Tanith lumbers forward, eager to join the battle.
Robin blinks. "Oh!" He fumbles for his bow. "Right." He takes aim at the creature still standing.
"That might've done the trick!
Robin beams and looks at Carina proudly, without checking his shot. "My dear, I think I hit something!
Robin's arrow somehow makes it past Cuetzpalli and Tanith, lodging in the beast's eye. The beetle rears back, letting loose a shrill roar, and snaps at Farrukh.
The clumsy lunge only succeeds in ripping off a bit of Farrukh's trouser leg. The beetle shakes it viciously, unaware in its confused state that it has accomplished nothing.
Carina grins. "Great!"
Finally.
She watches the ensuing battle, nervously fingering one of her explosive vials. She winces at the sight of Cuetzpalli getting a burst of acid on him.
She moves forward behind Tanith and throws her bomb, aiming for it to land behind the beetle.
The beetle is badly burned by Carina's well-placed explosive.
Cuetzpalli screams as the acid hits him full on, and sets his flesh to sizzling. Now completely furious, Cuetzpalli tries to smash the bug again.
Miss
Farrukh slashes with his scimitar again as hard as he can, hoping to mark the beast before he tires completely.
Despite his exhaustion, Farrukh manages to cut off three of the beetle's massive legs. The beetle lets out a keening hiss as blue liquid leaks from its injuries, slowly going still.
Tanith rears back with his polearm only to find the beetle slain. He lowers his weapon and claps Farrukh on the shoulder. "Nice shot!"
"Thanks Tanith." he says, drooping a bit and trying to catch his breath.
"Don't know why I'm so tired all of a sudden. We didn't fight for long."
Once he's caught his breath a bit he takes a closer look around the room.
"Me too, I'm exhausted. Who's that a statue of?" Cuetzpalli asks, pointing to the figure. "Maybe he's the god of tiredness or something?" Cuetzpalli walks over to the statue for a closer look.
Cuetzpalli and Farrukh find nothing.
"Anything good in there?"
Eight man-sized stone slabs, about four feet off the ground, are arranged in two rows within. A long-dead corpse, possibly a human, laws sprawled out upon one of these slabs, his red leather armor the only hint of color in the otherwise drab room.
Cuetzpalli goes over to the dead guy, and searches his body. If the armor looks to be of high quality he will remove it as well.
Farrukh tries to wrack his brain to figure out what this weird orange stuff is.
Before heading over by Cuetzpalli to see what's on the dead man.
Cuetzpalli finds that it is a masterwork suit of leather armor, emblazoned with the same eight-pointed star. He also finds a plain silver ring.
Cuetzpalli will deposit the armor by their rope back up, and then show the others the ring. "Probably worth something, we can sell it back in town. Well, only one way left to go now," he says, heading for the unexplored passage. "You wanna creep down there and take a look Farrukh? Seems to be working decently well so far..."
"Can do."
Carina does a little fist pump when she sees the beetle carved into bits.
She remains outside the room with Robin & Tanith, reaching into her pockets and producing the potions & pearl she found.
"Check this out: I found these in the beetle nest. I'm not entirely sure what these two potions do, but I do know that this one's a healing potion!" She says, holding up the potion she does know about.
"I also found this pearl. Think it'll be worth something nice if we sell it?" She holds up the pearl.
"And that's not all. Turns out the Seekers were here before us a long time ago, looking for treasure as well. Only difference is, they never came back out."
Robin eyes the potions. "I found some similar." He hands the two green vials he found earlier to Carina. "Do you reckon they are the same?"
Robin glances at the corpse nearby with unease. "I don't think they were scared away by a swarm of beetles. There's something else down here, I'd wager."
Carina takes the two vials Robin gives her and examines them.
"Can do."
[dice=Stealth]1d20+5
[dice=Perception]1d20+7
Farrukh finds his exhaustion instantly fades when he walks out of the room.
