Aannra looks around the space wile Velden dos his interrogating, She takes out the Smoke sticks and other items.
"This is not test, this is a play gone bad"
She says.
"Unless this is a SIM and a very good one, I think we are looking at an unwanted infestation at this location."
She puts her drone back down again next to the door on the right facing in.
"When your ready"
The drone complies going through a crack in the door to explore 15 feet ahead then comes back.
Velden nods as Aannra sends her drone in. "I suggest we secure both doorways, and whatever is behind them first. Then proceed one way or the other, depending on what we find. I don't want to constantly be splitting back and forth, but I also don't want to leave an unsecured door behind me that something could come through and cut off the exit. Once we secure both doors, I suggest we choose one direction, and seal the other direction off from our side, until we are ready to explore it."
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure we're going to find enough trouble without leaving our behinds exposed for more to come up that way. "
The drone responds in common so all can hear, "No threats seen, pool of water, statues, and doors."
Selvanna speaks up, "We can watch your back from this point, should we summon the other two to bring the mounts into this room. Then it should be really secure."
"You might want to consider jamming pitons under the doors we haven't opened yet. That should make getting through them a bear and give you enough warning. But yeah, might as well get everyone and thing in here. Seems pretty defensible. "
Selvanna nods and Arlington is off in a heartbeat. Swan is still outside and Selvanna goes back out to her. Corhash, gets what he can and covers the bodies then drags them outside. Once both bodies are out, Swan and Selvanna come back in. The last member of the greenhorns takes a few pitons and secures the other door.
Veldan nods at Bishnu. "Exactly. Fortunately, the door opens into this room." He grins. "Would have been inconvenient if they both opened out. We can thank someone for being an idiot when they designed this place to be secure. Anyway, we might want to put something heavy in front of it as well, some of those big stones from outside. Then the animals being in here should be secure. We should powderize those bones and bury them outside too, just to be sure." He points to the shattered bones that had moments before been alive. Obviously he means for the greenhorns to do that, since he's looking at them. Fortunately, Corhash seems to have learned his lesson. Perhaps the mutilated corpse of someone he knew has made him grow up quickly. "You should bury the bodies outside as well, don't want them waking up as zombies like the skeletons did. We can dig them back up when we head back to town."
Selvanna speaks up with a joke in mind, "How about we put Jack in front of it!"
Swan seems to be an utter wreck, and just sits in the corner, the other green horns follow directions as Velden and the others give.
It seems like you are waiting for the room to be secure before you leave, so advancing the time by a half hour or so. Jack and Elo bring the mounts into the room. Jack brings in boulders and places them in front of the door. With another boulder he smashes all the bones that were placed in the center. The graves are being dug by Corhash and Arlington. The mounts and the backup fighters have secured the room. Jack nods to you to advance.
Velden moves to the opposite side of the chamber, so he has a good view down the hallway when the door is opened.
"Ok, Ida renew the light spell on my sword, just to make sure, and we'll have 3 or 4 hours of light. Then we can open the door and proceed..."
Aannra gos over to Swan.
"Swan look at me, You need to keep focused here Swan, time to lose it later but right now your life is on the line, you need to be here and now. Forget any thing more than that. Do you understand, focus on the here and now only"
She looks to see if Swan had taken in her words and then moves over to the Guys.
You are not for sure if your words worked. She stopped crying so that she could hear you and has not started again. But she is still a wreck and not leaving the corner.
Velden holds up while Aannra comforts Swan. He has never been a very personable type, not with his background, and he finds it somewhat amusing that the android was programmed with better interpersonal skills than he ever developed. He's always been the 'See Problem, Kill Problem, Next Problem' type.
Now that it's been pointed out though, he pulls Selvanna off to the side. "Keep an eye on Swan, she may lose it. Be ready to knock her out if needed, she'll be easier to carry as dead weight if we have to bug out fast, than to herd if she's losing it. I say this with the objective of keeping her alive, understand? Not to heap more on her." He tells the girl, his voice low and pitched for her to hear.
You are not for sure if your words worked. She stopped crying so that she could hear you and has not started again. But she is still a wreck and not leaving the corner.
Aannra slaps her hard cross the face once,
"GET YOUR SORRY ASS OF THE FLOOR AND GET TO WORK SWAN."
