Mahjik gets a sense that there's a fair number of people about - but cannot really figure out relative positions and how to not get into the way of those that are effective. He chooses to bide his time instead.
Although her wounds are slowing her down a bit, Yarzoth remains quick enough to avoid both attacks from Urza.
Douena floats into the room and around Pezocks space. The tengu doesn't notice her and continues to complain about the lack of light.
Yarzoth's head darts forward and bites into Makoa's neck, leaving a nasty gash.
Lorenz continues to wait.
Next Up: Urza, Douena, Pezock (subject to delayed action), Mahjik (subject to delayed action), Yarzoth, Lorenz (subject to readied action).
Lorenz looks around nervously. What was taking them so long? Were they did? Should he go get help? Unwilling to give them up and not willing to continue on to his certain doom, he keeps his scimitar upraised over his head, though his arms were getting a little sore.
Makoa manages not to cry out as fangs rip his nexk, and he retaliates with another swing of his axe.
Urza's desperation grows as the battle continues.
Claw:
to hit damage
Claw:
to hit damage
crit confirm:
to hit damage
Makoa tries again to catch Yarzoth, but this time she dodges to the side. In doing so, however, she presents her back to Urza, who swipes at her with one of his claws, catching her on the back of the neck. "Ydersius damn you all!" she gasps amidst a spray of blood. Then she coughs up blood and collapses, falling over top of the hole.
Down below, Lorenz sees blood start to drip from the hole in the ceiling and splatter on the floor beside him.
"Damn us? With some blasted light, I'll damn you! Let me at her!" Pezock yells.
"She's dead, Pezock." "Makoa replies wearily. "Urza cut her down. Good job, my friend."
Grimacing as he moves, Makoa growls a spell and let's it close his wounds.
Pezock relaxes and lowers his sword. "Well done, Wizard! Now use your magic to make us some light in here."
He raises his sabre to his face, as if trying to look at it, and says softly, "Yes, I know you didn't get to taste her blood, but her evil is ended and that was the goal." He lowers the sword again and sheathes it.
Lorenz takes a step back from the dripping blood, his face pale. His imagine, ever overactive, conjured up far too many possibilities and he feared that he might be sick.
"Is everyone okay?" His voice is smaller than he'd expected and he doesn't actually expect anyone to answer.
"I can see in the dark so I don't do light. We'll get one of the others up here to help. Or maybe Mahjik has a light source."
Detect Magic and search the area.
How's everyone holding up. I'm at 8 of 24 hit points and only cantrips left to cast.
Makoa sighs as he leans against a wall and tries to get some energy back.
"That was probably the strangest fight I've had in my life."
Douena rematerializes in the corner, puts out her hands to see what's around her, and meets something feathery. "Oh, hi, Pezock. It's dark up here, isn't it?" She fishes a bone chip out of her pocket and requests light from Desna. She immediately spies Ieana's scaly body bleeding on the floor. "Did you kill her? But we never found out why she came here!" ""
Lorenz jumps when Douena's original light goes out. He hoped that meant she'd lit something else.
"What should we do?" Douena asks the others. "She's an evil old snake-lady who killed the captain and the first mate and the cook and everyone else and probably won't tell us anything true anyway, and we'll have to kill her all over again after we're done asking her questions, which is always unpleasant. Or we can just let her go her way to her old snake-god and hope there's some clue around here that tells us why she did all this. Only if we take the time to look for clues first, there won't be time to save her, and if we save her and then find a clue, we still have to re-kill her. What did you think of flying, Pezock?" she goes on, turning to the tengu. "I thought it was kind of disappointing. Very slow, and you can't talk."
"Are you sure? You didn't all turn into vampires, did you?" Lorenz calls back.
"What do you mean by crowded? Should I stay here? Are there any other ways in?"
"" Douena calls back emphatically. "Some of us up here are going to have to go, too. I'll stay to search for hidden things, and Urza stays because he can see magic. The rest of you are just in the way."
Mahjik materializes himself, shouting, "Hah! Master Wishbone! You never expected that! Did you?" He's not addressing anybody present there, so he's probably talking about something that happened in his head.
He looks about and nods to himself, "That was strange." He bends down and takes a look at Ieana's remains; then makes sure to strip her of any items that she may have on her. As he does so, he thinks aloud: "I don't think I care enough for her to want to hear her story from her mouth. This place is foul with ancient evil - we don't need her to tell us to understand that much. Truth be told, I'm hoping we don't have a need to stay here much longer. Maybe there is a reason for Ieana coming here; and maybe we're better off not finding it."
