Round 1
Ami rides Yeen next to his brother. He looks around the room for the source of the noise he heard earlier.
Perception
Mahdi trails after cat and halflings, looking around him warily. When the sounds of nature at war meet his ears, he grips his quarterstaff tightly.
Round 1, Init 6
Pent ambles along with the others, letting them lead the way. He perks up when the sounds start to pick up. "Well, this place is still creepy. Be less so once we're sure we're alone." Pent rubs his chest, then tugs on his ears at the same time.
"I think my hearing's getting more acute. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can hear better..."
Round: 1, Initiative: 4
Weapon Equipped = Guisarme
Conditions = None
Smite Evil = 2/2 (+2 attack, +4 damage, +2 AC)
Lay on Hands = 2/4 (2d6 healing +1d6 if not fatigued)
Guisarme Attack Mods: BAB +4, Str +2, MW +1, Size +1
Guisarme Damage Mods: Str +2, Two handed +1
Spells (caster level 1, concentration +3)
1) Hero's Defiance
”What is that?”
Aldebert 5’ steps and holds his guisarme out toward the rubble.
Round One: All PCs acting.
Mahdi looks ... bemused. "...that's an earth elemental. Water and now earth? Something is afoot here. Hmmf, I suppose I'll need to study the other elemental languages..."
He takes shelter behind the cat, since his protections have somewhat dissipated, and draws his crossbow.
"Be wary, though, they can move beneath the stone and the earth."
Round 1, Init 6
AC = 13
HP = 28/30
Weapon Equipped = Light crossbow
Condition(s) = None
Pent hears Mahdi call out. "An earth elemental... Something... I'll need..." The gnome nods vigorously, and begins to mutter, while scuffling his feet in the dirt.
Suddenly another rumbling sound is heard, this time from the passage to the east that several of you have just passed through. A second, nearly identical, elemental emerges from the rock near Aldebert and comes to a stop next to him.
Aldebert shifts his grip, and his attention, and tries to keep both earth elementals at bay with his pole arm.
"Watch the rear! There are two of these now, and there may be more!"
Round 1, Init 19
Kul pushes his hair out of his face and asks, "Are elementals lawful outsiders? Should I be using the axe?"
He then prepares to swing his falchion at the first elemental to approach:
The elemental lumbers forward, but does not act aggressively as it makes crackling noises. It's rocky shape seems to turn in the direction of the elemental that has just appeared.
Aldebert does not take his AoO.
He watches the two elementals chatting and wonders what they are talking about. He keeps his weapon ready, but does not yet strike.
"Can we talk to these guys? Anyone? They don't seem hostile. At least not yet."
I wonder if we struck too soon upstairs with that watery beast. Maybe it would have left us alone?
The earth elemental senses opposition coming from the other elemental, and free of other commands, lashes out at its brother.
"Er, yeah, no, not quite, but I can take them at their word, if you need me to listen to them and translate. I just can't speak back at them with words like theirs. Only pantomime, and they seem rather daft when it comes to interpreting body movements in the flesh."
As the second elemental rumbles in response, it's rocky appendages flail harmlessly toward the approaching elemental.
The first elemental responds with rumbling in kind, returning the flailing of its counterpart. It's attack slams into it's counterpart solidly. Sounds of cracking rock echo through the shrine's passages while the rubble behind it tumbles slightly.
,
Round Two: All PCs acting.
Round: 2, Initiative: 4
Weapon Equipped = Guisarme
Conditions = None
Smite Evil = 2/2 (+2 attack, +4 damage, +2 AC)
Lay on Hands = 2/4 (2d6 healing +1d6 if not fatigued)
Guisarme Attack Mods: BAB +4, Str +2, MW +1, Size +1
Guisarme Damage Mods: Str +2, Two handed +1
Spells (caster level 1, concentration +3)
1) Hero's Defiance
Aldebert watches as the two creatures fight each other. He stands back and watches.
”Look they're fighting each other! Must be some kind of turf war I guess. Maybe the winner will go away and leave us alone.”
He leans on his guisarme and enjoys the spectacle.
Round 2, Init 6
Pent hears Aldebert calling for interpretation as he walks through the narrow corridor.
"Alright, let's see what we can make of their banter."
Pent scrunches his face in concentration.
"This one here is talking about the nice digs down here, underground, I would assume makes them quite comfortable. Now he's saying he can identify the other based on smell, as long as he gets close. Now he's saying boulders do their own fighting."
The second elemental returns a slamming attack of it's own. As the attack connects, the apparent conversation continues with the sounds of earth and rock.
"Whoa. I'm listening to rock talk. This is amazing." Pent leans against the corridor's wall, and continues to translate.
"So, that other one is saying that he's not smelly, and that he hasn't been here long, and that he came here sudden-like, and that there's more, of fire," Pent winks at Mahdi. "And it's being attacked by another who likes it."
Round 2
Ami watches, confused, then pads Yeen next to his brother.
