"I can't say I was very impressed by them - arrogance just tickles me funny" - the man adds, then looks at Rosalia with a smile - "Most of the time"
Turning to Javi and Shaggar, he adds - "I cannot condone that we simply go there and murder them, not even if they decide to follow us - in fact, arrogance and being offensive is not usually something we should penalize with a kill, at least from my perspective. If we could agree on that one, it would please me immensely" - by now Heldar is looking directly at Shaggar.
Turning to Javi, he continues - "I would enjoy having additional information on their intentions - it would be extremely useful to understand their plans, mainly regarding our own expedition. And for some reason, I don't think they will have any qualms in spying on us" - he ponders - "But in all honesty, I would rather not have you risk your life alone Javi. If we can come up with a plan similar to the one before, involving invisibility or something similar, to guarantee you will not go alone, I might agree. But as competent as I know you are, I would rather you would not got there on your own my friend. The decision is obviously yours though" - he puts a hand on the halfling's shoulder.
"Ah, Heldar, you DO care!" He gives the larger man a whack on the knee-cap, then turns somber. "And frankly it's not worth worrying about immediately, anyway. Securing our own camp is more important. Farthest from the demon-lovers? Or somewhere else?"
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"I cannot condone that we simply go there and murder them, not even if they decide to follow us - in fact, arrogance and being offensive is not usually something we should penalize with a kill, at least from my perspective. If we could agree on that one, it would please me immensely" - by now Heldar is looking directly at Shaggar.
Shaggar pats Hatyah and considers. "We have traveled many miles, sayyid, and you have been a good companion... Would you prefer a literal truth that will reassure you or an actual truth that will bother your conscience?"
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"An actual truth" - the man answers without skipping a beat - "Every single time Master Shaggar"
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Shaggar nods, "I would make the same choice. The truth is, if I see them in the pyramid, if they impede our progress in any way, if they try to exert their 'authority' in any fashion... I will do my best to kill all of them - without exception or hesitation. Their arrogance plays no part in my thoughts. My reasons are practical and in keeping with desert traditions and gnoll ways. Desert agreements are written in words not documents and signatures. She made it clear that they would attack if we approached their pyramid. She offered that they would leave us alone if we left them alone. I clarified our terms... making sure she understood the price if they failed to abide by the bargain they offered. If, in their arrogance, they think to ignore our agreement or assume my words are hollow - that is their mistake. I have given them fair warning, nothing else is needed. More practically, it is my job to improve our chance of success and survival. Chelaxians dogging our steps through a trapped pyramid is a risk I would minimize." He wipes the sand from his muzzle. "The agreement was mine, not yours. You may fight or not, as your conscience leads you. I respect your choice. But I will walk my own path as you must walk yours."
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"I can't say I was very impressed by them - arrogance just tickles me funny" - the man adds, then looks at Rosalia with a smile - "Most of the time"
"Are you trying to imply something here, Master Heldar?" Rosalia responds acidly, shooting him a withering stare. However, she drops the topic right there and then; clearly, she can see the merits in focusing on their current problems rather than creating a few more here at home. (And besides--she was well used to Heldar's playful teasing by now. Much as she's loathe to admit it.)
Rosalia leans back and listens to the conversation unfolding, her eyes caught by the elemental storm in the distance more often than not. However, when she finally speaks up, it's clear that her mind was definitely not wandering off with the air and earth spirits that battle for supremacy on this mortal coil.
"I'm with Shaggar on this one--more out of practicality than anything," Rosalia says with a vague shrug. "I don't play them as fools; arrogant, for sure, but not fools. If they want to challenge us for the pyramid, it's their lives they're forfeiting. The main thing I'm worried about is them telling our other Chelaxian headache where we are."
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Shaggar leads the group to a hollow in the cliff wall, his keen eyes piercing through the early morning and hunting irregularities in the rock. He finds what he seeks: a cleft of sorts, too shallow to be called a cave, but it offers shelter from the wind and the shifting sand, and is comfortably out of sight of the pyramid that has been 'claimed' by the Chelish agents.