"We're never better off not finding anything," Douena insists. "Things are there to be found. If we don't find them, they'll get disappointed. That reminds me, we still need to find Ishirou's treasure when we get out of here." If she can't convince anyone to leave the room, she doesn't mind repeatedly shoving people out of the way so she can conduct a thorough search.
Urza takes time from searching the room to make sure that Yarzoth is dead. "I hate you still."
After getting pushed out of the way once, Makoa goes over to the statue in the room and wipes blood from his neck wound on the lips. He feels the strange sensation of turning into mist, then goes down the hole to solidify next to Lorenz.
"Not a vampire yet. I've got the teeth for it though."
Lorenz starts when the mist comes out and eyes Makoa suspiciously for a moment before lowering the sword.
"Glad to see you're all right."
"More or less. It's been a long time since I fought like that."
"What did you think of flying, Pezock?" she goes on, turning to the tengu. "I thought it was kind of disappointing. Very slow, and you can't talk."
"Flying?" the tengu says with a shrug. "Oh, because you think I'm a bird? Bah! It was boring. Like you said, too slow. And too dark!"
The various materials strewn about the room appear to be either food supplies that must have been caught locally (fish, shellfish, and strips of meat taken from birds and monkeys) or supplies that would appear to have come from the Jenivere (the bedroll and waterskins).
Beneath the carving of the bat-winged demon on the northeast wall (the one Makoa used to turn himself back into gaseous form, Douena finds a hidden panel.
"Definitely not a vampire-snake-person." Douena sounds almost disappointed. "She's been eating things. We'll have to clear all this out, or it will stink in this tiny room. Ooh, what's this, though?" Douena will examine the hidden panel for any traps.
Urza does detect some magic coming from exactly the same spot that Douena finds the hidden panel. After a few seconds of concentration, he can determine that there are 6 distinct auras, one on the panel itself and 5 behind it. The one on the panel is of moderate strength, while 4 behind the panel are also of moderate strength. The remaining aura behind the panel is of faint strength.
Douena does not find any traps when she checks it.
"You're sure it's magic right there?" Douena asks Urza unhappily. "There's a panel there, but I can't find any trigger for it. And if I can't find the trigger, I can't disarm it."
Learning from Urza that the panel is magical, Douena spends some more time looking very carefully at the panel. The extra effort pays off, as she manages to notice a very faint glyph traced on the panel. She is able to determine that opening the panel will set off a magical trap of some sort, although she's not sure what sort of effect it might have.
"Ooh, it's a glyph," she breathes carefully, irrationally afraid that speaking too loud will set it off when there was just a pitched battle fought in this room. "I've never tried to disable a glyph before." She turns to Urza with a grin. "This is going to be fun! But dangerous. Everyone else should go back downstairs, just in case. I'm good at jumping out of the way if I have to." She looks at the dead Ieana. "Do you think if someone picked her up before putting blood on the demon, she'd go all misty too? I hate to leave her up here. And we haven't gone through her pockets yet." She unrolls her tools and arranges Captain Duck and the mini-Jenivere. When everyone who's going to leave has left, she beseeches, "Help me out here, Desna."
Though Urza feels drained after the battle with the serpent-woman, he stays to assist Douena in her search of the room and the corpse.
For all that it matters, Aid Another to search.
"Don't forget, we still have that thing waiting for us outside the doors."
"I just got up here," Pezock says. "Why go back now?"
With a bit of careful work, Douena is able to scratch out part of the glyph. It isn't easy as it resists her attempts, but eventually, she breaks through the magic and disables the trap. Opening the panel, she finds five items inside: two ancient scrolls, what would appear to be a single card from a deck of cards, a candle, and a block of incense.
Read Magic to identify the scrolls.
cards
candle
incense
that is assuming they are all magical.
Read Magic to identify the scrolls.
cards 1d20+6
candle 1d20+6
incense 1d20+6that is assuming they are all magical.
The scrolls are divination and restoration.
The card is from a deck of illusions. It creates an illusion of a peryton.
The candle is a candle of truth.
Urza does not successfully identify the incense.
"Wise man would expect a purpose," Mahjik ponders. "Ieana probably knew of this place - I doubt she tried to run and hide her in some sort of vain hope that we wouldn't follow. So maybe she had a purpose for coming her that involves these items? I'm not really familiar with magic, but is there a purpose to any of these that a cleric of a snake god would want?"
"Bah!" Pezock says. "What does it matter now? We've stopped her. Her plans, whatever they were, are ruined. I say we take the spoils for ourselves and celebrate! Wizard, explain to me what these treasures do!"
