Ebon can't hear anything coming from the storeroom, so he opens the door and carefully takes a step inside. The light on Todric's shield reveals a vast hall draped in shadowy cobwebs and filled with haphazardly-placed statues. The air is heavy with dust, and every footstep, every clank of armour echoes hollowly among the figures. Though some of the statues are swathed in thick coverings like misshapen beasts and others are bare and uncovered, all are coated in a thick layer of dust.
Leering visages loom out of the darkness, fearsome wooden and stone faces carved in grimaces and scowls. Just next to you stands a guardian lion from Tian Xia and an enormous and detailed stone carving of some great horned archdevil clutching a three-pronged trident. Further away into the darkness you can make out more carvings, including a many-armed Vudran goddess, some strange and ancient-looking totem-esque structure, and a whirling dervish in action, the folds of her keffiyah exquisitely carved... and many more beyond that.
Nobody notices anything immediately dangerous as you enter the room.
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Norine draws her crossbow and loads an cold iron and adamantine bolt. "Don't know, but maybe their hardness would be good against stone," she says. "If the masks came alive, maybe so the statues."
Standing behind the big men in the doorway, she casts Guidance on Muluk and Mez - knowing Ebon can cast on himself and Todric - and then casts Detect Magic, waiting for any auras to resolve themselves.
You detect no magical auras.
You might be able to recognise a few of those statues, though. Like that big archdevil there? That's definitely Mephistopheles.
The arrow flies across the chamber and embeds itself into the far wall, illuminating a couple more statues nearby--a sword-wielding guardian with an almost demonic visage, and what may have once been an Arcadian warrior-woman, but her head has been snapped off.
Mez and the rest file in, on the hunt for whatever beast stalks this dusty chamber. The harrowing shadows cast by the strange statues makes it a nerve-wracking process, with lots of false alarms as the shadow of a demon dances along the far wall. However, in the end, it's Mez and Todric that spot it first--
A statue smiles.
Right on the other side of the room, near where Targost's arrow embedded itself in the wall, stands a roughly halfling-sized statue depicting some kind of almost daemonic, grinning visage. For those familiar with the far east, it may strike you as being of Vudran design; these sorts of statues are often used as guardians at temples and in villages (although typically they does not move). With Mez and Todric now staring right at it, the statue stands up from its crouched position and directs its stone blade at the party; in that instant, the sword shimmers from a stone-like visage into something of steel. Looks like you found your target!
Initiative: Todric | Mez | Statue | Norine | Targost | Ebon | Muluk
Knowledge (Arcana) to identify.
Todric rushes at the unknown statue and thrusts his rapier into hard, hard stone. That looks like it did more damage to his hand than it did the statue!
Initiative: Todric | Mez | Statue | Norine | Targost | Ebon | Muluk
Knowledge (Arcana) to identify.
Status
Statue - 4 damage
Mez bashes on the temple guardian with his mace, but even the hard, bashing weapon seems to be largely dulled by the solid hunk of stone that makes up the statue creature's body. It retaliates with a weak jab that has zero chance of making it through Mez's tough armour plating.
Norine pulls out her wand and blesses the party with the luck of Desna.
Targost realises that this is a construct known as a caryatid column. Some might consider them as "lesser golems", sharing many traits with the more well-known constructs, but being much cheaper to create. Their stony exterior is resistant to all kinds of blows, and worse, all weapons that strike the caryatid column are subjected to such resistance that many simply shatter and break. Caryatid columns are immune to magic, like golems, although they can be affected differently by certain stone- and rock-transmuting spells.
Initiative: Todric | Mez | Caryatid Column | Norine | Targost | Ebon | Muluk
Status
Statue - 14 damage
Targost wracks his brain for some way to harm the statue, and tries his luck at weaving forth the acid that courses through his veins. Alas, despite his shot being quite on the mark, it seems to do very little; the green stream quickly turns into a dribbling, steaming mess. Well... at least you cleaned it off a bit.
Ebon's mighty swing is perhaps a little too mighty. He misses the statue ever-so-slightly, his enormous hammer passing through empty air. Muluk advances, scimitar in hand, pushing his way past a couple of statues in order to flank the stony beast. Alas, trying to weave between the exhibits makes hitting a tall order.
