Round 108
Hinagiku's healing power washes over the group, healing over the rest of Ary's frostbite.
Isilme continues on ahead of the group, gaining another thirty feet down the stairs as she moves, light on her feet, as if there were no ice there at all. The stone walls transition into walls made of solid ice - likely the remains of some ancient glacier lodged into the mountain side.
At the bottom of the stairs is a gruesome metal door that completely blocks the passage leading further downwards. It looks like an amalgam of old weaponry - blades, knives, and axes jut out from the surface. In the center is an open sliding panel - two beady eyes peer ahead from behind the door's peephole, though they cannot see Isilme thanks to her protective magic. At the top of the door is a set of chains that remind you of a drawbridge - obviously the structure is meant to be lowered forcefully onto any unwanted trespassers who attempt to come through the door.
Tricky... thinks Isilme as she spots the door designed to crush those who approach it. Still, this was just the sort of thing Xanderghul lives for, and a bit of illusion could go a long way in simplifying our entrance here.
Whispering softly, Isilme warns the approaching group. "Door is trap, Xanderghul should give them what they want. It will be quite a rush."
Whatever it is behind the doorway, they don't seem to hear Isilme's whisper.
While Valaria works at the trap, Ary stands on edge, and immediately vanishes in a flicker of motes when the trap triggers. She ultimately fails to protect Valaria from the attack, but takes a moment to recover the spent maneuver regardless. She then nods her thanks to Hinagiku as the worst of the damage from the cold heals over.
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At the suggestion, Xanderghul casts an illusion. Though minor and simple, it depicts the party heading down the stairs. All crouch like burglars and tip-toe down the stairwell and towards the area with the peeping eyes.
Round 110
Xanderghul moves slowly down the stairs so that he can see what Isilme is talking about, then intones the words for silent image, his voice echoing down the passage way. A few moments later, he conjures a likeness of the heroes moving down the stairs and towards the trap. As they get into range of it, the door suddenly slams down, easily squishing those within fifteen feet of the doorway. This reveals, to Xanderghul and Isilme at least, an old female wikkawak with a large hunchback and a deformed face. A string of drool hangs from her lip, and she wields a blade in her left hand. Next to her is a large lever, as well as a large wooden wheel with a metal chain running through it, with a crank for pulling the drawbridge back up. She smirks happily to herself as the "heroes" are squished, not even noticing the lack of screaming... but she does notice the dim light coming off Radiance in the distance, Xanderghul standing at the very edge of it. She narrows one of her eyes and her hand darts to the crank.
Initiative!
Initiative Order!
1. Variska (grazed, fatigued)
2. Hinagiku (EE)
3. Ehren (greater longstrider, EE, -3 STR, -1 CON, -2 CHA)
4. Isilme (EE, -1 STR, -3 CHA, -4 CON, Invisible [172])
5. Xanderghul (EE, longstrider, -1 STR, -3 CHA)
6. Drooling Wikkawak, Ayavah (1 NL, -3 STR, -2 CON, -3 CHA)
7. Valaria (Mythic Heroism, Wounded)
8. Ary (EE, longstrider, grazed, Enlarge Person [165])
Combat begins!
Isilme/Xanderghul/Ehren/Valaria/Ary/Hinagiku are up!
With Isilme and Xan's plan going off, Val hurries forward, easily moving over the ice without much trouble.
Ehren's endure elements spell continues to protect him from the cold, but it does not stop the bottoms of his bare feet from sticking to the increasingly icy ground. He tries to keep his feet in constant motion, so as to allay the irksome sensation. When the plan goes into motion he breaks out into a slow but steady jog, covering more ground thanks to his magically enhanced strides.
Carefully aiming for the crank next to the old witch, Isilme focuses and unleashes a torrent of oily substance at it, drenching it in grease. As soon as she completes casting, she moves forward quietly onto the door to make the task more difficult for the crone to winch it back up.
Hinagiku/Ary/Xanderghul are up!
Ary gingerly makes her way down the stairs... unwilling to crush Xanderghul under her considerable bulk should she fail to keep her footing.
