"There is magic at work here friends" - Heldar warns - "And one strong enough to prevent my link with Javi to take effect and heal him" - the oracle sounds concerned.
Hesitating for just a split second, while evaluating the situation, he decides to move ahead, to cast a protective spell on his halfling companion - "Lets get out of here"
Heldar strides forward confidently, trusting to his faith to protect him from whatever vile magic is at work. He walks to Javi, and calls upon the protection of life itself as he touches the halfling. He feels a brief urge to glance into the heart of the disc, but he ignores it.
Javi-- your head clears. Buy Heldar a drink when you guys get out of here, yeah?
You no longer feel the compelling fascination to stare into the basin of blood.... or to add more of your own to it. Looking down in the bowl is still disquieting, though. You think you hear a disappointed sigh, and in the slick of your own blood you have a brief glimpse of something... big, settling down and closing its eyes again.
Lyrian shivers. "That disc, or bowl, or whatever you want to call it... it's hungry."
Shaggar avoids looking at the bowl and snarls, "What is that thing?"
As Javi seems to return to his normal actions, Heldar moves outside of the room again - "Or whomever once created it" - he retorts to Lyrian, turning his attention back to Javi - "What happened? What did you feel?"
He does try to garner more details by looking at the bowl, if there any distinctive markings or symbols about it that may ring a bell, or perhaps the relation between the numbers and the bowl iself - "It may all even be unrelated... And perhaps 'someone' or 'something' occupied this room?"
"Uh... I'm going to step into the room to examine that thing," Rosalia says, "but maybe someone else should hold my sword...?"
Rosalia divests herself of weaponry before stepping into the room.
Rosalia steps into the room.... her face grows slack and her gaze seems fixed on the basin. She starts stumbling forward towards it, but Javi and Shaggar frogmarch her back out of the room before she can figure out how to make herself bleed into the bowl. Grimacing, Rosalia rubs at her face and shudders. "Okay, that wasn't a good idea. That's-- ugh, that's an awful feeling."
"Yes," Lyrian says grimly. "That thing's stone, right? Maybe we can chuck it down the elevator shaft, if we can't burn it."
Shaggar.... while the fact that the item is compelling people to donate blood to it does seem to be the sort of thing you might expect from the undead, you haven't ever heard of any particular undead that do this or have anything to do with this. However...
...hm. Well, you don't think the material of which the disc is made is any sort of alloy or metal you are very familiar with.
"I think I've seen a metal like that once," Lyrian says slowly, staring at the disc from the safety of the doorway. "In the Blakros Museum, in Absalom. It was that same sort of dull grey-lavender color. They said it was from a rock that had fallen from the sky."
Heldar: well, you're pretty certain it's evil? There are any number of diabolical and otherwise-nasty cults that involve ritual blood collection. Gazing closely as you look for any signs or symbols-- --you do see some very small carved writing on the inner lip of the bowl. It is not a language you know, and it is not the now-familiar hieroglyphics of Osiriani.
Actually, you think it's Aklo-- you've seen a few other instances of it so far, once in the room of 'knowledge' and once on the black obelisk. Do you wish to try and decipher the writing, Heldar? (Or anyone else?)
"I'll try and study it from back here," Rosalia mutters, and then detects magic.
"Uhhmm," Rosalia says, squinting. "I think there's... a couple of spells on this thing. I think there's a suggestion effect... and a minor geas spell... there's other stuff I can't pick up, though."
Shaggar stalks around the bowl, fingering his axe. He looks as if he is debating trying to drive the cursed thing through the floor.
Finally, Javi’s eyes focus and he grunts in pain … looking at his still-bleeding left hand for a second before realizing he’s still adjacent to the bowl.
He takes a reflexive step back, eyes narrowing on it suspiciously, but holding his ground to see if anything further happens. He speaks quietly to his team, though his eyes trace continue to suspiciously search the details of the strange metal. ”A voice in my head. A hungry voice talking about being thirsty. And I should feed him … with my blood.” He pauses to remember. ”LIfe is in the blood, it said.”
