"Ooooouuuuuuch!" Irakelesh yells in pain as the centipede moves faster than lightning and strikes at him.
Ai'sha will circle behind the group and heal Irakelesh with her wand.
Aliva will move in to engage the beast, hoping to draw the attacks to her instead of her allies.
"Milani grant me your protection so that I may protect those in my charge!" Aliva says as she moves forward to the creature.
G'nock moves out onto the sand, and looses a shaft from his longbow, which embeds in a chink in the creature's carapace.
Aliva moves forward, but the giant insect bites into her with its clacking mandibles.
Round One Irakelesh (missed shot), Fitliss (cast divine favor), Centipede (moved and bit Irakelesh), Aliva (blessing of defense), Ai'sha (used wand of cure light wounds), G'nock (hit with arrow)
Round Two Irakelesh (up), Fitliss (up), Centipede (not yet up), Aliva (not yet up), Ai'sha (not yet up), G'nock (not yet up)
Centipede- 6 damage
Aliva Shrugs off the poison of the creature, bringing her weapon around to strike at the creature.
Aliva mumbles a quick prayer and a intangible divine force protects her.
HP 11/22
Fervor 1/3
Blessings 3/4
AC 21
Irakelesh closes his eyes as he absorbs the healing energies from Ai'sha. "Thanks!" he says as he opens them back up. He glances over his right shoulder and spots G'nock coming up. "I need to get some distance from that thing so excuse me G'nock as I step around you." Once at a safer distance, Irakelesh takes aim with his bow again
Fitliss doesn't show any signs of pain as some of Irakelesh's bite wound transfer to him. The gnome simply begins casting without a word, struggling to cast in a manner that won't give the centipede an opening.
Aliva smacks the centipede across the face with her morningstar, clearly causing it pain. It backs up slightly and then retaliates by trying to bite her, as well as bringing it's long whiptail swinging around.
She manages to sidestep the mandibles, and hops over the tail as it comes swinging around, unscathed this time around.
Round One Irakelesh (missed shot), Fitliss (cast divine favor), Centipede (moved and bit Irakelesh), Aliva (blessing of defense), Ai'sha (used wand of cure light wounds), G'nock (hit with arrow)
Round Two Irakelesh (missed), Fitliss (cast cure light wounds), Centipede (full attacked Aliva), Aliva (hit with morningstar), Ai'sha (up), G'nock (up)
Round Three Irakelesh (up), Fitliss (up), Centipede (not yet up), Aliva (not yet up), Ai'sha (not yet up), G'nock (not yet up)
Centipede- 15 damage
Aliva manages to sidestep the mandibles, and hops over the tail as it comes swinging around, unscathed this time around.
"This is starting to feel a lot like fighting that thing upstairs. I can't hit anything!" Irakelesh aims the bow again, taking more time on this shot.
Fitliss shifts forward slightly, and thrusts at the centipede with his longspear.
Fortune seems to be turning in the favore of Pharasma's Seekers. Irakelesh sticks another arrow into the monster, and Fitliss moves forward and impales the centipede on his longspear, doing even more damage.
Round One Irakelesh (missed shot), Fitliss (cast divine favor), Centipede (moved and bit Irakelesh), Aliva (blessing of defense), Ai'sha (used wand of cure light wounds), G'nock (hit with arrow)
Round Two Irakelesh (missed), Fitliss (cast cure light wounds), Centipede (full attacked Aliva), Aliva (hit with morningstar), Ai'sha (up), G'nock (up)
Round Three Irakelesh (hit with bow), Fitliss (hit with longspear), Centipede (not yet up), Aliva (not yet up), Ai'sha (not yet up), G'nock (not yet up)
Centipede- 29 damage
Ai'sha repositions to get a clearer shot while drawing her shortbow, then shoots once.
Ai'sha's arrows flies over the creature's head and impacts into the stone wall beyond, but G'nock is able to deliver another well-aimed arrow, this one striking the vermin in its ocelli clusters. The centipede looks extremely weak, like almost any blow could bring it down at this point. It keeps fighting, but Aliva continues to evade the the thing's maw and tail.
Round One Irakelesh (missed shot), Fitliss (cast divine favor), Centipede (moved and bit Irakelesh), Aliva (blessing of defense), Ai'sha (used wand of cure light wounds), G'nock (hit with arrow)
Round Two Irakelesh (missed), Fitliss (cast cure light wounds), Centipede (full attacked Aliva), Aliva (hit with morningstar), Ai'sha (missed), G'nock (missed)
Round Three Irakelesh (hit with bow), Fitliss (hit with longspear), Centipede (missed), Aliva (up), Ai'sha (up), G'nock (up)
Round Four Irakelesh (up), Fitliss (up), Centipede (not yet up), Aliva (not yet up), Ai'sha (not yet up), G'nock (not yet up)
Centipede- 36 damage
Aliva dodges the large bug, "Is this size of insect normal around here?" Aliva asks before swinging her morning star.