Canvas and cloth are stretched as a makeshift barrier, the tired camels finally given a rest and unsaddled, waterskins unslung for deep draughts of water. It's been nine hours since you set out from Nemhep, and they've been long ones, pushing against the wind that only grew stronger. The wind howls a thousand feet above your heads even now, but sheltered by the rock, it's quiet enough to hear each other talking, at least.
....well, at first you can hear talking...
By the time you've rigged your shelter-- stretched out your tired legs-- and had a few minutes to discuss things like the morality of killing devil-worshiping soldiers before they can graduate to being serious pains-in-the-ass, the wind is... getting louder, again. Shaggar has been keeping an wary eye, ear, and nose on things all through the setting up of camp-- trying to seal things as best he can against the potential elemental onslaught. Now he snarls as he looks up and sees... a rock figure several times the height of a man (but looking no larger than a child's doll, at this distance) goes over the edge of the cliff, far, far above you all.
Together, the group wordlessly watches the surreal sight of the earth elemental's fall, a thousand feet through the air, end over end, until it's no longer the size of a doll but an enormous mass of rock that slams into the canyon floor three hundred feet from your location. It sends a sheet of sand up in the air from the impact, and chunks of broken boulder-body go flying.
A dozen rippling figures of thunderclouds chase after it, streaking down to earth to batter the downed giant with savage stabs of lightning. The rock scorches and shatters further.
You are very glad you got your shelter up, because it gets worse after that... Soon, the shrieking wind makes conversation inaudible, and the stinging, abrading sand worms its way past your taut canvas and rakes at your skin. You can see barely thirty feet beyond the shelter of your little hollow, and the noise-- thunderclaps, and the sound of cracking rock, echoing through the valley-- is overwhelming.
Shaggar's energy is focused on the camels: he and Hatyah have full hands in keeping the beasts in line, huddled in with the group in their shelter from the elemental fury. You all get close and comfortable with the feel of scared camel breathing in your hair.
But the elementals pay no mind to the presence of small, huddled mortals hiding in the cliff-face niche. They fight with the relentless and tireless power of fundamentally opposed natures, and after what seems like an eternity, the noise and fury and chaos slowly recedes, as the bulk of the storm moves on down the canyon, away from you.
It's a good two hours before you feel it would be safe to emerge again from the shelter. And when the first person out moves the bit of canvas that had kept out the worst of the sand, it's to find that a good four feet of sand have built up on the other side of it. Nothing you can't climb out from behind, but the sheer thought of what would have happened to you if you'd been caught in that without shelter.... 'flayed alive' is a good description.
The campsites of the would-be treasure hunters are all swallowed up by the deposit of four new feet of sand. The pyramids are still visible, of course-- four feet isn't enough to bury the entrances, but it is a start, as the desert starts reclaiming its treasures.
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If Shaggar weren't so busy keeping the camels calm and the tarpaulin from being lost to the unnatural storm, he might have found some time to be terrified at the elemental battle. As it is, he digs a trail out of the shelter and appreciates that the dunes now running up against it probably conceal it nicely - an unobtrusive hidden base for the camels and unneeded gear.
The ranger inspects the pyramids from a distance, silently hoping that being in the open plain instead of sheltered by the cliff, they are under even more sand. He would be delighted if the Chelaxians had to dig out from 20' of sand. Sadly, his wish isn't granted. He crouches down in the shelter entrance and addresses the team as loudly as needed to be heard over the retreating storm.
"The storm is passed but it isn't done. It should discourage the Chelaxians from seeking their city allies. The shifting dunes may slow them as well. Perhaps we should try to summon the pyramid now to gain as much time as possible for our exploration?"
The time spent cooped up in the small cave is a harrowing one for Rosalia, filled with nightmarish visions of cave collapses and being buried alive, so much so that she barely even pays the barest heed to the amazing forces of nature warring mere metres away from them. Instead, she can mostly be found cooped up behind a small boulder somewhere, hands wrapped around her knees and occasionally muttering to herself. Scant moments after Shaggar digs their way out from the sandbank, Rosalia charges on outside, anxious to be out from those cramped and concerning quarters.