This stuff is ugly, but it's not brown mold. It might even be edible. In fact, Farrukh is able to find a small hole in the stone that's been clogged up by paste and dead beetles. He thinks this might once have been a sort of food fountain.
The similarly colored organic mass in the corner is no more than a beetle-made nest.
Carina determines that these identically-shaped and -colored potions are also healing potions.
"Robin, your potions are also healing stuff. I wonder if that means the other two I found are also healing potions?" Carina says, beckoning Cuetzpalli over and handing him her healing potion.
"There's still the matter of this pearl..."
Cuetzpalli will deposit the armor by their rope back up, and then show the others the ring. "Probably worth something, we can sell it back in town. Well, only one way left to go now," he says, heading for the unexplored passage. "You wanna creep down there and take a look Farrukh? Seems to be working decently well so far..."
He feels a slight ripple brush against his foot. Listening closely, he hears several somethings moving in the water ahead.
First, you had the horrid misfortune of running into a bunch of Smenk's thugs on the way to the cairn. Their leader, a vicious half-orc named Kullen, is an old rival of your captain. The bandits had always come out worse whenever running into Kullen's band, and you know you alone don't stand a chance against them in a fight. Worse yet, Kullen recognized you.
Fortunately, they appeared to be preoccupied with a broken wheelbarrow and weren't willing to leave it to give chase. You caught a glimpse of something pale and roughly human-shaped inside the wheelbarrow that gives you the feeling they were in as much of a hurry to be on their way as you were.
You came to the cairn and ran into four dead wolves--one at the entrance with its head bashed in, three more in a larger chamber. Somebody else has been here. Recently.
You're not sure why you didn't just leave then. This wasn't a safehaven, it was a death trap. Maybe you were too curious for your own good.
Now you've come to a strange room full of lanterns. There's a hole beneath a green lantern with a rope leading down. The corpses of a dwarf lie beside a big sarcophagus.
[ooc]Corrections posted later.
Farrukh creeps back to the others.
"Looks like it's flooded down there. I heard something moving in the water. Sounded like there were quite a few of them."
Carina pales. "Water? But my bombs don't work as well in water..."
After taking a look at the masterwork leather armor, she nods. "Yep, that's definitely a Seeker's ring, alright."
She nods at the potion vial she holds out to the Olman. "Drink this. It's a healing potion, I promise."
Astraden tries to be as quiet and unassuming as possible around the potentially noisy horse. In the flickering light of the lantern she searches the dwarf's body for food. She doesn't find any, so she creeps over to look down the hole, rapier drawn.
Astraden also tries to keep the gigantic raptor from screaming or tearing her face off. "Be like a stone," she tells it.
Up above, the dinosaur crouches, growling. The horse starts whinnying loudly.
Down below, the adventurers hear Bermintrude making a whole lot of noise.
Carina's ears perk up. A quizzical look appears on her face.
"Is Bermintrude in trouble? It sounds like something's wrong!"
Astraden backs away. "Whoa, way to overreact. Okay, I'm going." She goes back out into the webbed corridor, but then stops and crouches down to hide. Though she has no love for wolves, the dwarf was killed cruelly, and she wants to figure out who was responsible. If whoever comes up seems nasty, she'll run again.
The horse stays by the hole. The dinosaur seems to want to pursue, but, unknown to Astraden, he knows his orders.
Bermintrude doesn't stop whinnying.
Wringing her hands, Carina walks back to the hole and starts climbing up the rope.
"Well? Is anyone going to come along?" She asks, clearly hoping she's not alone in this.
She scrambles up the rope, readying an explosive vial. She looks around when she reaches the top.
Tanith busily follows the pretty daemon-girl. "Who was that?"
"Hell is that noise?" Farrukh says, before walking back to the rope.
Cuetzpalli takes the potion and drinks it. "Thanks."
Once he hears the noises from the horse above, he runs back and climbs up the rope to make sure that Spiny is okay.