With Isen under assault, Vincent rushed to aid him.
,
"Looks like if you crunch their bones without breaking the skin they aren't quite so messy," Vincent suggested between swings of his hammer.
"That makes sense," Isen considered, stepping back and unleashing a bolt of Bludgeoning force.
"Good thinking, Vincent. You there, your targets over here!"
Drawing Blunt Arrows, Phai shot at her choosen foe twice more, aiming for what she hoped were body areas vulnerable to blunt trauma.
Vincent worked to close his own wounds even as the creature revitalized itself. After suffering a few more bites and gouges, he deflected a second claw and shoved the creature back, then renewed his own assault.
,
Maintaining her challenge against the final creature, Phai sidestepped away from Vincent so he would be spared the weird pus if this one decided to suicide itself on her spear as well, then shot two more blunt arrows at the last creature.
Isen stepped another step back - there wasn't much point in being close if he was using magic - and threw another blast of power.
Vincent took a moment to wipe the bulk of the slime off of himself, then retrieved his wand to repair the injuries he and Isen had suffered.
"Nasty things... former miners?" Vincent's tattoos skittered around his body for a while, before finding a portion of Vincent's shield arm untouched by the muck and emerging. Axis glittered for a bit as it inspected the ruptured corpses.
After it had explained what it knew to Vincent, it took notice of the large glowing gem and began to whirl about excitedly. "Calm down, Axis. We don't know if it's safe. It's possible it could even be the cause of this mess, and it wouldn't do any good for you to try to incorporate it if you just spread disease everywhere you went after that, would it? Besides, it looks like it was broken."
Grimancing at the gunk covering him, Isen sighed. "What are the chances these were not loaded with whatever plague this place contains. But yes, my guess would be these folks were ones who stayed a little too long, perhaps sneaking down to do some private work while the mine is meant to be close."
"Possible...although I don't think any missing miners were mentioned? But it should be easy enough to find out..."
Phai heads over to one of the creatures remains, trying to deduce their origin and nature...mainly wether they once were regular humans, possible not too long ago.
"If your theory proves right, this could be a very dangerous investation. The way their fluids splashed on attackers would suggest it to be a form of transmission of whatever caused their transformation. Once we are done here, I want to check up on all of us to make sure we're not affected."
Isen frowned. "Interesting," he remarked, although it was not nearly as interesting as whether they had infected him or not. For now, however, he wasn't sure it was wise to try curing it. If this disease was as odd as it seemed it was possible magical curing wouldn't work, or would have an adverse effect.
"Are we ready to continue?" he asked after a moment.
Axis whirled about a moment longer, then vanished into the sprawling combination of tattoo and engraving that was its customary perch.
"All set here. We should be careful as we approach that thing. Even though it looks broken, it may be related to the disease, and the fact that it still glows suggests that it is still at least partially functional. And maybe hot."
"Aside from them probably being disease carriers, I do wonder about their reckless tactics. They don't seem to have a proper hive mind like the enemies we faced at the beginning of our journey - but it would seem they have some way of resurrection available. Fascinating."
Turning her attention to the shattered orb, Phai approaches it, then turns to Vincent again:"It may be. Do you think it is magical or technical in it's origin? Both, perhaps?"
With that, she cast Detect Magic and took another glance.
"This definitely looks like it might be the source, or at least a source, of the illness affecting the miners. It puts off some kind of energy that makes people sick, and the closer and longer you're near it, the worse it gets. Unfortunately, from what I can tell, the moss around this area loves it, and the whole region seems like it depends on that crop to survive.
"Maybe we can find a way to make medicine from the moss, to ward off the stones effects, that way the miners could continue their work without being affected? We could seal this room back up again, but there could be more sealed rooms farther into the stone, and they could stumble upon them just as easily." Vincent paused in his musings and noticed the looks on his companions' faces. "Is it already getting to you two? Perhaps we should move back a ways while we consider our options. My only guess is that my partially constructed anatomy makes me less susceptible to the effects."
"Also, did you notice the shards. It may simply be broken. If we were able to repair it, it might be able to augment the growth of the moss without the localized effect of harming the people nearby."
Blinking a few times, Phai takes a step back from the sphere:"It's the source, alright. Whatever it radiates, the magical power behind the emanation is impressive. It was like staring at the sun."
Forcing herself to look away from the sphere, she turns to Vincent:"We should definitely attempt to repair it, or keep it intact at the least. Aside from the fact that the local population depends on the moss and it revitalizes a dead world, unleashing the power in a destructive impulse could probably level the nearby area."
Moving back, Isen nodded. "It does...seem to be getting to me, yes." After a moment, Isen tried to recall the effects of such radition, and if magic had any effect on it.
"I don't have magics that could fix this properly. One of you maybe?", Phai turns to her comrades. *cough* Mending *cough*
Isen shook his head, looking green around the ears, and looked at Vincent.
"I have some minor magic that might be able to repair the damage, but if it's particularly powerful, it might resist the spell. If we hadn't been cut off from that other power source, I probably could have managed something with a bit more kick, but that doesn't really help us now. If the magic doesn't seem to work, I can pile up some of the larger rocks to at least block up the entrance until we can find a way to repair it permanently.
"For now, let's play this safe." Vincent retrieved the rope from his pack and tied one end around his waist, then handed the other end to Phai. "If something happens to me in there and I can't walk out, pull me out please. Oh, and one more thing, I might be able to help relieve you of the illness you're suffering, but that might simply mask the symptoms and interfere with your diagnosis of the disease. I'll leave that choice to each of you."
