|
Brady stumbles out, his elbow in Tad's hand, his own hands still wrapped around the disk. Clearly out of sorts, he hands off the disk to anyone who will take it, then begins explaining about the other things he saw in there. Intending to go back in, he sees everyone staring at his eyes. "What? What's wrong?"
The darkness inside the room, suddenly starts to expand out into the hallway, as if whatever was holding it at bay has suddenly been released! Dru, Faliana, Monty, and Dale quickly start to back away, but are not fast enough, and are soon bathed in darkness, all of them unable to see anything! You hear a startled cry from Arletta as well, as the darkness starts to flow into the other room as well.
Only the golems constant pounding seems unaffected by the loss of light.
|
Standing at the edge of the darkness, right before Brady's screams, Faliana tenses and stares at a blank space tracking it down the hall and into the other room. She starts to call out to Tad and Brady, "Be care...", before blanching in fear. After a second she seems to breath easier, before giving a roar of pain and crunching up and clutching one eye.
After a few seconds of rocking back and forth, she tands up breathing heavily for a moment, hand resting on the pendant. "That was... unexpected. I think there was a spirit here, or maybe a haunt though I've never seen a haunt run before... Is everyone okay?"
Turned away from the darkness to face the group, Faliana gives a yelp as she gets encased in the darkness. "Oh shit! It wasn't over. I think I've been blinded... Don't worry though everything else seems okay, I just can't see... But then I can't see the serpent monster thing so I might be able fish those discs out of the crack safely! Can someone guide me over there?"
____________
|
|
Dale's eyes watch the darkness come closer to the group, even as he backs away and Brady follows. "Hey Brady, I think that thing is making the darkness, lets try getting it in a bag or something? Its going to be sure hard to study that way though.. hrm.."
Hearing Dale's voice and a better explanation for the darkness. Faliana releases a rush of air. Choking back a few tears of relief, she calls out voice wavering slightly, "So this is not just me? Oh, merciful Ashava, thank goodness! ...But how are we going to handle something that creates such a large area of black? Can we try the bag method?"
A few moments later there's the sound of metal clinking hard against stone and a muffled "Ow." folloed by a few choice curses. After a second Fali clears her throat and in a small voice asks, "Can someone, uh, help guide me out of here?"
|
|
Brady shuffles his backpack off his shoulder and kneels next to it with the stone to dig out his blanket. He wraps the disk in the blanket in the hopes that the darkness would be snuffed. "Sorry everyone, lots of unexpected things happening with this. Hopefully a good wrap in a blanket will help out for the time being."
Wrapping the disc up does indeed block the darkness effect, as if it were radiating off of it. Suddenly everyone is able to see clearly once more, none of you the worse for wear... well, other then Brady's eyes, which look like he's blown a blood vessel in both. There is almost more red then white in them.
With that immediate problem dealt with, the rest of the items in the storage room can finally be examined.
The two animal figurines that Brady mentioned, are both carved from some sort of black stone, which Dale will quickly identify as onyx. One depicts a raptor-type bird in flight, the other a small weasel-like animal raised up on its hind legs. Neither of them radiate magic under Tad's divination magic.
The small metal rod he found on the lower shelf does though. It is very slender, just over a foot in length, and surprisingly made entirely of mithril.
The final item Dale will recognize as an orrery, but it is in very poor condition, the long years were not kind to it at all. All the delicate gears and levers no longer function, and a few of the parts are missing. You're not sure it would even survive getting moved.
|
|
Faliana, glad to be able to see again, walks into the room rubbing her arm. "I'm glad what ever spirit was floating around here, didn't seem to stick around... I've never been very good at handling haunts. But these statues look interesting, I wonder if it had any importance besides being decorative?"
Glancing at Tad, focusing on one side of the room, Faliana moves behind the small grippli and sets her focus on the other side of the room running her mind through the loops, hoops, and ticks needed to manifest her magical senses.
____________
Faliana will notice nothing that Tad hadn't already pointed out... the only magical emanations from the storeroom came from the small mithral dowel, and the disc, now wrapped up.
The two statues you think are just cheap decoration.
|
Dale quickly blocks out the pounding on the door as interesting items come into view after Brady snuffs the darkness "Oh look at these things! Magical? Some yes? Ooo look at this orrey! Its a mechanical model of the solar system, or of just the sun, earth, and moon, used to represent their relative positions and motions. Its too bad its in such bad shape, but I bet the researchers would love to have a look at it."
Dale then moves along through the other items, cursing his lack of ability to see magical auras.. oh wait! "If we think it could be useful, I can mix up an identify extract for that mithril rod there and anything else we've not yet been able to understand?"
As the others ponder that he takes a look at the onyx statues that Faliana tosses aside. But isn't able to recognize much.
Alas, not unlike the pendant earlier, Tad can determine little about the delicate mithril bar beyond its magical nature.
It is easy enough to take the newly found disc into the next room. The golem continues to pound on the door, ignoring you... the cracks starting to get bigger. Arletta watches cautiously, though has no insights to give.
And of course, as soon as you unwrap it, the room is bathed in darkness once more... only Brady and Tad able to see at all... and the later unable to reach any of the slots... never mind how deceptively heavy it is.
Brady will quickly realize that the slots on the wall are all the exact same size, and the disc could fit into any of them.
|
|
When the darkness starts appearing from under the blanket, Brady immediately folds the blanket over again before making any attempt to put the disc in place. With the room still lit and visible, he points to the 4 positions, each seemingly corresponding to the Cyclopean words.
"Moon, Void, Sun, Stars. This has got to be void, right?" He carries it over to the wall near that position, and sets it down nearby, leaning it against the wall still wrapped up, waiting for the others to chime in.