"What do we do, brother? Why are they fighting?"
Ami delays.
"I'm not really sure Ami. Pent is translating, but I don't have a translator for Pent-speak so I don't really understand what's happening."
"I do know that they're fighting each other and not us, and I know nothing about what they're fighting over, so I say we wait and see."
He looks around.
"We just have to make sure it's not a distraction for some other activity or attack."
Round 2
Kul delays.
"Pent, are they a threat or not?"
"This one here's by my invite- the other one there must be hostile, otherwise mine wouldn't be attacking it to protect us." Pent looks like he's still trying to figure that out, reaching a conclusion quickly to answer Kul.
Mahdi looks briefly skyward. Well, ceiling-ward. Mostly what he feels like doing is going to look for the fire elemental (eeee! A fire elemental!) that Pent's mentioned, but probably he shouldn't run of to do that while they have a... an earth-on-earth fight happening in their rear-guard.
"Can't yours speed it up, then?" Mahdi asks, ever the soul of patience and tact. He raises his crossbow and sights along the stock at the earth elemental... the other one... no, the other one.... the one Pent DIDN'T make. Bored now.
His crossbow bolt isn't so much an attack as it is an exercise in why wizards shouldn't be given high-tension projectile weaponry. The arrow just misses Yeen's lashing tail and ricochets off the wall, coming nowhere close to hitting its intended target.
Mahdi sighs, much put-upon. "There's a fire elemental up ahead that I want to talk to," he complains, "and instead I'm watching Rocky and Rocky II."
He sulkily reloads his crossbow.
The elemental looks up as something flies by it. Though it seems posed to attack, it does not. Instead it's grumbling speech continues.
Round Three All PCs acting.
Ami stares on, wondering what to do.
Round: 3, Initiative: 4
Weapon Equipped = Guisarme
Conditions = None
Smite Evil = 2/2 (+2 attack, +4 damage, +2 AC)
Lay on Hands = 2/4 (2d6 healing +1d6 if not fatigued)
Guisarme Attack Mods: BAB +4, Str +2, MW +1, Size +1
Guisarme Damage Mods: Str +2, Two handed +1
Spells (caster level 1, concentration +3)
1) Hero's Defiance
Aldebert watches Mahdi shoot into the combat and hears Pent’s mostly sane babble. He grabs his guisarme and stands a little straighter and ready for battle.
”OK then I think I get it. One is hostile and the other is not, right Mahdi? So, which one is yours Pent?”
He moves his guisarme from one to the other waiting for instructions… then he strikes!
"Brother we strike! Strike this one...er...I think!"
Round 3, Init 6
The earth elemental continues its assault.
Pent shields his eyes, as rock and dust scatter like micro-constructs. He watches as the strange elemental continues to talk, with no outward sign of hostility. He looks up at his own elemental and yells. "HEY, STOP NOW!!!! THE OTHER ONE ISN'T FIGHTING, ONLY TALKING, SO YOU SHOULD JUST BE TALKING NOW, TOO!!!" When words of common fail to sway the destruction, Pent shakes his head with dawning misunderstanding.
"So, yeah. The rubble once rock was asking why our rock was still rolling punches. My elemental was too focused on the fight to even listen to me. He just said he was here to fight the... nemesis? Yeah, that sounds right."
"Sorry, Maddie. We should be off."
Pent pats the elemental for its service, before it disappears.
Based on Pent's last post, Aldebert would have held his swing, and stood confused and befuddled.
Round 2
Ami stares at Pent, then his brother, then Mahdi...and then slowly backs away, confused.
The series of attacks easily destroys the elemental.
Perception:
(normal)
(low-light)
(normal)
(low-light)
(normal)
"I don't remember the doorway in or around this pile. Any of you remember that? I don't remember that." Pent waits for the others to decide their next steps.
"I'm feeling a little spent for the day. Likely I can clench some healing should we need it. Probably can do that several more times, but I can't bring back the ellie, nor the Sarahtar, so when we get a chance, we should rest. So when we rest, we should decide where else in the countryside we want to visit. I keep thinking on the church basement in Kelmarane. What lies beneath, you remember. That, I remember."
Aldebert takes some time to recover from the battle, and he only hears the tail end of Pent's conversation.
"Yes, we'll go under the church eventually, but not yet. We've things to examine first."
He walks up to the doorway, partially hidden, and clears it away. "This is new to us I think. Is everyone ready to move on? I'd like to see what's behind this door."
Once the party is more or less together, and recovered, he'll open the door.
Ami is about to follow Aldebert when he puts his small hand on his brother's small shoulder.
"Look, brother! Plaster flakes. This is unusual. Mahdi, look! What does that mean."
Ami points to flakes of plaster scattered on the floor with no corresponding cracks visible in the southern wall.
Kul begins clearing rubble.
When given a chance, out of Pent's earshot, Kul says to Mahdi, "I'm not so sure that Pent is our best translator. I need someone else to translate what he says. Is it hard to understand strange languages? Would a wand work?"
