As Kakrish move about the room, he find different magical auras. There is two aura that come from the bag in the corner. Then as he look down in the pool, he sees at the bottom, over one hundred keys. One of them is glowing with a magical aura. The bottom of the pool is at least forty feet down.
"This one heard a voice." Red Raven observes, moving into the room after Hoga. "Hoga, this one believes we should continue the habit of removing the heads of the dead."
Yes. That would be the kind thing to do, Hoga agrees.
He'll take a few moments to sever what heads must be severed.
Tamora picks up the glowing rock.
"I agree. We do not want to face any more zombies than the one that are causing these deaths."
She hears the booming voice and casts detect magic as she surveys the bag and the fountain.
"I think we must pick the right key to advance or peril will strike us. I believe that is what had befallen this orc."
Nevertheless, she tries to detect other abnormality that are hidden in the room with her senses.
Perception for anything unnatural other than the bag and fountain (Take 10) - 19
Hoga once again rase his axe and bring it down on the fallen orc's neck. Severing the head from the rest of the body. This time however, no skeleton rise up to attack the party.
Tamora wak around the room while using a spell to try to discern more about the place. She doesn't seem to find anything more.
Tamora eyes are still glowing as she faces her group.
"Nothing out of the extra ordinary except the magical signature under the fountain and two auras coming from the bags which is most likely the other keys to access the next area. Can anyone identify the auras before one of us gets hasty?"
Hoga can't identify auras, but he'll look in the bags.
Event though Tamora suggest to be careful, Hoga goes and pick up the bag. Insis he finds a bedroll, a flint and steel, an iron pot, two torches, 5 days worht of trail rations, a waterskin. He also find four flask containing liquids. All four have a label writing in orc.
All the stuff seem to be in good condition.
Hoga shares the information. 2 acid, 2 healing. Who's good at throwing acid?
"Nice. We can use that stuff. But I'm not great at throwing. I'll leave that to someone else." He walks to the edge of the pool. "There are a lot of keys down at the bottom of this pool. One of them has a magical aura. Maybe that's what the voice meant when it said 'Magic is the key'" He walks around to the other side of the pool. "Anyone here any good at swimming? I would do it but that's a bit too much like bathing. And I'm allergic to bathing." He laughs at his own joke.
"Anyone really if most of us are decent throwers. Garrik fares better at it due to his profession from my understanding. But we should save them for other purposes if we can."
Tamora brushes her hair away and looks down at the fountain.
"That leaves the solution of this room at the bottom of fountain that can be pointed out by those who uses the detect magic spell, mainly Kakrish and I and retrieved by a swimmer. If there are no takers, I will attempt the fountain."
"This one is not a bad swimmer... but has no idea what key to grab." The tengu admits, scratching the back of his feathered head.
Hoga's got this, no problem. He doffs his armor, carrying just his dagger.
I'll get the keys. Tie a rope to me, just in case.
Taking 10: 18
Tamora points which key Hoga should take with her sight before tying a rope around his waist.
Has Hoga get ready for a swim, Tamora tries to explain which key to pick up. With over one hundred keys that look almost exactly the same, it isn't a easy task.
While Tamora is trying to explain to Hoga which key to get Kakrish interrupts them. "Wouldn't it be easier to just grab all of them and bring them up? Then we can sort out the correct one here."
Tamora squints at the fountain before putting a hand on her temple, pinching it her fingers as her explanation seems to be a failure.
"Retrieving a cluster with the signature of the aura will suffice. Grabbing all of the keys will take too long and strenuous for one person unless all of us are willing to go for a swim back and fro."
"Anyone really if most of us are decent throwers. Garrik fares better at it due to his profession from my understanding. But we should save them for other purposes if we can."
"Agreed. We should split those up among us. Never know when it will come in handy."
As Hoga ties the rope around himself, Garrik looks around the area for a good place to anchor himself with the rope should Hoga be in need of retrieval.
Looking around, Garrik noticed that he can use either the statue of the fountain or one of the four column in the room to either anchor or use as a improvised pulley.
Hoga tries to understand Tamora's description of where the key is and jumps in the pool. The water is cool but not a danger for a short swim. Going down to the bottom isn't really a problem and thanks to his darkvision, Hoga can clearly see the keys. Thinking about what Kakrish said, he grabs a whole bunch of them and start swimming back up. Garrik helps him up by pulling on the rope.
Either it was luck or something else, Hoga brings back up the right key.
:)
"Ha! I knew you could do it!" Kakrish moves to give Hoga a big bear hug but isn't tall enough to reach his shoulders so instead embraces him around his waist. Only briefly. "Ok. So let's see that key." Kakrish picks out the correct key from the pile that Hoga brought up. "Now that we have the key, where does it go?" He starts searching the room for a keyhole.
Kakrish looks around the room and find two possibilities.
"Where to now?" Red Raven asks. "This one has no experience in dungeons."
Hoga will try the keys on the northernmost door first.
Hoga walks over to the door on the right and tries the key. It's a perfect fit. He is able to open the door. Beyond it lies a long hallway, almost fifty feet long with another door at the end. On either side of the corridor stand eight statues. The statues look like Kassen and each hold a lavishly decorated longsword above it's head.
"Oh... This looks perfectly safe." The tengu states the obvious.
Can one of you magic users take a look at this? Hoga asks, unsure what sort of trap this could be.
Tamora casts detect magic on the hallway and try to sense traps.
If she detects or sees no traps, she will experiment by toss a rock into the hallway.
