The cash would certainly come in handy, but Malavine wasn't sure how to deal with the silk without it crumbling. Maybe magic..?
The dead body was, however, less cheerful. Malavine winced at the smell. "I thought the heat usually turned dead more...dry, and less smelly?"
The remains of the body see to be fairly recent, perhaps about a week old. Thus the desiccation has not yet set in.
The construct approaches the cloth, and makes an appraising look. He reaches out with his hands, which seem to take on a bronze glow, before gently brushing them against the silk cloth.
Hickle sighs, and shakes his head at the desecated body. "Poor lad. Didn't know what awaited him. ...Interesting how this is only our seccond venture, and we've already discovered we were beaten in arrival by two others. I suppose this city is quit a tempting plunder indeed."
"What took his head, though? Is the room trapped?" Malavine looked around the headless body, wondering where the head went.
"I hope not, because it begs the question - how did he turn like that?"
Maybe the head ate it? Kephry suggests, using a part of her sleeve to try blocking out the scent, Like a crow, perhaps. Taking the part it liked best and leaving the rest for later. The question is though, she muses as she crouches next to the corpse, how did you get here?
Behind another set of double doors, you find what appears to have been another bed chamber. Most of the contents of this room have fallen apart or otherwise been reduced to dust from the dry desert air. A foul, cloying smell fills the room. Sure enough, another of the horrid winged heads approaches you.
Vargouille:
Anton:
Hickle:
Malavine:
Kephry:
Zelda:
Kephry alone acts before the creature.
Okay, creature acts. Kephry can act retroactively.
Creature lets out its scream, same as the last one.
Fort Saves:
Malavine:
Zelda:
Hickle:
Kephry:
Anton:
Alanna:
Okay, this time looks like Zelda and Anton are the only ones who failed. That leaves Zelda and Anton paralysed for 4 rounds (or until the creature attacks them).
The rest of the party (including Kephry) may now act normally in round 1.
"What the hell are these things?" Malavine muttered, drawing a starknife, "And why do we keep getting them?"
Hickle frowns, again withdrawing his crossbow. He was starting to run low on ammunition by this point, and he suspected the same of his construct. Perhaps he could scrounge up enough wood to makeshift a few more.
"mᎽ ᎠᎪᏆᎪbᎪsᎬ Ꭵs ᎥᏁᏟᎾmᏢᏞᎬᏆᎬ. buᏆ ᏆhᎬᎽ ᎪᏒᎬ ᏢᏞᎪᏁᎪᏒ bᎬᎥᏁᎶs. Ꭵ ᎪᎠᏉᎥsᎬ ᎪsᏦᎥᏁᎶ ᏆhᎬ summᎾᏁᎬᏒ ᎾᏁᏟᎬ hᎬ Ꭵs ᎥᏁ ᏁᎾ mᎾᏒᎬ ᎠᎪᏁᎶᎬᏒ Ꮎf hᎪᏉᎥᏁᎶ hᎥs hᎬᎪᎠ ᏟᎾᏁsumᎬᎠ." Shmick supplies, before firing the first shot, and with pinpoint accuracy at that!
"I'll be sure too." His master replies, before firing his own.
Facing a hail of incredible attacks, the creature drops dead before it has a chance to inflict any real harm.
A few minutes searching the room reveals it to have likely been the room of an adolescent male child. You find a small rusted dagger, a handful of marbles, and a small lacquered wooden box. The lacquered box is an ancient board game whose rules have been forgotten over time.
Inside the box are several small, carved stone playing pieces. The box functions as the game board. To an Osirionologist, the game might be worth 100 gp as a rare antiquity.
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Anton stands motionless.............
...until the paralysis wears off.
"Woohoo! Games!" he yells, falling upon the handful of marbles and old box. "Woohoo! This one is a Dollhouse Mk2, the only machine powerful enough to carry two weapons!" he says, setting up a marble and randomly placing game pieces around it. "And this one is a Chameleon, 50 tons and mostly used as a training mech once it was made obsolete my newer models of medium-class warmachines, like the Vindicator and Enforcer. And THIS one is an Ogre, an unstoppable juggernaut killing machine. Okay, and all these guys represent ten human armies that are trying to defend...."
"Ahem," the eidolon politely says.
"Oh. Okay," Anton answers, sullenly placing all the playing pieces and the marbles back in the box carefully. "Ah, well. Let's keep looking and see which corpse -this- head crawled out of."
Kephry blinks a few times as Anton goes off on his... delusions, deigning to not respond with "they're just marbles?" She does, on the other hand, look around for said body that she is also sure should be around here somewhere. I certainly hope we don't run into any more of them... they're very loud...
This room does not seem to have the body that "spawned" the creature; it must have come here from elsewhere. You're uncertain what drew the creatures to nest here, or if there are more of them.
