"What? What was that?" Rosalia demands as the strange and unintelligible voice drifts past her ears, immediately stopping in her tracks and reaching for her gladius. The magus glances around warily, and then pauses, a deep frown darkening her features as she spies the most curious sight...
"Look there," she says quietly, gesturing with the tip of her blade to the walls of the building. "That blackness there. It's... it's been burned."
** spoiler omitted **
You trudge together towards the building, the eroded stone bleak and bare beneath the moonlight. The building does not look like a residence, temple, or tomb-- it's a utilitarian two-story structure with no particular decorative touches. If there ever was a ceiling, it has long since been destroyed.
A hundred feet away from the building, a breeze kicks up, dragging at your robes and keffiyahs. It seems to come from the direction of the building, and each of you hear a man's hoarse voice borne on the little gust of dry desert air.
** spoiler omitted **
After that, quiet.
** spoiler omitted **
Heldar frowns as the voice is carried to them - the hairs on the back of his head standing up involuntarily as he squints to make out the details of what Rosalia is pointing out - "Either this is all the most strangest of ruses to attract gods know what, in the most deserted of places, or there is someone in trouble up ahead" - he adds, picking up the pace.
Shaggar growls, "Either we have come at the right moment or we are dealing with a restless spirit. The voice is speaking of holding a door, someone screaming, and every person taking care of himself." The gnoll presses forward slinking towards the building, wary of the opening terrain they are crossing.
As you come closer, the soot streaks Rosalia pointed out are more easily visible to everyone. It doesn't look as though the whole building was burned down-- there is some blackening around the yawning gap where a door once might have stood, but much of the walls show no sign of fire.
Closer to the direction of your approach, the remains of the walls are shorter, perhaps 3-4 feet high. On the further side from you, the walls reach up higher, a few bits still reaching up to the original twenty feet or so. (Rather like in the original image.)
There are the faint traces of a double line of stones leading towards the gap of the doorway, as if they had served to mark a path's existence. They are near buried in the sand now, however.
You hear nothing from the structure as you approach.
However, the first person to approach the low outer wall (...unless you're Javi and can't see over it...) or reach the doorway sees the following:
The building forms a rough square. The side nearer to you seems to have been a low-walled, enclosed yard with no roof. A stone pile in one corner looks to be a ruined, sand-choked well.
The building itself is divided into three semi-open rooms. Each room has at least a foot of sand accumulated on the floor and thickly covering the ruins of furniture. The west-most room has some crumbling wooden structures that might, by their height, have been bunk beds. The center space has long racks fastened to either wall, and rungs on the far wall leading up to a platform twenty feet up. (The wall behind the rungs seems heavily marked with soot).
The east-most space has more half-collapsed furniture, and, more to the point, it has people:
Two Osiriani soldiers are struggling with something on the floor-- after a second, you realize what it is: they are trying to hold a trap-door shut, throwing their combined body weight atop it. Despite the fact that the moonlight gleams off the sweat on their bare torsos and straining arms, they make utterly no noise.
They don't appear to have noticed you-- the entirety of their effort is caught up in holding the trap door shut.
Shaggar curses the winds of fate as he peers over the short wall and debates what to do. With a snarl, he decides to do 'the right thing'. The gnoll quickly pulls his keffiyeh fully over his head and moves into the building to assist the guards, calling out to them in Osiriani from the outer room before they can see him. "Hold that door! We're coming to help you." Then he rushes into the room to quickly step on the door, to keep it closed with his full body weight, in case his appearance shocks the soldiers. "What thing comes from below?"
The soldiers don't appreciably react to Shaggar's voice, even at his initial shout of promised aid. The gnoll breaks cover and runs around, adding his significant weight to the wooden door-- which crunches under his foot, as his booted foot drives right through the planks.
Splinters of wood jag against Shaggar's calf and foot as he stomps a hole right through the door, but he is able to catch himself before the rest of his weight settles on the door and drops all of him through it. He yanks himself free with a snarl.