"Let's..." her voice crackles from a mouth dried from nervousness and the heat of the day. "Let's get this over with before that happens again."
Once everyone's all ready and accounted for, Rosalia will get out the two funerary masks and prepare to put one of them on.
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The magnificent storm is enough to drive any sane creature to praying... unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), along with a lack of natural size and common sense, Javi bears a distinct lack of common sanity. He sits the entire time a small arm's reach from the canvas barrier, legs crossed and looking like a child on some kind of spectacular ride he can't predict or get enough of. Every terrifying clash of thunder, wind or sand brings a delighted whoop! or peal of laughter. From time to time he gives another party member a wide-eyed, wide-grinned, and thrilled nodding look that seems to say, 'are you hearing this?!'
As the storm tires itself out, the halfling's energy similarly dwindles, until he sits near the entrance, idly tapping the butt of one of his daggers into the side of the treated canvas, feeling the strange resistance created by feet of piled sand.
When Shaggar's movements indicate time to look out, he hops up, curiosity and excitement rushing across his mercurial features. He follows Rosalia out, and at the mention of finally getting their task started, begins rummaging through his pack for the masks. "You don't have to ask me twice."
He hands one to Rosalia and its twin to Heldar , then he quickly double-checks all his gear, pulling the dark-tinted goggles from his pack and strapping them on so they rest atop his head for quick deployment.
"... and so the rabbits ready to test the snake hole, no?"
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The group staggers or darts out of their shelter, looking around at the quasi-transformed landscape. It seems that, at long last, the goal of the many days of travel is within reach.
Gear is grabbed, last minute preparations made. The wind from the storm still swirls sand around your ankles, but it's beginning to die down and the light of the sun is resuming its natural dominance over this section of Osirion. Save for the faint hiss of the blowing sands and the wickers of the camels, it is quiet.
No time like the present, is there....?
Rosalia dons the real mask. The heavy gold settles over her face, held by the thin strap. Five sets of eyes (well, seven if you count Rook and Hatyah) stare with anticipation for results-- most of you looking towards the center of the square formed by the four pyramids.
Nothing seems to happen, at first. The wind dies down further. A camel makes a rather scatological noise. Welp, that's it, go home kids, nothing to see here.
...it's getting harder to visually focus on that empty plaza space, however. It's almost as if it's getting... blurry? Foggy? Filled with a green haze that becomes denser and more opaque the longer you stare at it.
A low shriek builds in your ears, like the sound of the wind again, but the air is still.
In the space of one minute's time from when you first notice the odd misting appearance of the air, the 'mist' becomes thicker, and the shrieking louder, though it seems something you hear with your mind rather than your ears-- and it's accompanied by a sensation of pressure, like deep, deep underwater, pressing at your eardrums, as if all the air around you were suddenly heavy and oppressive-- it builds and builds until--
--a pop of relief. The desert air ripples.
Where there was mist, there is now stone.
The Pyramid has appeared: not in the middle of the four that you already saw, but superimposed atop them: a mind-bogglingly large structure of green veinstone. Each of the four pyramids you saw before appears to be nothing but one corner of the base of this truly massive monument. The four pyramids have been wholly covered up and subsumed into this enormity of stone.
The veinstone sides are steep, and blank, and glossy smooth, with only the thinnest of cracks between blocks. You see no entrance at ground level. The stone from the pyramid is cold to the touch, as if, wherever it was before you dragged it across unknowable distance to here-- it was instead in some lightless, otherworldly place.
You think, based on what you remember of the study of all those scrolls back at the start of your journey (you remember that, right?) that you might actually have been looking at the surface of Aucturn... and that Rosalia possibly just pulled the pyramid across the gulf between worlds.
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Javi works his jaw in the aftereffects of Rosalia's ear-popping pyramid summoning trick, then he looks at a particular corner of the massive structure. "So who do we have to pray to in order for that to have left only a small stain where once stood an annoying corner of Cheliax?"
After their full circuit of the perimeter, and as they stand looking up at 300 feet of wall-climbing fun, Javi looks up at Shaggar with a grin. ”Round two, fur ball. Think you can beat me to that entrance?”
