"I can hang on to this quill, if you'd like." Aris places the stone quill in her bags, examining the ossuary with wide eyes. "This place is fascinating; the architecture suggests a lot of care and effort, I think. Perhaps we should work the south side first and then push north if we don't find anything."
Raven motions for the quill. "Hold on, I think I have an idea..."
Raven snatches the quill without some much as a "thank you," and places it into the statue's waiting hand, then quickly steps back.
When Vorsirion mentions his skills, Alexei offers him the chime. "If you are familiar with magical items, please. As we say, this will aid us all, and if something has overcome to two ranking priests on their home ground, I'd like as much aid as possible."
Moving towards Raven and the writing, "Unless you feel like staying here forever, or not getting paid if that is a more terrible fate, I'd suggest refraining from calling the Lady of Graves servants necromancers. It's a serious insult suggesting they are violating the dead, perhaps the goddess' strongest taboo."
"The writing is faded, probably old. If it was vandalism, the priests would have had it removed. I'd guess it's a reminder about the correct way to enter the Ossurary. Like most riddles, it's probably easy to remember or understand once you know the answer."
Leaning on his spear, he nods at Vorsirion's suggestion. "You could be right, if there was any place I'd expect to need it, it would be near the entrance. You usually lock the front door rather than the interior ones. Let's look things over a bit more though. I can't see how to open them, but it sounds like there should be doors to our left and right."
As Raven places the Quill in the hand of the statue, the wall ahead shimmers and then melts into the surrounding stones ! Beyond that, a corridor winds around. There, standing at you, mouth agape, a small human boy, perhaps 6 years old and covered in dirty clothes, looks at you in shock. His mouth hangs open a moment in almost comically before he runs away down the hall.
Still by the writing, Alexei watches as the wall disappears and the boy runs away. Well... that was unexpected. Can anyone tell if that was a real boy or something else?
Readying his shield, he cautiously approaches where the wall/door was to see if he can notice anything, particularly if the boy left any footprints.
Vasilyan widens his eyes as soon as the boy shows up from behind the wall ahead of him. What the... Incredulous, Vasilyan cannot help but shout at the boy: "" He shakes his head and focus on his inner soul. Taking a few steps forward, Vasilyan channels the strenght of his god into his mind and when he opens the eyes again, he carefully scans the area in front of him searching for the lingering aura of the boy. Sometimes one's aura tells you much more about a person than she would admit with her words...
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Remaining focused, Vasilyan steps behind Raven and puts a hand on her shoulder. "I don't know what you've done, but it seems like it worked" Even though I can't still manage to explain that boy... "We should go now" adds Vasilyan trying to press the other to move forward down the corridor. "That boy might be a trap" he remarks quite neutrally, "But still his sudden appearance unsettles me. We need to find him" And of course fall in their trap, I know...
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Raven turns around, looking somewhat annoyed. "I was referring to whatever crackpot has been lurking around down here, banker, not the priests. I took a job from one of them last Lamashan to clear out a nest of skeletons. I expected him to become literally aflame, with all the religious fervor he was displaying."
Raven's arm snaps out to catch him, but it's too late. "Damn," she says, and then tosses over her shoulder, "I agree with Vasilyan. The boy's probably not the culprit, and might not even be real, but he may provide an important clue or two. Everybody move out and keep on your guard." With that, Raven begins moving cautiously into the passageway, keeping Harbinger at the ready and scanning for any immediate threats.
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Vorsirion looks on in surprise as the wall opens.
"It worked! I did not think it would..." he concedes.
As the young human boy appears, Vorsirion looks on skeptically. "This seems out of place...you cannot always trust your senses," he adds.
Vorsirion closed his eyes for a moment, and saw another human boy, young like this one. He was frail and sickly. Vorsirion watched as a group of boys pushed him into a mud puddle, then laughed as the boy struggled to get out. When he opened his eyes again, the vision was gone.
"We should keep going," he says, though he appears someone shaken.
Following where the child went opens into a hall with several doors on each side. One is slightly ajar, which Raven hears hurried, hushed whispering, and a "SHhhh!"
