Asher delves into another fit of quiet muttering when Falko asks if there should be a watch? "Out here, all by ourselves? Of no, perfectly f+!~ing safe. Let's just leave our heads pointing at the damn rivers so the beasts won't have to leave the comfort of their homes to snack on us while we sleep. Sounds perfectly damn resonable!"
He quiets down when Johnathan helps with the firewood, and gives him an approving nod. He hands him his bag. "I'll see if I can't help with the boats. Can you do the same with my ammo, in case the rounds are soaked? I'd do the same with your own, too."
He'll then go help Cretien get the boats onto shore and tie them down, if needed. "I'll take first watch. Too wired to sleep just yet, this place reminds me too much of the war. Keep thinking I hear people loading their muskets in the bushes." He says, his eyes dancing from dark shape to dark shape in the night.
"I will," he says, and starts drying off the ammo. Shaking his head slightly at the war veteran's paranoia "Much more likely to get eaten. Especially Falko." He smiles sadly at Falko, as if he misses him already.
The night passes without incident and you wake and eat something but decide to get going.
Fall Day 7
[ooc] Those trained in Knowledge Nature
notice that small animals are acting oddly
Johnathan
You follow the golden markers further inland. Then before you the wall of trees open onto a vast flooded plain. A large stone ziggurat looms at the edge of your rain-obscured vision. Three tiers of aged stone,
their ancient carvings all but dissolved by time, rise up out of the forest to a sixty foot high peak.
Or is it farther? Sudden vertigo strikes you all, and for a moment you can’t tell which is closer—the top tier of the ziggurat, or your own hand. But when you look back down the sensation passes. You spot the remains of a camp site ahead, right beside the ruin’s entrance. Three limp humanoid figures lie amid toppled tents and archaeological supplies.
Just beyond the camp and the remains of the dead, a fifteen foot high mouth yawns open in the stone side of the ziggurat’s first tier. Vines that once hid it have been hacked away, and somewhere inside the ancient ruin, faint light glows.
As they walk, Johnathan keeps staring up at the canopy, peering as if trying to get a look at something moving among the branches. If questioned about it, he just shakes his head.
"This is a bad place," he says softly when he spot the ziggurat.
Johnathan
head.
Johnathan sobs quietly once, holding his head and turning his eyes away from the canopy, staring at the ground.
"Vital vital vital vital vitalvitalvitalvitalvitalvitalvital..."
Johnathan says in the back of the group, mumbling. He whispers, "I want to go home." He'll follow the group, but otherwise won't go near the bodies.
"Yes, I do believe we are due for some intense R&R when we get back. This swamp is in my bones already."
After getting his perspective back to normal, Asher begins to answer Falko reproachfully. "By all the might of Risur man, we have a job to do. Pull yourself tog-" he is interrupted by Johnathan's chanting.
Asher gives a look to the, so far, still solid members of the team (Cretien and Angus), and moves forward.
"I'll check the bodies..." He growls a bit, looking cautiously around him while holding his foreboding, black musket in his hands. "Eyes peeled. I'm expecting missing brains, don't let anything that could cause such a thing sneak up on me, you hear?"
He'll move forward carefully, slowly, and when nearing the bodies he'll use his feet to turn/nudge them into position while eyeballing them, his musket loaded and ready in his hands for if something happens.
We should also look for the spot where the golden seal we were told about was removed it might tell us something Says angus carefully searching the bodies for any clues
"I agree. I don't know much of this alien business, but if I had to guess that artifact is at the heart of all of this." As the others come to help search the bodies, Asher allows himself to stay on overwatch which was his particular specialty anyway. He scans the surrounding area for threats while the other two, who Asher believes had inspired to be brave by taking the first steps, try to learn more from the corpses.
Cretien will step forward, rifle drawn, to look at the nearest body.
Three bodies—two men, one woman, all humans—lie dead in the camp
outside the ziggurat. They died while sitting, eating, and working near
the campfire and a small folding table.
You notice how odd it is that none of the bodies of the dig team
have been cocooned, eaten, or carried off.
Heal DC 10
by the time you have reached them, and so are well decomposed.
More noteworthy, the bodies have already been examined and that their clothes were rifled through.
The camp site has a good amount of mundane gear, including rope,
climbing kits, sunrods, and thieves’ tools. There are also several journals, logs, and other notebooks, most of them carelessly tossed onto the ground. These contain no useful information.
vs DC 10
"no sign of wounds or trauma, the bodies have been decaying in the heat and rain for at least a week," Cretien notes, "And nothing of use in these damned journals."
"I didn't hear Bergeron's story, so I don't know."
"... Neither..." Asher says suspiciously, a growl in his throat.