As both Red-Raven and Hoga voice concern from what they see in the hallway. Tamora move closer and use an orison to discern magical auras. She concentrates on the spell for a few seconds. After a while she can see a magical aura coming from the swords but not from the statues themsleves.
Looking at the corridor once more, Tamora notices something weird. It almost look like there is a difference on the floor in front of the third set of statues. It is hard to say for sure, but it would look like a pressure plate of some sort.
Throwing a rock on it, however, doesn't seem to activate it.
Kakrish peers down the hallway, without entering, to try and get a good look at everything.
"Well let's try the other door too." Kakrish nearly shouts. "Maybe that will look just as interesting."
Good idea. Maybe we can bypass a trap. Hoga goes and tries the other door.
"Hardly. The room feels like a trap the moment I laid my eyes on it. The swords, for instance, give off such vibe. I sense magic from them and they are enchanted for a purpose. For what purpose I do not know. However, I found their trigger which some sort of pressure plate or the square in front of the third set of statue. We might want to trigger it without stepping into it if we want to move to the next door without being affected by the trap and it will need a heavy object to trigger it. I marked it with a small stone so that all of us will know where to throw it."
Tamora looks around the room for objects heavier than the small pebbles she carries other than the dead orc.
Perception (Take 10) - 19
If she finds one, she will throws it at the pressure plate. If not, she will pray to Saranrae for forgiveness and hurls the dead orc onto it. In regards to both, she will ask for help if she can't do it alone.
As Tamora searches the room Taladrius steps forward to take a look at the blades from the doorway. He holds his hands out to detect the magical auras and concentrates.
With the trigger plate pointed out, Red Raven takes off down the hallway, somersaulting and flipping across the chambers, landing only on the floor sections where there are no alcoves. A final flip and twist, and he lands safely on the other side, where he immediately drops to the floor in a push-up position in case he set anything off. He looks back down the hallway, and once he sees that nothing goes flying at him, he nods to himself and rises to his feet.
Taladrius takes Tamora spot and concentrate on the magic aura coming from the swords.
2nd Round: Number of different magical auras and the power of the most potent aura.
3rd Round: The strength and location of each aura. If the items or creatures bearing the auras are in line of sight, you can make Knowledge (arcana) skill checks to determine the school of magic involved in each. (Make one check per aura: DC 15 + spell level, or 15 + 1/2 caster level for a nonspell effect.) If the aura emanates from a magic item, you can attempt to identify its properties (see Spellcraft).
While the sorcerer concentrate on his spell, Red-Raven run down the corridor and jump over the plate, landing out of danger on the other side. Tamora, after searching the room, find nothing that could be heavy enough to trigger the trap aside from the headless orc corpse. After a small inner prayer, she start dragging the body toward the plate. It's hard work, but she slowly make her way to the plate.
Tamora drags the body with difficulty to the doorway. After Taladrius had conduct his magic detection, she walks towards the half-orc.
"Hoga, can you help me lift and throw the body to the square with the small rock in it?"
Of course.
Hoga goes to the door and unceremoniously heaves the headless corpse at the pressure plate, then steps back.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"Hold for just a moment, Hoga. You are right about the blades having an aura about them, but..." Taladrius takes a step towards the statue on the right, and stares up at the blade it is holding as if trying to see something that isn't there. [b]"...in a way to trick our eyes."
Hoga grabs the dead orc and start swinging it back and forth to get some momentum for the throw. Just has he is about to send the corpse flying, Taladrius interrupt him. He then moves toward the first statue and look carefully at the sword.
Garrik walks over to give Hoga a hand with hurling the body toward the pressure plate and comments, "This place has been explored semi-regularly for years, it could simply be a trap that was sprung long ago too."
"Guys. What's the hold up? Can't we just bypass this trap like our birdman did?" Kakrish gets a twinkle in his eye. "Or maybe we can just spring the trap on person and do some fighting!" Kakrish takes a step towards the trapped hallway as if he is going to spring the trap. He really isn't but he's just trying to get a rise out of his fellow adventurers.
Tamora also helps Hoga with the hurling of the body.
"The magic on the blades seems to be an illusion to hide how much they have rusted. If any of you were to hit the blades with anything, I'm sure they would snap right from their hilts. Which would make this trap pretty harmless I think."
He says this as he's stepping away to give everyone enough room.
In response to Garrik, "That's true, but it could have been reset by whatever else is in here. Maybe it even resets itself."
As the body sail through the air from a three man heave and lands with a thunk, Tamora's eyes is on the hallway, curious of the incoming occurrence now that the trap is sprung.
"I doubt it won't reset without a body preservation spell after a year or so. Still, it begs the question at the rate of decay in this crypt factoring out the intervention of dark magic."
The body land on the plate, within a second you can hear a click and all the sword arm of the statues come down. The swords flashed in the hallway has they cut through the air. If anyone would have been standing in between a pair of statues, this would have been a fatal injury.
Tamora muses how fortunate she is for spotting the trap and not in the direct target for the swords.
"Shall we?"
The faithful of Sarenrae steps towards where the first set of swords landed and strikes them with all the strength she can muster to clear the path after hearing Taladrius's conclusion of their brittle nature.
With the Swords within easy reach, the group can easily hit and break all the blades on their way to reach Red-Raven at the other end of the corridor. There is another sturdy door there blocking your path.
Kakrish winces as the trap swords swing down. "Ok. That might have been difficult if we had been in there when that trap was triggered." He steps forward into the corridor. "But that's done with. Let's move forward. Red, is that door locked?"