Moving to investigate reveals a pair of young, dirty children covered in rags and castoff clothing, trying in vain to cram themselves behind one of the crypts to hide.
Backed into a corner, their hiding spot failed, the young girl starts to cry, tears streaming down her dirt covered cheek. The boy looks up more defiantly, though clearly terrified as he says, "Hey, we've done nothing wrong!" almost out of habit. Noting your attire he adds, "Hey, you're not one of them Phar-asthma-ites."
"How long have you been in here? Poor children..." Aris kneels down, the better to meet the two filthy children on their own level. "And what do you mean about 'Pharasthmaites?'"
Vasilyan smiles calmly at the children and moves closer very slowly in order to don't alarm them. "We mean no harm" he whispers reassuringly. He couches next to them. "We just want to help. Tells us, why are you here?"
Raven gives a distrustful look towards the children, and keeps an eye on all entrances and exits to the room.
Again she gives a look towards the children, then without explanation, kneels down and feels for a pulse on both of them.
Vasilyan cast a skeptical look upon Raven as he sees her tries to feel their pulses. Then, realizing what the half-elven mercenary has thought, he closes his eyes for a second. Erastil, please, tell me that she's wrong...
The child wriggles away, though they are definitely solid and you could feel a pulse. "Hey, don't touch me!" If they're an illusion or undead, it's a convincing disguise.
"I promise, we didn't steal nothing! We just stay here to keep out of the cold! We didn't even touch... much..." He looks guiltily to a casket that had been opened up, no sign of the skeleton that must have belonged there. "But what use do the dead have for a bed?"
The two take turns, pleading to you:
"Look, it's safe here. Safer than on the streets. There's a crack in the wall we can wriggle through... none of the bigger kids or grownups can get into it. We've been here months, and noone's caught us... those robed people always do some complicated muttering all the time and so we know when to get out of sight. And it's been some time since we've seen them, even! So please, don't hurt us!"
Raven gives a nod towards Vasilyan. At the kid's speech, for a brief second, the party can see some sympathy flash across the hardened mercenary's eyes before she says gruffly, "Look. I don't know about living on the streets. But I do know that something down here is making priests disappear. So I have a reccomendation: get out of here. If you ever need a hot meal, go to the Tipsy Kobold and tell the barmaid that Raven said to give you a meal. Before you get out of here, though, I have a question for you: have you seen, heard, or even smelled something that wasn't the priests lately?"
Vasilyan smiles understandigly to the children. "Understood. The priests were simply praying and paying homages to the dead. Don't worry about them."
The Brevic archer thinks to himself for a few seconds before asking a single question to the children: "Listen, you've said that you've been here for months. What have you been eating? "
"And how much of this place have you explored?" Aris stays crouched in her original position, not putting too much pressure on the two children. "We're trying to learn what...or who...has been making the priests disappear, and anything at all you could tell us would be appreciated."
The two children look at each other nervously. "We don't go too far... there's scary, creepy things. Lots of dead people, and I swear I even saw one move!" The young boy chimes in, "Down the hall, I saw a bunch of cockroaches, like, a whole bunch. And I also saw one set of doors that led to a big room... but it had scary statues in it. Not moving or anything, but scary."
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Vorsirion listens to the boy's response.
"You are brave to live here. I...lived in a similar place...for a time. You should find somewhere safer to stay. These dead...some of them do move, and if they catch you they do not care that you are children, and they will kill you. It must be safer in town."
Unsure of what else they can do for the children, he says "Where is this big room with the statues in it? Can you tell us how to get there?" the elf asks.
Leaving behind the two children, you briefly investigate the tombs where so many Brevic nobles have been laid to rest, going back centuries, they all seem remarkably well cared for, given the age given by some of the carvings.
Given the meticulous upkeep you've seen so far in the Ossuary, things seem more and more amiss and unsettling the further you venture in. You pass a row of suits of armor, only to have them explode into a swarm of cockroaches and vermin that rush towards you, almost as if directed with hostile intent. Viscous fluid dribbles from the ceiling and down the walls in places, and you can almost swear you saw a floating head as you pass by a room, only to watch it vanish.