"Ai'sha! Great shot! Somehow you were able to hit that housefly that was resting on the wall." Irakelesh grins at her while readying and releasing an arrow himself.
"You better shut your mouth or I'll undo all the healing I just did to you.", she replies, going red.
"Those two were just warning shots, the next one will hit."
Aliva steps forward after dodging the last bit, and smashes the creatures face to pieces with her morningstar. The centipede slumps to the ground, and it's hundred or so legs slowly stop twitching and curl under.
"Yeah Ai'sha. The thing's dead now. I bet you can hit it." Irakelesh rapidly scoots away to the far side of the room to avoid Ai'sha's fist that he knows is coming.
”Whew, that thing hit like an ogre,” Fitliss wheezes, moderately wounded despite never having been hit. ”I only have two spells left for the day, should I heal myself now?”
Irakelesh feels the injuries leave his body. It is a strange feeling, not quite like when healing energy flows in. "Fitliss, I don't think I'll ever get used to this. Not that I'm complaining." Irakelesh stretches his long arms above his head and twists and shrugs his shoulders a couple times, cracking the bones in his back.
He rummages through his backpack and pulls out a potion then hands it to Fitliss. "Here, this is a healing potion. Use this instead of your spells to get yourself healthy. We don't know what it in the mausoluem."
”Thanks Irakelesh, using a potion is a good idea! I’ve got my own though, I will just use that!” Fitliss declares, pulling a potion from his pack and downing it. ”Now who else is ready to go explore this likely deadly mausoleum?!” the oracle asks excitedly, limping off to get a head start on his more able-bodied companions.
"Well I'm glad that thing is dead.", Ai'sha says, after missing a punch on Irakelesh. "Lets get this mausoleum done with."
Aliva cleans her Morning Star off and looks back at everyone.
"I doubt we could sneak up on much if you two continue to fight like that." shaking her head Aliva leads the way to the Mausoleum
Leaving the centipede's corpse, you walk across to where a rectangular stone building sits in estate. At each corner stand columns carved to resemble men and women with their arms crossed over their chests. A set of stone doors stands in the southern face of the building, carved with bas-relief faces of two men. Hieroglyphs are carved into the doors just beneath the faces.
The faces on the doors match the faces on the statues outside the property. You suspect the men to be Pentheru the Elder Pentheru the Younger, and their respective wives, and this is probably the tomb where they were buried. Hieroglyphs are written upon the building.
The hieroglyphs identify this building as the "Crypt of the House of Pentheru," and warn "May defilers be cursed by the gods until their day of judgement."
The crypt's stone doors are heavy, but open easily. Inside, a wide stairway descends 15 feet, faintly lit by the sun from outside the doors. Another set of doors stands at the foot of the stairs. These also open easily.
A stone altar sits upon a raised stone platform in the center of this square room. Columns carved in the likenesses of male and female figures with their arms crossed over their chests and khopeshes or ankhs in their hands stand at each corner of the platform. Empty torch holders are built in all fur of the room's corners. Two stairways exit the room: one climbs to the south (where the group came from), while the other descends from this chamber to the north.
Irakelesh, Ai'sha, and Aliva spot a strange, humanoid creature that looks almost like a mummy lurking behind the altar platform. It sees them see it, and runs out to attack.
Adhesive (Su)
A weapon that strikes an adherer becomes stuck fast to the creature’s adhesive flesh unless the wielder succeeds at a DC 14 Reflex save. A creature adjacent to the adherer can attempt to pry off a stuck weapon with a DC 17 Strength check, but doing so provokes an attack of opportunity from the adherer. The adherer’s adhesive flesh gives it a +8 racial bonus on grapple checks. It can attempt to grapple a foe as a free action whenever a creature successfully hits it with a natural attack or an unarmed strike. An adherer does not gain the grappled condition when it grapples a foe, nor does it provoke attacks of opportunity when it attempts to do so. Fire can temporarily burn away an adherer’s adhesive coating—whenever an adherer takes at least 10 points of fire damage, it loses its adhesive special quality for 1d4 rounds. Universal solvent, alchemical solvent, or a similar fluid removes an adherer’s adhesive quality for 1 hour if it fails a DC 15 Reflex save, or for 1d4 rounds if it makes the save. The adherer’s skin loses its adhesive quality 1 hour after the adherer dies. An adherer can release anything stuck to it as a free action. The save DCs are Constitution-based.