He cuts his eyes quickly to Heldar, ”And much appreciated. I owe you … again.” He sheaths his blade as he continues watching the bowl. ”Sky metal, huh? Seems like a good connection to the Stranger.” He shrugs his tiny shoulders, ”Or the Visitor. Guess that reinforces the connection between them and the Pharaoh of Numbers, huh?”
He looks over at the group’s casters, ”It seems to be triggered by proximity. Do we know if it’ll try again?” He looks at the bowl, trying to determine if there’s a way to shut it down or block it.
”I mean, could I toss a blanket on it or something?”
"I doubt a blanket is going to solve our problems," opines Lyrian, mulling over the problem. "But I may have a solution. Slap me if I start to try to bleed again."
Lyrian casts sift to examine the whole area without entering the room.
Javi, it seems to be a metal basin on a stand, with no moving parts. So there's not really much for you to disable, unfortunately. A blanket might make it slightly more complex to start donating blood if you were affected, but it wouldn't likely do much to change the compulsion effects.
Javi, Lyrian, and Rosalia each still feel a very slight impulse to move closer to the bowl, but it's no stronger than a memory of the vague voice of 'did I remember to sharpen my sword last night', and doesn't seem to be able to exert any control over you right now.
Heldar and Shaggar feel unaffected.
The stand/basin could be moved; it's not bolted to the floor or anything.
Lyrian casts his spell and studies the room carefully. He notices that the numbers on the far wall have continued to shift, the overall value of the figures changing. The basin continues to sit there, a little puddle of Javi's blood down in the bottom of the dull grayish-purple metal. Lyrian discovers the same Aklo inscription on the rim of the bowl that Heldar had.
He detects no other traps or anything of significance in the room. The doors do not appear to be trapped. The walls, floor, and ceiling are utterly smooth and featureless glassy black, except for the wall containing the inscribed numbers. You see your reflections, blurry but still identifiable as to who is who.
Lyrian, you do notice (and Heldar too, should have stuck this in when he was examining the basin) that there is a bit of a dull brownish stain of discoloration at the bottom of the basin. It's partly covered by Javi's blood, but it looks like if you added that much blood again to the bowl, you'd have enough blood to fill the basin to the old stain's level.
Rosalia clears her throat. "Smart? Do you know what this is?"
There is no answer to her question.
Shaggar steps closer to the number wall, only casting the odd vengeful glance at the bowl. "Perhaps there is a wrong formula or a code in this text that will do something."
Shaggar: Stupid numbers. You don't know.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Frustrated with the figures, Shaggar debates 'dividing' some of the on-wall equations with his axe.
Rosalia can't read the numbers, but someone takes the time to scribble out to her the basics of the Osiriani numbering system (a base ten, with repeated symbols to indicate multiples of numbers) she grasps it fairly quickly, and squints at the wall from her side of the room.
"I really have no idea," she says after irritably looking over the numbers from the doorway. "I'm more worried about that stupid blood... bowl... thing. Like Javi said, there was a voice... whoever owns that voice, I don't think I want to meet him. Can we break that disc?"
Javi nods along with Rosalia. ”Even as a historical artifact, I can’t think of any good letting people handle this bowl. Broken is better.” Javi scowls, "As long as that voice stays out of my head, anyway."
with the team working on the mystery of the blood bowl, Javi takes back up his (interrupted) circuit of the room, spending some time at the two doors in search of threats and traps ... complete with ear-to-door-pressing for any sounds from beyond.
Heldar stares first at the bowl, with its stain and fresher blood from Javi, then focuses his attention on the numbers on the far wall - "I'm not sure we should even be looking at this.." - he lets the thought hang, while trying to find a deductive thread that will allow him to understand what they are looking at.
Lyrian ponders what he has seen, looking for a recognizable pattern.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"I can guaran-damn-tee we shouldn't be looking at that."