The sounds of the breaking wood and Shaggar's own breathing are all that he can hear.
A scant handful of seconds after Shaggar charges to their aid, the men fade away as if the cool night breeze had whisked them into nothingness.
Rosalia hurries after Shaggar, watching the corners of this bizarre ruin as the gnoll rushes to help the guards. It is thus to her immense shock that she hears a loud snap as Shaggar's foot crushes through the trapdoor, and she snaps her hear only to see the ghostly apparitions fade into the night.
"Ghosts?" she wonders, creeping slowly towards Shaggar and frowning darkly. With a flick of her wrist and a few choice mystery words, Rosalia's eyes begin to glow with faint blue energy as she gazes around the interior of the building.
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Rosalia, as you approach Shaggar, you can see that the trapdoor is actually badly burnt-- but still intact. It has a foot-sized hole where Shaggar stomped through it, and the beams are brittle and charred, but it's still serving its purpose of being... a door. After a fashion.
Peering inside, you see that it is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Nah, seriously, it's dark down there, what with the only illumination being the moonlight streaming in. You think you see iron rungs in the wall, going down.
Your cantrip to detect magic, however, comes up with something-- above you. In the central 'room' there is the ladder leading upwards-- you are picking up a glow of magic from atop that 20-foot-high platform. It seems to be conjuration magic.
"Something magical's up there," Rosalia informs the group in a low tone of voice, gesturing at the platform, "of the sort that brings things from far to near. It could be benevolent... but my experience of conjuration magic is that it tends to bring pain more often than not."
She pauses, and her brow arches ever-so-slightly. "... But why would there be some kind of magical object in an abandoned and apparently haunted building?"
You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Heldar rushes after the others, simply to find there is nothing there. When arriving at the trapdoor he looks all around - "There is definitely something askew here" - he adds in confirmation of Rosalia's comment - "Some sort of magical trap?"
Javi, blade in-hand, watches Shaggar’s actions. His face shifts briefly to one of amusement as the big gnoll plants his foot through the ‘door’, but it melts off his face as the osiriana men melt into the night. ”Oh good. Magic and ghosts.” He hefts his little blade. ”Suddenly I feel ill-equipped.
He follows Rosalia’s gesture to the magics, ”Conjuration. That’s what Lyrian said was in that ankh building before those ancient soldiers materialized when I cut the mask’s straps.” He shrugs, ”They didn’t seem all that threatening. Eitehr way, we want to see if we can determine exactly what it does before we head down?” He looks around at the crew, ”Or are we even going down?”
Shaggar pulls a bloody, finger-sized 'splinter' from his ankle and summarizes his opinion. "Echoes of the restless dead, I think." He crouches to peer through the gnoll hole he made in the trapdoor. To Javi's question, he opines, "I would like to search further, if the enchantment above doesn't make this all appear an illusion." From his tone, he clearly has doubts this is a magical trap.
Lyrian hustles up to the wall.
"If we can't handle this, we can't handle the pyramid," he says. "Consider it a test run."
"Fair enough," Javi whispers in response, looking over Shaggar's shoulder into the darkness. "So, do we let Shaggar take point or drop a light down there?"
For Lyrian and Shaggar, the darkness on the other side of the trap door is not a great impediment. Both of them can peer through the boards broken by Shaggar's foot and see... a floor, about eight feet down, with what looks to be a little pile of sand down there. The boards, burnt as they are, are not sand-tight, and presumably some of the ever-present sand has drifted down through the cracks and built up that little pile directly below the trap-door.
There are more scorch marks on the wall that holds the ladder rungs, beneath the trap door. Beyond that, the angle doesn't let them see much more.
At ground level, however....
Shaggar pokes around. In the room you are currently in , there's a table against one wall. More drifting sand has piled a few inches deep on top of it, and the wood is dry and brittle from prolonged exposure to the desert air. A few toppled and broken stools surround the table.