He begins pulling rope from his pack, tying one end around his waist in a double climber’s knot, then testing its hold.
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The gnoll cranes his neck upwards, watching the massive structure appear. His careful speech is swept away by a gut reaction, "F$c< me."
"Round two, fur ball. Think you can beat me to that entrance?"
Shaggar shakes his head, and rubs the stone, "No bet." The gnoll examines the rock carefully and smells it.
"Well, you're no fun," he says while continuing to prepare the rope.
Lyrian looks up at the immense edifice with a boyish grin on his face. "Well there's something you don't see every day! So how're we getting up there? Ropes or magic? I've got rope, anyway."
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Rosalia gapes in amazement as the pyramid makes its sudden appearance, slowly and unconsciously dropping the mask from her face in some abject state of shock. "That... That is certainly not what I expected," she manages to stammer out, gingerly replacing the mask in her belongings for fear that a quick movement would cause the pyramid to disappear back from whence it came yet again. She feels a twinge of guilt for the fate of the unknown Chelaxians; but only a twinge, for there are more important things to worry about, like avoiding having to scale a three-hundred-foot edifice.
"Magic, of course," Rosalia sniffs, turning to Shaggar and sizing him up with an arched eyebrow. "Much faster, and much less dangerous than the alternative!"
"I don't weigh much," Javi offers, modifying the way he's preparing his rope, leaving it tied around his waist as he loops the coils around him to have it ready at hand. "What if Shaggar takes me and Lyrian up there? We'll check for traps and secure the entrance while Shaggar brings the rest of you up."
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Shaggar nods, "I would make the same choice. The truth is, if I see them in the pyramid, if they impede our progress in any way, if they try to exert their 'authority' in any fashion... I will do my best to kill all of them - without exception or hesitation. Their arrogance plays no part in my thoughts. My reasons are practical and in keeping with desert traditions and gnoll ways. Desert agreements are written in words not documents and signatures. She made it clear that they would attack if we approached their pyramid. She offered that they would leave us alone if we left them alone. I clarified our terms... making sure she understood the price if they failed to abide by the bargain they offered. If, in their arrogance, they think to ignore our agreement or assume my words are hollow - that is their mistake. I have given them fair warning, nothing else is needed. More practically, it is my job to improve our chance of success and survival. Chelaxians dogging our steps through a trapped pyramid is a risk I would minimize." He wipes the sand from his muzzle. "The agreement was mine, not yours. You may fight or not, as your conscience leads you. I respect your choice. But I will walk my own path as you must walk yours."
"Understood Master Shaggar" - Heldar nods - "But I do not speak of written or signed agreements, simply of my beliefs. And they are not bound to simply doing, or not doing something because someone says so - had we decided to access the area where they are located, and had they barred us from doing it without any formal explanation as to their ownership of the area, I would not feel confined by their words" - he smiles again - "If they do not own it, what right do they have to bar us from entering it? Had they tried to stop us with violence, and violence they would have met in return" - he approaches the gnoll - "I can only thank you for the amazing job you have done so far in keeping us safe, and I do understand that we are not in a city, bound by laws or guards. Nor do I assume that everyone is innocent, or filled with good intentions. But my convictions are part of myself, as much as yours are part of your own, and regardless of my opinion on those back there, I cannot offer murder for being followed, until their intentions are understood by me - but I will not hesitate in asking them if they do so" - he adds.
"However, we do not see alike you in two things my friend - the agreement, as you call it, was not yours, but ours, as you travel with me, and under my protection" - the choice of words is curious, and Heldar's tone quite serious - "Regardless of anything else, I will not allow harm to come to any of you" - he looks also at the others - "Since from my perspective, we walk the same path, and not different ones"
As the elemental forces battle each other, Heldar cannot help but watched in muted amazement - amidst the wind, sand and debris - as long as there is a hole through which he can peek at the titanic battle he does so, and when he is finally forced to take full shelter, he wears a huge smile on his face - "Simply amazing..."