Javi: The stains in the bowl indicate that it was probably repeatedly filled with fluid to the level indicated by the old stain at some point in the past, or that a fluid was allowed to sit in the bowl at that level, long enough to leave the stain. And you're pretty sure-- call it a random hunch-- that the fluid was blood.
Javi studies the doors super-intently for traps. In the end he is forced to the same conclusion that Lyrian was: they are untrapped. He hears nothing behind either door, just a deep, yawning silence.
Lyrian: Lyrian, meanwhile, squints at the numbers. Within a few seconds his mind has grasped that this is not an equation, like the scrolls and walls so far have boasted, but rather one very, very, very large number, with the entire wall being needed to express the value.
After a few more seconds of intent study, watching certain hieroglyphics shift and change and thus alter the value of the entire number, he realizes that the value of the number is decreasing.
Mulling this over, he is relatively sure that this is, essentially, a count-down. That at some point, very, very, very long ago, this wall depicted a very, very, very large number, and that number has been counting down for a long time. Say... thousands of years. Also, it appears to be running down to its zero value. With some quick math, and translating the time increments being marked by the changing hieroglyphs, Lyrian is relatively sure that the 'clock' is going to hit zero sometime within the next 24-48 hours.
The basin sits there, patiently, in case anyone feels like adding to the blood there. Javi's blood is lonely, all by itself. Just, you know, if you felt like it.
"Well, we need to deal with things one at a time - Rosalia, perhaps a simple illusion that will cover the bowl? If we don't 'see' it, maybe it has no effect?" - Heldar questions - "Otherwise, I say we turn it upside down, or drag it out all together. Last chance scenario, run to the next door" - he smiles.
"I don't like the decreasing numbers though..."
”Oh, good,” Javi mutters, lightly pressing his fingers on the southern door, ” … I work best under pressure.”
Javi peeks through whatever crack he can create, bringing his active Wayfinder to bear if necessary.
"It seems the landlords are antsy and plan an eviction process in the relatively near future. Startlingly near, given that this hallowed heap has been sitting here since Aroden was a kid," says Lyrian. "We need to get a move on. Javi, what do you see?"
Javi: Both doors appear to have only deathly silence beyond. Get it? Deathly? Cuz you're in a... a tomb...
The door rasps forward at Javi's touch, granting him a narrow glimpse of the room beyond. It's dark in there, Javi. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
(A little bit of Heldar's light spell does shine in behind you-- you see a decent-sized room, faced with green marble again rather than the obsidian. There are shelves in one corner, of the sort that might hold papyrus scrolls, and you can make out a line of curving stairs that go up to a dais. There's a chair there, maybe?)
To Heldar's suggestion that an illusion spell might cover the bowl, Rosalia arches a brow. "Maybe. Do you have an illusion spell? Because I don't. But I'd think that if covering it is all we are trying to do, a cloak or a bedroll would work just as well. Personally I vote shoving it down the elevator shaft... or at least dumping out the blood."
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Shaggar takes a peek into the room that Javi is viewing to prevent the small thief from become Grue-food.
Shaggar sidles after Javi to peer through the gap. He sees... a room roughly thirty-five by twenty feet, with the far wall being taken up entirely with a sort of dais. There is indeed a chair there, but it's facing away from the door, and seems to be facing some sort of contraption.
There are a number of devices arranged around the room, as well as shelves holding scrolls, and what looks like a writing desk.
Rosalia is leery to step into the room again, as she does not think that the effect on the bowl has been suppressed, so, yes, doing something about the bowl might be handy. Shaggar kicks over the stand and basin and Javi's blood spills out onto the floor, bright red against the glassy obsidian.
"...okay," says Rosalia. Making sure someone else still has her pointy objects, she steps into the room.
Aaaand she beelines for the knocked-over bowl, starting to right it, before Javi and Shaggar and Heldar frogmarch her back out into the hallway again. As soon as she's out, she shudders and looks like she sort of wants to puke.
"--I really hate that thing. He just-- the voice just sounds so reasonable."
Javi looks up over his shoulder at the big gnoll. "What's your guess? I've never seen those devices." He looks about to ask another question when Rosalia's entry interrupts them.