However, beneath the table, there's a body: a blackened and withered humanoid form, curled in a defensive crouch beneath the table, as if the wretch had been trying to take shelter beneath the table, although it doesn't appear to have saved him.
About thirty feet away, there's another body-- harder to spot, as the drifting sand on the floor has half-swallowed the body. The body is similarly blackened and dessicated. One hand still holds a blackened, pitted khopesh sword, but fighting seemed to serve this unfortunate no better than cowering had the other.
The bodies appear to have been simply attired and armed. The charred, flaking remains of clothing that still cling to their bodies would be in line with the bodies of the Osiriani soldiers that you saw in mirage form.
In the central room, racks on the walls look to have held weapons. Anything of significant value has long since been taken: all the remains are a few unstrung bows, the wood warped and brittle by the heat, some spears in similar condition, another khopesh sword of unimpressive workmanship, and some half-rotted tack for camels and horses, hanging from a hook.
On closer inspection, the western room does seem to have held bunk beds- half-collapsed now. A footlocker at the base of each bed has been busted open, and the chests no longer hold anything but sand.
On the whole, this building gives the impression of a guard-post, which means that high platform could have served as a watch-tower, perhaps.
The ladder up to the watch-platform is iron rungs set against the wall. Only one person could climb it at a time. Who is that lucky soul?
Shaggar sticks his muzzle through the hole in the trapdoor, smelling the corridor below, while keeping an eye on his allies' investigations.
It smells kinda dry and cool downstairs.
Shaggar carefully climbs up the rungs set into the wall. The scorch marks are here as well, as if a fire had burned directly over the ladder, and left the wall to either side untouched.
At the top, he's standing on a small 5 x 10 foot platform. There's a fairly good view from here-- you can see the distant line of the river under moonlight, far, far off to the south and west, and east you can see out over the bluffs towards the chaotic terrain of the true Underdunes, which you have wisely led the party around. (There are still very distant storms happening in that direction.)
There's an iron brazier or something similar here? A little sand has filled the hollow of the bowl, but the breeze keeps this platform fairly free of sand.
Broken glass crunches under your feet. It looks as though a crystal the size of a man's head had been broken into pieces here. Some shards are in the brazier, jutting out from the sand; the others are strewn underfoot.
You instantly notice one crystal fragment a little larger than the others-- it's about the size of your fist (you have a big fist, so maybe a bit smaller). It has a red light flickering faintly inside it, like a little ember. The crystal chunk is warm to the touch, but not hot.
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Shaggar takes a final look around and heads downstairs carrying the strange stone in his clawed fist and the brazier beneath an arm. At the base of the ladder, he scrupulously details what he saw above and then displays the stone for the others to inspect. He looks at the wealth of trained occultists around him, "Do you know what this is? Sitting by the brazier, and the other bits of broken glass... I'm thinking this may have been a lighthouse of sorts."
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Rosalia, though still with her detect-o-magic eyes aglow, alas has no idea what this little chunk of crystal might be.
Javi pokes his head back into the room at SHaggar's question. His voice is light, "That'll sell."
Then he goes back to scrounging in the bunk room, mostly just kicking up a bit of sand and dust.
It probably would sell, it's very shiny. And the red light inside curls around and twists and throbs in a captivating lava-lamp manner.
Unfortunately, Lyrian can definitively tell no more than Rosalia-- the red crystal emanates conjuration magic, and is the source that Rosalia detected earlier. You can always try again tomorrow.
The ruined guard-post is completely silent except for your voices and the sounds of your movement. Occasionally, the mild night breeze blows sand grains over sand grains with a soft, barely perceptible hiss, but that is the only noise aside from yourselves.
Three hundred feet away, the camels are waiting patiently, with Rook and Hatyah as their unlikely guards.
Shaggar drops the gem in Rosalia's hand and turns his attention to the trapdoor. He pulls the remaining spars away before heading down. In the corridor, he maintains a wary eye, looking for clues as to what happened here and who fought.
As Shaggar sees once he's down the short ladder, it's less a corridor than a cellar, and not a terribly large one. It's fifteen feet wide, and perhaps thirty feet long.
