The whip is more surprising than hurtful. Emi isn't sure what to make of it.
Vision's always tricky down here, but I ought to be able to see more than just a whip.
It could be held by something she can't see. It could also be a spell she supposes. Right at the moment though Emi thinks it's better to go with a sure thing.
She drops her bow and snatches her falchion, taking the measure of the darkling by her at the edge of the bridge as she does so.
Kayleigh's menacing dagger gives it just enough pause to create an opening, and Emi takes it.
As she recovers her swing, something occurs to Emi.
A whip! Maybe...
She calls out "are you here because of the shrine? For Callistria? If you are, let's talk!"
Regeris's target is a wary one and it seems to detect him at the last minute. It - she - he realizes as they grapple, dodges the bulk of his thrust and pivots to escape. He only trips her at the last second, sending her scrabbling for the side of the bridge. She misses her catch by a hairsbreadth and is swallowed by the chasm with a gasp.
Tassira's lightning cascades around her target but doesn't strike it.
Emileva's swipe at the weapon sheers through it like its not there. But when it lashes back at her and wraps around the bicep of her weapon arm it leaves an ugly bruised lash.
Back out on the gloomy bridge, Regeris is quickly finding himself surrounded. Another of the taller creatures leans in out of the shadows to flank the inquisitor. Everything about it suggests it's a Dark Stalker, a more powerful species of Darkfolk than the Creepers. He doesn't know anything more about them except that this one is trying to kill him. Its wicked short sword lashes out and Regeris has very little space to avoid the blow.
The other two Creepers strike out with their swords but only manage to nick Regeris once. Again, dark reagents flow through the inquisitor's veins.
When Regeris retreats the Creepers do the same. Foreign whispers in the darkness convey commands, one to another.
"Trade?" Kayleigh asks Tassira, holding out her daylight-enhanced dagger while eyeballing the mage's torch. "I'm better armored if we want to take the fight to those creepers!"
"Deal." Tassira exchanges the dagger for the torch.
Torch in hand, Kayleigh marches fearlessly out onto the bridge.
HP 59/59
AC 17, touch 12, flat-footed 15 (-2 to all when raging), DR 2/-
Fort +8, Ref +4 (+1 vs. traps), Will +2 (+2 Will when raging) [Defiant luck]
CMD 20 (22 vs. grapple)
Rage: 0/18; Harrow points: 2/3; Auspicious Mark (1d6+1) 0/1; Defiant Luck: 0/1
Effects: Aided (+2 to hit), antidoted (+5 vs. poison), protected from evil (+2 AC, saves vs. evil)
Nebbin follows right next to Kayleigh, sword at the ready.
Emi would think more seriously about moving onto the bridge with the others, but the ghost whip sure is a problem. She can't seem to do anything to harm it, and she doesn't like the idea of it tagging along behind if she goes with them.
Emi doubts she'll be so lucky, but she isn't certain the whip can move. The best she can do is experiment and try to keep it busy. She steps back away from it and concentrates on not getting hit again if it follows her.
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The magical whip dissolves as the full light of the torch advances to swallow it up. Kayleigh and Nebbin's march take them to the very apex of the bridge and in the dim reach of the torchlight they can make out an assortment of things among the rubble on the ground on the other side of the chasm. Bedrolls, sacks and coils of rope.
As they start to take another step forward the chasm below them is suddenly lit far, far below their feet by a yellow flash. A split-second later the boom comes up, accompanied by a gust of warm, dusty air.
Most of the enemy on the other side of the chasm is in flight. Kayleigh imagines their heels just beyond the reach of her little flame. One stirs among the bedrolls and things, its own enchantment broken. It looks about to flee as well.
With the whip gone Emi can drop her defense, which she does.
The new thing bugging Emi is how she can't imagine any outcome of the fight that changes anything in the long run. If they drive off the dark folk now, they can just come back any time.
While they've tended to think of this place as part of a 'basement' with a shrine, and treated the problem much like a pest infestation, it's really nothing like that at all.
The better analogy is the place is like a back yard abutting a gigantic forest. There's a whole world down there and she can see no way to hold onto the area without camping out at the bridge forever. The terrain won't allow the little nub of land Helvara claims to be walled off. Any solution walls, guards, magic, would be massively expensive and still probably fail in the end.
Some other solution would have to be found.
Emi moves back up to her old spot and calls out "Stop! We have to talk! What do you want here? We can negotiate!