"Dr. Meredith never claimed their brains had been eaten, but both Bergeron and our contacts with the local constabulary DID. There are no holes in their heads though. Also, all claim that the deaths happened some time ago, longer than just a week. I was under the impression that some time has passed since the crew here had died and we are just the first team to officially investigate it."
Health DC 15
Chretien
Johnathan whispers his reply to Falko, "We have to...it's going to be bad, very very bad, but we have to. Vital, vital to put a stop to this, we must find the clue, the sign. I'm sorry."
"Maybe..." Asher says in response to Falko's concerns about being manipulated. "I got the feeling that Bergeron, while self-important and probably hiding something, was legitimately confused about some of the points I brought up. It is possible that neither are responsible and something else is going on. These people..." he says, gesturing to the corpses. "Might not even be the true dig team, and instead people that came about later. They are either the dig team and very well preserved (though that still doesn't make sense for the lack of missing brains), or are other people entirely. Their things have been gone through, however, so I think it best we act under the assumption that other people could be here."
He looks at the mouth to the ziggurat, at its glowing tunnel. He picks up a few of the sunrods and passes them around. "Yeah... Let's head in." he says. "I'll take the rear and keep eyes behind us." The winds around Asher begins to swirl as his defensive winds enclose him.
Cretien follows Lemond's lead, his rifle ready and eyes scanning his surroundings.
Falko
and then collapsing.
A pattern of seven concentric rings surrounding a central white stone is
prominent above the entrance to the ziggurat. A dot lies on the sixth ring from the interior.
You have to marvel at the Ancients who built this place. While the ziggurat rose sixty feet above the ground, you descend what feels like fifty feet down rough stone stairs, to a room forty feet across, with a twenty foot ceiling adorned carvings.
Stone amulets on golden chains hang from the carved mouths of jaguars and dragons all along the ceiling. Two more bodies lie sprawled on the floor of this entry room, a man and a halfling woman. A toppled wooden tripod leans against one wall near the base of the stairs, and a cracked amber lantern on top of it emits dim but endless magical light. The light gleams off metal in alcoves along the walls, and a second glance reveals three tusked humanoid faces, their eyes closed, blindly watching all who
enter.
When you glance back, you realize the stairs you came down were only ten
feet long.
GM Rolls
FALKO
Effect –4 penalty on Will saves and
Charisma-based skill checks; cannot
receive benefit from or attempt the
Aid Another action; cannot willingly
accept aid (including healing) from
another creature unless he makes a
Will save against his insanity’s DC.
Description
The paranoid character is convinced that the world and all
that dwell within it are out to get him. Paranoid characters are
typically argumentative or introverted.
A Knowledge (Religion) check (DC 15)
as matching the star system. The sixth ring would correspond with
Apet.
Johnathan takes a deep breath, not looking back at the stairs, then lets it out slowly, whispering.
"This place is a crossroads, the priests carry their gifts, the guests pass through. Something is here."
He seems very small, more frail than usual, hugging himself and walking gingerly as if his next step might wake a sleeping beast.
vs DC 15
***ABOVE***
"These bodies have tumor-like bulges... Probably what killed them, not missing brains."
***ENTRANCE***
"This symbol... it is a diagram of our star system. The one with the dot denotes Apet."
Johnathan murmurs in reply to Cretien, Apet... the distant plane of duststorms, endless in time, infinite...don't look into it."
A note nailed to the wall reads, in Xambria’s hand-writing, “The
mummies are worth more than all your tuition. Don’t touch them.”
Asher eyes the mummified orcs as they pass them, keeping watch behind them as they go, until Falko speaks to him.
"You're rattled, constable. As are some of the rest of you." he says, looking at Johnathan. "With you lot chattering your teeth with peeled eyes on the path in front of us, you'll do no good as a rear guard. I can still pull my eyes away from the unknown ahead to make sure nothing comes at us from behind. Trust me to this."
"It's all a little strange in here, let's keep calm. We are all rational adults and officers of the law here."
"Constable." Asher says, looking to Angus. "If you could. Let's move forward before we all get too jittery to do our jobs."
Angus leads the party forward down the passageway, you seem to lose track of time and distance you think you may have walked 400 feet but it may have been only 45. Eventually, you spot a lank mummy wearing a gold necklace. The inert corpse hangs from a wooden spear that has impaled it from behind.
As Falko approaches the mummy, Johnathan whispers harshly. "The necklace, it's the necklace, the necklaces." He backs up to Asher's side, unslinging his musket from his back and loading it.
"That weapon is loaded now." Asher says as Johnathan gets his firearm ready. "Remember what I said about how to hold it properly."
If nothing happens immediately after, Johnathan will then cast Mage Armor.
Falko
"Necklaces? What about them, Jon?"