"I shall wait until we leave this place," Isen noted, "And purge everything I can once out."
"Sure, lets do this", Phai agreed to the plan, holding on to the rope with 2 hands, ever vigilant with spear and shield in the other pair.
"As for the illness...I would welcome a chance to study it a bit closer, if such an opportunity arises - but I can understand if the two of you want to minimize the effect it could have on you."
"I thought that you might feel that way, which is why I asked first. Let me know if your decision changes. For now though..." Vincent turned to face the broken gem, "let's put this thing back together." The auttaine carefully entered the room, gathered up the fragments from the floor, then approached the gem and attempted a mending.
Vincent looked about the room for any apparent cause for the damage, then returned to the others. "Good news and bad news. The good news, I didn't seem to make it any worse, and I should be able to block it off for now to prevent it from harming people. The bad news is I don't know a spell powerful enough to put the thing back together. We can see if the town has a scroll of something a bit stronger than a simple mending but even that might not be enough. Sometimes, for particularly complex items, you might need multiple different spells, special power sources and possibly even specialized repair equipment and rituals to repair it without interfering with its actual function. For now, I suggest we seal up this room and check the rest of the mine for any other older construction or dangers, then head back to town to see if the baron has ever heard of something like this thing before."
After untying the rope and returning it to his pack, Vincent began gathering large stones from the area to wall off the entrance. Fortunately, the work was made considerably easier due to his ant haul spell.
Isen rested, feeling distinctly unpleasant, and frankly not able to move large rocks when well. "Yes, we'll need to report, and explain, to the Baron. He should know somewhere that might have what we need to mend it."
"Considering there have been no mentions of this type of artefact in the libraries available, I would not bet on ANYONE alive here knowing just what this is. But I concur, we should look further on, to see if there is more danger in this place, before reporting back. We'll have time to contemplate about possibilities to mend the protective hull later.", Phai answered, clearly not happy about their inability to fix the outer shielding with mundane magics.
"Take one of the shards with you - we can try and find out what kind of material they used, at least...then maybe try and craft a new containment unit, rather than fixing this one."
Isen took one more look around the chamber before preparing to head back.
"I'm a bit wary of bringing any of the pieces back to town, in case they carry the sickness as well. The thing seems to give off two different types of energy. The kind that inflicts sickness and pain, which can be blocked by the stone, as it had been before they opened up the chamber, and the kind that causes the moss to grow and flourish, which apparently can permeate the stone and cover a much wider area. If we do create a new containment vessel, or even if we make further attempts to repair the old one, we need to make sure it allows the good energy to escape. If we can learn how it works, it may end up being best to relocate the thing to the baron's keep, where it can be kept safe as well."
"I think it would be save to bring it along - it would be counterintuitive to build a protective shielding for something that poses the same kind of danger as the object it shields one from. But you are the creator, so it's up to you. As for the second type of energy, I had thought that was the Orbs purpose, and the shielding would not interfere with that aspect of it's power...but that was, of course, pure speculation. Albeit it does bring up a good question: What do you think IS the purpose of that orb? The magic is a bit too powerful for it to be a fancy light source-", Phai responded to Vincent.
"At this point I don't think I know enough to speculate about the orb's purpose. I'm pretty sure the purpose of the gates is to enable travel, but they also granted us unusual powers, if only briefly. The growth of the moss may be a beneficial side effect just as the sickness is a negative one. One thing we can say for sure is that we need to find more information."
After a few minutes of walking in silence, Vincent said, "Actually, now that I think more on it, the effect has some similarities with the gate's effect. When we passed through, we were connected to a new source of energy, and it's possible this is what allows the moss to grow in this otherwise inhospitable region. When we came to this world through the broken gate, our connection was severed and attempting to draw on that power resulted in a very unpleasant sickness. I admit, the connection is tenuous at best, but it is possible that the beings that created the gates could have created the orb and the ruins as well. Perhaps they share some aspects of their construction?"
"Have either of you ever heard of anything akin to this on other gated worlds?" Isen asked, trying to think. "If not, then it might have something to do with why this Gate doesn't function as intended, rather than being something related to it."
"Honestly, I'm just grasping around in the dark. I hadn't ever heard of the gates before Phai and I escaped capture through one. To be fair though, I never paid much attention to that sort of thing before it became relevant to me."
Isen sighed. "We'll add it to the pile of things we need to research, then. At this rate I shall be grey in the beard before we finish finding out all the things we need." Looking around, he added, "It seems we are done here. Let us go. I fear that if I have contracted something in this dark hole the sooner it should be treated."
"As said, I think we should give the place a once-over to make sure there's no passages, hidden or otherwise, that we missed. Saves us the trouble of returning before reporting our findings to the Baron - then I'm good to go, I suppose...not like there's any reason to expose ourselves longer than necessary."
"Decent enough. Say, do you remember any Syaandi coming or going recently? We may have reason to believe some could have been trespassing in the mines.", Phai answered, and inquired.
The nature of their find would best be reported directly to the Baron. He was dependent on the quarry for stone, but he probably was more dependent on the moss growing to keep the location hospitable enough to make defending worthwhile in the first place.
Luckily, the complex seemed rather compact, and it should be easy to seal it up and resume mining without breaching this weird ancient ruin again.
"We found some nasty creatures lurking in the area that attacked us. Made quite a mess when you cut them open as you can see. I'm looking forward to an opportunity to get out of this armor and give it a proper cleaning after we report our findings to the baron."
Tired and feeling rather unpleasant still, Isen remained quiet on this occasion.