Aannra bodily pulls Swan up off the ground and push's her to the other greenhorns, Saying
"Where just about to head into this f****g s**t hole and we need you all ready to fight NOW! Arm her and make her stand here, ready, if she dos not slap her until she dos, we can't afford to lose straight now. You have been told what to do, NOW MOVE IT!!"
With out another word and a killing thunder look on her face, she heads back to Bishnu and the others, When she gets to them all she says is in a low voice is.
"Combat command implants"
and nothing more.
Velden sighs. "Aannra, in the future, let Bishnu or Ida handle grieving humans." Is all he says. But he gives Selvanna the nod to go take over and do her best to fix things.
Aannra looks at Velden, the look is utterly cold, hard, mechanical inhuman look.
"Grieving? we don't have time for grieving. We need our assets effective now, I never took you for soft, Velden."
She go's back to looking at the door.
"Talking of which, you two are up."
She steps back 10' and points to the door.
Velden shakes his head. "Check your programming, Aannra. Sniper. Sniper." He returns to the ledge opposite the door she is pointing at. "Sniper's do not open doors. That's for the heavy armor." He nods at Bishnu, and grins, falling back into the two-man team easily, even if it's expanded to 4.
She pulls he air pistol reading to shoot what ever is behind the door, her drone saying nothing counting for little. She looks over at Bishnu. Waiting on him.
"Yeah, yeah, strong back, weak mind, I get it. " as he hefts his shield and moves to open the door in his way.
In the center of this room is a large pool of clear water, fed by a fountain on the wall above it. The fountain has a stone statue of a weeping maiden holding the slain body of Kassen, but his head has been broken off and is nowhere to be seen. A voice booms out from the darkness, saying, “Magic is the key.” The voice slowly fades, leaving a dreadful silence.
The doors leading out of this chamber are locked and can be opened with a DC 30 Disable Device check.
At the bottom of the pool are about 100 keys, all nearly identical. The pool is 40 feet deep. A creature can swim half its speed up or down with a DC 10 Swim check as a full-round action. Characters carrying a medium or
heavy load can automatically descend 10 feet per round without making a swim check.
"Hmm, I don't like it when magic talks." Veldan comments, following Bishnu and Aannra into the room. Veldan uses his free hand to cast Detect Magic and then studies the room.
Aannra stands for a moment the opens the strange Bio-mechanical 3ed eye in the center of her forehead, thus bringing up Detect Magic/psionics letting her scans the rooms from just in side the door way. She then moves in and repeats, taking 5 round actions to do so each time.
"I'm scanning the rooms Powers and magic features now, lets see whats hidden here."
"Yeah, this sounds like you folks sort of business. I'll just keep an eye out for trouble. "
Velden will step into the corner to maximize his use of Detect Magic. Once he's scanned the whole room carefully, he'll step diagonally around the pillar and scan down into the pool.
Aannra looks on as Velden starts moving into the room, from this point on, if there is a pressure point trap the sniper can find it.
She lets her drone to do the scanning inside for her, its starts by going over and looking at the passage ways
Now with the two scanning the room she reads off what the drone finds.
::"report drone"::
::"Two passage ways and at the end doors, closed, they have locks"::
One of the keys emits a magical aura. The statue emits a magical aura.
Velden nods as he finishes looking around. "Magical glowy key in the water, magical statue in the corner. Traps abound." He looks at the key in the water. "Wonder what my chances are of fishing it out with rope and a hook, or twine and a hook, rather than swimming down. Knew I should have learned mage hand." He jerks some hair off his head with a wince, and drops the hairs into the water, to see what happens.
The hairs just float on the top of the water.
Velden nods. "Hmm, not acid then." He looks around for any other obvious or inobvious traps.
Aannra looks at Velden and corrects his inaccurate statement
"The Mage hand spell only works on none magical objects directly"
She says as if reciting something from a text book, that said she then moves her drone over to look at the water
Velden nods. "Correct. However, it does work on the nonmagical key next to the magical key, or the non-magical wire bent into a hook, or on a camp shovel. All of which can then be used to retrieve the magical key." He mutters in a distracted air, searching for traps.
