Agnar heaves-ho again.
Round 4
The portcullis refuses to go as you strain and strain until finally -- with the water just about at Agnar's head, he gives a mighty heave in unison with the rest of you and wrenches it out of position. Escaping back into the earlier tunnels, you watch as the water reaches 10 feet high, with no obvious signs of it dropping anytime soon.
Escaping out of the flooding room, you find yourself on a crooked stair that is uneven and hewn from the living stone. It winds upward, apparently following a natural seam in the rock, eventually leading to a solid door.
Opening it, you find yourself in a rectangular room . To the north, this room is paved in patterned tiles of different-colored slate and subdivided by a pair of pillars carved in the likeness of leering fiends. Beyond them, friezes on the walls depict processions of animal-headed creatures marching along a black river’s banks toward dual shrines in opposite corners of the chamber. These each depict a shadowy individual standing in a sinister longboat. Between them stands a bronze double door, its face decorated with a mosaic of a winding river crafted from obsidian tiles.
The shrouded figure in the boat is Charon, the Horseman of Death.
The southern shrine is a simple stone altar with an unlit oil lamp.
The northern shrines each consist of a large piece of quarried quartz upon which has been set an unlit oil lamp and a shallow drinking cup stained with some dark residue
You think it's dried blood no more than a week old.
You recognize the dual altars as a relatively outdated and obscure form of worshiping Charon in which the smoke of the two shrine lamps symbolizes the rising spirits of the dead as they approach the River Styx. You also recall that in these old temples, the lanterns were magical keys that helped to seal doorways.
"Oooo." Kereek gapes at the fiends and marching animals. "Am this a magic place?"
The whole room is discomfiting, but Kat has no idea what any of it means, Fiends, a boatman and a doorway... sounds like... She begins to shudder, but stops herself. "I do not like this room...
" she says to no one in particular.
"I'm not fond of it myself," mutters Agnar. "Let's stay right here quietly for a moment while I help put Kat back together again."
"Thanks - that Cyclops had a heck of a punch."
Kereek fishes in his pouch and pulls out three potions: 1 cure moderate and 2 cure light wounds potions. "Ah! Kereek has magic cure potions! If Kat am wounded, this am good?"
"Thank you маленький дракончик." Kat takes the two cure light wounds from Kereek and then two of her own. She spends a moment before the door is opened chugging the concoctions and making a face sour from the taste. "It wouldn't be so bad if they all tasted the same-you could get used to it. No, these are always a new terrible taste."
Kereek grins as Kat downs the potions. "Prazil am trying to make moon radish flavor potions, but him as getting radish and snail confused some times. Him am not smart like Kereek." Kereek nods sagely.
Prazil shakes his head, his attention ripped from the eerie depictions in stone at the mention of his beloved radishes. "Moon radishes?! Am there for being moon radishes here? Where?! Where, where?! Prazil am not for smelling them." As his eyes light up with excitement, his gaze bounces frantically around the room as he gapes behind the shrines, in all the corners and nooks of the rooms, and even in Agnar and Coterie's backpacks. "Ooooo! Prazil would be for looooving a tasty moonradish right now!"
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Kn: Religion:
Coterie gently shushes the pack-happy kobold away from her bag, intently studying the wall mural before them as Katerina is patched up. An amulet around her neck glows, causing her turn with her eyes a clear golden color and her thick Dwarven accent back. "Yer right t' dislike these altars, Agnar. 'Tis Charon, Fairyman of th' Dead. But they're mighty old. Can't recall last time ah've seen somethin' like this." She taps one of the candle basins. "These 'ere? Meant to be lit and the smoke symbolized souls returnin' t' th' land o' th' dead. They're also used t' magically seal doors. You'd hafta ask the Kobold how those work." She taps the medallion around her neck with the symbol of a crossed wand and dagger, as the gold light fades and is replaced with a deep purple/black glow.
"Tesrain earn respect to be called by name!" an oddly squeaky, growling voice suddenly came from the four-armed Investigator. "Tesrain great mage! I no go to school or study with Humans, but I turn to great mage! Tesrain knows much about magicks!"
The purple fades into gold. "Aye aye. Jes' keep focused already. I'd rather see Raul come out of this one in one piece."
Then the voices fade completely, and Coterie blinks several times, taking a seat on the stone floor as she drinks deep from her canteen. "I could use some healing too, if it can be spared." She comments, sounding winded.
Katerina keeps her own counsel but thinks, What in the? A mass of people in Coterie's house?
Kereek blinks twice at Coterie's words. "Wait. Who am Tesrain and Raul? Where am Coterie?" Kereek passes the Cure Moderate Wounds potion to Coterie, wondering how many of the voices it can heal.
Agnar keeps his low tone, though it gets a bit sharp when he addresses the kobold on the radish hunt. "I recognized Charon right enough. Those lanterns though, that's news to me. Prazil! There's no bleedin' radishes here! Quit poking about! You'll rustle up another zombie afore we're ready to slay it! Just a moment and we'll see if we can't get everyone fixed up."
Prazil scratches his head as if he wasn't wearing a helmet again and patiently corrects Agnar, "Well, ok Agnar, but Prazil am looking for moon radishes, not bleeding radishes." The kobold's face scrunches up in disgust then as he adds, "Who am for wanting bleeding radishes? They am for sounding terrible and gross! Blech!"
