Grubgullet groans and mumbles a bit, but acquiesces to Aury's requests. He rolls himself over to the door... and plops himself back down, completely blocking the exit.
"Grub, come now. We shall rest somewhere else, and I promise you a large meal. But we must get out of here."
"Well as long as we're stuck here, how did you even find us, Goivan?"
Goivan shakes his head. "Find isn't the right word. We were on the shadow plane and were leaving when I was suddenly just dumped here. I have no idea how it happened."
Aury'tss raises a brow. "The shadow plane? How in the world did you get there? Wasn't everyone just off trying to find a way to stop the hill giant attack?"
"A painting that we hoped to use to gain a tactical advantage against the hill giants." Goivan grins. "Crazy how that sounds without the details."
"No crazier than stuffing an ogre down a mystery hole we found in a cabin in the woods, filled with monsters. Hmm. Cabin in the woods filled with monsters. Reminds me of a bardic tale I read once."
Aury'tss sighs and sits down to study her spellbook.
"Perhaps you and Sly should work on dragging Grub back to the ladder out of here. I don't think it would work on you Goivan, but I could make Slyvec bigger if it would help. But only for a little bit."
"Err, did you even climb down the ladder, or did you get plopped right into the underground bit?"
"Ugh... okay, okay, no dragging... I get up."
Grub hauls himself back up and squeezes through the door.
Grub heaves himself to his feat, and weakly squeezes through the door and hallways as the group makes their way back to the exit. Reaching the ladder, Grubgullet sighs and slowly, ever so slowly, the group ascends back up to the surface, finally arriving back into the cellar of the shack, and then up to the shack itself and outside into the fresh air.
The battered and wounded group breathes a collective sigh of relief, and sets about to setting up some sort of camp to figure out their next plan. Wiser and more experienced, they can decide what they will do next. They collected a few items in the dungeon, but left some things alone, and one room unexplored. But, there is the larger mission looking. Somewhere a raiding band led by a fire giant, is closing in on Cliffort if Hawke's scouting groups are to be believed.
"Ugghh" The tiny kobold flops over onto the dusty wood floor of the shack when she reaches the top of the ladder, and rolls to the side to make room for everyone else.
"That was an adventure. Didn't help with the giant problem, though. We still need to go take care of one of the groups before they reach Cliffort. Any ideas?"
"Well, we'll deal with it in the morning. It's been a long day, and we still have the rest of that shack to figure out."
Aury'tss blinks and groans at the bright morning sun, glad to remember that the motley group would be returning to the dark underground structure to investigate the corridors they left unexplored.
"Well, mister trap expert, how does it look?" She says, elbowing the wayang and nodding towards the door.
- success
- success
Grub feels weak yet, and recalls with some horror the 300' shaft down to the dungeon, and then back up, and now back down.... and then back up...
Aury'tss tries to tie a bandage around one of the wounds that one of the skeletons inflicted on her, but it keeps coming loose. After a while, she just gives up.
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- success
- success
- success
The group begins their laborious trek down the 300' shaft deep into the earth again to investigate the final hallway and makes sense of who or what was buried here with so many eternal guardians. Why the shrine,why the urns? What of the device he was buried with? What of the geometric patterns?
Sly says "Hey guys, I will stay up top here and keep watch."
Aury searches the corridor for traps, finding none. Shaeyl reaches the door to the room and examines it checking carefully.
He finds an old trap that he isn't sure is functioning any more.
- success
He disables the hand chopper device and determines it was probably still working.
He next starts working on the lock mechanism.
- fail
After a bit Shaeyl gives up unable to open the lock.
"Here, let me have a try at that." Goivan suggests.
Goivan steps up and takes a look at the lock. "Hmm." He sets to work and after a short bit, there is a click and the lock seems to open.
Opening the door cautiously, the group reveals another vaulted chamber. Well carved motifs, many of them geometrical in nature line the walls, floor, ceiling and columns.