In a bizarre room of polished mirrors, the walls begin to spin, faster and faster, until it almost looks like they're moving backwards, until they abruptly stop. Looking in the mirror similar yet strange figures appear: a flame red woman that could be Raven's twin, yet her dress is different, an elven woman that vaguely resembles Arisl, a clean cut version of Vasilyn. The "mirror twin" of Alexai is a young woman with strangely similar eyes, while a portly human wears almost identical clothes as Vorsirion. These strange apparitions regard you with the same amount of shock that you yourselves have, before each of the mirrors shatters.
You venture deeper and deeper into older and older burial places, until you open a Pharasman sealed set of double doors, which, when opened, reveal a gothic Pharasman cathedral that forms a rough circle nearly 100 feet wide. All around the room, flanking statues depict Pharasma, holding her quill and book like a warrior would a sword and shield, all facing towards a set of double doors to the West. You have little time to marvel at the room, though, as one after another sections of the wall explode outwards in a shower of masonry and rubble, revealing a half dozen skeletons that all turn their soulless gazes towards you.
Disturbed by the strange apparitions in the chamber of polished mirrors, Vasilyan stands astonished at the exploding sections of the wall. "Watch out!" he shouts out, holding his trusty bow tight in his grip, "Skeletons ahead! Stand ready!" he screams as he tries to focus his gaze on the vile undead and not to look directly into their soulless eyes.
Raven, to her credit, hardly bats an eye on the strange apparitions, only saying, that they best be on the lookout for a powerful mage. As soon as the skeletons appear, she smoothly readies her sword and shifts into an aggressive stance, her eyes zeroing in on one of the skeletons.
For Raven, everything but that skeletons fades into grey as she drinks in every detail about it. Its stance. What bones are cracked. The state of its weapons. As she does this, she prepares to charge...
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As they pass through the room with the mirrors, Vorsirion is transfixed at the strange figure before him. He cannot look away, yet his only desires are to flee this foul place.
They continue on for a time, until the skeletons emerge from the rubble. Vorsirion looks toward their gaze, and feels both horror and fascination, the juxtaposition of which make it almost impossible to concentrate. He has seen so much of these foul creatures...he both hates their taint, and yet wants to dive fully into it.
Vorsirion holds his head in his hands...all he hears is cruel laughter.
Make it...stop!
As she charges into battle, Raven roars, [b]"Pull it together, Vorsirion!"
Aris raises an eyebrow at her twin before hesitantly raising a hand in a gesture of greeting. When the mirrors crack and the party once again moves on, she begins thinking out loud. "I've never seen anything like that, except once. We did an experiment with boiled absinthe and bloodwort extract, along with a few other ingredients, back at the University in Lepidstadt. The dishes were silvered, and the point was to glimpse what you could have been. No one succeeded, though, except the professor. I just kept getting a strange-shaped ermine or something... Maybe those mirrors did something similar?"
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Everything Aris learned about the restless dead in her books rushes from her head, replaced with pure panic as the party's skeletal foes pour forward. Instead of calling out a warning, she simply stares, dumbfounded.
A voice comes from the walkway overhead. You can see a gray haired man there looking down, his eyes clouded by madness. "You have come to join my army, yes? The Dark Lady... she has said I will raise an army! She has said I will rule! Much better than my old Misstress..." His voice trails off in a mad giggle. He repeats, again. "Come, join me!" At that, the skeletons begin to move forward! Each bears a longsword and heavy steel shield, and has is wearing a breastplate with ancient heraldry on it.
As her panic threatens to overwhelm her, Aris begins math drills in her head, running through the formulas of her spells before deciding on one. 793 Squared. Simple, maybe, but effective. Looking at her new ally, the one with the giant sword, she makes up her mind about a target as well. "大きくする人" As she speaks the draconic words, the numbers pour out of her head and into a pinch of iron filings, which she throws in the air.
Her casting done, Aris takes a step back and to the side, ducking behind Vasilyn and her soon-to-be-giant friend. "Okay. Your move."