"Then place what you wish to hook the key out with in the water, I will use a power like mage hand to move it as you described"
She says in a toneless matter of fact voice, her mind was calculating a blinding speed there location parameters for the force that would need to be used to move said object.
Velden raises an eyebrow, but nods. He pulls his back pack off, and digs into it, pulling out...
...another backpack. This one looks like standard military issue, built by the minimum bidder. "Most annoying thing about a stint in the military, they farm this stuff out to the minimum bidder. These people used metal wire for the frame of the backpack. I bought a good one, and stuffed this on in it, since I had to have it by regulation. Never got around to throwing it away when Bishnu and I mustered out." Using a dagger, he cuts open the fabric of the backpack, and cuts out an 8 inch piece of stiff wire, then bends it into a hook. "Here you go..."
She takes the hook, then drops it in the water,
letting it sink down to the bottom, the then reaches out her mind and moves it to hook the magic key.
"Velden couls you take the Key please
Very paranoid, but finding no traps in this room.
Once it's up, Velden will hook the key on one of the metal projections on his bow. "Ok, great, we got the key. Now do we want to actually use it?" He asks wryly. :)
Very paranoid, but finding no traps in this room.
Aannra nods, "yes and on which door? , there are two"
Velden looks at the two doors. "If this was a test at the temple, there'd be a pair of twins. One would only tell the truth, and the other would only lie, and you'd get to ask one question to find out which one was safe." Velden shrugs. "The monks didn't like my solution, but it worked. I kicked one through each door, and watched to see which one got hit with the paint ball of shame."
"Two injections of sodiumpentaphol and a polygraph test each would have saved the door"
She stops at the looks she gets from the others, a perplexed look on hers,
"What? Did I say something funny?
Velden shakes his head. "Not funny at all, just that you assume a monastery has access to advanced truth drugs." He shrugs, and then walks over to the two doors.
"Ok goddess, about time you did something useful for me." He puts the sword on the floor, and then spins it.
"Stupid goddess! Can't you even figure out where the doors are?!?" He kicks the hilt again.
He picks up the sword again, and taps each door with the blade. "Door! Door! Not wall, not pool, DOOR!" He drops he sword again and kicks the hilt.
He looks at the sword, and then up at the ceiling. "Seriously? Are you that incompetent?" He kicks the hilt.
He looks up at the ceiling again. "You are seriously doing this, even random chance would have had it point at something by now. Goddess you're a useless goddess..." He kicks the hilt.
"B~+#~!"
"I'm going to find the nearest temple to you and throw a firebomb in it!"
Finally, Velden slumps. "Ok ok ok, fine, please?"
Velden looks from the sword to the left hand door. "Goddess says the Left Door is the Holy and Safe Way." He picks up the sword, puts it in it's transparasteel sheath, and walks to the right door. "Goddess is a lying b&*!!." He then puts the key in the door and turns it.
Aannra looks on at the odd antics.
could have just looked at the locks and seen witch one fitted the key or which had most scratch marks from use, but he looks like he knows what he's doing, must be some kind of odd Devine magic.
She stand to one side air gun ready.
The key does not unlock that door.
Velden looks at the key, then the door.
He slips the key into his pocket. "Ok, so, this is the right door, but the key doesn't fit." He begins to examine the doors in detail. He'll start by checking to see if this one is unlocked. He'll also check the hinges, etc. Same for the other door. When he checks the other door, he'll comment out loud. "Goddess may be being cute and doing a head fake, telling the truth about which door knowing I'll assume she's lying like usual. Goddess does that too."
In a sotto voce stage whisper to Aannra Bishnu says "Don't mind him, he gets like this and it's mostly harmless. "
Velden, concentrating on the doors, scoops up a stone off the floor and throws it over his shoulder at Bishnu.
The stone bounces off his chest plate with a rattle.
"See, mostly harmless. "
The perception check was for once you use the key to unlock the door to room 8. The key does not unlock the door to room 7, though it is still locked.
Velden finally shrugs. "Goddess is playing games again." He says, pulling the key back out again. He moves to the door the goddess indicated, and tries the key on the lock, there is a snick and the door unlocks. He then pockets the key again. Instead of opening the door though, he moves back and prepares to shoot through the doorway. "Muscles and Armor up!"