Tod and Mez both beat down upon the statue, chipping off more and more of its stony exterior. Mez's blow is particularly solid, resulting in a resounding crack shattering down through the interior of the caryatid column - but also of his mace. Checking the weapon shows no obvious signs of damage, but with maybe a little more force behind that blow, even the tough steel mace could have crumbled.
The caryatid column tries once more to thrust its stony blade into Mez, but is simply having no luck here.
Norine wishes some good luck upon Ebon, who roars and slams his Shoanti hammer into the statue. The force of his blow is certainly enough to shatter much of the statue, but it's severe enough that Ebon's own weapon loudly protests in return. The wooden shaft, particularly where it holds up the earthbreaker's heavy head, frays and cracks, leaving it feeling decidedly unstable to wield.
Muluk swings wide again, but Tod and Mez don't, together successfully managing to bash the stupid statue to pieces before it managed to hurt anyone. Well... except for Ebon's earthbreaker, that is.
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Norine looks at the Shoati's earthbreaker sadly and says, "Don't worry, we'll find a way to fix it, Ebon. While my spells are not up to such a large weapon, I am working on mastering a better spell sometime soon, though it won't help you or us now."
Norine squats and looks at the broken statue, deciding on a suitable chunk and placing it in her bag. "Just a curiosity," she explains.
"Now, let's search this place before we proceed," Norine says as she moves around and behind various statues, making a circuit of the room and ending at the statue of Mephistopheles, which caught her eye earlier.
When Norine squats down beside the broken statue, she notices that within the rubble is a fist-sized opal spheroid.
When she investigates the statue of Mephistopheles, the curious gnome discovers something odd... the base of the statue is rather thick, and at the back of it is a latch that swings open. Hidden inside, and obviously left untouched for many years, are a dozen black vellum scrolls sealed with crimson wax and molten silver.
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Norine eagerly shows the rest of the group what she found, "More than a curiosity, to be sure! I wonder if it powered the statue, or was its heart or soul or something?"
Norine tries to detect magic again on the opal spheroid and on the scrolls, just in case the magical emanations were blocked before by the structures they were inside of.
"I really want to open the scrolls, although 'breaking the seals' on things is often a bad idea... Still, I really want to open the scrolls," the excited gnome weighs the options and consequences.
The scrolls are written in a language Norine is unfamiliar with; however, if she had to guess, she'd pick Infernal - the angular lettering and symbols that look not unlike the holy symbols of Archdevils here and there give her that much. The scrolls continue for some time in rather small print, and at the bottom is what appears to be a signature made in blood.
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Mez watches as Norine examine everything in the room, but his eyes can't help but be drawn to the cracks upon Ebon's mighty hammer. "We'll get it fixed." is all he can muster before motioning for the group to follow him back to the previous room, planning to use the sight of Cayden to see what is beyond the sealed door.
Mez marches on back to the stuck door and attempts to use his explorative sight to see beyond. It's largely pitch dark beyond, but he can sort of vaguely make out the room from strange purple lights that glow dimly here and there. What's most relevant is that he can see what's got the door stuck--an enormous, thick, and slimy mat of bizarre mould and fungi. He can also make out what looks to be bookshelves, perhaps, likewise covered by strange plantlife.
Notably, he can't see anything particularly dangerous, at least from the vantage point of the door. That said, the room looks to be far larger than what he can make out.
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Norine, knowing Celestial, tries looking at the lettering upside down, and then she tries reading it backwards, and then upside down and backwards, but she makes little progress."As much as I would enjoy burning them now - perhaps frustrating a few devils - I suppose we should let the scholars at the Society study them."
Giving up for now, she stashes the scrolls in a scroll box in her pack and follows Mez.
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Frowning, Ebon carefully wraps leather strips around the haft of his Earthbreaker, then re-hooks it on his back.
" She was a fine weapon, and will be again. At least it helped get rid of that statue."
Looking at Muluk, Tod and Mez with melee weapons drawn, he readies his newly acquired longbow and prepares to continue.