----------------
No less amazing is the appearance of the massive pyramid, prompted by Rosalia's actions.
"And here it is" - the man mutters, then smiles at his companion - "Pulled across the worlds by Rosalia, from the very depths of Aucturn. Well done!" - he adds in a good mood.
As they explore the area, and find what seems to be the single avenue of ingress into the structure, he voices his opinion, seconding Rosalia's - "I am not much of a climber in all honesty, so if it is not imposing on Master Shaggar, magical flight definitely has my vote, lest I be dangling from the bottom end of a rope for days on end while you explore all on your own"
After some quick discussion of the best way to reach the entrance, it is decided that Rosalia's magic will serve well. She casts a spell on Shaggar, who finds that gravity now seems something of an option, rather than a hard-set rule...
Javi quickly clambers onto the Shaggarvator. The gnoll is certainly strong enough to take another, as Javi weighs so relatively little...
Nothing could stop Lyrian from embarking on such an adventure. He clambers onto the shaggy gnoll's back and holds on, suppressing the various wry comments that come to mind in order to preserve his own safety.
The Swagger/Shaggarvator makes sure both his guests are secured before fly/running up the side of the pyramid. For a sense of safety, he keeps his claws brushing the stone surface. At the entrance portal, he kicks away from the structure. Hovering 5' away from the pyramid, the gnoll lets Javi and Lyrian check things out before taking the risk of setting down.
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Rosalia will of course do the honours of imparting just a fragment of residual air elemental power (free radicals and all that, you know) into Shaggar's body. He feels lightweight, as if he could leap over a mountain with ease...
... for those on the ground, they may notice two tiny, mostly transparent angelic wings poking out of Shaggar's back, barely the size of his paw apiece, fluttering prettily in the breeze. Rosalia's snickering is probably enough to let on that this is just a 'flair' of hers she added for the heck of it...
"Can't wait for my turn" - Heldar admits with a grin at the chance of soaring through the skies.
With his passengers in place, Shaggar grunts and starts ascending. Faster than a speeding locomotive-- able to leap tall pyramids in a single bound! Okay, not exactly, but pretty close.
Still... Air Shaggar ascends, defying gravity on the way up the pyramid's side. At the entrance way, he stops, looking it over from behind the smoked lenses of his goggles. Lyrian and Javi do likewise.
Javi is, apparently, too thrilled with the cool view from 300 feet up the pyramid to really pay too much attention to details. Shaggar and Lyrian, however-- both of whom benefit from being able to see in the dark-- can see that the stone entrance opens directly into a corridor, a corridor that leads away, down into the heart of the pyramid...
The square of entrance you saw is twenty by twenty feet, now that you're right up before it. The desert sun penetrates only a little bit into the corridor, playing over the marbled green stone. Beyond that, the darkness takes over...
The air that yawns inside the corridor's mouth is cold, and old, and still. By the sun's light, you can see a cartouche inscribed on the floor right at the entrance... and dozens... hundreds... no, thousands of tiny hieroglyphic carvings etching walls, floor, and ceiling, covering every inch of the marble surface, as far in as your respective eyes can see . The square-shaped corridor disappears into blackness beyond that. It slopes downward at a gentle angle.
IN THE 90TH YEAR OF THE SACRED REIGN OF THE FOUR GOD-KINGS, THE PHARAOH OF NUMBERS, BLESSED OF NETH, SPEAKER TO THE DARK, HOLY IN APPEARANCE AND IN MIND, DID ORDER A CENSUS TAKEN OF THE SUBJECTS OF UPPER AND LOWER OSIRION. HOLY ARE THE FOUR! BY THEIR FACES THE RIVER FLOWS AND THE SUN RISES AND SETS! ALL HAIL!
Nobody perceives any traps.
The tunnel goes down, perfectly straight, walls perfectly smooth except for the hieroglyphic carvings on them. It is possible that master dwarven craftsmen could make walls this insanely even, this smooth, but it would be the work of generations. There's almost something eerie about how perfectly symmetrical the architecture is.
