Skeletons continue to claw, this one does so at Mivvy again, as its last assault found purchase.
This time however it's distracted by its pining for the fjords, and misses by a wide margin.
The adventurers still find their attacks ineffective against their skeletal opponents.
Saya misses again, which gives the skeletons the opportunity to strike at her!
One of the claws strikes home, cutting in to the poor monk's flesh.
Drea learns some insights into the creatures she is fighting, then uses that insight to immediate effect, dropping the one in front of her to the floor in a clatter of bones as she seems to find their weak point.
Shaya finds little of value, the scimitars are broken as is their chain mail. It's a heavy prize for little monetary reward.
The efforts of all appear to be in vain, perhaps save the healing. The skeleton does indeed advance as Mivvy had anticipated, and it seeks to strike Drea, who just downed its ally.
Evidently feeling that turnabout is fair play, it nearly downs Drea in just one strike! (Well technically two.)
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Drea, boxed in and unable to retreat, chooses to press their attack, airy blood-like substance darkening the rocky cavern floor, partially-sublimating into vapour around them.
"Friends, you will see. Please allow me to further travel with you," the sylph says, swinging mightily with their heirloom greatsword, their eyes already rolling up in their head as they pass out.
And the sylph collapses, unconscious.
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Virog walks over to Drea, sticks the wand of cure light wounds directly into one of their open wounds, and swirls it about.
"Closer to the wound ah get it, the better it'll work, trust me."
He grins toothily, satisfied with the results of the healing so far. He then crouches down next to Drea and brandishes the cure wand in their direction, pretending to be menacing them with it, "Didn't I just say that I didnae want none of y'all leaving us unwillingly? Now do ya want another tap or don'tcha?"
The last skeleton does indeed fall nearly simultaneously with Drea, leaving them as dead as they ought to be. Their loot is unremarkable, but in the back corner of the room our heroes find a mutilated corpse, with a note regarding plans to make an army of undead "fish people", as well as a ring of protection +1 that hadn't seemed to do the corpse much good and a suit of +1 leather armor, sized for a medium creature.
This passage seems to lead nowhere, coming to a dead end (literally) with the corpse.
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Drea says nothing as Virog gruesomely pokes at them with the wand, twice.
"Thank you, friend Virog," they say as they rise from their prone position. Drea looks around at the scattered bones. "Such hatred for their history," the sylph says as they reach out and touch one of the longer bones of the shattered skeleton. "I will honour them in spite of their rage," and they pocket a thigh bone.
Drea accepts the ring and looks at it intently. "Thank you, friend Mivvy," they say as they put it on, rising to their feet again. "I will do this gift much honour."
Drea keeps their sword out. "How are the rest of my friends? How do we think Janira is faring?"
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Virog spends a minute clumsily fiddling with the straps on the armor, eventually just tying it in horrid tangles of knots. He eyes the thigh bone that Drea pockets cautiously, but does not say anything regarding it.
"I fig'r Janira's dead. Or near enough as makes no difference." He shrugs, shifting his new armor, "At least she chose it, 's better that way. We should probly hustle if we're gonna save enough'a her te bury."
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Mivvy shivers, "Janira!"
She cleans her sword and sheathes it, "Every time someone nearly dies, I forget why we are where we are. I think it's a survival instinct."
"Maybe Janira's got some tricks up her sleeve? I hope so."
Mivvy turns and starts to head back to the crossroads, "Anyway, this looks like a dead-end, let's try another way."
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"Indeed, Miss Janira is an experience Pathfinder, I believe she'll find us soon enough, " Saya said, looking down at her hands. Then she shrugs and picks up her bow from where it leaned against the stone wall.
She resists the urge to sketch the unlikely scene of Virog poking his wand into Drea's wound, but lends a hand to Shaya's interesting idea..
You all find that searching this area is not a fruitful use of your time, there was another branch off the previous room. You could walk by your friend the deaf gillman again.
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Partly assuaged that Janira is not a problem for them to solve at present, and steeled in their resolve to somehow communicate with the deaf gillman, Drea addresses the group as they come back into the main cavern.
"Friends, shall we try again to confer our information to this good gentle-person about the risks of the undead so close to his reverie location? Who would like to attempt to communicate with him? I am happy to assist in any such diplomatic endeavour - I am keen to know more of Aroden's presence in our world, and if this person knows anything, we and the Pathfinder Society in general would be all the much richer for that knowledge!"
They finish their excited rant with a breathy tone to their voice.
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"Yeah, I 'spose I kin talk t' 'em"
Virog will dictate to Drea a long and rambling diatribe about the undead that we fought, what they looked like, everything we know about them, how the guy was focused on using gillman, how he was pretty clearly killed by his own undead, and how it might be a good idea to keep an eye out for further undead.
"I dun know if ye rilly care much abut was goin' on down here, but there's was a whole muck a dead folks down in that there hallway, and they was right pissy. We broked 'em up real bad, well the rest of these folks did. I mist mostly. Coupl'a'us got cut up a'awful bit in tha doin', too. not that ya should worry, imma have fixed it. But ya should worry about tha dead folks. If ya see 'em, and they don't have no skin or meats or nuthin', beat 'em with summat flat. They're a might bit brittle, so they'll go down faster that way. Oh! And we found a dead dead guy. Not one of the fighty un's like we's was talkin' 'bout, but right proper dead. He had a journal where he talked about killin' bunches of y'all gillmen and makin more fighting undead with 'em. I fig'r he got kilt pretty good by his own dead men, so that's not terrble, but if you'd've had any druthers about it, ya might want ta keep an eye out for more dead folks, or murderin' dhampir wanderin' around. I don't much advocate for murder or the like. Make's me tetchy."
The gillman looks exceedingly confused, largely because Virog's accent makes the lip-reading difficult, but he seems to understand. The gillman breaks his silence and informs the Pathfinders that they have entered a site sacred to the gillmen. It was once sacred to Aroden, the dead god of humanity, as well, but over the past century, the carvings in the nearby room have weathered and melted, and he speculates that soon Aroden’s influence will have faded completely.