Trying to force his head clear, Lorenz takes a deep breath and lets it out as he reaches into his quiver, fingers nimbly selecting the magical arrows he'd found on Smuggler's Shiv. He draws and fires one and then another. The first arrow's flight is off, but he's more successful with the second.
Lorenz's arrows fly out, but unfortunately, even with the second, the cover afforded the wight by Lorenz's own companions protects it from harm.
Ishirou swings at the wight, catching its upper arm, but only doing a small amount of damage.
Seeing that his companions are not handling the wight as quickly and easily as he first thought they would, Makoa decides to move in closer. He pushes through the water, making his way around behind Pezock .
The wight looks around at the rapidly diminishing space surrounding it, and then at the out-of-reach orb. It's clear it wants to move, but doesn't want to open itself to attack. With a hiss, it launches another attack at Mahjik.
It comes close to hitting the monk again, but at the last moment, the tip of its pick rebounds off the magical armour protecting him.
Next Up: Jask, Urza, Sasha, Pezock, Mahjik, Shokambe (subject to delayed action), Lorenz, Ishirou, Orb, Makoa, Wight.
Douena continues to look on helplessly.
Die again already.
Magic Missile
Saying a quick prayer to Nethys, Jask pulls out his dagger. He then opens his hand as if to drop the weapon, but instead the dagger flies from his hand towards the wight.
The wight ducks aside, and the dagger flies back to Jask's open hand.
Urza fires off two bolts of energy, which zip between Sasha and Ishirou. The wight tries to dodge aside, but the bolts change direction suddenly to hit the wight straight in the chest. The wight hisses with rage.
Sasha takes advantage of the wight's confusion over being hit by the magic missiles and lunges with her rapier, piercing it just below the neck. Then she spins round with her kukri, slicing the wight's arm.
Pezock also presses his attack, but the wight recovers enough to dodge out of the way.
Next Up: Shokambe, Lorenz, Ishirou, Orb, Makoa, Wight, Douena (subject to delayed action), Jask, Urza, Sasha, Pezock.
Mahjik grimaces with the sudden weight on his body as the evil energies of the creature burns his very being. A sudden surge of speed makes his body slightly indistinct as he jitters in expectation to any attack.
Quickly he strikes at the creature, but against its expectations he aims not for the wight, but its weapon instead.
Lorenz, frustrated at not finding a clear shot, decides to move to a better vantage. He forces his way onto shore and then begins moving around the water on the far side of the conflict.
As Mahjik goes for the wight's weapon, it attempts to go beneath his grab and strike him; however, Mahjik is able to pull back and avoid the blow. The dodge means his first attempt to grab the pick is unsuccessful, but on his second attempt, he manages to knock the weapon from the wight's hands.
Shokambe continues to delay while Lorenz moves round to get a better angle.
Ishirou takes advantage of the wight's momentary shock at losing its weapon. He raises his katana and swings quickly down at the wight's neck, cutting deep. The wight makes one last move, reaching out in the direction of the orb, then topples over face-first into the water.
"Aw, poor evil undead thing," Douena remarks upon witnessing the wight's final gesture to cling to unlife, her sympathy as usual arousing once the immediate threat is over. "I'll preach you a nice funeral. He wasn't Mwangi. What deity do the Sargavans tend to worship, Jask?" She turns to look at the blue orb, still glowing coldly. "Do you think it's safe to walk up and smash it, or should we sit back here and throw rocks at it just in case?"
"Gah! Wise men must truly be filled with wisdom, if they can still give sage advice when feeling old like this." Mahjik grumbles as he looks at his skin. "It's different from what happened to you Little One. See?"
Lorenz keeps moving along the edge of the water until he's behind Jask. "You look like a fish dried up on a dock, Mahjik," he observes. Then he looks to Jask. "I can keep shooting arrows at it if I need to; they do damage to it but it's certainly tougher than glass. If we can safely hit it, though, then this will work better." He pats the flail at his hip.
Jask looks carefully at the blue orb and frowns. "It's hard to say, but I think it should be safe to smash it from up close, just so long as we stay on the outside." He takes a tentative step closer to it, then another, and finally moves within 5 ft of it . "Its power seems to be concentrated inside it."
Lorenz nods, removes his flail and approaches after Jask. Once he's near enough, he begins to strike at the orb, trying to shatter it.
Lorenz sets to work smashing the orb. Pezock pushes through the water to help him, eager to get a chance to actually smash something. Ishirou and Makoa come to help as well. Despite the cracks in it, the orb is still quite structurally sound, so it takes a couple minutes of hard work, but finally the cracks start to spread further out and then very suddenly, the whole thing shatters. Its blue glow fades and vanishes.
Lorenz steps back as the orb shatters, returning his flail to the hook on his belt and rubbing his hands with satisfaction. "That seems to have done the trick."