The walls are lined with crates and barrels, most of which have been opened. The effects of the desert's erosion are much less pronounced down here in the shelter of the cellar walls-- except for directly beneath the trapdoor, the floor is mostly sand-free. The walls are braced with wood and stone to keep the desert's sandy soil from spilling inward.
Shaggar's keen eyes pierce the cellar's darkness with little trouble, sweeping from one end to another. There's an empty wall sconce next to him designed to hold a lantern. The same wall also boasts a round shield, with the hide painted in simple concentric circles, and dotted with a hundred pinpricks-- a dartboard.
The center of the room boasts a few cushions spread around a low crate-turned table, with an unlit oil lamp in central position.
Probably more to Shaggar's interests are the corpses: two that he notices right off, and one that it takes a bit longer to see.
One is right by his feet: a figure in heavy armor, face down on the cellar's floor. The corpse bears no signs of burning, but the desert has kept the body fairly free of rot. If he turns the body over, the face under the helm is that of a woman, as pale-skinned as Rosalia or fairer. She seems an old woman to have been marching around in heavy armor-- her hair is ghost white, her face withered even before her dessicated skin had pulled back to the bone. Her teeth are bared grotesquely in the dry flesh of her face-- perhaps in a grimace of fear, perhaps just the result of the corpse's dessication. A longsword is near her hand.
A few feet away is a man in gray robes, in a similar state of preservation. By his coloring, he was probably Osiriani. He is clutching something small that gleams and winks even in the dim light that filters through the trapdoor's hole. His shaved head is still lying on a bedroll, next to a backpack-- he almost looks to have died in his sleep. He is also an older man, with a trim white goatee and deep lines of aging at his eyes and the corners of his mouth.
On the other side of the table there is what you suppose you could call a body-- more accurately, it's a pile of ash, with blackened bones and armor jutting out from the middle of it. The flesh has been wholly consumed by fire, leaving only a charred skeleton and the soot-blackened rings of a chain shirt behind.
Soot marks the wall behind the ladder, and several of the barrels and creates in the room show some signs of partial burning.
Nothing moves.
Heldar peers from above, but in all honesty he really cannot see anything in the pitch black darkness - "I can't see anything in this darkness... Shaggar, do you think it safe to use some form of lighting in there?"
Heldar makes a quick gesture, and a small orb of light sprouts at the tip of his longspear. He then moves to join Shaggar - "Should we perhaps tie a rope out here to make the ascent a tad easier?" - he suggests.
Javi glides down the rungs a moment behind Heldar, hitting the ground lightly and quietly as he squints against the darkness. "Why? Do we think the ladder won't hold up?"
Lyrian drops down and looks around with magically-enhanced sight.
Shaggar points at the dead 'priest' (as he thinks of the man). "There's something shining from his palm."
Lyrian peers around, his eyes unbothered by the darkness, arcane power augmenting his ability to detect all sorts of things. Sadly, he sees neither magical auras, nor any sign of hidden doors. None of the armor, weapons, or gear on the bodies seem to be magical.
Pocketing the strange gem in her bag (no doubt Rook would have fun playing with it later - hopefully he didn't pick up any ranks in use magic device while she wasn't looking).
Everyone else seems to be going down the trap door, but Rosalia remains up on the first level, her eyes glued to the camels and her ears alert for the rest of the room. "I'll keep an eye out up here," she says as the last disappears down below. "Let me know if there's any trouble."
As everyone else pokes around in the cellar , Rosalia keeps an eye out above ground, senses primed and wary.
-"You close the door!"
-"It's GONE, the door's GONE!"
-"Nonono! Fill the doorway! Stop him! He's going to be so angry! Hide! HIDE!"
And several things happen at once...
Rosalia sees.... the huddled corpse beneath the table start to move, although not as if it were getting up and walking. Instead, it seems as if some force is tugging it, dragging it through the sand towards the hole of the trap-door.
Rosalia also sees...
