What Hisstla said! The High Elf kneeling before you appears to be the one your party has come here to seek out. Of course, he's facing away and at the end of a long room, so it's difficult to tell for certain. Elves all look alike, you know how it is...
Geetra-Na steps to the side to give herself a clear shot and trains her bow upon the elf
Hisstla will quickly walk up to the man and stab him with her beam of fire.
Seeing that Geetra-Na is aiming, Lionel will not approach the figure.
The fire-beam pierces the elf's back easily, creating a smell of burning elf flesh (a delicacy in Orsinium, and in some parts of Black Marsh), and a slowly rising column of smoke.
The elf doesn't respond at first. Then, slowly, his head turns toward you. The first thing you notice is that the elf is grinning like someone who was just informed they had won 1000 septims. The second thing you notice is that his eyes have been ripped out. The third thing you notice is that his head won't stop turning.
Impossibly, the elf's head rotates 180 degrees around, snapping its own neck bones in the process. Like its recently-inflicted eye wounds, the neck breakage doesn't appear to bother him much. In fact, upon gazing at you, it begins to smile wider and wider and wider.
His mouth opens slightly - the only warning you get before his left hand snaps back and snatches your wrist in an iron grip. You feel cold...a cold so sudden and sharp that it takes your breath away. It begins to creep up your arm the longer the elf's grip grasps your scales. What do you do?
Geetra-Na promptly shoots at the elf's left wrist
Hisstla tries to pull her arm free of it's grasp, the fire blade dropping in the process.
Lionel moves in after Geetra-Na's attack, attacking with his staff (with reach) :
Doing
(Messy)
Geetra-Na's magical arrow flies true, striking the Altmer's wrist just as Hisstla manages to yank her hand free. She takes a step back, clutching her wrist with her other palm in an effort to work some feeling back into her forearm. The fire blade falls to the floor, burning against the stone.
Silently, the monk darts in, moving nearly as quickly as the ranger's shot. He strikes at the elf's arm, which was reeling from the arrow embedded in his wrist, and completely crushing its middle finger.
The elf had been kneeling and facing the strange statue up till now, but suddenly he stands, his movements jerky and unnatural.
His jaw hangs open and a rattling hiss emanates from behind his exposed teeth. All around you, Lionel, in the pews to your immediate right and left, the bodies of the Dark Brotherhood members are beginning to jerk and twitch. As your gaze suddenly fixes on them, spectral chains emerge from their chest cavities, snaking their way through the air like charmed snakes to the Altmer!
What do you do?
"What is this madness!" snarls Hisstla as the undead beg flying like ragdolls towards the Altmer. Changing tactics, Hisstla will attempt to dive under the creature's outstretched arms and get behind it to get the object of their mission, the Scroll!
Not knowing if the chains are really solid, Lionel will try to hit them, hopefully preventing one or more of them from reaching Altmer :
(messy)
Hopefully scattering some of them away from Altmer.
Hisstla, you dive behind the Altmer as it reaches for you, but your momentum carries you too far, and your body slams roughly into the squat altar the front of this makeshift "cathedral". This close, you can see that the altar of the demonic figure that the Altmer was worshiping was holding a gemstone in its gruesome hands.
It is shaken loose by the impact of your body, and threatens to fall to the floor! Defy danger to catch it!
Your attack doesn't seem to harm the spectral chains, Lionel, but what it does do is get the attention of the seeming-dead Dark Brotherhood member it's attached to. With a jerk like a puppet being pulled by a marionette master, the Dark Brotherhood assassin rises to her feet and charges you! You can see that this one, in life, was a Bosmer, and now she is trying to stab you from below with a wickedly curved Dagger of Sithis. Defy danger, if you like your guts to stay inside your abdomen!
Swirling his staff with great force, Lionel tries to deflect the attack :
Not only do you deflect the revenant's dagger strike, but your staff strikes the wrist of the creature with such force that it's disarmed! The dagger flies up into the air, and with effortless ease born of long years of practice, you snatch it. Add 1 Dagger of Sithis to your inventory. When you have time to examine it more closely, I'll tell you its tags.
Hisstla, your arms dart out and catch the fragile-looking gemstone before it shatters on the floor. Immediately afterward, your sense of danger screams in warning and you glance up to see that the Altmer - or what is left of him - is standing over you now. What do you do?
"Back off, or I destroy the gem." Threatens Hisstla.
Your attempt fails, and the Altmer roars in rage at your impudence. Throwing his hands up in the air, the corpses in the pews behind him and all around Lionel begin to rise up in the air. Their very soul force is being yanked out of them, providing enough power to fill a dozen black soul gems - and it's being focused at you, in a beam that looks powerful enough to blast a hole through your scales! Let's see another Defy Danger roll to avoid being vaporized.
With Altmer's attention focused on Hisstla and concentrating on focusing all that dark energy, Lionel attacks Hisstla, hoping to catch him off-guard and lose his concentration :
Doing
(messy)
Lionel attacks Hisstla, hoping to catch him off-guard
Hisstla, take 1d6 damage from the glancing blow - even though you twisted most of the way away from the beam, it has left a blackened scar on your scales right where your neck meets your shoulder. However, you still have your head on your shoulders....
Which is more than can be said of the Altmer. Taking advantage of the high elf's concentration being elsewhere, the monk takes two confident steps forward and bludgeons him sharply in the side of the head, knocking it clear from his shoulders. The caster's head rolls off to the side, and all of the Altmer's risen corpses collapse into their pews.
The head of the Altmer remains animated, its lips moving as it stares hatefully at the Redguard. You feel dark magics gripping your heart...take -1 Forward to your Constitution mod. After a few sickening seconds, the elf's eyes roll upward and he finally expires for good...
