Tane deflects and dodges the attackers who would do him harm. He glances over just in time to see one of the undead wound Selene. His focus falters as he keeps one eye one the oracle and his next swing lacks concentration.
Malya spell hits a skeleton, but it doesn't seem to damage the wicked bones
Selene is on the defensive and could need some help...
Tane can't hit its second foe, but Essa and Roguk are ready to join the battle. Takeshi seems on the verge of panicking
I can't do a thing! I don't know how to fight these .. things! My bow is useless, I there's no spell I know that can affect them!
Bloody Skeletons AC 16/12/14 F+0 R+2 W+2 HP 5, DR 5/Bludgeon, Fast healing 1
Green skel 5/5
Blue skel 3/5
Yellow skel 5/5
"Malya! Ossa regenerare!"
"Malya! The bones are regenerating!"
"Everyone, the bones are regenerating. Not only that but my frost does not hurt them." She would grab her staff and steps up to the blue skeleton. "We have to whack them really hard."
Tane's eyes widen at the comment, growing momentarily concerned.
Regenerating? That's impossible!
Tane, you're fighting undead creature in a crypt. Anything is possible."
Tane nods to himself and says reassuringly, "Right."
"We have to whack them really hard."
The fighter grins ear to ear and shouts, "HA! Now that is something I CAN do!"
Without realizing he's done so he slips to celestial and speaks to Malya.
Malya bravely advances towards a skeleton, and smashes the undead ribs with her staff! The creature falls down, and doesn't seem to move anymore.
Selene is still on the defensive, and Takeshi dashes away to the previous room
I'll come back soon! Don't worry!
Bloody Skeletons AC 16/12/14 F+0 R+2 W+2 HP 5, DR 5/Bludgeon, Fast healing 1
Green skel 5/5
Blue skel -3/5
Yellow skel 5/5
Red Skel -2/5
Enev slashes at the nearest corpse,
Without looking back Tane shouts after the retreating comrade, confused. "What?! Takeshi? Where is our song of motivation?! Where is our support?
Tane growls in exasperation at his cowardice.
NOW!? Running away NOW? Typical Takeshi, typical.
Let him go and worry about protecting Selene.
And the others. Enev. Malya. Essa. They need you to stay focused right now.
The fighter focuses his frustration into the current task at hand and winds up and rotates his body to transfer maximum strength into his next blow. He lowers his shield with his left hand and brings his morningstar forward towards the undead creature's head.
A bony hand rakes at Selene's shoulder, ripping part of her clothes and leaving marks in her flesh
Enev is luckier, as his foe miss him.. only to be obliterated by Tane a few seconds later
Essa and Roguk enter the fray. Essa moves up to the skeleton by Selene and she points to the skeleton by Enev and Tane and tells Roguk to 'smash'.
Selene's defensive posture and Malya's lotus allows her to deftly out maneuver and block the skeletons' boney, bloody claws.
She spins round and engages cautiously against the crafty undead.
Essa's shillelagh scatters the bloody bones of the last skeleton.
Now what if they come back to "life" later?
After a few moments, Takeshi comes back, with his hands full of blunt arrows from the previous room
Oh. Sorry. You already won... I'm glad everyone is fine. I can heal someone, if needed. I just hoped these arrows would harm the skeletons, and that I could help you...
Knowledge Religion: 10
Selene contiues to bash the bones with her morningstar to see if she can slow the regeneration. "Quis cogitat sancta movrtur aqua commorans fracta ossa orum!?"
"Does anyone think holy water would might stay their broken bones?"
"Selene asks if holy water would keep their bones down." Mayla would thump the skeleton near her just in case before searching the room.
Tane huffs, "I'll show you how to keep them down!"
He stands over top of the fallen parts of one and repeatedly smashes it with his morningstar, attempting to break it in tiny tiny pieces.
Tane and Selene smash their skeletons, into very small pieces.
Unfortunatly, after waiting a few minutes, you notice that the bloody bones kind of "mend" themselves slowly.
Meanwhile, Enev and Malya discuss together, studying the spooky regenerating undead. A spell of Bless might be useful here, used to break the dark magic which bind the unholy creature together.
