Severus watches the magical exchanges with profound interest.
"It seems that the sinmagic allows for a channeling of sorts. As though one is suddenly able to access the power of his or her own wrath and use it effectively against others. It is a fascinating technique."
There doesn't appear to be much else of interest in the room; the side rooms contain a few more ranseurs, but they all crumble when touched. It'll take quite a while (several hours minimum) for the lingering aura to fade sufficiently to see much else on the upper dias with detect evil or detect magic.
"If there is a demon in this room, she is surprisingly patient. If she has been here for however long she has been here, she will likely outlast us." Severus ponders the conundrum.
Thandion looks much calmer now having worked some aggression on the Sin spawn. Walking over to the door and leaning on it, he says"I can be patient too. I say wait here for a couple of hours at least."
I agree with Severus, I think that this demon quasit thing will outlast us mortals. I don't think we should hang around this unholy place any longer than we have to. Avian paces the room nervously.
"'Eventually' for the Thassilonians could be days or weeks. I think the demon has been here that much and longer, at least." Severus arches an eyebrow.
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Pavro moves over and shuts the doors,
"Hey Quasit, I'm guessing you are a fan of that Lamshtutu godish thing. Well let me tell you what we are going to do to her temple, firstly I'm going to paint it pink, and have people carve cute little figurines that open up to reveal more inside, and call them Lamashtu the mommy of monsters. Then I'm going to have the place consecrated, and every year we'll give the kiddies mommy of monsters toys and bake quasit cookies and laugh at your silly little waste of a lifetime. How long have you been down here, decades? Centuries? Wow, and I thought I was wasting my life, you are positively the saddest little thing I've ever heard of, good grief, I can see why you wouldn't want to show your face in hell of wherever it is you quasit types come from... You are an embarrassment!"
While Aressa moves across to take a position adjacent to him scanning the air.
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After a bit of taunting, you do finally get a few dirty curses thrown at you from near the orange pool, but no other action is taken against you.
Pavro nods to himself,
"Right. We could just smoke this little bugger out, start a nice big fire in here, seal the door tightly and let it choke to death. There's nothing here we'll miss right? All we'd have to do is keep a careful guard on the door so the invisible git can't slip out... It'll either have to try and stop us or become demon jerky."
"I find it interesting that we are taking the aggressive action here, against a creature that has done little to harm us. Other than the earth elemental, the giant rat, and the one sinspawn, our invisible adversary has not seen fit to attack us." Severus paces a moment or two. "It deserves our respect for that, if nothing else."
"And as I mentioned before, the demon will outlast us in any waiting game. I think it is far too patient and effective at that, since it has been doing it for so long already. Hundreds, if not thousands, of years."
"I would recommend actually leaving the demon be for the time being. There are more tunnels to explore. And I doubt that the demon 'lives' in this room. We could possibly find the demon's lair and more clues for its presence here."
Pavro nods, "But we do have it trapped in this room at the moment right? We know its here, so we should keep it in here and kill it. Frankly if its a little demon just barring the door from the outside might thwart it, if thats possible, if it hasn't attacked us its presumably weak. I'd much rather deal with it than let it flap around doing whatever the hell it wants to."
As you stand around discussing what to do with the quasit, you hear the door open, and see that the door is actually designed to open either way, and beside it is a tiny quasit who speaks quite clearly, "You've spent the last several minutes trying to figure out how to 'deal' with me and gotten nowhere; what makes you think that a few more hours would be anymore help? Even if you manage to kill me, there are bigger things afoot than you can possibly imagine, and killing a single pawn will get you nowhere, assuming you're able to do that much. Now I suggest you leave before the comedy of your silliness wears off, and I tire of your babbling. You've done your heroic deed for the day by deactivating the runewell; now go home and train some more so that when the real challenge comes, you have a chance of living. Oh, and tell Kooruvus that... oh, nevermind, I'll just tell him myself." With those final words she disappears into the other room and down the hallway beyond before you can fully react.
Muttering darkly to himself Pavro heads for the eastern passage from the statue room with Aressa, looking mostly recovered if still a little shaken prowls out into the lead.
Thandion follow Pavro out, then take the lead down the corridor.
Severus follows the others, carrying the elegantly crafted ranseur much like a staff. He shakes his head at the previous silliness, then turns his eyes back to the ruins of the Empire that they are still progressing through, his eyes open to any minute detail that might indicate something more about sinmagic than he had previously recognized.
Avian checks his pistol absently to make sure it's loaded, then heads out with the others, following behind Thandion.
About 30 feet beyond the statue room, after going up several short flights of stairs, you find a door, and after appropriate searches, open the door to find a small (15' diameter) round room with a round well in the center of it, and another door on the eastern side. There is also a flying head with tentacles hanging down that attacks the first member of the party (I'm assuming Aressa based on past marching orders), but it's bite goes wide as it tries to pull out of it's dive unsuccessfully.
Severus loads and fires his masterwork hand crossbow.
As the thing flies back up to the ceiling, Vors nocks an arrow and looses a shot at it.
Aressa lashes out at the strange apparition, snarling, while Pavro watches on anxiously.
Avian makes sure he's reasonably close and then fires his pistol at the winged creature.
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As the flying head snaps forward, teeth gnashing Marcoul recoils in disgust and horror. Dark waters of Cocytus! What is that thing! Shaking his head at the un-natural creature, the dark priest takes a deep breath before he summons up a inner well of courage. Foward! Foward! The priest screams, lost for inspirational words, but knowing that the action, not the eloquence, is what would matter.
With the help of the priest's Sermonic performance, the party is able to drop the vargouille, much to Marcoul's relief, as the creatures are sometimes able to turn victims of their bite into more of their kind, quickly.
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No-one was bit? Hastily asks the priest, while carefully inspecting each of the members of the group. Breathing a quick sigh of relief, the tension seems to drain out of Marcoul, before he dabs his forehead with a black silk cloth. We... we were extremely lucky just now. The creature we faced was a Vargouille. Its a foul outsider from the realm of Abaddon. Though weak, if one was to bite you could have turned you into one of its spawn. We must have surprised it. Looking around one final time, Marcoul gestures to the opposite door. Lets move on. And everyone be on your guard.
Thandion mouths an 'O' then moves on making sure to be ahead of everyone.
Aressa snorts and stalks onwards snapping,
"What's Vargouille abyssal for waste of my time?"
Pavro glances about, looking down at the weird corpse and tracing his fingers around his neck apprehensively.
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Marcoul politely coughs and then looks at the ornery ediolon. I believe it comes out to... Taking a deep breath the disciple of the Fallen Lord, hisses out with a sibilant tone a stream of unearthly words. Mənim vaxt tullantılar. Eyes flashing hard in the flickering light of the catacomb, Marcoul takes the black silk cloth he was previously holding and elegantly dabs at the corner of his mouth. Even in the dim torchlight its easy to make out the faint trail of blood coming from the priests mouth. Everything has a price my dear. Smiles Marcoul, teeth now rimed in blood. And it is wise to guard your words. Words have power, especially in a place like this.
"Magic has power, words are wind," Aressa retorts rolling her eyes.
Pavro coughs,
"So's a hurricane 'Ress. But I'm with her, we don't need to show respect to loathsome evil creatures, prudence is all well and good, but I'm inclined to spit in a lot of these buggers eyes."
"Speaking of eyes, keep them peeled. Where there's one there might be more. This place is crawling with nasty beasts and that quasit is still lurking about."