Then, following Coterie's advice as he still doesn't understand her ability or reason for changing voices so often, Prazil turns to Kereek. "Ok, Coterie am saying we should be for asking you, Kereek. Am you for knowing about magic smoke lantern things?"
"Am Kereek knowing how lanterns work? You am lighting them and they am making light for peoples who am not seeing in dark!"
Prazil scoffs as if seeing through a silly joke, "Psssh! You am not a kobold, Coterie! That am easy to see!"
"Prazil, Coterie is not a Kobold. But, I think she is one, sort of. Like you and Kereek are like dragons. Da?" Kat looks at the crazy gargoyle named Tesrain/Coterie/Raul and shrugs.
Prazil scratches his helmet in confusion once more, "So, Coterie am for being descended from kobolds? Prazil am not for ever having heard this am possible!" He looks excitedly to Kereek, "Kereek! Maybe this am meaning big feets all am coming from kobolds!"
Agnar rolls his eyes.
"Erastil preserve us!"
He turns to Coterie.
"So...erm, Tesrain. Can you figure out how to work these magic lamps for us?"
"No Prazil. That's not what I meant. I meant that like you have the spirit of the dragon, she has the spirit of a kobold." And who am I that I would know. I am not a scholar, that much is true. She asks the gargoyle, "Am I right? I mean, I am just guessing."
"Kereek am thinking she am hiding lots of spirit in her head. Maybe too many spirits!" Kereek looks slightly confused and disturbed by the warring voices coming from Coterie.
"It does seem a bit crowded in there, but no matter. Kereek, do you think you can figure out if these lamps are magical and how to get them to work?"
Prazil scratches his helmet at the talk of magical lamps as questions of genies and wishes jump into his mind unbidden, but the knightly kobold holds his tongue. Instead, he comes alongside Kereek and gives his a reassuring and encouraging pat on the back, "Kereek am for being extra good at that if lamps are needing to be set on fire, Agnar!"
Kereek listens to Coterie detail the ritual with a look of disgust on his face. "So we am for bleeding into the cup? Cyclopses are not nice giants, am they?"
"I'd say not. So, we're boiling this blood, are we? Because the other option I'm not liking so much."
"Kereek no likes this idea much, but Kereek am willing to bleed for team. Kereek not so likely to get hurt since Kereek am sneaky fiery!" Kereek suddenly grows claws and cutting himself, bleeds 10 HP into one of the cups before pulling out a grimy cloth and patching up his cut.
As the blood boils away, doors to the north -- leading to a hallway that quickly branches west -- and to the east swing open. The latter set of doors leads into a chamber that's rough-hewn, as if it were never fully finished. A bronze double door opens in one wall and a passage exits through another.
Katerina looks to the north, wondering if it really makes any difference which way they go in this maze. "Let's go, then." She steps off towards the bronze doors, her eyes to the floor, hoping to see any sign of a trap before she gets to it.
Kereek slinks forward, staying just behind Kat as she opens the doors.
Prazil pats Katerina on the side of the leg and holds his shield up for her consideration. "Maybe you should be for using one of these? It am big help to Prazil for not getting smashed by big dead giants so far."
"Better to be fast, Prazil. Thank you though."
Prazil arches one scaly brow at Katerina's explanation then turns to Kereek and innocently asks in a whisper, "Maybe she am not for knowing what 'better' means?" He shrugs in confusion but keeps to the front of the group again, lest more dead giants try smashing his friends.
Kereek shrugs at Prazil and whispers back "Maybe she am better at getting hit?"
Agnar moves into line with the rest of the party, testing his bowstring as he steps through the door.
The door doesn't appear to be trapped and you move through it only to discover an unfinished stairway that climbs 30 feet and dead-ends at a stone wall.
A search reveals no further egress and your return below, heading into the other chamber.
Its construction differs from those seen previously. The ceiling reaches to a height of twenty feet overhead and appears to bear many fractures in the rock. In the center of the chamber, two columns of mortared stone support a ceiling of strange, delicate arches of stone.
As soon as Katerina enters, a dreadful creature -- some hideous cross between a lobster, an octopus, and a human -- appears in a burst of foul-smelling damp mist.
You hear its voice in your head: In whose name do you dare intrude upon the inner sanctum of the Horseman of Death?
Agnar:
Katerina:
Kereek:
Prazil:
Coterie:
Kereek smiles at the bad-smelling lobster-man. "Hello! We am Big Heroes, but we am not bringing horses-men. Horses-men am living back in forest and we am for giving them a bow! Kereek am having Pork Chop, but Pork Chop am not horses, Pork Chop am war-sheep! So maybe Kereek am Sheepman of War?"
Prazil ensures he's between the strange creature and Kereek as he looks perplexedly from his clutchmate and the bigfeets.
"Uhhhh, Prazil am for being called Prazil?"
"We come investigating the disappearance of the folk from Varnhold. Who are you?" Katerina's sword is at a low ready, And what is this thing that arrives in a cloud of stench and serves the Horsemen?
The creature, apparently unsatisfied with your answers, raises its pincers to attack.
It's a piscodaemon, an aquatic daemon that roams the lower planes sowing misery and blight.
Agnar:
Katerina:
Kereek:
Prazil:
Coterie:
Antagonists: