Kwin grins broadly when he sees the scroll, tucking it away carefully for future use.
The plate is medium sized and after a good cleaning would be totally serviceable.
Rose studies the remains, but because of the conditions of the room isn't able to tell much from the fungus covered skeletons. They did not appear to have any broken bones though (no smashed skulls or rib cages etc).
Moving to the next door further south along the corridor, Miette searches for traps and says, "The door looks safe, but something isn't right with the floor on the other side." She cracks the door open a little and points to a very fine edge between the hallway stone and the room stone floor. Cracking the door open a bit more and looking up at the ceiling she points to three vents. "I don't like the look of any of that." Otherwise from what you can tell in the hallway the room is empty.
Are there any doors in the room? If not, why bother with it now?
"Agreed. Like the green slime room on the level above, perhaps this is best left for when we don't have other alternatives."
We'll try the door that Kwin's icon is next to. Detect magic, detect poison and Rose and Miette checking for traps.
Miette explains that it looks like the whole floor is rigged as some kind of scale. "I am not really sure what is in those vents up there, but if the floor is rigged for weight, then probably nothing healthy."
Searching the doors further south turns up no traps, magic or poison. Once the door is open it reveals the quintessentially boring empty room.
Exploring the western hallway a bit more, you see that the hallway dips down about 10' with staircases on either side and where the north/south hallway crosses and there should be some kind of walkway or bridge there is just a gap.
Hmph. Guess we keep going.
Kwin will scan the empty room with detect magic. Assuming he detects nothing, he'll say "Indeed. Later I will search for secret doors with spells again, but for now let's move on."
We'll continue on down the corridor, heading the way that the skeletons came from when the shriekers went off.
Finding no sign of an ambush, the party presses on, until they come to a door on the south wall. The hallway continues further west.
The door appears safe, untrapped and unlocked.
Parfin will open the door and see what's inside.
The hallway goes south before turning south-east and then finally east ending in another door. Miette, Rose and Kwin examine this new door after Parfin determines the hallway is safe and find it to be safe as well.
Dobin keeps a watch as the others work on the door.
Kwin stands back with bow ready while Parfin opens it.
Be ready. We're bound to find someone, or something. Parfin will proceed.
Water trickles from a crack in the ceiling in the eastern side of this room, where it gathers behind a thirty-foot long stone dam that is about a foot in height. On the eastern wall, on the far side of the gathered water, there is a niche in the wall. The niche is one foot tall, six inches wide, and six inches deep. The bottom of the niche is ten feet above the surface of the water (the room’s ceiling is fifteen feet high).
As Parfin enters the room, he sees this stone dam shimmer and begin to writhe, serpent-like. The northern end of the dam turns toward the door and the water behind it begins to spill out! The dam/creature then winds across the floor toward Parfin, and the water rushes toward the door washing over everyone!
Dobin - Init:
Jericho - Init:
Kwin - Init:
Miette - Init:
Parfin - Init:
Rose - Init:
Dam - Init:
Party up!
Jericho waits for the party members ahead to move. "Where the hell did this flood come from????"
Can Kwin tell anything about this dam to warn his allies? I'm guessing construct or from the earth elemental plane?
Knowledge (roll)
Add +11 if arcana, +9 for all others.
Edit: From that roll, I think it is safe for Kwin to say "I've never heard of anything like this! Do we fight it or back off and see if it follows?"
Kwin is able to determine it is, in fact, a construct but little else beyond that.
Parfin shows his impatience and flies into a rage! He then rushes in to destroy the wall! I have an earthbreaker! I'll break it down!
for
Parfin rushes in and crushes his earthbreaker into the wall! Despite his solid hit, the heavy weapon appears to do no damage to the animated wall!
Anyone else?
Does the niche in the wall have any sort of architectural importance that Kwin can tell? Knowledge (engineering) .
Seeing Parfin's mighty blow have no discernable effect, Kwin says "I don't think I can hurt this thing!"
Parfin looks at his enemy, wondering what just happened... or didn't happen. Being under a rage, he looks to be winding up to try again.
Dobin stays to the back of the party, having no idea how to fight a wall. He does keep an watch on their back-trail....just in case!!
Jericho double moves to outside the room.
As Rose and Kwin try to discern the purpose of the niche, the other warriors in the group stand ready. After Parfin's massive blow seems to do no damage at all, the wall, resembling a serpent in a way, rears back it's 'head' and tries to bite Parfin, though the raging half-orc manages to easily avoid the slow moving wall!
*miss*
Party up!
Kwin says to Rose, but loud enough for the others to hear, "I don't think he can hurt it! We should retreat. If it follows us out of the room, we should run to the ladder back up to the first level; it can't follow us a ladder!"
Probably.I hope.
That's a lot of talking, so I think it is safe to say that's at least his standard action? He'll step back as well; done on the Roll20 map.
Parfin will end his rage and withdraw from the stone snake, closing the door as he exits.
Out of Combat
The stone wall/snakes does not appear to follow the party out of the room. Once Parfin closes the door, you are free to continue exploring elsewhere.
"Let me consider what we saw back there. Perhaps I can work out what it would take to deal with that thing, and we can return then. In the interim, I'm sure Rappan Athuk has no lack of menaces for us to deal with."
We'll continue down the passage that this side room was off of. I moved Kwin's icon there.
"Perhaps there is some way to dispel the magic which animates the wall? " Dobin asks.
Continuing down the western hallway, you come to a door. After your standard investigation, Miette says "Locked." The gnome sets to work trying to pick the lock. After a few attempts, she is able to unlock the door. "I wonder what's in here?"
The north wall of this room is a mosaic that depicts the party as they move inside the room, as if it were a mirror. The south wall is painted, and the painting, like the mosaic, depicts the party. The pictures in the mosaic and in the painting move as the each of you move about in the room. The north-wall mosaic shows a treasure chest sitting on the floor against the south wall.
The painting on the south-wall also shows something that does not appear in the room, instead of the treasure check depicted in the mosaic there is a staircase leading downward.
Jericho is confused by all the images, in reality and in the mirror. "Sick bastard who designed this place..."
Parfin doesn't even comment. After landing a solid strike against a stone creature that showed no injury, Parfin is left to doubting himself.
Kwin will move to the middle of the room and cast detect magic. He'll make a slow circle, making sure he tilts his detection cone up and down to examine the floor and ceiling as well.
Miette examines the room more carefully while Kwin takes his time with detect magic, but finds no other traps.
Kwin is able to detect three illusion auras (1 on the north wall, 2 different ones on the south wall) as well as two univeralist auras (1 on the north wall, 1 on the south wall)
"Hmm. There is definitely magic here. I'm sensing some there, and there. And illusions, several illusions, there and two there." Kwin points out what he senses.
During all of this the pictures on the walls continue to mirror the movements of the party.
Noting the moving images on the wall, Kwin comments sarcastically Well, that's certainly not creepy at all."
He'll move over to where the stairs go up to the chest. Thinking this may be one of the illusions, he'll unstring his longbow (effectively making it a long stick) and use it to prod at the stairs, looking for any sort of flaw that may reveal the stairs to be an illusion.
Will save