Xanderghul and Hinagiku are up!
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Xanderghul continues to move down the staircase, weaving another illusion as he does so. Hoping that his enemy doesn't understand the intricacies of magic, he casts another silent image. He evokes an image beneath and around the trap that the wikkawak sprung. Something bubbling begins to spread out from beneath the trap. Like an ooze, the substance is amorphous and brick-red, and has bits of bone and brain and organ in it. As one watches, a tendril of it reaches up. A second tendril joins with the first, and a third tendril causes it to resolve into the shape of an arm - Ary's arm, in fact.
On the other side, an image that looks strikingly like Valaria begins to pull herself, half-formed torso first, from beneath the crushing trap. More goo spreads out from the trap and wraps around, climbing its walls, developing into human-ish shapes.
Hinagiku is up!
Hinagiku does her best to follow Ary closely, staying in the light of radiance. Like the commander, she walks slowly, counting on her allies to whisper them a warning if and when they need them to rush down.
The hunchbacked wikkawak woman's eyes widen at the sight of Xanderghul's illusion. She grabs the winch and starts to turn the crank, her padded fingers helping her to keep a hold of it despite the slippery grease Isilme conjured onto it. The door starts to creak upwards, despite Isilme's weight on it.
Round 111
Isilme/Xanderghul/Ehren/Valaria/Ary/Hinagiku are up!
Val moves forward again. "We need to get through that door before she can reset the trap. Isilme, can you tell if it's locked?"
With the wikkawak exposed, Val springs into action and charges down the corridor at lightning speed. She leaps straight at their enemy, bringing her dagger down at her throat.
Seeing the wikkawak is about to be distracted by Valaria, Isilme swings around behind her, preparing to release the catch on the crank to cause the trap to fall back to the ground. Doing so should buy time for the others, and perhaps distract her enough to give Val an edge against her as well, she thinks as she steps around cautiously to avoid getting in the crone's way as she reacts to Val.
Now off the stairway, Ehren picks up the pace, running beyond the reach of Radiance's light. Unable to see in the dark, he stops only when he feels the ground change beneath his feet. He could tell that Isilme and Valaria are further ahead, but he opts to wait until they have more light - he finds himself missing his ability to see in the dark.
Ary continues to trundle down the hallway, opting to be careful of overrunning an invisible ally rather than rush headlong into danger. Once she's added her weight to the draw bridge - considerable, thanks to Xanderghul, she moves in close to the crone to ensure she can't simply move out of range with ease.
Xanderghul is up!
Hinagiku moves forwards with the rest, staying in Radiance's light while protecting the rear of the group. Variska is the first to step onto the creaking drawbridge, as Xanderghul sends out a flying disc of shadow at the hunched wikkawak. The shadows curl around her, but she continues to try and pull the door back up. Isilme pulls the catch on the wench, releasing the chain - the drawbridge falls back down to the ground with a thunderous smash.
Valaria comes charging down the cavern shortly after and the tip of her starknife catches and tears a wicked gouge from the enemy's hide. Ary then steps onto the drawbridge, her considerable weight ensuring that the wikkawak will not be able to pull the contraption back up.
Outnumbered and frightened by the abominations oozing out from under the doorway, the wikkawak attempts to flee - the woman is unnaturally quick for her age and malformations, but she is unaware of Isilme's presence...
Setting up behind the old crone was worthwhile for more than just preventing the door from being sealed it seemed. As the wikkawak begins to turn to flee Isilme finds herself facing the completely unaware goblinoid. Stepping slightly to the side she whips her rapier around behind the wikkawak, cracking the flat of the blade on the backs of her knees. As she jumps forward in response, Isilme is prepared sweeping her leg forward to catch the crone's shin with her own, sweeping her left leg out from under her.
Isilme abruptly appears behind the wikkawak as she falls to the ground at her feet. Variska steps up next - her hewing slice opens up the wikkawak's flesh with a chilling snick!
Round 113!
Hinagiku is up!
As soon as the wikkawak woman comes into view, Hinagiku precipitates herself toward her. And, as she blocks one more of her escape routes, she strikes towards her foe's temple.