He then turns and walks back into the water to see if he can find some of the arrows he'd shot during the previous battle.
Gloomily returning the one magic arrow he was able to find to his quiver, he steps out of the water. "This is a mildly depressing place." He mutters.
"Indeed." Mahjik suddenly remembers. "Oh! I got this satchel from over there! Maybe the place has at least something useful for us." Mahjik examines the content.
Within the pouch, Mahjik finds 10 small gems that appear to be diamonds.
"Aw, pity. Figures we'd find some salt in a salt mine." Mahjik tries to chew one of the pieces. "AR-ghh, autsch." He grimaces, "Not salty. Very hard in fact."
Pezock leans over and peers at the items in the pouch. Then he shakes his head. "Bah. Useless!"
"May I have a look at those?"
Appraise
Urza gets a creepy, my precious look on his face.
"Diamonds! With so little light it's hard to tell what they're worth. I'll need to have another look at them once we're out of here." He puts them away.
While the others were smashing the orb, Sasha spent time gathering the bodies of the wights so Douena can give them a proper burial. "This one's got a couple things," she calls out now, indicating the wight that spoke and wielded a pick. "There's this pick, which looks in pretty good condition despite being down here for gods know how long. And there's a silver chain with a key, too."
"Ooh, a key!" Douena snatches it from Sasha excitedly. "I like keys. They open things. We'll have to see if we can find the lock it goes to." Douena puts the chain around her neck before asking Desna to consign the departed wights to a more restful existence. "I hope she can hear me all right in here," she sighs when she's done. "Maybe we should have buried them outside."
Sasha smirks as Douena snatches the chain away from her. After the burial rites are concluded, she says, "Perhaps the key has something to do with that big machine. There's also that equipment we passed back by the entrance. Should we check or should we keep moving on?"
"If this orb is responsible for all the undead creatures, it ought to be safe now. I'd say we might as well check." Lorenz says in agreement.
"Wise man would not dismiss the possibility of chickens, just because he finds some broken egg shells," Mahjik intones meaningfully at Lorenz.
"I actually meant the machine where Mahjik found the diamonds," Sasha says, "and the equipment in the alcove near the entrance. But the orb makes sense too." She moves towards the remains of the orb, but pauses. "If it's safe, of course." She looks to everyone else for some sort of confirmation.
Lorenz looks confused. "Um, sorry. I meant that the tunnels should be safe now that the orb is destroyed. Safe enough to look things over more closely, at least. Though it'd be a good idea to check out the remains too."
"In either case we should get moving. We do have a schedule to keep, remember? Actually, we should try to pick up our pace so we get ahead of schedule and further ahead of anyone following us."
Lorenz looks confused. "Um, sorry. I meant that the tunnels should be safe now that the orb is destroyed. Safe enough to look things over more closely, at least. Though it'd be a good idea to check out the remains too."
Sasha blushes slightly. "Oh, right, sorry. That makes sense too. Let's search the rest of the place first, and then come back to the orb." She grabs Lorenz's hand and starts pulling him back down the passage. At Urza's words, she says, "Don't worry, we'll be quick! Shouldn't be more than a couple of minutes, and the more who help out, the faster we'll be!"
Ishirou nods and follows as well, then Jask. Pezock looks bored by the idea, but agrees to help out too.
You find nothing of note among the remains of the orb or by the excavating machine, but there is an old iron strongbox in the small, abandoned camp near the entrance. The strongbox is locked, so Sasha brings it directly to Douena to try the key. The key fits, although the locked is rather rusted, so it takes a bit of fiddling to get the key to turn. Inside the box, you find a bag of 750 gp and a bone scroll case containing the deed to the mine. The mine's owner is listed as Feran Crinhouse.
Looking at the bag of gold, Lorenz grins. "Well that was totally worth looking for."
Douena scoffs. "Really? What are you going to spend it on way out here? It might have come in handy back in Eleder. And I don't want a salt mine, either." Disappointed in the key, she hands it back to Sasha.
Sasha takes the key back with a shrug. "There's always Kalabuto," she says.
Moving forward in the mine, you pass another bridge and then come to a chamber that is free of water (although it is still damp). The cavern is filled with immense piles of rock salt chunks. Shovels, picks, and other mining tools lie scattered about the chamber. At the opposite end of the shaft, a neatly excavated wall supports a pair of double iron doors.
Douena checks the doors to see if they appear to be locked or trapped.
Douena finds no sign of traps on the doors, and they seem to be unlocked, albeit heavy and difficult to move. Pezock helps to push them open. Beyond, a passage stretches forward, very slightly inclined upwards.
"How big was the hill? Do you think this would lead to the other side?"
