”
A body lies slumped in the corner, still clutching a club. Its legs have been eaten away by acid, and the corpse is already showing signs of putrefaction, with patches of mold on the skin. A broken lantern lies next to the body, its oil spilled on the floor.
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Rhoswen ambles in to the room past the desks and heads to the body. She stoops over it, but is careful not to touch it. "Poor fellow, likely just down here researching some little-known species of the natural world and he's... well, he's been dissolved in acid."
She stands back up and tries to nudge the body over with her boot.
Rhoswen notices that, although most of the lower body has been eaten away by acid, the corpse also bears bloody gashes upon its torso.
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"Eh, give me that, you drunken sot." Torean takes the wand from Brewslee and activates the divine magic, tapping him on the arm.
By the time Torean reaches the next room, he's back to normal size. He walks into the room and makes a face at the sight of the body eaten by acid. "Seems like a horrible way to go." The dwarf looks at the desks to see if he can find out what the man might have been writing.
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Rhoswen steps back and rummages through her back pack. "Cachu!" she sighs, closing up the pack with a huff. "I can't believe I forgot one..." She tries to hide a jealous glance at Torean's use of the wand on Brewslee, but keeps her mouth shut, not wanting to seem weak.
"Perhaps we can find some other clue in this room to behind this poor soul's demise." She carefully looks around the room.
The two northern desks each contain small, empty candelabra, two bottles of dried ink, and old quill pens. The southern desk has been used more recently—the candelabrum holds the stubs of half-burnt candles, the ink bottles are still wet, and fresh ink stains the quill pens. A handful of books and scrolls, treatises on the solar system and the empty space beyond, lie open on the desk. There are many notes, but all seem to be written in Osiriani.
Rhoswen searches the room and finds a sheet of parchment that fell beneath the desk, but it is also written in the same language.
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Late to the party it seems Ruby enters the room, glances at the body and just stands guard taking out her bow in case something tries to surprise them. She asks the group "Can anyone tell how long the dead body has been there, since someone was using this place to write, if the time is short, it means they sat in here with a dead body to do the writing meaning they or someone they knew did the killing. Also where did the acid come from? Could it be he was killed trying to get info?"
Stag finds the door unlocked, and therefore an perfect target for kicking.
*BAM!*
The door opens into a musty storeroom is filled with boxes and crates stacked in disorganized piles, some only a few boxes high and others reaching all the way to the ceiling. Small puddles stand on the floor, and the occasional drip of water echoes in the darkness.
Coiling around a human skeleton in the center of the room is a wet green plant with sickly flowers that smoke with a nasty yellow vapor. The flowers turn toward the door and begin to tremble!
INITIATIVE
Rhoswen rushes in as Ruby fires an arrow past the creature.
The flowers of the plant suddenly blow a cloud of pollen at Rhoswen.
Stag moves in and swings his sword at a flower, but the plant creature pulls it back out of reach.
Variel stares at it. Hard. But his hex doesn't seem to affect it.
Brewslee runs in, ducks under a flailing tendril and swiftly counter-attacks, but his blow doesn't land.
Torean shows everyone how it's done as he stomps up and chops into the creature.
Ruby moves up and tries to pull Rhoswen back, but finds the elven warrior hard to move.
The plant directs another flower to spray pollen into Torean's face.
An entranced creature can take no action other than to move at its normal speed into a space within the yellow musk creeper's reach.
Stag slashes a few tendrils off, then Brewslee stumbles around the plant and punches a large flower near the top so hard that it bursts in a small cloud of pollen. The rest of the plant goes limp and collapses.
Rhoswen soon shakes free of the pollen's effects, and after a quick search of the area, the group finds a door half-concealed behind some crates along the right-hand wall.
PERCEPTION
Something is blocking the doors on the other side, making it hard to open them.
Stag kicks it, but the door holds.
The group gives bounces off the door a few times, but eventually manage to force it open. Beyond is a chamber that contains several tall wooden bookshelves reaching to the ceiling, almost bursting with the weight of books and scrolls filling the shelves. The shelves and their contents are encrusted with thick growths of brightly colored fungus and glistening mold. Many tomes have fallen from the shelves, their open pages forming a base for more fungi and large mushrooms which carpet the floor. The air here is damp and close, and several of the fungal growths pulse with an eerie purple light that dimly lights the room.
The group moves to the other door, and though Ruby goes to listen to it, Stag just opens it without a thought for safety. Beyond is a large room filled with monsters of all shapes and sizes. Giant skeletons and stuffed taxidermic monstrosities are frozen in poses of snarling ferocity, while mummified corpses lie in sedate repose in ornately carved sarcophagi. As silent as a tomb, the air in the hall is stale and musty. Two large wooden signs lean against one wall, inscribed with the captions “Hunting the Beasts of Legend” and “The Honored Dead.” Unlit oil lamps hang from brackets in the center of each wall.