Tassira cringes when she hears Emi.
...do they even speak our language?
Regeris pads along coldly as they flee. "They have demonstrated no interest in negotiating and have had many chances to do so. Still though, I won't slaughter an enemy in flight."
Breaking into a jog, Regeris passes his bow to his other hand and yanks out his longsword to close in on the creature in the bedrolls. "Surrender now and be spared!"
The new stalker flees before Regeris, but not before the inquisitor is able to get an attack off...
Kayleigh moves after Regeris, bringing the light of Tassira's torch with her.
Tassira follows behind Kayleigh so the torch doesn't get swallowed up by the darkness.
SInce her appeal has gained zero traction Emi switches back to her bow and follows along with the others to the opposite side of the bridge.
She looks around for abandoned belongings left on the ground.
Regeris gets ready to swing, but holds his attack. He's not going to kill a fleeing foe. He stays his blow and does his best to make meaningful eye contact.
"They're routed, let's follow them to ensure they don't regroup to attack us."
Nebbin continues to stay close to Kayleigh, following her lead.
"There's too much space down here. If they won't make peace, I don't think we can kill all of them, can we? I think we might just need to bar the door," he says.
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Kayleigh glances at Nebbin and it's clear that there's worry reflected in her eyes. After giving a quick shrug, the priestess says, "We don't know what these beings are capable of. If even one of them can bring forth magical silence the way they can call forth darkness, they could chop through a door and be upon Helvara and her staff in the middle of the night. They wouldn't stand a chance."
Looking back over her shoulder and up at the great fissure, she adds, "And we don't know how far up that goes. There could be a way all the way up to the surface."
"I guess we need to keep following them, and then try to deal with the wasps, and then maybe go down the crevasse? Maybe that's a way people can escape if they have to if the Gray Ladies come!" he finishes excitedly.
Kayleigh can't help but smile at Nebbin's exuberance and his 'Gray Ladies' name for the Queen's plate-clad female enforcers: She pictures an army of octogenarian spinsters advancing menacingly, walking sticks raised to strike. She needs a bit of levity, for her own thoughts have turned dark.
More likely we'll end up tossing Gray Maiden corpses down into the darkness if we ever come to blows with the Queen's bodyguards.
The items scattered around on the other side of the chasm are arranged like a crude campsite. Little heaps of rags scattered among the rocks are laid out like child-sized beds. Sacks are piled against the wall on the left side of the tunnel, along with heaps of corded ropes and a pair of grappling hooks. Two lines stretch down out of the darkness above and dangle there by the wall, easily within reach if you stand on the precipice. It certainly suggests that these intruders came from above the bridge somewhere. Or possibly that some of their party ascended further.
Next to one of the bedrolls is a heap of hard, hollowed-out bug carapaces that remind one strongly of the flying critters the party battled the last time they crossed this bridge.
Recommitting to the task at hand, the advance down the tunnel to the shrine is slow and deliberate. The smell of smoke suddenly becomes very strong as the group moves deeper into the cave. Something's burning ahead. The flickering light of the torch casts the group's shadows wild upon the walls, giving the illusion of motion where there is none and keeping everyone jumpy.
As expected, the tunnel widens again after only a few dozen feet. The collapsed foyer of the shrine comes into view with its tumble of earth and boulders on the left. The masonry walls of the shrine suddenly loom up out of the darkness. You catch the fleetest glimpse of a short, cloaked figure framed in the arch to the shrine, then it disappears around the corner.
To the right as the group enters the room there are two more sleeping mats on the ground and a tiny, smoldering fire. A crude light shield is deployed between the fire and the bedrolls and an empty roasting spit straddles the flames. Another pile of bug shells lies against the wall near the fire next to a pile of broken furniture parts.
Kayleigh moves forward another 20 feet to bring more light to the area.
"Hey--we may be able to let the Calistrian wasps do the dirty work for us if we awaken the haunt again."
Regeris looks curiously at the hollow carapaces. "What were they -doing-?"
Padding along carefully, and raises his eyebrows over at Kayleigh before nodding once. "Not a bad plan. I'm out of invisibility spells unfortunately. My sincere hope is we can get them to just flee entirely, but I also would love to know what the hell they're up here for."
He notices the creeper at the edge of the light and sighs. "They're ready for us."
Emi destroys the light barrier around the fire, hoping a little extra radiance will help.
"My guess they must have some crafting value? Maybe the make good containers or something?"
