"We aren't afraid of the undead." says Date Palm stoically. "Now if that is all, you are free to leave." he says with a shrug, moving back to where he was sitting when you burst in. The two men follow and you see that you apparently interrupted a card game.
Ankhef stares at them in total disbelief before speaking.
"Have you counted how many undead are out there rampaging!?! Do you have any idea what you've helped do?!?"
Ankhef is shouting by the end of this, furious at them.
Seherab shakes his head. "This is a waste of time. There might be more undead moving through the area as we speak. Let's get back out there and keep searching. Maybe our dragon friend has found something." He makes sure to say this last part loud enough that the men can hear.
Date Palm sends down his cards as his face becomes stony. He stands up, roughly shoving his chair back as the other reach for their maces. "You better listen to your friend, dwarf. We have only done what the Church allowed us to do and we have a right to protect our tomb, so it is best if you march yourself out that front door." he says coldly as he punctuates the last word by slamming a dagger down onto the table with the point firmly directed at Ankhef.
"Do not threaten my brother. We're just here to help."
"Too late dwarf. The threat has been leveled." he says, turning his icy gaze onto Hogan as he picks up the dagger and slams it into the table, point first. "You have tried my patience for the last time. Either get your bumbling, drunk asses out of our sight or we will gouge your eyes from your head after we make you watch us slit the throats of each of your 'brothers'." he says, sarcastically mentioning the last word.
The two men that were sitting, immediately pull their maces back out and roughly stand up, knocking the chairs to the side of the room.
Hogan looks to his brothers before drawing his hammer.
Teos frowns at the growing violence. Find peace? Fighting hurts all. he signs. His body his weapon, he simply focuses on breathing evenly, allowing events to unfold in the same way that one breath follows another.
Dwizzle raises his hands in alarm.
"Oh no! Now you did it! You taunted a dwarf!"
Scrambling out of Hogan's way, Dwizzle twists his face and shakes his head like a disproving parent scolding a child for touching a hot kettle.
"Let's all just calm down and we'll get out of here. The compass is useless to us now, we won't be able to repair it." Seherab turns to leave, hoping the others will follow. He calls back, "We'll leave you to your tomb, but if the undead come crawling in don't say we didn't warn you."
As Seherab pulls the group from the building, seemingly by dwarven willpower, the men shrug and let the door swing shut as they resume their seats and pick up their cards.
It seems that the undead have been mostly handled by your trap and daring demeanor, but you think that you have only hours until you cross the path of a wandering pack of ghouls in the area.
"Ok, let's hope we have better luck with the next compass. We have to, right?"
"I can't imagine what could be worse than having been disabled and sold for parts by a group of thugs..."
As you move through the Gulla Market, a glint catches the eye of Dwizzle and he quickly scans the area, finding a few magical auras. With expert dexterity, Seherab deftly pulls free a brick, revealing a small opening marked with a copper coin.
Inside, he pulls free a Catching Cloak wrapped around two Potions of Cure Moderate Wounds and a Robe of Needles.
---
Moving to the next area, the group sees that it is the Pyramid of Arithmetic Bliss. Despite its name, this “pyramid” is nothing of the sort. The building’s unique trapezoidal roof stands out against the necropolis’s skyline, but the structure was merely the headquarters of an old stonemasons’ guild. After the Plague of Madness, the Pharasmins repurposed the site into a resting place for Wati’s architects, engineers, and mathematicians—most of whom rose as undead in the ka pulse.
Most of the ceilings in the “pyramid” are 10 feet high, supported by 3-foot-thick masonry walls.
In front of you, you see a long-neglected garden and thirty-foot-tall obelisks decorate this broad, walled-in courtyard. Several squat outbuildings stand near the western wall, but a sprawling sandstone building with a steeply pitched pyramidal roof and elaborate reliefs dominates the property.
The walls of the Pyramid of Arithmetic Bliss are inscribed with Ancient Osiriani hieroglyphs detailing many of the great works and techniques of the bygone stonemasons’ guild. The obelisks were erected after the building’s consecration as a tomb, and list the names of the most esteemed dead interred within in Ancient Osiriani. Uncared for, the garden went wild long ago, its more exotic plants now replaced with heartier desert scrub. The outbuildings serve as lesser tombs that once held the servants, assistants, and apprentices of those buried within the larger tomb, but their occupants were animated by the ka pulse and the buildings are now empty.
In front of you, you seen the entryway's doors: gilded and firmly closed.
Teos looks curious. Stone makers. Many secret paths, many traps. Maybe? He looks about, cautiously, for signs of movement or anything obviously of interest.
Ankhef carefully examines the gilding on the doors.
"At least anything in here is unlikely to have been broken recently."
The doors appear to be unlocked, but you don't really notice anything else.
Ankhef shrugs "It's unlocked."
Hogan will open the unlocked doors.
Dwizzle stands on his toes, looking over Seherab's shoulder for anything dangerous he or his allies are about to step into.
Seherab nods. "A place like this, filled with so many mathematicians and inventors... seems like a good site for another compass, I'd say."
Before the doors are opened, Seherab checks them for traps and then lets Hogan lead the way.
Deep niches line the walls to either side of this wide passage, dividing blocks of detailed hieroglyphs. Scrolls and loose bits of parchment lie scattered across the floor.
The Pyramid’s entryway serves as an enormous filing system for the guild’s collected wisdom, readily available to all of its members.