"If this is void, then the other three must correspond to the other words, right? Arletta... this disc carries a magical darkness with it. Does yours do anything special that you've noticed? Anything that would make you think of Sun, Moon, or Stars?"
"The others all glowed." She says, thoughtfully, the puzzle seemingly making her forget her distrust of the half-orc for a moment. "Though one seemed to flicker a bit... we thought perhaps its power was fading."
She hesitates a moment, then reaches into her satchel, and for the first time, removes the disc she'd been holding therein.
It is apparently just as unusually heavy as the other, as she has to exert herself to lift it up. It looks no different then the one Brady recovered either, just a simple stone circle... but this one seems to be glowing... the light emanating off of it, pushing back whatever shadows your own light sources had not already eliminated.
"I do not know... I never really got to see them all together... before they were..." She frowns slightly, before continuing. "... put somewhere safe."
She can't stop herself from glancing towards the door where the Monolith pounds, a worried look on her face.
|
|
Monty nods.
I think your logic is sound... Brady, I know you can't reach up there, and I won't be able to see, so I'll carry it up and you shout instructions to me okay? It'll take a minute, but better than nothing...
He takes a deep breath as he walks into the darkness and feels around for the disk to carry up.
Ooookay Monty my boy, just like training with a blindfold on while master hits you upside the head with a stick, just feeeeel your way through it... never did get the hang of fighting blind...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
|
|
"Yes, void seems like a straight away conclusion here! Lets give it a go and see what happens!" Dale gives a sideways glance at the disk Arletta finally pulls out of her bag.
"We'll get through this Arletta, don't you fret! We are quite the experienced team here you should know. Why, we trekked all the way into the jungle and back, and not one of us died to the plague! Pretty amazing really." He rubs the poc marks on this arm thoughtfully.
If I implied otherwise, that was unintentional! Only the areas on the far left of the map that are open to the sky, show significant wear (the area where the archaeologists are, the balcony with the orb, and where the tents are set up.
You are able, to get the darkness stone out, and insert it into the slot you think is associated with the void. The lack of light, its weight, and the fact the slots are eight feet off the ground, forcing you to lift them well over your head to place, makes it take a bit of effort to get them in place.
But once you do, it slides in with a soft click. Unfortunately, slotting it there, does not stop it from projecting its area of darkness out into the room. Only Brady and Tad are able to see the final result... but neither of them note anything happen at all in response.
|
|
After slotting the stone in place, Brady attempts to throw his blanket up high enough to cover the disc at least until they have the other three in place, so the rest can see while they work.
"Well, we have officially reached the very uncomfortable part of the evening. Nothing happened when we slotted that in, so nothing's probably going to happen until we get all four in. We might as well leave Arletta's out until we have the other two, because it's all moot if we don't get those."
"So, anybody have ideas? I'm pretty committed to not staring into that crack again."
|
|
As Tad mentions letting the monolith break through the wall, Faliana stops mid conversation with Arleta and seems to do a whip about to face him, her face a warzone between two strong personalities. After a second or so though, Fritannia's horrified look wins out. "Abbadon no! In no way am I going to be a proponent to letting a snake demon-devil-evil thing that can control people with a glance possibly go free. Not unless it's the only Calistra-damned way of sealing it again."
After a second to breathe and calm down, she continues in a calmer voice. "I agree we should check the rest of the place to see if there is anything that can help us, but if there is not, I say we use the void disk and try scooping them out ourselves. I'll even do it myself and give you permission to knock me out or tie me up if it doesn't work properly." She p[ause for a second, that is assuming that the disks are in a place we could possibly retrieve them from. Hey, Orcish man and Mr. I-have-way-too-much-hair. How close were they to the crack, could we possibly reach in and grab them?"[/b]
Neither Brady, nor Dale, saw either disc when they looked.
The crack would have been barely high enough to fit the discs through... a couple of inches at most... and four feet off the ground and a few feet deep. You certainly could not reach through physically.
If the discs are in there... where they would have fallen, the chances of hauling them out from this side, are slim... an that's if you had a lot of time and some means of reaching them and there wasn't a creature in there that could interfere in any number of ways.
The disc is indeed emitting light. Though it does not appear to be colored in any noticeable way. It seems to be roughly the same brightness as the light spell Brady can summon up with his wayfinder.
After some discussion, and experimentation, you decide to move on, hoping to perhaps find something that will help in one of the other unexplored rooms. A hope constantly punctuated by the pounding of metal on stone, letting you know just how little time you have to find it, if it exists!
As you head back around, Arletta stops, not wanting to go further down that way, for fear of drawing the attention of Juliet and the other archaeologists, though you suspect it might be more the fact that the crack is down there, at the corner.
You quickly find yourselves back at that very intersection. The broken doorway behind you, through which you can see the Pathfinder archaeologists working... the large alcove to your left, with the fountain of clear water beneath the carving of the cyclops breaking free of clutching tentacles... the pounding of the Azlanti monolith echoing down the hallway to your right... and stretching ahead of you, a wide hallway, lined with the giant stone doors, two on the left and third at the far end, just visible through the dimly lit corridor.
And then the crack, right there on the corner, outlined by bright light shining from whatever is on the other side.
|
|
Standing outside of the 'area of dark,' there was no way that she was going to reprise her inability to navigate in pitch black, Faliana rests control back from Fritannia. When all three of them are together, she gives Tad, Brady, and Dale a bow. "I'm sorry about Fritannia's outburst, she doesn't like the idea of something that can mess with someone's head like child's play, and quite frankly so do I.
" Not to mention her dislike of possible betrayal. ....they're just going to hurt you dearie...
Shaking her head as if to dispel something, Faliana looks at everyone. "Well, time's awasting! Let's get going; I say we try the closest door on the far side from the crack!"
__________________