Emi thinks about the wasps for a moment now that Kayleigh's mentioned them.
"I suppose anything is worth a try, but why haven't they bothered them already? Do you think they know about them?"
"Maybe they're eating the bugs?" Nebbin suggests. "And just throwing the shells on the floor?"
He looks around to see what else may be down here. He hopes they can clean out this shrine quickly, and then climb the ropes to see if they can figure out more what's going on.
As the group enters the chamber outside the shrine, some of the items around the fire start to come into focus. The 'fire' is barely more than a smoldering ember. The spit above it is covered with a bubbling slime that matches the leavings on the carapaces. Nebbin's guess seems closest to the truth.
Unlike the bedrolls by the chasm, the three here arranged on the other side of the fire shield seem made for man-sized folk. It seems reasonable to assume the two breeds of Darkfolk camped separately. Taking in the two sites in total, you count eight bedrolls by the chasm and three here. If those numbers stand up, you at least have an approximate count of the remaining foes.
The archway to the shrine looms up out of the shadows, tall and dark. No sounds issue from chamber beyond.
"Without our spells, maybe we shouldn't go into the shrine right now?" he asks. "We probably need to deal with the dark folk first?"
Regeris kneels by the bedsides, scowling. "We can always flee. The way behind us is clear and I would strongly prefer that we drive the dark folk out of this shrine."
Kayleigh listens to Nebbin and Regeris carefully before speaking. "I still have one protection spell left; I'm not sure if Tassira can cast any more."
Regeris seems to be correct about the dark folk not having any ranged weapons as the party is still not under attack. This makes her opt to take a little more time to be cautious and attempt an experiment. Grabbing a rock off the cavern floor, she casts light on it and whispers for Nebbin to throw the stone up the hole in the ceiling near the dangling ropes, to make certain no dark ones hang there waiting to spring an ambush.
At closer inspection of the spit, Emi revises her thinking.
"Yep, eatin' bugs Nebbin."
Emi looks around the area, turning almost a full circle while peering out into the dark beyond their circle of light. Things have gone well so far, but she can't figure out how they might make their success stick for any meaningful amount of time.
"I think we should stick with dealing with the dark folk. Maybe we can scare them badly enough to stay away, at least for a while. But I don't know what's to keep something else from coming along and claiming this spot after them."
Looking up she comments on the ropes ascending the crevice.
"That can't go too far up right? I mean we're more or less at a sub-basement depth below the city. I wonder if it goes up to an opening into a building or something?"
Nebbin takes the rock and throws it up.
Kayleigh does her best to follow the trajectory of the rock Nebbin threw, both as it ascends into the crack in the ceiling and then when it plummets into the depths. Then she recasts the spell on Nebbin's sword, just in case he should somehow get separated from the group.
The fact that the little rock glows upon Kayleigh's casting tells her that the enemy and its cloak of magical darkness is out of range. When Nebbin heaves the stone it reveals a naked face of rock stretching up and up. Roughly sixty feet up the wall there's a dark depression, right where the dangling rope seems to originate.
The pebble glances off the fissure wall just under the hole, skips another couple feet up, then begins to fall. It whizzes past the bridge and plummets down the crack, lighting up the walls of the narrow crevice as it falls. The height is dizzying - a thousand feet or more of dark air lies under the little bridge.
Eventually the light disappears, lost in the inky depths of the earth.
Remembering that he injured a creeper with an arrow, Regeris takes a bit to check the rope and the way forward to see if there is any indication of blood so as to get an idea of where their quarry went.
After recasting light on Nebbin's greatsword, Kayleigh examines the wounds of Regeris and Emileva. Figuring that she's got enough positive energy channels left for the coming confrontation and its aftermath, the cleric steps away from the entrance to the crypt (to ensure that she doesn't accidentally heal any lurking enemies and channels positive energy.
"So are we going up now?"
Emi doesn't sound thrilled about the idea.
Kayleigh's eyes dart between her friend and her mentor as she awaits Regeris's decision on the matter. The way the priestess takes a couple of quick steps away from the chasm's edge seems to indicate that she has no interest in climbing or descending at the moment...or, more likely, ever.
As Regeris looks over the ropes he glances over his shoulder. "They are either in the shrine or up in this hole. I think it would be... exceedingly dangerous to chase them up here. But if I can find evidence they went up here, maybe we cut the ropes and then investigate the shrine."