Lore
Adherers look vaguely like embalmed and mummified corpses wrapped in dirty linen, but are in fact something else entirely. Transformed by hideous processes on the Ethereal Plane, their bodies are riddled with tiny, adhesive strands that can stick to anything, allowing the adherers to bind their enemies’ weapons and capture living creatures for their depraved, blood-draining rituals.
Though once human, adherers have forgotten all traces of humanity, and now hunt their former kindred with gleeful abandon. Adherers digest food unusually slowly, and as such can feed on a single creature (humans are their favorite meal) for days or even weeks, taking only one or two bites a day and forcing their living captives to endure a hellish, drawn-out death.
Adherers can survive as scavengers, but crave the sensation of trapping another creature and repeatedly draining its blood. Lacking the expertise or intellect of their captors, however, adherers tend to err on the side of taking too much, so their captives rarely last long. Though adherers occasionally drink the shed blood, more often they simply collect it out of habit, storing it in vats, jugs, and bottles. Those exploring adherer lairs are likely to find many such containers, cold and congealed.
Adherers have Damage Reduction 5/ -
Adherers are male or female, like humans, and procreate in the usual fashion, save that they join their filaments into a cocoon during copulation. They weave similar constructions out of dead fibers to keep their young safe while the parents hunt. While they rarely have the opportunity—as their lust for blood generally overcomes all others—adherers are also capable of interbreeding with humans. The resulting abominations appear human at birth, but quickly change as the ether filaments multiply and spring from their skins. Within less than a year, the children are transformed in both body and mind into infant adherers.
Adherers on the Material Plane have a lifespan approximately twice that of an ordinary human. Young and old must hunt as long as they are able, and those nearing the end of their lives often seek the most dangerous duties, craving death as an alternative to burdening the nest. Adherer dead are cocooned in their own filaments and woven into the walls of their community.
In combat, adherers naturally gravitate toward melee, where they use their adhesive qualities to crush their opponents to them, binding them in strands of sticky, extruded filaments and leaving them alive for later bloodletting whenever possible. The stickiness of their skin also makes them adept at disarming their foes, making melee weapons a risky option for those facing them. If confronted with enemies who can’t be subdued easily through simple grappling and adhesion, adherers are smart enough to slink into the shadows and set up elaborate ambushes.
Adherers have Spell Resistance 14.
Adherers often choose to live underground or in heavily vegetated terrain, where they can find or manufacture cover and concealing shrouds for their nests and ambushes. Their favored lairs, however, are ruined or abandoned buildings whose original inhabitants have been exterminated.
Adherers are cruel stalkers and ambushers, with a debased intellect scarcely above that of a particularly clever and ruthless animal. They exhibit a feral cunning in setting up ambushes, but their society is little more than a brutish pack ruled by the strongest, cleverest, or most vicious adherer in the nest. Dominant adherers control breeding in the nest and select the choicest captives for their feasting, sometimes casting out those who would challenge their authority. Those adherers unable to claim power and unwilling to serve beneath the dominant member sometimes voluntarily leave in order to start their own nests (a process that frequently involves restraining their bloodlust long enough to mate with captives and produce a new generation of nestmates). Adherers are constantly driven by their hunger, and even those able to converse with them in Aklo find them barely able to hold a conversation. The only creatures that seem to enjoy the company of adherers are spiders, who sometimes sense an affinity of sorts within them. Some sages speculate that the ectoplasmic secretions of an adherer’s filament-bonds act as a pheromone that attracts spiders to them. What is known is that spiders will not attack adherers unless magically controlled, and some adherers have still greater empathic abilities with arachnids.
Surprise Round Irakelesh (up), Aliva (up), Ai'sha (up), Adherer (not yet up)
Round One Irakelesh (not yet up), Aliva (not yet up), Ai'sha (not yet up), Adherer (not yet up), Fitliss (not yet up)
Aliva moves forward up to the the Altar, readying herself for a fight.
"Hey! I can read this." Irakelesh takes a moment to read the inscriptions silently then he translates to the group. "That part there says, 'Crypt of the House of Pentheru'. And that part there," he moves and points to a different section. "That says 'May defilers, especially redheads, be cursed by the gods until their day of judgement."
Just as he's finishing the translations Irakelesh notices the mummy-like creature. "Whoa!" he exclaims and backs away.
Irakelesh's eyes grow wide as he recognizes the shambling thing. "Hey guys," he says, clearly concerned. "Absolutely don't let that thing get close to you. I know it looks like a mummy but it's not! It's something called an adherer. It sticks to you and your weapons."