There are two more rooms on this floor, which you can explore in quick succession. You find that neither of these rooms is inhabited by a hostile force, flying head or otherwise.
Immediately to your south on the map is what appears to have been a sort of study. A large lacquered desk, now in poor condition, sits in the center of this room. Bookcases stand along the eastern and southwestern walls, sagging as if ready to collapse at any moment. Their shelves have fallen out, and the piles of dust at their bases are all that remains of books and scrolls that failed to survive the long years.
The final room (just opposite the stairs and completing your clockwise circle around this floor) appears to be another bedroom.
The walls of this room are decorated with a scenic vista of a river valley running through a desert, resplendent with verdant life and greenery near the shores. Only a few pieces of lacquered furniture remain in the chamber. A faint, musty odor of decomposed wood and fabric lingers in the air. A set of doors stands in the western wall.
You find nothing of significant value in either room, though restoring the desk or the furniture magically might fetch some small value, if you decide it's worth it to transport.
"A wonderful little desk, miraculous it's survived as long as it did." He brushes part of his beard as he looks it over. "Would be easy enough to restore, may go for some good coin. Yet we already have a variety of goods with us on hand, the desk could be cumbersome... But then again, its not as if we're moving it through wilderness."
"Mending shoulod make it strong enough to grab on the way out," Malavine agreed. "We'll pick it up when we leave, if you like." She headed back for the ground floor, looking to finish that before continuing.
"We're already here, perhaps we take it downstairs and leave it outside untill it's time to leave?"
As Hickle organizes moving the desk downstairs, Malavine leads the way back to the first floor, the room with the ghostly lovers encounter that you experienced not long ago.
Malavine started working through the house clockwise, starting with the room in the North West. It seemed the way to do it. Or as good a way as any other, at least.
Moving northward, Malavine passes a set of doors that lead via stairs down to the western courtyard.
The room she peers into appears to have been a dining room. An enormous stone table, the marble top polished and smooth, runs parallel to the west wall of this large room. A much smaller stone table stands in the east side of the room. Splintered piles of dust and wood lie in the corners and along the walls—the only remains of chairs after untold years. A strong, fetid stench pervades the room. An open, sand-filled hallway lies to the south, while an open doorway leads east.
Disturbingly, half a dozen human skulls have been set upon the western table. Each skull is polished clean and balances atop a tarnished silver goblet standing on a tarnished silver dinner plate.
That seems... ominous, Kephry comments once she sees the skulls, gripping her weapon tighter in anticipation of the "artists" returning. Perhaps this has to do with the floating heads? We should ask the Pharasmins about this...
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Anton mostly supervises as Alanna hefts mightily to recover the old furniture.
As Kephry calls attention to her discovery, the eidolon and her summoner look at each other, as if passing secrets messages.
"Sooooo, are we gonna take the plates and cups? Seems a waste to just leave them here just because of a few creepy non-flying skulls," Anton asks.
"That's taking a need to drink a little too far." Malavine approached slowly, well aware of the unusual number of undead this place seemed to have.
"How macabre." Hickle mumbles, as he looks at the goblets. "No! Don't touch it. You might trigger a spiritual upset."
There does not appear to be any magic in the room save that which you brought with you.
The skulls seem to remain inanimate as you tentatively approach the plates and goblets. Examining them, the silver plates are worth about 30 gp each, and the goblets 45 each. You are uncertain who would have posted the skulls this way or why.
As you collect the silverware, Malavine begins to realize a pain near where she was bitten by the wild dog yesterday is getting worse, despite being healed. Reaching down to massage the area, she is startled when the entire upper layer of skin slides off, revealing several voracious inch-long worms (Malavine suffers 1 Con damage).
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"Gah!" Anton exclaims, putting the last of the silver dishes in a sack, "You're turning into a wormskull! Maybe we can fix you if we get you to the surface in time!"
"Well, fixing would be nice." Malavine replied in a shaky voice. Skin sloughing off was not the sort of thing she enjoyed. Trembling, she reached a hand down and touched just above the area, using her healing talents to keep her leg whole. "Let me see if I'm strong enough to deal with it, and if we're not...well, let's go as fast as my worm-infested leg allows."
Malavine believes she has successfully purged her system of the worm pox.
Anton having gathered up the goods, you are free to move on. There does not seem anything else of interest in the room; the dining tables would be quite a feat to transport, and are likely well past the point of diminishing returns.
The next room over is a smaller dining area, probably for servants, is empty except for a few shattered bowls and a decayed wooden table.
Beyond that is the kitchen. Two stone tables sit against the western wall of this room, while a third occupies the southeastern corner. A small, square wooden butcher’s block stands in the northeast corner, now almost collapsing under its own weight. A stone oven sits in the
middle of the north wall. A humanoid skeleton lies hanging partially out of the oven, its head and shoulders inside the oven itself.
A door to the east and an open doorway to the south exit the room. The door to the east exits into the pantry and on to the east courtyard, both of which you've already looked at when you were outside.