In front of you, you see two chattering dwarves. They appear to be wrestling over a scroll, but something is off. You can partially see through their bodies and the scroll as well! As the slightly stockier one wrests control, he rips open the scroll and begins to feverishly point at various markings, but none of you can seem to make out what either creature is saying.
Additionally, it appears that they are completely ignoring your presence despite the not-so-subtle entrance. They appear to be completely wrapped up in whatever they are arguing about.
describe the movement of the heavens were buried in the Pyramid upon their deaths.
Ankhef begins to babble "Then the complementary angle..."
but quickly snaps out of it.
"Allips!" Ankhef screams out in panic.
Teos grunts in acknowledgment at Ankhef's warning. He moves to interpose his body between Ankhef and the creatures.
Seeing another group of dwarves, Dwizzle's eyes widen and seem to stop blinking. He leans forward, completely absorbed in their conversation and his thoughts about how he must befriend them as soon as they are done conversing.
As soon as they are done... mustn't interrupt them... dwarves don't like to be interrupted...
Teos moves forward to intercept the allips, but the creatures ignore the loud dwarves and continue to babble in an unintelligible language. They have discarded the ghastly scroll and have moved to heavy-looking tome.
"Ah! I remember the tale about the dwarven team who helped revolutionize Osirian geometry... but that's a tale for another time. The short story is that they were buried in the Pyramid and should be dead..."
Seherab pulls out his magical short sword and prepares for the worst.
Teos wanders over and picks up the scroll. He assumes it is charged with some evil magic so he attempts not to look at it directly, studiously staring at the wall instead.
Hogan draws his hammer as he hears the story.
Dwizzle continues to sway, babbling in broken Dwarven to himself as he observes.
Teos grabs the scroll, but it appears that the vellum is merely a substantiation of the two allip-dwarves and it immediately crumbles into void ether and dissipates upon contact with the devout man's calloused hands.
The allip-dwarves still continue to ignore the other dwarves and gnome as they furious fight over which page of the tome to look at.
Hogan will move up to one and smash it with his hammer.
"Cease the chattering!"
Hogan wildly swings his earthbreaker through the slightly smaller dwarf and the creatures recoils in pain as his weapon passes through the incorporeal ghost.
The two creatures turn angrily to the beclad dwarf and babble even louder now!
Initiative:
+2 while Underground.
Initiative:
1st: Dwizzle
2nd: Allips (Big); (Short) @ 9
3rd: Seherab; Hogan; Teos; Ankhef
The allips turn angrily as Dwizzle remains fascinated and they shove their hands deep into Hogan's body.
As they remove their hands, they greedily stuff what appears to ghastly scrolls into their incorporeal knapsacks. Hogan blinks a few times and suddenly is having trouble remembering why he is even here in the first place.
As they shove the scrolls into their bags, the allips look reinvigorated as if pulling knowledge from Hogan helped to bolster their undeath.
Initiative:
1st: Dwizzle
2nd: Allips (Big) @ +5; (Short) @ 4
3rd: Seherab; Hogan; Teos; Ankhef
Pending
Hogan - Two Will Saves against Supernatural
Ankhef swirls his hands as the spirits surrounding him flee momentarily and try and take control of the Allips.
Ankhef sends out a burst of holy energy to try and lock down the allip-dwarves, but their mental fortitude seems to be more powerful than Ankhef's.
Initiative:
1st: Dwizzle
2nd: Allips (Big) @ +5; (Short) @ 4
3rd: Seherab; Hogan; Teos; Ankhef
Pending
Hogan - Two Will Saves against Supernatural
Dwizzle smacks his lips and mumbles to himself lazily.
"Huh... imagine that? All that knowledge stored up in Hogan for our new friends... they're so interesting!"
It would seem even when fascinated by supernatural foes, Dwizzle's mouth continues to run like a well-oiled clock.
"Damn it, someone snap Dwizzle out of it!" Seherab shouts as he studies one of the allips and stabs at it.
Hogan keeps smashing.
Teos frowns at the perhaps unnecessary violence. Still, the fight against the restless spirits appears unavoidable at this point. He joins the melee, swinging fists both magical and fiery at the ghosts.
Dwizzle sways dreamily, smiling at the allips.
"No... no... don't hurt them. They're so... clever. Hey -- someone snap Dwizzle out of it! Maybe I'll snap him out... Hey Dwiz! What? Snap out of it! Oh snap!"
The gnome's beard glistens with drool as he continues to babble on about how the cleverness of an allip.
The dwarves swarm the allip-dwarves, causing a rather raucous dwarf party in the middle of the room as Dwizzle looks onward, feeling as if he has reached rapture due to the increasing number of dwarves in his presence.
Only Teos is actually able to strike a dwarf-allip successfully as Hogan greedily grabs back one of the ghastly scrolls from the taller dwarf-allip. Wincing, he shoves it into his mouth and feels as if he can remember things again, but wait... (what was it he was forgetting?)!
--
The dwarves greedily plunge their hands into Hogan's noggin once more and pull out ghastly tomes this time as they eagerly try to stuff it into their satchels.
Initiative:
1st: Dwizzle
2nd: Allips (Big) @ +10; (Short) @ 6
3rd: Seherab; Hogan; Teos; Ankhef
Status
Hogan (2 Wisdom Damage)
Pending
Hogan - Two Will Saves against Supernatural with -1 for Wisdom Damage
Ankhef steps over and shakes Dwizzle out of it.
Hogan shakes off the allip's second attempt to pull tomes from his head. He swings his hammer again.
"Don't hurt them? They're trying to... well, do something to Hogan!" Seherab stabs in frustration at the restless spirits.