Shaggar reads the cartouches and provides a running narration of what they say... before depositing Lyrian and Javi in the entrance and punching the 'down' button on the Swaggervator.
Lyrian does read Osiriani, and reads the first cartouche out loud, translating into Taldane. He stops a few names into the second one.
Heldar stares from below, waiting for his turn on the Swaggervator.
Javi spends a few minutes marveling at the height and view, but the business at hand re-exerts itself, and he gets to work. First, he double-checks his goggles and equipment after the flight. Next, he pulls a wayfinder from his pocket, activating its Light then securing it to a pocket in such a way that it can be revealed or tucked away quickly. Then he tucks it away.
As he works, he shakes his head at the words read by Shaggar and Lyrian. ”You know what i’ve always wished I had? A running list of the names of all the people living in Osiriana carved in the stone walls of a nearly inaccessible giant pyramid … oh, look!”
Gear-check complete, Javi sneaks about thirty feet into the darkness, straining with his ears for any sounds from within as he waits for the rest of the team to ascend.
Shaggar hits the ground and looks at the remaining pathfinders. "Next?"
Heldar smiles widely - "Let's go friend Shaggar - any chance of circling the pyramid for a view of this truly magnificent monument?" - he adds.
The gnoll blinks, "That should be possible." Shaggar carries the pathfinder up the pyramid via the 'scenic route'.
"Amazing... Simply amazing..." - Heldar marvels at the sight.
When Heldar and Shaggar finally land, Javi looks back, squinting at the pair silhouetted against the bright sunlight behind them. "What ... did you two stop for a bite to eat on the way up?"
Shaggar lifts everyone ultimately to their new and lofty perch, where they are attacked by Javi's witticisms.
Javi, meanwhile, has heard nothing but a deep, deep silence from the sloping entry shaft. Nothing seems to stir inside. The air from the shaft breathes onto your face, chill, and dry, and smelling faintly of myrrh and a less-pleasant smell beneath that.
Everyone takes a few moments to look over their gear, and to nominate the lucky person who is going to go first.
Lyrian will move carefully into the pyramid, keeping a cautious look out for danger at all times. He will stay at least forty feet in front of the main party.
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The group sets out, Lyrian a stone's throw ahead of the group, his otherworldly eyes piercing the gloom ahead easily.
The shaft descends at its gentle angle for... a long time. The square of sunlight that marks your entrance becomes more and more distant behind you, and the air seems thick, and quiet. It would be a bad time to discover that you are claustrophobic, as with every step down the smooth, long tunnel, you become more aware of the press of tons and tons of stone around you in all directions. Even one rock would be enough to crush a man, and there must be... thousands of them, composing the dense bulk of the vast pyramid. Every block is tightly, near-seamlessly joined with its neighbor. And facing you on the walls and the ceiling, the endless script continues, listing name after name of mortals who have long since perished from the earth.
The stone is smooth, dustless beneath your feet. The air inside the pyramid is chill and becomes chiller the farther you go. Heldar's light flickers over the marbled green walls, but struggles to pierce the darkness ahead.
It is three hundred feet into the belly of the pyramid before Lyrian sees anything other than the listing of endless names. The tunnel broadens into a antechamber of sorts, a room thirty by thirty feet on a side, the ceiling rising to thirty as well. The gentle downward grade of the shaft evens out to a flat floor in this square room. An exit on the opposite wall from the one by which you entered leads onward into the pyramid, passing under a large arch marked with yet more hieroglyphics.
The archway's glyphs contain no encircled runes, but they spell a message all the same:
This room also contains four murals, one each wall. Each wall is dedicated to a different one of the pharaohs. Each pharaoh is represented in paint and mosaic, with semi-precious stones and precious metals inlaid into the wall. There are two braziers set at the base of each wall, but they are currently unlit.
Additionally, Lyrian's keen ears detect a faint, rhythmic scuffing from down the continuing hallway. He can just see that it ends in a T-juncture; he sees nothing in that hallway that would be the source of the noise, but it might be around one of the corners.
Lyrian searches the area before and around the archway, looking for traps. He also listens carefully to the rhythmic scuffing sound, trying to identify it.