Kyra is more than happy to cure Tal, but is looking at Seoni with worry, and acts first on the sorceress-- especially when Tal's words suggest she may be poisoned.
"Saki, watch that creature to be sure it doesn't stir to harm us again!" she asks the servant of Shelyn, while she hurriedly unclasps her cloak and drapes it around the sorceress's body. "Here, there are blessings woven into the cloth that may help you fight the creature's venom," she says.
|
Saki nods to Kyra's request, but it's nevertheless clear that her attention is focused on Seoni. She fumbles around in her backpack, drawing out a tough leather bag portioned with various medical supplies. The paladin barely even pauses to ask for Seoni's permission before she begins applying a pressure bandage around the wound.
Only once she's satisfied with her handiwork does Saki stand over the strange spider-woman with glaive at the ready.
You need two consecutive saves for a cure. One more, please!
|
|
"You're definition of evil and mine are greatly different Paladin," Seoni hisses in pain as she wobbles from the poison coursing through her veins.
[dice=Fort]1d20+1
She takes a five foot step back and begins defensively casting Scorching Ray.
[dice=Ranged Touch.]1d20+4
[dice=Fire]4d6
And the previous roll that's two right?
Um, yup! Back to the game, then!
Kyra watches Seoni for a few moments, but sees that she seems to have thrown off the malady. She takes her cloak back, and lifts her wand again.
She takes Tal's wand as well, heals him, then looks at the wretched creature they have dropped.
"We have not sought to trap you here," she says, unable to help a stab of pity. "I serve the light, and I would that no-body is trapped in a pit like this. Talk to us. Tell us your situation."
Looking around the room, you find the ruins of an enormous machine. They must be ancient beyond memory, and appear complex beyond reckoning. There is something both graceful and sinister in the strange pipes, dials and pistons.
|
|
"Strange," Saki murmurs, looking around the machine with some trepidation. "Do you suppose this was built by the elven creator of this place...? I wonder what it's for..."
She, however, has little interest in messing around with strange and ancient contraptions, and so the paladin will quietly keep a watch out at the doorway until the others see fit to leave.
"How strange," Kyra murmurs. "If I were an artist, I would mark down the shape of this mechanism for the Society's minds to study. But we have an evil to confront, right now."
She nods at Tal's words. "There were other doors from the main hallway, but let us return to where we cornered that fish. Perhaps it has, um... swum out... and we can reach the door with no difficulty."
She leads back to the fish-hall.
Having traipsed back to the place where you last saw the floating "fish", you now find an empty corridor with a closed door at its end.
Finding no traps on the door, Talhaearn opens it by pressing his palm on the central disc. As soon as the portal swings aside, a powerful jet of water bursts forth, narrowly missing the rogue. It is the weird tentacled fish, which has just spat a prodigious stream of water at you.
The 'fish' is trapped between you and the rubble of a cave-in that seems to have buried a machine much like the one in the room you just left.
<- vs. Touch AC
Anyone, go!
"--the hell?" Kyra yelps, as she pulls back from the water splash.
"...wait. The fish... got through the door? ... I suppose it could have bumped into that disc..."
She peers cautiously around the edge of the door. "More rubble. Worth getting wet over?"
|
|
Saki blinks in confusion at the situation. "We're back to things not making any sense," she sighs lightly. "But perhaps we can at least try to calm this... fish down."
The paladin hands her glaive off to someone else to hold, and visibly raises her hands in the air, trying to seem as nonthreatening as possible. She enters the room and, still keeping her hands visible, bows to the fish. Then Saki steps back, mentally preparing for her attempts at communication to get met with a jet of water to the face as well.
The creature does not immediately attack, but something about the way it holds itself reminds Saki of a child with a rock held high, ready to hurl. It speaks in a low, burbling, alien tongue, utterly incomprehensible to the paladin.
|
|
Saki appears puzzled at the speech, her brow knitted, and she shrugs at the fish with an apologetic smile before following Tal's lead - bowing to it and then slowly backing out of the room. "Hopefully it will understand we are not a threat here at least," she murmurs.
"Let us investigate the next door along the... strange floating room, I suppose."
Leaving the fish alone and following the route Saki mentions, you find yourself floating through the strange corridor and moving through several more doors, then finally into a very long hallway. It runs more than eighty feet and ends in yet another nondescript door. Talhaearn inspects it and finds it to be as trap-free as all the rest.
This strange dome-like room is mostly unassuming at first glance, but upon gazing upward, the magical nature of the chamber quickly becomes apparent. Looming trees with black bark and dry, writhing branches extend from the arched ceiling one hundred feet above, defying gravity and growing downward rather than up. A fine layer of soil covers the stone floor of the room below, and several sets of bloody footprints lead from the northern doorway toward the door to the west.
|
|
"What in the...?" Saki slowly makes her way into room, looking up with undisguised awe at the upside-down trees. "I wasn't sure that I would see something stranger than a fish swimming in the air, but it seems I was wrong!"
She awaits the results of Talhearn's search for life by the western door, too distracted by the strange and marvellous plant life to pay much attention to what may be beyond.
Initiative Order
Hound
Kyra - (surprised)
Talhaearn
Seoni - (surprised)
Saki - (surprised)
Talhaearn spots a strange wolf-like beast lurking amidst the half-dead foliage and thus he his not surprised when it leaps down among them. Huge and startlingly well-groomed, this large, stocky canine’s dark-green fur is braided into intricate patterns that seem to loosen and retie themselves on their own. It shouts something in an unknown language as it lands.
Barrow hounds do not particularly enjoy killing living creatures, and instead prefer to scare them off with their unearthly howls. Failing that, however, barrow hounds are fierce combatants, and their ability to constrict creatures with their prehensile locks makes them formidable foes.
Talhaearn, go (one move or standard action only, please)
The hound barks, a sound so strange and wondrous that it sends Seoni spiraling through space and time. Her eventual location being solid rock, she reappears on the room's eastern edge. Kyra grits her teeth and withstands the sonic vortex.
Anyone, go!
Kyra raises a hand to clutch at her head, grimacing at the eerie noise.
"What... is that... thing?" she yells, as Seoni literally disappears.
She hurriedly calls out to Saranrae. A shield of flickering, transparent flame appears over her arm, and with that defense in place she runs forward.
As Kyra brushes past, the hound snaps at her with enormous jawa and also, shockingly, with the braids of hair around its neck. The priestess blocks the attack by thrusting her shield between them and positions herself.
Seoni's magic missiles, Saki's glaive and one of Talhaearn's swords all hit home, cutting into the huge and noble-looking beast.
Snarling, it rounds on Kyra and tears at her with its jaws. Simultaneously, the braids around its neck uncurl and snatch her up, dragging her bodily to it.
Anyone, go!
|
|
"Let. Her. GO!" Saki shouts at the strange lupine creature through gritted teeth, thrusting forward with her glaive only to meet the resistance of its tough hide. The paladin forces herself to inhale and exhale, feeling anger override her and impact her ability to fight.
Be like the river... cool and calm, slowly flowing water... the river that passes around an obstruction, that wears down that which is before it with unfazed endurance...