Hinagiku's charging strike ruthlessly batters the fallen wikkawak woman.
Ehren is up!
Ehren passes the wikkawak and enters the next chamber proper, only marginally paying attention to the ongoing battle. He considers entering the fray, but decides against it; between his depleted strength and his already less-than-spectacular melee capabilities, he would only be getting in everyone's way. Instead he keeps watch for any more incoming enemies, a task made difficult by the dark beyond Radiance's light.
Isilme is up!
With their only enemy on the ground, wrapped in shadow and surrounded by his allies, Xanderghul simply dashes around the battle, across the drawbridge and into the area beyond. Isilme tucks her ioun stone away into her pocket and moves down the hallway into the next room along with him. The pair creep past the edges of Radiance's light, though they are still visible to Ary's keen elven eyes. Squinting around in the darkness with their black-and-white vision, Xanderghul and Isilme find a large icy chamber that contains three large standing stones, similar to the menhir. Crude markings - whorls and scratches that the heroes do not comprehend cover each stone. There are no other living things here, and from her quick lookover of the room, Isilme doesn't see any traps in her immediate vicinity.
Well surrounded and trapped on the ground at this point, the wikkawak woman has little choice but to try and fight. "Druun dar o dech der ghaan grot, molkac," she says, her voice slurred. Great strands of drool drip down from her lips and onto her heaving chest. "Ugmitok dech dhuul or merthaan ac kaagaan or shuugaan an ac oklaagec duun Kalek!"
She lurches to her feet as quickly as she can muster - Variska acts first, her blade going straight through one of the curling shadows. Hinagiku deftly contorts around her attack and lands an impressive strike. As the bugbear lifts her blade to block Valaria's knives, Radiance breezes past their foe, leaving a narrow score that slowly opens into a gory weal. The wikkawak huffs and faces Ary. She puts all of her weight into the swing when one foot slips, the momentum turning her. Her swing ends up nowhere near the giant crusader.
With the party closing in, Val attacks again, wanting to put their foe down so they can keep moving before it's too late. Stoic in demeanor, she knows she would finish off the slowing, aged wikkawak with these blows. The wikkawak woman falls to the ground, unconscious.
Round 114!
Combat ends!
As the heroes move deeper into the chamber, they find that the other end of the chamber is blocked by a large, wooden door.
It isn't trapped.
It isn't locked.
Do you wish to open it?
1. Variska (grazed, fatigued)
2. Hinagiku (EE)
3. Ehren (greater longstrider, EE, -3 STR, -1 CON, -2 CHA)
4. Isilme (EE, -1 STR, -3 CHA, -4 CON) <--- You're up!
5. Xanderghul (EE, longstrider, -1 STR, -3 CHA)
6. Drooling Wikkawak (Entangled [114], Grazed, Prone, 20% Concealment) , Ayavah (1 NL, -3 STR, -2 CON, -3 CHA)
7. Valaria (Mythic Heroism, Wounded)
8. Ary (EE, longstrider, grazed, Enlarge Person [165])
"Well, that could have been worse. Nice work on the illusion Xan, as always." She glances over at the door. "Only one way forward from the looks of it."
Hinagiku finally takes time to look around, her gaze falling for a short moment on the draw bridge, of which she fails to understand the purpose, then the door, and finally, the three stones standing in the middle of the room. Slowly and solemnly the monk approaches them, wondering whether they might be somewhat linked to the menhir above.
Round 117!
Variska nods in agreement with Valaria. "Yes, that was a good illusion. We would have been squished under that trap, otherwise."
Ayavah jogs after them, trying to keep up. Once she is in the chamber, she pauses to catch her breath as she looks around at the large stones in the middle of the room. "I wonder what these things are. Are they like the wardstone upstairs?" she asks.
Xanderghul sighs and shakes his head. "Simple minds are too easy to trick." he says. "I don't have the resources for the really impressive stuff. Except for the six-foot hole I tricked a half-dozen yetis into falling thirty feet down earlier." He grins. "One day I'll create something with which I actually impress myself."