Vasilyan clenches his teeth and nods at Arisl'arial, clearly satisfacted by her tactical choice. He then draws his bow, nocks an arrow, and fires it against the strange and disturbing man on the walkway overhead. "" he barks to his allies as soon as he can release his breath without impair his aim.
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As she charges forward, Raven stumbles briefly for a moment before adjusting to her new height. Unlike many mercenaries, she does not charge into battle with a wicked grin on her face. Her expression is a mask of calm, almost serene, professionalism. She is a soldier, not a warrior.
Leveraging her new power against the skeleton she's focusing on, Raven swings, her massive blade even larger in her new form.
Strangely, as the elf raises the skull, his countenance becomes distorted. In his place is a different creature entirely...an undead corpse with once-fine robes hanging in tatters from its withered frame. A pale blue light shines from where its eyes should be.
"My servants! Rise!" Vorsirion says, or rather a voice emanates from where the elf should be standing.
Abruptly, another of the undead resting in the crypt rises, but unlike the others standing arrayed against the adventurers, it attacks one of the other skeletons.
Arisl begins to case a spell and Vasilyn's arrow barely scratches the madman, while Raven's blade comes down with a bone rattling crash, slicing deeply into the skeleton. The undead barely retains cohesion, returning the blow.
Desna apparently smiles on the party, as both of the undead miss widely!
Surrounded by undead, Alexai does the obvious and Channels, though the skeletons seem little phased
Pleased as her spell takes hold of Raven, causing her muscles to bulge and her body to grow almost too fast for her expanding armor (while her sword becomes uncomfortably large), Aris takes just a moment to survey her handiwork. Then, she puts her mind to the battle at hand. She abandons her math for the time being, instead simply forcing an eagle out of the space between reality and not. Her new friend summoned, she steps forward cautiously.
The eagle, for its part, simply flies toward the nearest skeleton, striking toward it in a blur of claws that nevertheless miss their mark.
Vasilyan furrows his eyebrows as he sees his arrow missing the man atop the balcony. His keen eyes are however soon claimed by the army of advancing skeletons in the chamber. Without losing his confidence, the Brevic archer nocks two blunt arrows in his bow and fires them in rapid succession at one of the skeletons.
Right after, he turns to Arisl'arial, to see if the elf is alright. Seeing that she's still unscathed, he whispers "Don't worry milady, we'll make it. Nice spell selection anyway" He smiles confidently at her in order to fuel her resolve.
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The madman, cackling loudly, drinks a potion, shouting, "Soon, soon you will join my collection!"
Raven swings her blade, newly embiggened, at the skeleton, but it appears that she is having trouble adjusting to her new size and misses wildly. She smoothly steps back to use her extended reach to her advantage...
The undead servant that joined the adventurers mindlessly attacks its former fellows, lashing out with its bony hands.
I had hoped it would work better than that. Maybe there is something about this place that strengthens the undead?
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A shower of arrows, claws, and sword assaults the skeletons, a few taking purchase, with most bouncing off the skeletal armor. The Skeletons, in turn, focus on their attacks on Raven and an undead minion of the party's control!
Luckily most of the damage is given to minions, rather than flesh and blood party members, though Raven takes a nasty gash from one.
Raising the silver key in his hand once again, Alexei calls on the power of his god. "The Judge is with us! He blesses our struggle!"
The skeletal minion, meanwhile, counterattacks its fellows after taking a big hit from a sword.
The gibbering man on the balcony moves deeper into the room and throws a flask out into the midst of the party, which explodes with a blast of flame!
Vosirion and his minion continue their assault, skeleton and human recoiling from claw and javelin.
"Be careful, Raven!" shouts out Vasilyan as he sees the woman he fought a group of trolls with in the past. These skeletons are dangerous indeed. If the same attack that hit the bird would have hit Raven, I don't know if she would have survived...We must stay wary.
Vasilyan keeps shooting blunt arrows at the skeletons to his right. "They're tougher than I expected, but we'll take them down!" He grins as he fires his blunt arrows, a firm expression on his face and his teeth clenched in tension.
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