Falling that, holy water sprinkled over the bones should indeed prevent the skeletons to rise again.
One of the skeletons is wearing a ancient necklace that must be worth more than an hundred gold.
At the end of the room, there is a staircase descending. Whoever comes close to it hears sounds of drippling water and some kind of low moaning.
"I know how we can destroy these things.." Enev searches in his backpack the book Father Prasst gave him.
"There is a spell in this book that will help us" Enev searches in the book pages until he found the spell, he casts Bless on the undead to prevent further regeneration.
She would watch him cast and sighs softly. If only she could wield the divine and the arcane. Unfortunately her focus couldn't take her there. She was grateful though for their divine casters and wouldn't replace them at all.
"Thanks Enev. I wasn't sure myself. I really should pick your brain about undead. Are we sure we want to press on at this point?"
Essa replies "I think I am ready! Ready Roguk?"
She ruffled his furry head and gingerly stepped over the gory blood covered flagstones to approach the stairs.
This level of the crypt has seen better days, and seems even more decrepit than the upper level.
At the bottom of the stairs is a circular chamber with three passageways leading from it.
In the center is a small stone pedestal.
The sound of dripping water can be heard coming from the eastern passageway, while the stench of rot emanates from the west.
Essa big flaming club shows something on the floor. It bears an inscription spiraling out from the pillar and written in Common. It reads:
“To the south you might take your ease,
to rest and reflect on Kassen’s deeds.
To the east lies the wheel, to open the gate.
To the west is the resting place of Kassen, hero of the Fangwood.”
Mayla steps forward reading the inscription to herself. Looking both directions, Mayla's nose wrinkles at one, and she hears from another.
She then would go to detect magic in the room mostly aimed at the pedestal before them and then searching outward.
"So our choices are South, West, and East. West holds Kassen, but it mentions a gate. Possibly to open the way to Kassen or to rest."
Scooting in behind Malya to read over her shoulder, she also smells something. "Malya you need a bath!" She jokes aware of how filthy, grimy and bloody she is herself.
"They don't mention this part in the stories about how everything stinks do they?"
Tane wrinkles his nose at the smell. "If Kassen is resting to the west,I think someone needs to build in a window or something because it stinks over there!"
Looking over the party he adds cautiously, "I just want to say I'm fine pressing on, but are any of you in need of rest? We've been blowing through this place with intentions on lighting this lantern and heading home but perhaps we should catch our breath? Don't some of fancy magic guys require a special dance or something?"
Tane scratches his head, unaware of the intricacies of spell-casting.
Selene takes a long time to answer the nagging question at the back of everyone's mind, "It pains me in every way to say this, but we can not rescue anyone if we don't take a moment of respite. The undead here are lethal, and the traps from here on probably will only get worse as well. There is no hope for anyone if we push our luck and end up short. I feel like I am letting everyone down, but I don't want any of you to fall simply because I am desperate to save the missing people."
Tane had intended his question to be a point of clarification, not something to weigh heaviloy on Selene!
Tane's grimaces and says, "Oh-nono, Selene. I wasn't saying you are too weak to save us, I uh, you see, I was just was trying to make sure that everyone didn't need a rest to uh, talk to your God. And you know, tell them to send you down my spells."
Smooth Tane, smooth. Get out of it before it is too late!
Tane turns away from Selene to find the first spellcaster he can and stumbles on Essa. "R-right Essa? That's what you told me you do?"
"Besides a sleep spell, and a scroll, I am out of spells but my lotus shield I can use a couple more times. A rest would indeed help me recover my spells." She heads to the side with the water sound and just listens to see if she hears any movement from within.
Malya hears a strange, gurgling sound from the east part of the deeper crypt.
The passage to the east slopes down a bit a$er leaving this chamber and water has collected in the corridor.
"Strange gurgling is coming from this side and water has collected in the corridor here. It looks like this one will be a water filled room. I would be willing to explore one more room if you guys want but I definitely say pull back after that."
Mayla tried to identify the noise.
"I err... what Tane? I said no such thing!" She gives him a perturbed shove, not exactly playful, but not out of malice, more just rough and tumble style interaction. "But maybe we should rest, I still feel weak and I am pretty battered yet myself. I could use the chance to commune with nature. Although another room I think we could do, if there are no creepy crawleys"
Selene raises her head at Tane's fumbling, distracted from the disparaging moment, "Alright, one more room, but I am all out of my magics as well. Which way?"