He looks at the bowl, then back at Rosalia. "Other than being completely creeped out, the voice doesn't seem to bother me as much once Heldar helped me resist it." He shrugs at Rosalia, "We could just expose you to it until you can resist it. It's unnerving as hells, but at least you'll be past it."
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Shaggar glances at the objects which make utterly no sense to him. He points a claw at each one, stating loftily and with great authority, "That one is used to mesh reed fibers into papyrus, most likely for all these scrolls. That other device is a separator, used to draw all liquid from a potion - leaving it as a powder. And, of course, that third object is a hippopotamus stretcher."
"The smaller devices and instruments seem to be navigational and astronomical tools. Celestial globes, armillary spheres, quadrants, astrolabes, and equatoria. Why they're here, I can't say."
(Lyrian is in the same boat as Rosalia, regarding current susceptibility to the bowl-thing.)
Rosalia gives Shaggar a look, momentarily distracted from her unease over the bowl. "A hippopotomus stretcher," she repeats extraordinarily deadpan. "....ugh. Fine. Fine, let's get this over with."
She screws up her eyes and walks into the room...
...three more times, with the attendant 'everyone marches her back into the hallway', before she finally seems able to stand it. She looks distinctly rattled by the end of the affair, and spends the time while Javi searches the next room with her face buried into Rook's fur.
Lyrian's turn!
Lyrian dutifully hands off his weapons before walking in again, but this time he seems fine. He gives a shrug, looks to the others, then takes back his bow.
Meanwhile, Javi sidles into the room like a desert breeze... It's still dark inside. Heldar is kind enough to stand at the doorway and give him some light. Javi still doesn't know what the devices in the room are but he knows what they're made of-- shinies. The contraptions appear to be made of gold, silver, and platinum... inlaid with mother of pearl, onyx, and other precious stones. They are highly decorated and embellished, while still presumably being functional for whatever their... function was.
Javi finds no traps in the room, though there are perhaps a thousand tightly-rolled papyrus scrolls stacked on the shelves. Each one is bound with a black-and-gold ribbon; they seem quite well preserved, but then, the room has been cold and sealed for a very long time.
The desk is a desk, only wood, but very handsomely carved. There are several reed brushes resting here and small sealed bottles of ink.
Finally, there is the thing on the dais. A chair faces what appears to be a metal tube, possibly made of brass, that disappears into the wall. The tube is about a foot in diameter at the point where it enters the wall, but it narrows to a smaller point before the chair and seems to have numerous wheels and cogs and levers attached to it. There seems to be a hole you can look into.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Shaggar nods sagely at both Rosalia's comment and Lyrian's analysis, "Yes, it's an armadillary sphere that also stretches hippos... And I think that is a spyglass going into the wall."
The gnoll glances at Heldar, turning serious. "Sayyid, there are many scrolls here. Could you smell them with your mystic senses to discover which are magical or mundane?"
Javi pauses at Rosalia’s reaction to the rough treatment, but nods when she seems over the bowl’s mind-clouding. ”Believe me, but I understand, Rosalia. Better to have him out than in, though.” His grin is back in a flash, ”Plus, we got yer back. What could he possibly do when you have friends like us?”
Without waiting for a reply, he heads into the southern room for his scouting.
The thief nods along with Shaggar, ”I’m not an academic by any stretch, but with what we know of the Stranger and the Pharaoh of Numbers, my gold’s on these being devices for tracking the proximity of that planet and ours. Might be worth seeing if there is magic in them, as well. I wouldn't be too surprised to learn they were connected to the not-ominous-at-all countdown on the wall out there.”
He meanders around the room, poking at interesting-looking odds and ends. ”Ya know, we could have planned much better for getting artifacts out of this place. As it is, I don’t know how we’re going to get anything more than we can carry out that front entrance. I mean, I have a couple of empty sacks, but that’s about it.”
Heldar listens to Rosalia with some concern, as she whispers softly - "As much as it may not comfort you enough, we will be here" - he nods.