"Can someone get the lever?" Ehren asks once the battle is over, already walking deeper into the room. "I doubt that the wikkawaks will get through that stone anytime soon, but it wouldn't hurt to have another barrier."
The druid initially looks upon the standing stones with interest, before quickly realizing that they are mundane. He looks back at Ayavah and shakes his head. "No, these stones are not connected to the ley lines at all. I doubt that they are even magical. But the marks on them clearly mean something to these wikkawaks. There is no telling what, though."
Once they reach the door, he looks upon its surface carefully, not noticing anything out of the ordinary.
"It's clear."
"That would be quite the illusion, Xanderghul. Would the object be illusory, or just the sense of it being impressive?" she says, poking fun at the mage. While she teases him and awaits a retort, she digs out another of her nearly infinite supply of scrolls of comprehend languages and takes a moment to recite it. The effects of the spell wash over her, and for a moment she feels a small measure of the innate familiarity with language that use to be second nature to her.
Walking over to the stones, she glances at the writing anew, intuiting meaning from the glyphs via the spell she had invoked.
The stones all have the same phrase inscribed into the bottom -
"Accept thy god into your soul, consume the weak, rise above mortality, run above the clouds, and gain immortality."
There are three names inscribed into the tops of the stones - one for each stone. They read "GRITH, SON OF THE MOUNTAIN", "KUUMO OF THE ANCIENT TONGUE", and "NATHRU, THE BEAR-SPEAKER" Under each name numbers have been inscribed in a tally system. Each stone has a different number of tallies - Nathru has the most - it would take too long to count them, but there are thousands total.
"Alright," says Variska, walking over to the wench and winding it until the drawbridge is fully drawn back up. "If it's clear, should we continue, then?"
Round 118
"These stones refer to leaders perhaps? Or Wikkawaks who ascended as Wendigos? Each bears a name and the saying "Accept thy god into your soul, consume the weak, rise above mortality, run above the clouds and gain immortality", which is clearly a reference to the transformation. The names are Grith, Son of the Mountain, Kuumo of the Ancient Tongue and Nathru, the Bear-Speaker. Those sound familiar at all to you, Ehren?" she asks as they begin heading towards the door. Pondering for a moment, Isilme attempts to recall if she herself has heard of any of the names before.
Nope, they don't sound familiar.
"Because we needed more wendigos to worry about other than the giant super one..." Val mutters under her breath. She shakes herself to put the thought of a horrible potential of death by flesh eating deer ghost out of her mind. "Unless there's something else written on them or the stones decide to start talking to Ehren or Daisy again, I don't know if we're going to figure out much more unless we keep moving."
"No, I've never heard those names before," Ehren says with a frown, trying not to contemplate the possibilities Isilme mentioned too deeply. For them at least, it did not matter how many wendigos there were; one was enough to spell doom for all of them. "The titles are certainly telling, though. These wikkawaks must surely have a tamer of bears among them. And the wikkawak that we slew, the one that was speaking in that loathsome tongue... Perhaps these are the names of their priests?"
Dropping that line of thought, he looks to Valaria, regarding her last comment with a nod. There was little point in wasting too much time speculating. "Right."
Without further ado, he opens the door.
Ehren opens the door, revealing a long, stone passage that snakes off into the dark. The walls are covered in hard, icy rime. On either side, more passages branch off. The group moves forward, with Valaria and Isilme at the lead until they reach a fork. To their left, an icy staircase continues down and out of sight. To their right, a gate of wooden spears tied shut with a cord blocks the passage. And straight ahead, the tunnel continues onwards beyond their field of vision.
Round 120
"Right it is then," she says, moving over to sever the cord sealing the gate of spears to the right. Once the gate is open, she takes lead again, placing 50' between her and the remainder of the group.
Round 129
The door opens, revealing a steep flight of icy stairs that leads to a small cave. Isilme and Valaria creep in carefully, and find the cave completely empty of life. All the cave seems to contain are several casks littered carelessly around on the ground. It is a dead end.
"I have a feeling going deeper may be the way to go. Shall we try the stairs next?"