"Is that all?" Douena sniffs at the contents of the drawer, already bored with them. "I was hoping for something fun." As no one else has done so while she was working, she starts to go through Ieana's pockets after putting away her tools.
On Yarzoth, Douena finds 9 scrolls, a vial of liquid, and a fine gold ring, all magical according to Urza. Non-magical items include a holy symbol (presumably of Ydersius), a waterproof scroll tube (can hold up to 20 scrolls; worth 250 gp), and 18 pp. Of course, she also has the robes she was wearing.
Scroll of augury (x2), comprehend languages, cure moderate wounds (x2), find traps, lesser restoration (x2), and remove disease.
"Well," Douena amends, "all the scrolls are kind of nice. And a tube to put them in! When I use up the scrolls, I bet Mr. Duck will fit in there," she muses, peering into the scroll tube. She turns back to the hidden drawer and panel and considers a moment. "There," she finally decides, removing her shell necklace and putting it in the empty drawer before replacing the panel. "Now the next people to find this room will have a nice surprise." She uses her arcane mark ability to place her own identifying mark invisibly in the place of the scraped-away glyph.
Since there seems to be nothing more to find in here, Urza returns to the blood room. He agrees with Mahjik. Yarzoth has gone through quit a bit of trouble to get here and he is interested in just what it was that she was after.
Search the blood room. Take 20 for 26. Liberal use of Detect Magic as well.
A recap of the description of the chamber:
Judging from this cathedral-like chamber’s decor, this area must have once been a significant temple dedicated to some vile god. To the west, a few steps lead up to a shrine presided over by a ten-foot-high statue of a beautiful, fanged woman, save that instead of arms she possesses two upraised bat-like wings and instead of feet her legs end in talons. She looms over a glistening altar of blood-red stone that seems to weep blood into a trough below; this trough of blood runs the length of the room before disappearing to the east through a set of bronze bars in front of a wide opening in the wall that drops away into darkness. Stone pillars support the roof 25 feet above, and two dry fountains sit opposite each other against the walls in the middle of the room. Three large alcoves, one to the south and two to the north, contain complex wall carvings. The entire chamber feels unnaturally cold, and now and then strange disembodied whispers slither through the air.
Urza doesn't find anything additional in the room. The bat-winged statue and the altar (unsurprisingly) both detect as magical.
Looking through the bronze bars, Urza sees that the blood drops onto a stone platform along the edge of a rippling pool of dark water. The blood runs across the stone and into the water. The walls of the long, high-ceilinged cavern seem almost to be ancient worked stone decorated with serpentine carvings or other eerie shapes. Above, the ceiling is a forest of slowly dripping stalactites.
"Mahjik," Douena instructs, "pick up Ieana and do the blood thing on the wall; see if you can carry her out of here. Otherwise, we're going to have to cut her up into tiny pieces and shove her down the hole one by one."
Mahjik grimaces, "I can try; but her poisons have sapped a lot of strength out of my body - reminds me of Teacher Lao's training, it would leave me feeling like this and take a week to recover."
Mahjik picks up Ieana as best he can, and tries to mistify himself and his carry-on. If successful he'll move back down to the lower room.
Looking around at the room, Lorenz still feels queasy in his stomach about all the blood. "Is there anything we can do about this place? It's nasty. It ought to be an abomination to some friendly god or other, right?"
Urza returns to the X-room trying to figure out what she wanted here.
Mahjik picks up Ieana's body. The snake woman is rather heavy and in his weakened condition, lifting her is a strain, but he manages. He wipes some of her blood on the lips of the bat woman carving and he turns to mist. Unfortunately, Ieana doesn't turn to mist with him and her body drops to the floor.
After searching down below, Urza returns to the upper room.
"Well, that's no good," Douena grumps, frowning at the snake-woman's corpse. "How are we going to get her out? It was very inconsiderate of her to die up here."
Pezock looks down at the corpse. "She died up here because we killed her up here. Why do we need her down there anyway. We came here to kill her. We did that. It doesn't matter whether we killed her up here or down there. She's dead. Take her stuff and let's go."
"Because this is the best secret clubhouse in the world!" Douena retorts. "You get to open up the sea, and it has all the traps with the scritchy-doll tunnels, and then you get to turn into mist and float into the secretest of secret chambers! Only not with a stinky decaying snake-person corpse in it," she scowls at Ieana's lifeless body. "Oh, well, maybe I'll come back in a few decades. She ought to be all skeletony by then. Then I could dress her up in funny hats and a feather boa." The thought of desecrating Ieana's remains cheers her up considerably. Come on, Pezock; let's go." Douena wipes her hand in the sticky blood pooling on the floor and swipes it across the stone demon's lips.