Alanna Initiative:
Of Course it's undead Skeletal Cook initiative:
Alanna is startled as the skeleton, placing its hands on the edge of the oven, swiftly push itself out and to its feet, bursting into flames as it does so. It then swings a heavy cleaver at Alanna.
Attack:
Cleaver:
Fire:
Alanna may act, followed by initiative from the rest of the party.
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"Oh what the hell!?" the beautiful eidolon exclaims as she instinctively jumps back from the flaming barb. "Oh by the Seven Pillars of Law I've not seen this much undead since we walked in on that vampire clan absorbing that Tri-Delta house."
"Oh. I loved those guys! So friendly."
"They were friendly because they wanted to EAT YOU, darling," Alanna quips as she moves in, her many arms striking out at the skeletal chef de cousine.
Only Alanna's last strike hits the creature to any effect. Alanna suffers 1d6 damage from remaining in the creature's immediate vicinity.
Initiative:
Burning Skeletal Chef:
Anton:
Hickle:
Malavine: 15
Kephry:
Zelda:
The skeleton again attacks Alanna;
Cleaver:
Fire:
Entire party may now act, preference given to Malavine, Anton, Alanna, and Zelda.
Zelda's bullet penetrates the skeletal chef, and though the projectile itself seems to do very little, the frost damage weakens the creature's flame for an instant, a large section of its ribcage turning black.
This is getting ridiculous! Kephry shouts at no one in particular, the follows up with a howl of frustration as she runs up to the flaming bones made animate, swinging at the cursed beast.
Alanna's attacks inflict some minimal damage before Kephry gets frustrated with the living dead and smashes the cook back to the afterworld.
Aside from the stone tables against the western wall and the butcher’s block, the only thing remaining in the room is the cook's cleaver, which is nothing particularly impressive.
The exit to the south leads into what appears to be a small chapel.
Malavine looks at Kephry, obviously impressed. "You really use your anger well." Nodding, she started moving into the chapel. "Remember not to touch any holy symbols of vengeful gods, no matter how shiny they may be..."
Hickle and Shmick had been for the most part following along, and reacting as is approriate to what's been going on. When the skeleton suddenly made an appearence the gnome had fallen back onto his rear in surprise, not even having time to reach for his crossbow before Kephry finished off the thing.
"More and more surprises in this house, isn't there? My oh my..."
Helped up by his construct, both searche alongside the Oracle in search of danger and other interesting things.
Hieroglyphs and images of fantastic beings cover the walls of the chapel. A small stone shrine, dusty and partially defaced, stands against the eastern wall. A mysterious warm wind blows through the room as you enter. The slightest hint of divine magic lingers in the room, but it's as the memory of gods long forgotten.
The catfolk smiles sheepishly at the compliment, rubbing the back of her neck as her weapon rests against the ground, I don't get really angry often, I don't like how I am when I'm angry. But it can help in the right circumstances.
"Angers not a bad thing. Hate, rage, jealousy...none of them are bad. It's how you use them that defines them - and making sure they don't use you instead." Malavine grinned cheerfully, and turned her attention to the Shrine, seeing if she knew any about this God. It might be a useful fallback, given the number of undead in the house, if the Deity in question was friendly. But despite her powers, she didn't know much about the Gods...
Malavine doesn't know much about the particular deities involved (Hickle translates their names from the ancient Osirion as Anubis, Selket, and Maat), but they seem to be rough analogues of Pharasma, Saranae, and Abadar respectively. Many theologians of the "modern" Inner-Sea area would probably just consider them primitive understandings of those deities.
The next room contains a stone privy built into one wall, and a stone table with a basin stands against the other wall. A large mirror once hung above the table, but it was shattered ages ago. The floor is covered in broken glass and dead scarab beetles. A headless corpse sits upright on one of the privies; the corpse is not from the original inhabitants, but appears to be only a few years dead.
The room beyond that, the last unexplored room in the manor house, seems to be a bath. A large tiled pool sits in the center of this chamber, surrounded by sloping tiled floors. A few steps descend into the basin, which has accumulated a deep layer of sand on its bottom.
Faded murals on the walls depict scenes of life along a river, with recurring themes of running water and aquatic life running through the artwork. In the northeast corner, a tarnished bronze spigot juts from the wall just above head level. Archways lead north (the privy) and west (the foyer you entered by), and a stone door leading to the eastern courtyard stands in the eastern wall.
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Not having the same fears and taboos that humans have, Alanna goes up to the headless corpse to investigate it...but first she runs it through with her longsword.
"Can't be too careful," she says, and Anton nods at the sage advice.
"Bad way to go, on the pot. Maybe he died from lethal dysentery! You gotta keep your fluids up if that happens," he muses as he helps her check the corpse over.
While they're searching, Anton casts a healing spell on her.