...two man-shaped forms step out of the wall south of her. They are humanoid, but their features are indistinct and vague, and she can still see the wall behind them (through them). One of them is waving his arms around in a panicked fashion and clutching at his head.
Downstairs...
Heads snap up towards the sound of the voices, for those with keen hearing. But before you can react much to that, motion in the cellar catches your attention.
A figure is rising up through the burnt body on the ground. Unlike the forms upstairs (that none of you can see), he is very distinct and clear-- the spitting image of an Osiriani officer, save for that whole 'translucent' thing. His face is contorted in anger, and he opens his mouth to shout at you, his eyes blazing with unholy light.
His mouth opens impossibly wide, and a bone-chilling sound emerges, a scream of fury and panic combined.
Shaggar, Rosalia, and Javi feel a note of terror battering at their hearts, but they can deal with this stuff. Heldar and Lyrian, however-- you are suddenly overwhelmed by an unthinking terror, the panic that turns men into animals, the desire to flee.
Initiative order:
>>>...Rosalia
>>>...Javi
...Officer
...Heldar (panicked, round 1)
...Shaggar
...Soldiers
...Lyrian (panicked, round 1)
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Javi steps forward in the dimness, getting ready to poke the shiny object. ”Hey, something down in an abandoned, burned out ruin, let’s all go ah—“
His head snaps up, eyes fixing on the ceiling exit only momentarily before snapping back down to the whatever-it-is trying to explode his mind with fear. Javi responds with a witty, ”Uuuuhhh…” before he jerks into action.
He springs forward, his little scimitar darting at what would be a regular man’s exposed underbelly.
Javi's blade whips through the spectral figure... like cutting air. A thin wisp of smoke trails his scimitar, but he did far less damage than he is used to doing to foes with, y'know, actual bodies.
Rosalia shudders as the bone-chilling scream nearly sends her for the hills, but perhaps it's the sheer disturbing nature of the scene unfolding before her that, perversely, keeps her rooted to the real right now. She couldn't be off screaming like a little girl when an apparent haunting was afoot. The northerner can't help but wonder what madness had struck them to investigate a creepy, old, abandoned and thoroughly burned building in the middle of nowhere...
"Uh--guys?" Rosalia calls out tentatively, rooted to the spot with her blade at the ready should these... things... come closer to her. "The ghosts are back. And the corpse is moving. What the hell is going on down there?!"
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Rosalia: It's kind of hard to tell? They haven't currently done anything to attack you that you can tell. They seem pretty upset, though, going by their, um, translucent body language. So, tossing yourself down into the pit with your friends, or staying up there?
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The spectral figure below flinched at Javi's blade whipping through his body, but now his eyes glow with a rekindled fury. He strides towards the brave little thief, the ghostly outlines of his legs moving through the crates and barrels as if they weren't even there.
One spectral hand reaches out towards Javi, long fingers raking at his face.
Fortunately (very fortunately!), Javi has reflexes like a cat. Like ten cats! The halfling deftly dodges the dire digits of the dreadful dead. The spirit howls its renewed fury.
Heldar... good news and bad news.
The good news is... you drop your spear. Yes, that is good news, because it means you don't take away the light source for Javi. The bad news is, you run like hell.
Seized with unthinking panic, you run right over the corpse of the woman-in-armor, shoulder past Shaggar, and throw yourself up the ladder with your eyes wide and your heart pounding. You burst out back into the moonlight, staring around wildly. Ahhhh, more spectral figures! What do? Where run?!
(Rosalia, Heldar just clawed his way up the ladder like a man possessed, and bulled past you with wide, panicked eyes.)
Rosalia (on delay)
Javi
Officer
Heldar (panicked, round 1)
>>>...Shaggar
...Soldiers
...Lyrian (panicked, round 1)
The gnoll scrambles awkwardly over the barrels to close with the strange phantasm. "Begone, shade! None here have wronged you." He whips his axe in a 2-handed killing blow, trying to split the apparition from skull to groin.