I still have some healing spells, if that might help!
says Takeshi, trying to keep a joyful tone
but I agree we should rest soon, and probably upstairs, it's safer now.
"There are frogs down this passage. They sound louder than normal. It'd definately not mating season. It's possible there are a lot of them or maybe they are big bullfrogs. But my sleep spell can work on them if they are an issue. So my vote is this way though we will get wet."
Mayla would work to tie up her skirt showing off her pantaloons.
"I could try to placate them too. Although I was never very good at the animal empathy thing."
"Frogs...I once licked one...woke up in trousers mid forest, Father Prasst was not happy" Enev has some fun memories coming back when they talk about frogs,
"Any side is fine with me, I only hope my armor don't get rusted with the water"
Tane waves a dismissive hand. "Frogs? If everyone else is in then let's make it happen."
Looking at Malya and Essa he adds, "Are you going to try and talk to them or make them go to sleep or should I just take care of it with this?" Tane holds up his longsword which hasn't seen much use yet.
Essa turns on Tane furiously, "Why would you attack frogs?! What is wrong with you? Do you need to kill everything that walks through the forest?" (Her reference to previous grievances with Tane clearly slip into her response)
"Ok, if they are fire breathing undead zombie demon frogs you can stab them, or maybe if they are giant ones that want to eat us, we might need to defend ourselves, but they are just trying to survive. Ugh." She turns away from Tane exasperated.
Mayla chuckled at Enev's story. "Alright no licking these toads. Essa and myself will try our tricks depending on what we find. My spell takes a little bit to get off so, someone between me and whatever we find will be nice. Essa, shall we try this."
Tane stares at Essa open mouthed, words escaping him for the moment. He closes his eyes and exhales at the same time, his body visually slumping. After shaking his head he sheathes his sword and heads towards the sound of frogs.
Let's go meet the rainbow frogs from happyland who will likely sing our praises of rescuing them from this horrible place.
Tane doesn't bother looking out for anything special or dangerous and will open whatever door the frogs are behind.
The loud croaking sound comes from the northern room, which is closed by an old door swollen by water.
You're moving through mostly ankle deep water, but as you come nearer the door, the water get higher, up to your knees.
Tane tries the door which doesn't open and so he throws his shoulder into it.
The door still doesn't budge and Tane frowns. He tries again and throws his shoulder into the swollen door.
Tane looks back to the group and can tell that someone is going to come up here and try to help him.
Likely Essa, that girl is way stronger than she looks!
He holds his palm up towards the group and says, "I got it, I got it."
Shoulder, door, again.
A grunt of frustration escapes his mouth and he grits his teeth and says, "This. Sucker. IS. REALLY. "
Tane puts everything he has into the last attempt and finally gets the door to open.
After the fourth shoulder thrust, the door finally cracks open.
Of course, all element of surprise is now gone and forgotten, and whatever lurks inside the room had plenty of time to prepare itself when Tane nearly falls over the now broken door...
The room is filled with water, probably as deep as the outside corridor. The chamber is in an advanced state of decay, with a gaping hole in the ceiling admitting a constant trickle of water.
The three stone sarcophagi in this room are almost completely covered in a thick carpet of moss and fungus.
Frogs
AC 12/11/11
HP 15/15
HP 15/15
HP 15/15
F+6 R+6 W-1
Melee Bite +3 1d6+2+Grab or Tongue +3 (Grab)
Tane never saw coming the frogs...
But he's lucky enough all three sticky tongues miss him... Desna must smile upon him!
When three tongues lash out at him in what Tane perceives as attempts to him him for dinner, his instincts cause him to grab the hilt of his blade. He hesitates however as he pivots back to Essa and Malya gritting his teeth. Through clenched teeth he asks, "Please hurry up and make friends or put them to sleep or something. I'm afraid they don't look like they want to play nice."
"I can't placate them once they are already trying to eat you!"
"Give me a few seconds and I can try to put them to sleep."
Selene wades through the room's water to head off one of the amphibians.