"It will need to be quite long," Shokambe says, "but it could do. And it would fit the description we had of the two mines connecting. Assuming this does lead to the other side, we will easily save nearly a day of travel time. I suggest we give it a try."
"Wait," Douena says. "Shouldn't we leave some kind of sign for the woman with the dinosaur? Athyra? To let her know we did what we said and it's safe now?"
"Since we have no way of knowing whether it leads there or not without following it, we might end up using more time back tracking. If we have luck on our side though, it might be worth a try. We can always hurry to make up for lost time."
"Wait," Douena says. "Shouldn't we leave some kind of sign for the woman with the dinosaur? Athyra? To let her know we did what we said and it's safe now?"
"That's a good point," Sasha says. "What sort of sign can we leave? Do we know if she can read?" She looks around the cavern. "Perhaps one of those blocks of salt, and a shard from the blue orb. That would indicate that something's changed. Any other ideas?"
"She seemed far too wild to be able to read," Lorenz says. "If she was left on her own as young as it seems she was, I can't think how we'd communicate with her what we accomplished without some means of interpretative dance."
"Does anyone have any chalk?" Douena asks. "Or we could burn a stick so we could draw on the rock with it. We'll leave her a picture!"
Shokambe reaches into his bag and produces a piece of chalk. "Chalk," he says, handing it to Douena.
Douena grabs the chalk with a grin and hurries back to the mine's entrance. She looks around for a surface she can write on, maybe the side of one of the dilapidated buildings that's somewhat sheltered from the elements. "Mahjik, pick me up so I can reach the tall part," she demands. With Shokambe's chalk, she draws a stick figure of a happy woman that might vaguely resemble Athyra. Just to make sure, she adds a happy dinosaur by her side, with several arrows pointing toward the hole in the hillside from their smiling faces. Upon consideration, she adds several large butterflies as well, each of them also sporting a wide smile, and then draws a bouquet of flowers in Athyra's hand. The last thing, among the butterflies, she adds her own arcane mark. "There," she says with satisfaction giving the worn-down nub of chalk back to the guide. "Sasha, put the salt and the piece of orb under the picture."
Sasha places the salt and orb shard under the picture, as directed by Douena. Then she takes a good look at the picture. "I think that should work," she says.
Shokambe nods. "It's meaning is clear. We should get moving." He returns into the mine.
Alton is perched nearby and Sasha calls him over. When she starts to walk into the mine, he flies back to his perch. It takes a bit of goading from Sasha to get him to enter, but he eventually does.
You return to the iron doors and proceed down the tunnel. It is quite lengthy and takes close to an hour to reach the far end. During this time, you pass several other short tunnels, all of which appear abandoned and empty apart from an occasional discarded mining tool.
At last, you step out of the mine in a small abandoned camp similar to the one on the other side, though in a greater state of decay. From here you can see the road passing by heading northeast and southwest. To the east stretches a vast plain of tall grasses as far as the eye can see.
"The M'neri Plains," Shokambe announces. "This is where we want to leave the road and head due east. We wouldn't have reached here until tomorrow morning at the earliest if we had gone around."
"Sure thing Douena," Mahjik isn't the strongest, but even so he has little trouble with Douena on his shoulders.
...
"Mmneri plains." Mahjik nods to himself, "Irori rewards our efforts with time and energy saved. We should meditate on that." He nods again, smiling, apparently satisfied with some inner turmoil.
While Douena is pleased again not to have tons of rock over her head blocking her connection to Desna, she doesn't look enthusiastic about the plains. "What does M'neri mean?" she questions Shokambe. "'Lots of nothing?' It'll be like being on the Jenivere all over again, only with waves of grass instead of water."
Shokambe smiles. "Actually, it means lots of grass. I think you will find it much different from your experience on the water. For one thing, there is more to see. It may not look like much at the moment, but wait until you see the herds of antelope. I suspect you've never seen so many animals in one spot at one time. Or the elephants. The wildlife on these plains is amazing. Trust me, it will not be boring." He starts forward into the grasses. "But watch out for ants!" he calls back.
Lorenz grins with anticipation at Shokambe's words of elephants or antelope. His delight fades, however, at the mention of ants and he begins to nervously brush at his arms and legs as he imagines hordes of insects crawling all over him.
Sasha laughs as Lorenz brushes at imaginary ants. She grabs his hand and pulls him forward into the grasses. She leans close to him and whispers, "You only have to worry if they're in swarms. By themselves, they can't harm you." After a few more steps, she leans in again. "Unless they're the giant variety, of course. But then you'll really know if they're crawling on you." She continues forward, a smile on her face.
Above, Alton swoops lazily in the sky.
Douena pushes cautiously into the grass and then half-sneezes as the tiny insects disturbed by her intrusion fly up into her face. "They're trying to get in my nose," she complains. Ralph, however, runs out with alacrity to snap at the bountiful meal on offer.