Irakelesh takes another step back. "Does anyone have something to do fire damage? That can help."
"What do you mean it isn't undead? IT looks just like a Mummy!" Aliva shouts
”I can’t make fire! What do I do instead Irakelesh?”
"Very funny, Irakelesh, what of those symbols means redhead? The backward-looking bird-person?"
As they notice the creature, she jumps back.
"Well, I have no fire, unless we light some torches..."
She moves close to Aliva.
A sour stink fills the air as the pallid humanoid creature, wrapped in wispy strips of skin, silently moves forward with seeming ill-intent.
Surprise Round Irakelesh (moved), Aliva (moved), Ai'sha (moved), Adherer (moved)
Round One Irakelesh (up), Aliva (up), Ai'sha (up), Adherer (not yet up), Fitliss (not yet up), G'nock (not yet up)
"We really need to buy some essentials before we go to the next tomb tomorrow." Aliva says while readying herself for this creature.
Aliva says a prayer and her Morning Star glows with a bright light.
Ai'sha enchants her scimitar and strikes at the mummy-creature.
"Guys! I wasn't kidding when I said don't let it get close to you. We need to back out into the courtyard where we can move around this thing. Hopefully it will follow us and we can surround it."
Irakelesh steps back while he fires an arrow at the adherer.
"And if you attack it with a melee weapon..." Irakelesh grimaces when Ai'sha smacks it with her scimitar. "Uh. Well, you might lose your weapon. The thing is sticky and your weapon's going to stick to it!"
Irakelesh's arrow misses its target, but Ai'sha steps up and slashes at the bandaged figure, doing a fair amount of damage, but less than expected since his form is so strange. What's more, her sword sticks to the dingy cloth, forming long, thin, gluey strands as she pulls her sword away. It didn't stick this time.
But then the adherer turns to face Ai'sha, and slams one of its arms down on her head, pulling her into a sticky headlock.
Surprise Round Irakelesh (moved), Aliva (moved), Ai'sha (moved), Adherer (moved)
Round One Irakelesh (missed shot), Aliva (moved and cast magic weapon), Ai'sha (hit adherer), Adherer (hit and grappled), Fitliss (up), G'nock (up)
Round Two Irakelesh (up), Aliva (up), Ai'sha (up), Adherer (not yet up), Fitliss (not yet up), G'nock (not yet up)
Adherer- 2 damage
”Ai’sha!” Fitliss yells, charging forward to stab the adherer. ”Let her go you stupid not-mummy!”
Hearing what Irakelesh said Aliva still moves a bit to attack the creature.
"Urgh, let me...Go!", Ai'sha strikes again.
"Ai'sha! You've got to get away from him, er, it, er whatever it is."
Irakelesh aims his shortbow and fires off another arrow.
The group begins attacking the strange being in earnest. Fitliss misses with his spear, and neither Irakelesh nor G'nock can get a clear shot with their allies providing cover. Ai'sha tries to strike the monstrous humanoid with her scimitar, but can't manage, partly due to being in the grapple. Aliva manages to land a blow, doing a bit of damage, but her morningstar sticks to the creatures shoulder. She can't get it loose.
The adherer makes a strange coughing noise, that you soon realize must be laughter, as it releases Ai'sha from it's grasp. It then immediately begins pummeling her again with its fists and elbows. At the end of it all it grabs her in a half-nelson, painfully bending her arm back.
Surprise Round Irakelesh (moved), Aliva (moved), Ai'sha (moved), Adherer (moved)
Round One Irakelesh (missed shot), Aliva (moved and cast magic weapon), Ai'sha (hit adherer), Adherer (hit and grappled), Fitliss (missed), G'nock (missed)
Round Two Irakelesh (missed), Aliva (hit but morningstar got stuck), Ai'sha (missed), Adherer (releases grapple, twice hits and grapples Ai'sha again), Fitliss (up), G'nock (up)
Round Three Irakelesh (up), Aliva (up), Ai'sha (up), Adherer (not yet up), Fitliss (not yet up), G'nock (not yet up)
Adherer- 4 damage
"This isn't going to work well while we're stuck in these close quarters. We need to get this thing out in the open. Aliva and Fitliss, can you move back? Maybe it will follow us. Ai'sha, can you drag it?"
Irakelesh reaches down, for the millionth time, to find his belt of extracts is empty. He used everything in the earlier battles. Having no other options he aims and fires with his bow again.
"I...Don't think it works that way.", Ai'sha struggles and tries to hit the adherer again.
Morning star stuck in the creature Aliva smashes her shield into the beast.