The center of the room is dominated by a large stone box. It may be that it is a crypt or some sort of burial container, but it is not clear what its purpose it. It measures about five feet high, nine feet long and about five feet wide, and is made from a rich dark stone.
Aury'tss anxiously swishes her tail from side to side. "Ohh. This might be like another room we were in. There was a big box, and when we opened it, all those undead attacked. We should be careful."
Aury, you don't notice anything obvious other than the normal details. It does appear that there is a separate lid, that has been sealed with some mortar.
Shaeyl enters the room and steps to the side, looking around for the shoe.
"Well we could try breaking it open like the last one. We might find the other piece to that big jewel we found. Grubgullet?"
"Okay."
Grub squeezes his way into the room, past the others. His muscles are still sore, but he's sure he can do it.
Unfortunately, the lid is mortared to the rest of the thing. If it were chipped away some, it probably wouldn't be so hard to move at all for Grub or other strong people.
You fire a few detect magics around the room, but detect nothing within the room itself, but something inside seems to be magic. The schools seem to be evocation, necromancy, transmutation and fairly strong.
"Maybe we can chip it open with some of the swords those skeletons had. Then nobody has to dull their blade."
Aury scampers back into the tunnels and returns with one of the dropped swords.
Aury returns with some of the swords, and with some effort and time, you hack away at the mortar around the stone box. After about half an hour of chipping away, its enough that the group can slide the lid off.
With a lot of noise the massive stone lid grates over and is lowered down to the floor with a thump. Air trapped for centuries wafts out, stale and musty.
The group peers into the box carefully and within is a single large urn, much like the group encountered early on in their exploration. It appears to be bronze or some similar alloy. You haven't touched it yet, but this is surely the source of the magical detection. It looks large, and depending on the contents, if any, could be heavy. The lid is sealed on much like the other urns.
Mystery....
Aury sighs. "It's like I thought - this urn's just like the other one! We should probably be careful if we want to find out what that jewel does."
She takes her bow off her shoulder and holds an arrow in hand, glancing at the doorway.
"Anybody want to volunteer?"
Goivan chuckles and steps forward. "Why not."
Goivan takes a breath. Here we go. He tries to open the urn and grab whatever is inside.
With some effort the group hoists the big urn from within the stone sanctuary and set it in the room on the floor. Goivan nods to the group and attempts the urn. Whatever is sealing the lid on is like some dried and hardened resin. Annoying, but he works at it with his claws or tool and gets it away enough to take the lid off. Inside is a thick viscous semi-opaque gel. within the center of the gel is a glowing something. Smaller and roundish? It is hard to tell as its dark and the glowing thing's appearance is warped by the gel's refraction of the glow. Not trusting the gel one bit Goivan pauses and explains what he has found, perhaps letting everyone see.
Aury stands to the side, out of the way of the stronger of the group as they hoist the urn out of the sarcophagus. Wouldn't want to get squished, after all.
When it has been opened and Goivan takes a look, she peers over the edge of the urn.
"Yuck. That doesn't look too pleasant."
She invokes a few arcane words.
She looks up to Goivan. "You were always pretty good at getting a sense of things, do you think it's dangerous?"
"We could always just drop the other one in an see what happens."
After some analysis, Aury determines that the thing in the gel is a magically preserved organ. Perhaps a heart. As is the custom, some cultures preserve the organs as part of the funerary service. It is likely that the urns in the other room contain 4 other organs, preserved.
In this case the organs have been enchanted somehow, and are attached to the large magical gem pectoral that you recovered from the sarcophagus in the burial chamber.
You wonder what these magical organs might do. You have heard tales of ancient artifacts, macabre and horrifying, where a person will cut out their own organ and replace it with the magical one, gaining some power. You have heard of other, less gruesome versions where the organ is merely worn as a charm of some sort, protecting against some harm or magically enhancing its possessor. In cultures where the organs are preserved, the presumption is the person will need use of them in the afterlife. It isn't clear to you what taking the dead person's magically preserved and enchanted organs will do, but it sure seems like something worth investigating.