The gem you were holding, Hisstla, immediately begins to grow more brightly and flicker at the same time...
As the Gem begins to do...something, Hisstla takes a moment to study it to try and guess what it is going to do.
The gemstone's flickering betrays a great magical power. It appears to have been tied to the Elf's life force somehow, and his death is disrupting it - which, in turn, is causing a magical disruption to the blue walls of force that hold back the ocean in the hallway just outside this room!
"Find the Scroll! We need to leave quickly!" shouts Hisstla as her eyes widen and she begins frantically searching.
Geetra-na brings her owl down onto her arm and speaks softly to it while she searches
From the very demon statue that the Altmer had been praying to when you entered, issues forth a laugh that chills the blood in your veins. Its stony lips remain motionless, but when you glance over at it, you can sense its malign intelligence. A Daedra is at work here! The Altmer must have been communing with it!
Your owl, Geetra-Na, senses the danger before you do. It's already out the door and racing for the exit before anyone else has even responded...
All of this happens in the space of an instant. In the next instant, the Daedra stops laughing and says one word:
"Pop..."
The magical barriers holding back the Padomaic Ocean pop out of existence, and the crushing force of water begins to rush into the hallway. Its force is torrential. All of you must Defy Danger! What do you do?
Swimming with all his strength, Lionel attempts to swim out the way they came in :
And manages to do so with ease. He looks back at his companions, to see how they're doing...
As the water comes, Hisstla does the first thing that comes to mind: She begins radiating heat and dissipating the water; She knows she can't hold back the ocean, but if she can slow the rush around her enough to buy time for her escape, she will.
Lionel is able to duck behind the entryway leading into the main Dark Brotherhood Sanctum. There, he's in the lee of the deluge, able to witness it rapidly pooling on the ground in the center of the room, near the altar, and flooding the room rapidly. The monk had tried to swim out the way the water was coming in, but the current force of water pressure would be too great for any mortal landwalker to manage, even the strongest Argonian, and the monk realizes that when he gets closer to it.
Hisstla makes for the safe spot as well, but she's not as quick as the monk. She's nearly struck by a dislodged church pew as they all begin to be forced away from the locus of the ocean's fury. She dodges the first one, but more pews and bodies are rushing past your legs, threatening to knock you prone. I'm going to need another Defy Danger from you, Hisstla. You're close enough to Lionel that he could feasibly Aid your roll if you roll a 5 or a 9.
Hisstla's dexterity is normally nothing extreme to speak of, but in times of stress like these she rises to the occasion admirably. The flaming-hot Argonian steams some of the ocean water as she dives to the side and backward, avoiding scattered corpses and church pews alike.
You also notice, Hisstla, that the gemstone you're still holding on to is slightly repelling the water nearest to it. It's not enough to make an appreciable difference by itself, but it hints at greater potential within for the right channeler.
Geetra-Na tries to withstand the force of the water as she stows her bow
Your gear is firmly secured to your person, but that's about the only good bit of news, unfortunately, Geetra-Na. Mark an XP as the water completely sweeps you off your feet. Your body is flung backward, and strikes the altar once again - this time, right against the back of your neck. You're knocked out, for the time being.
By this time, the water level is already up to your ankles, and still rising quickly. What do you all do?
Lionel shouts to Hisstla "Grab Geetra-Na and let's get out of here!", moving to grab the other end of Geetra-Na.
"Did anyone see the scroll?" asks Hisstla as the water subsides enough for them to not be knocked around.
In all the confusion, Lionel tries to quickly scan the room for anywhere a scroll might be hidden :
Be on the lookout for the rising water. You know that that room is deep enough underwater that water will fill up the entire space, eventually leaving no air.
The headless body of the Altmer wizard floats slowly by in the rising waters. He's got a belt pouch on,and after grabbing it and looking inside, you find 3 spell scrolls.
There's a hidden door less than 15 feet away from you to your right. You think you could get it open.
Hisstla will take a deep breath, then move and do so.
It takes a few moments' struggle, but you manage to heave open the heavy, secret door built into the chapel wall against the growing water pressure. The water is at your waist level by now. Through the door, you see a hallway leading to a ladder that goes up. You can't tell where it leads beyond that.
"There is a way up here!" says Hisstla as she plunges inside.
Seeing as Hisstla didn't give any opportunity for debate or discussion, Lionel rolls his eyes and follows her, hoping this new path won't lead to a dead end - literally as well as figuratively.
By this point, you're having to slosh through water with relative difficulty, and with each passing second the water continues to flood the room. This hallway you enter via the secret door is already rising to your mid-chest level when you all reach the ladder and grasp the rungs, climbing upward.
It's not difficult to climb out of the rising waters, and Hisstla is the first to open the trapdoor at the top of the ladder she found. Climbing upward, the Argonian finds herself in a strange-looking room, about half the size of the flooded one below.
There's a pentagram on the ground, with a Black Soul Gem at each one of the points. There's a lilac flower in the center of the pentagram. At the far end of the room is a large banner of Sithis.
The water is still rising from below. What do you do?
Hisstla quickly looks around and sees if there is anything currently being held in the pentagram. If not, she will grab the soul gems.
"Is there a *door* up there?" Lionel shouts from below.
The only thing you can discern being held inside the pentagram is the lilac flower. You grab the Black Soul Gems, and they feel slightly warmer than room temperature in your hands.
When you snatch the final one from its casing, the lines of the pentagram flash once, then fade to nothing. The lilac flower ignites, and burns itself to ash in moments.
There appears to be a breeze in this enclosed room, somehow - the banner of Sithis is waving slightly.