Ami jumps off Yeen so he (Ami) can help dig.
He looks at Yeen and says ""Your home."
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"There we go!! Debris can see its way along, a big falchioner is now at your doorstep, escorting you out of our way, so as to permit us passage through barely perceptible portals!!"
Pent looks past Kul for a moment. He sees the waves breaking over the bow. He runs to the side of the great ship, sees the great oars splashing into the waters, and hears the muffled grunts of the rowers. He bounds down the stairs, into the hold, where he produces his gong, and begins to beat it in time with the slow pulls of the sweaty men.
Pent pulls out a gong, and bangs it with a grunt, each and every time Kul bends at the waist to extract a boulder, then shift it away. "Aaaannd, heave!!! Aaaannd, throw!!! Aaaand, heave!!! Aaaannd, throw!!!"
The gnome mimicks the man long enough to break a sweat himself.
Mahdi looks at the rubble mess with interest. So that's what bars him from talking to fire itself, is it?
He gets out his quarterstaff and uses it to help start levering away rocks.
@ Ami: "Hmmm. An excellent question, let's see if we can tell from where they fell..." says Mahdi, examining a few of the plaster flakes and checking the walls.
@ Kul: "Well, the gnome is mad," Mahdi says bluntly with a dismissive shrug (unlike Kul, not bothering to speak quietly or to care if Pent is within hearing distance). "There are wands of such things, yes, but there are many wands we might purchase if we could. Perhaps as Kelmarene rebuilds, it will be more feasible. I speak the tongue of fire already, but not that of the other elementals."
Seeing the door is more an obstacle than originally thought, Aldebert sets his guisarme aside and heaves stone and rubble out of the way with the others.
Clearing the rubble is a difficult process. Even as rocks are moved others roll from above, filling much of the cleared area. Beyond the difficult work of clearing the rock while not getting hurt by rolling debris is the question of where to put all the rock. The surrounding area and hall won't seem to accommodate the debris.
Yeen prowls back and forth around the group, a vigilent twitch to his tail.
At the stroke of the Gong, he jumps, swiping at air near Stunted Tom, and yowls before going back to his prowling once more.
Pent catches the cat out of the corner of his eye, and ducks accordingly. The movement appears to be second nature, as if the gnome were used to swats and tosses. "Alright, Yeen, alright!! Even the gongstriker needs motivation!! Your claws provide plenty, I'll give you that, so I'll just stand over here, out of the rubble, and out of your reach."
"I speak the tongue of fire already, but not that of the other elementals."
Pent lowers his gong for a second. "So you're saying they'd listen better if we used their native tongue? Well, that explains a lot, then."
The gnome has a harder time accentuating the chain gang work, now that more folk are heaving and throwing. He improvises, not letting the gong ring for long, creating a staccato punctuation for each lift and toss.
"I'm saying they don't understand languages other than their native tongues," Mahdi says with an eyeroll. "Even the strongest and most intelligent of the elementals, the elders among their kind, very rarely speak any language but that of their own kind. They're not very bright."
His lecturing is somewhat interrupted by his study of one particular section of wall. "...hang on a moment..."
Poke-prod-poke with his staff, then Mahdi laughs brightly. "Ha! An illusory wall to hide the real door. Clever."
He closes his eyes and feels for the handle of the hidden door.
As Mahdi's hand passes through the wall it appears as if he is reaching for something. Eyes closed he gropes around and soon the look on his face seems to indicate he's found something. The clicking noise that follows clearly indicates that he has indeed found something behind the illusory wall to the south. The sound that follows the clicking does not come from behind the illusion, but rather the two wooden sphinxes that stand in alcoves as they suddenly burst into motion near where others are clearing rubble.
Round One: Yeen (see note) and then all PCs acting accept Pent.
Initiative
(with Yeenoghu)
Round 1
Yeen sneezes and flicks his tail violently at the closest person then begins to Yowl loudly, staring intently in the direction of whatever the Fiery Destroyer of Food is playing with.
Round 1, Init 29
"I believe I found the door," Mahdi has enough time to say, then whips his head around to notice... sphinx statues again?
"--didn't we already burn these?" he cries out, and launches a line of fire along the two of statues.
He takes a small step backwards from the statues.
Round 1
Amiamble speeds to defend his brother from the wooden ones, using his slingstaff as a mighty small club.
He double moves into the room, getting into position to help his brother next round.
As the fire spreads over the sphinxes, they take the full brunt of the flame. Just as the fire begins to burn into their wooden construction they fall to the floor. It's as if some force had reconstructed them, but only to a small fraction of their previous state.
Aldebert picks at one of the bodies with his guisarme.
"I wonder if they rebuild themselves every day or two. Maybe we should scatter the pieces, or burn them, to prevent it happening again."
Aldebert piles up the pieces into a bonfire and looks around.
"Maybe we should wait until we leave, this thing will likely smoke out the whole complex down here."