Goivan just stands and shakes his head. "I don't want to touch anything unless we know more about what's going on. Between ancient magic and the rights of the dead."
"It can't be good to just leave them here, though, can it? If they used necromancy to make the tomb guardians, I doubt they had very nice plans for these."
"Do you think we already messed up whatever they did by taking the gem out of the other sarcophagus?"
"I'm just going to take a look at the other urns. I won't touch anything. Yet." She crosses the room and peers into some of the other urns.
I'm coming with you.
Shaeyl had gitters from the preserved organ. Something she recalled reading in a class, a long time ago, seemed like centuries.
If only she had paid attention in Necromancy, Lore and History of.
You recover the other urns from the other room, and it takes a while to crack them open too, but eventually your perseverance wins out. Within each urn, wrapped in burial linens, and seemingly preserved with embalming herbs are what you suspect must be mummified organs. Without unwrapping the extremely fragile wrappings you don't know what they are, but your detect magic shows them to glow magically.
Seeing no problems thus far, she dunks the rest of her scaly hand into the goo and grabs the contents to investigate.
Most of the runes and patterns on the walls are symbolic or pertain to funerary rites. You are however able to discern a pattern and some of the images are extremely abstract but one could interpret some of the glyphs as protective, and if one assigns certain symbols to the various urns, you are able to see that each of the four urns plus the fifth are represented, and linked by the control gem.
Aury pulls the heart from the goo, and a sense of power washes over her. Within her minds eye, and spirit voice speaks and if she closes her eyes a bit she can almost envision a person. She gets the sense that this person is who is buried in the chamber where you first held off the skeletons and encountered the shadow.
The heart seems to throb in your hand although it doesn't seem to move, it does glow with a deep rich light, about as bright as a small candle.
The voice in her head echoes "Long ago was I buried here by my brothers, after a life if seeking knowledge and immortality. I yearned to push on into the afterlife. Having met with some success, I found myself, after all the work and a lifetime of research, quite content with the existence waiting for me in the afterlife. These items no longer have any use for me. I hope that the guardians were not too much of a bother. Please take them, that they may strengthen you on your journey as they helped me on mine in the afterlife. My lungs, stomach, intestines and liver are preserved as was the nature of my people. In addition, my heart was also preserved. Each brings with it magical properties. Together, they are also linked by my pectoral piece, and the talismans will bring about a greater unity among you."
With that the voice and image fades, leaving you with more questions that you started, and mentally shouting 'wait.....!'
At least you have some small idea now what is going on here, and what the preserved organs do, and perhaps a little less squeamish about what to do with them or simply taking things from here.
The small kobold gasps in surprise as the voice speaks in her head. When it stops she excitedly repeats the story to the others - luckily, her bardic training ensures it is quite a well told story!
"Mystery solved!" She exclaims.
She grins and excitedly looks from face to face expecting similar reactions. After a few seconds she realizes she's still holding a (probably) human heart, she drops it back into the urn and wipes her claws off on the loose clothing the dwarves had given her.
Based on what the man said in your head, and what little you know, you probably have enough information to take the 4 smaller urns ( lung, stomach, liver, intestines ) and the large heart urn, along with the 'control piece' the large chest pectoral jewelry with gems.
"This person sounded righteous, but to gain powers from preserved organs? It sounds like the works of necromancy to me." Goivan frowns and scans the area for evil.
Goivan focuses his spirit and scans and detects no evil. He surmises that the undead present as guardians were evil, and it is quite likely the man buried here practiced necromancy in life and his research led him down this avenue.. However, the burial rites of preserving organs is itself not evil, though you do wonder about those same organs having been enchanted with magical powers. Why couldn't the man have used a nice ring or something like everyone else does?
While you heard the tale from Aury second hand, it seems as though in death the man had a turn of heart (hah!). Whether or not this is truthful or not, rolls through your mind.