The gnoll glances at Heldar, turning serious. "Sayyid, there are many scrolls here. Could you smell them with your mystic senses to discover which are magical or mundane?"
"I will do just that, and I do tend to agree with you Javi - though I am not sure if this contraption is measuring distances or actually some other event. I mean, we cannot deny our very presence in this pyramid is tied to a series of well timed and predicted happenings - it makes perfect sense to see this type of instrument here - I wonder if we can find a clue on how to operate it..." - he adds, conjuring a simple detection spell, enhancing his sensibility to magic, and starting to check the available scrolls, first looking at them from a distance, and then trying to evaluate their contents.
"Well all this stuff is going into a museum!" says Lyrian, shoveling the smallest items into his haversack.
Then he looks into the spyglass.
Rosalia nods slowly at the words of the others, and moves after them into the room, but still seems subdued and keeps a tight hold on Rook. Rook seems to grumpily tolerate this.
Javi circles around the room, poking at shinies. There's a compass (as in, the kind that makes circles, not the kind that points north) that seems to be made of platinum and pointed with a diamond. Filch!
Heldar scans the room for magic... and comes up with numerous sources of magic. After a few rounds of concentrating, he has found several. A dozen scrolls among the many in the room ping with strong magic. Heldar is able to read magic, and so in a minute or so he will be able to tell everyone that the spells on the scrolls are as follows:
Teleport, Contact Other Plane (3 scrolls), Mage's Faithful Hound, Secret Chest, Abyssal Vermin, Agonize, Illusory Wall, Shadow Step, Greater Infernal Healing, Dimensional Anchor
He also detects magic coming from over at the spyglass-like thing, but by the time he's pointed that out, Lyrian has already moved over to it and is peering down into the view-hole.
Shaggar sniffs the 'Hippo Stretcher' closely. "Many of these objects are made of rare materials. I think the smaller ones could sell for a couple thousand gold, just on the material value. Who knows how much they may be worth to a collector or historian?"
Lyrian, naturally, experiments with the levers on the spyglass.
The others watch as Lyrian wordlessly begins to fiddle with the levers of the device...
...wait, could it be....? You think you are actually looking at... the surface of Aucturn. Le gasp!
Lyrian tries a second lever and feels the motion of one of the lenses inside rotating out for another. The image of the world becomes much larger, now filling most of his field of vision. The little wrinkles and lines now become clearer as vast gorges twisting over an alien landscape. Broken mountains and frozen seas dot the terrain, where it can be glimpsed through the thick roiling clouds.
Fascinating! The Society will surely be interested. Lyrian slides the next lever into position. Another lens drops into place inside the metal tubing.
This one has an encircled rune on it.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Spoiler:Congrats, have a rune! 1 point of NL damage as you feel a sudden headache. Make a note on your sheet that you have seen the encircled rune of reckoning.
Lyrian staggers back from the eyepiece. "Oof!" he groans.
"It's the planet Aucturn. I've never seen or heard of views this good! Oh, and one of the encircled runes. I....'m feeling a bit more 'cursey' than before."
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
At Shaggar’s observation, Javi pulls out a sack and follows the group around, dropping in all the artifacts they can carry … starting with the expensive-looking compass.
He pulls up short when Lyrian is cursed. ”Oof. What’s that make? 3, now? Did that crazy old man tell us how many there were?”
"Is the rune still in the eyepiece? I'd like to see Aucturn but not the rune." He says drily.
Lyrian flips up the "rune" lever and ties a small bit of red twine around it to remind him.
"Should be good now," he says, showing Shaggar the controls for near and far viewing of The Stranger.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Shaggar eagerly looks through the spyglass to view a whole new world. After a long moment of silence, the gnoll steps back, "I want one of these." It isn't clear whether he's referring to the spyglass or the planet.
The planet doesn't necessarily look like a nice place to live, though. Then again, Shaggar is from the desert. It takes a lot to qualify as really inhospitable to him.