"Let's see what that thing was trying to keep us from." Salm casts Divine Favor then steps past the remains of the elemental and tries to open the door (at K20).
Salm opens the door to a preparation chamber. The whole room smells of fresh blood and rust. HE hears no immediate threats.
Connell takes the team's wands and after a quick inspection he grabs the more powerful one to reknit Bejis's various wounds.
Satisfied that the warrior is back in fighting shape he tucks the wands away for safe keeping. He unslings his crossbow from his shoulder, confirms that it is loaded and ready, and begins moving up to follow Salm. Almost as an afterthought, he incants another short spell. His eyes take on a dim blue glow as he surveys the chamber as he walks.
Salm continues into the room (L13).
Bejis follows Salm, squeezing through the first door, and ready to squeeze through the next.
Connell detects no magic within the oven and the flames within the oven seems to have died down to mere embers.
The preparation chamber is empty and has little within here that is of interest to adventurers.
Salm goes to the door to the central area and opens the door.
The walls of this room are lined with shelves holding all manner of contents—books and clothes and tools and small casks of food and wine and other supplies. A few small tables and chairs sit to either side of a flight of spiral stairs leading down.
A quick look around the room shows no magic items.
Below down the stairs you hear the sounds of activity.
"What a frustrating place!" Connell briefly glances at the books lining the shelves to see if any titles or specific manuscripts catch his eye.
Quickly bored the cleric turns his attention back to the staircase. "Well, looks like we go down to go forward." With a quick incantation his crossbow begins to give off a soft bright light. He hesitates at the top of the stairs. He peers down but waits for one of the others to take the lead.
In agreement with Connell, Salm stealthily goes down.
Perception
Stealth
Bejis is ready to take point going down the stairs.
I'll give a proper post tommorrow afternoon. Enlarge person will be down by now wiht the searching and all. I'll just bot our missing lady until the end of this. Then we gotta get our replacement.
In the meantime any last prep things before the final part of this run?
That means my shield of faith and divine favor are probably gone as well.
Salm will cast another Shield of Faith on himself, just in case.
As the divine energies of his spells wear off Connell grips his crossbow even tighter than before. He still has a few gifts available to him but none last as long as he'd like so better to use them as needed. He follows the others as they continue deeper into the building.
Going down into the bowels of the mausoleum you find yourself surrounded on all sides by lit black candles, carefully labeled urns on every side and hard stone walls. As Salm steps out into the room a shrill call issues from his left hand side.
"The intruders are here! In the name of the Black Winged Mistress kill them all!"
Bad Guys have 12.5 Init.
Connell
Aerieth
Bloodless
Bejis
Salm
14.4 GOOD GUYS UP!
To Salm's left is a crude waist high barrier. Someone could spend 4 squares of movement just to go over it or do it in one with a DC15 acrobatics check. The sisters you can see are armed with crossbows. Bloodless is at the top of the stairs with scraps immediately behind Connell.
MAP UPDATED!
Being bottlenecked on the staircase is far from ideal but it does put most of the band within reach as Connell casts another spell. Within seconds a warm glow surrounds Salm, Bejis, Connell and Bloodless. The glow again disappears in an instant but it leaves behind a sense of righteousness for the battle ahead.
Lvl1
Lvl2
Bard Spells per Day (CL 1):
Lvl1 1/2 remaining
After Connell gave his protection, Salm casts Divine Favor and moves to AB14
Need a Bloodless and Bejis post.
Bloodless will push down and move as far as he can in one move and ready an attack to go off when the first enemy moves into range. He will also call Scraps the wolf to his side...
Bejis goes over the barrier, boxing the 3 hags in against the wall. He roars, "Gorum guide my hands" as he swings at the southern most hag.
for
The group moves out to engage the women in whatever way they choose splitting the group to engage the sisters separately. Bejis's blow gets a solid hit on one of the nuns as the ladies reward him with a seemingly unending series of powerful punches and kicks that surprise the hardened former gladiator but do only moderate damage.
Bloodless and Salm perform a similar action against the other group of sisters waiting around the corner. These nuns have unwound their habits into deadly bladed weapons with which they twirl and slash at the two as the middle of the trio opts to simply knee bloodless solidly in the sternum at the same time his shoulder catches the bad end of a blade.
Bloodless takes 14
GROUP IS UP!
MAP UPDATED!
With spells running low and the team battling on two fronts, Connell again takes a deep breath and starts singing, letting the magic flow through his wordless song to bolster his allies as they face off against the warrior nuns.
Salm calls upon the divine power of his goddess and swipes at sister 2
Falchion: divine favor, judgement, bardsong
to hit to hurt
Bumpu,
Bloodless signals Scraps to attack the woman to Bloddless' front, hoping to get her tripped.
Scraps
Attack/Bite
Trip? VS CMD
Damage
Bloodless then swings for her.
Attack
Damage
Bejis grunts loudly, and then swings again and the injured one.
for
Bloodless and his dog do a good job of severely injuring one of the sisters. Backing off she pulls a bottle from one of her billowing sleeves and downs the concoction in one go healing the bite wound immediately. Salm has little luck managing to connect against her.
Bejis however has better luck as he manages to bisect one of his victims spraying the wall behind her in gore.
Salm gets sliced up by a bladed habit as the sister lets loose a guttural snarl.
Bejis's satisfactory performance is cut quickly as one of the sisters catches him with a round house to the sternum causing him to double over in pain, surprise and a sudden lack of air as the other sister catches his nose with a vicious elbow and chops hsi throat with the edge of her hand.
MAP UPDATED!
GOOD GUYS UP!
Salm steps up and tries again to strike at sister 2.
Falchion: divine favor, judgement, bardsong
to hit to hurt
Bejis swings into the next one, working to keep them trapped against the wall.
for
Bloodless and Scraps move in again...!
Scraps
Attack/Bite
Trip? VS CMD
Damage
Bloodless then swings for her with a vengeance!.
Power attack on prone opponent
Attack
Damage
Connell keeps singing to keep his companion's bolstered, but with few useful spells remaining he levels Abadar's favored weapon at the Sister Bejis just attacked. He takes a moment to concentrate on the crossbow, to will his power into it, then fires.
Salm and Bloodless step forward and straight up slaughter the second sister as Bejis horribly wounds but fails to kill his target Connell takes a shot but fails to find its mark.
I'll finish the turn tommorrow.
No map but.
The sisters attempt to move in and try to take out the group but fail to land any blows.
Salm tries to cut down another of the sisters.
Falchion: divine favor, judgement, bardsong
to hit to hurt
confirm crit: divine favor, judgement, bardsong
to hit to hurt
With a silent thanks to Abadar for a turn of good luck, Connell reloads his crossbow and fires again at the Sister Bejis has wounded.
Bejis swings agaain, "Gorum bests your 'Winged Mistress'".
for
Still need a post from bloodless but for the sake of alacrity and the fact there's only one sister left anyway.
The group steps in and in a series of devastating blows slaughters the remaining sisters.
Hopefully at least one is still alive for questioning.
As Salm moves to check if any of the Sisters can still be questioned, Connell again draws out the healing wand and moves to Bejis.
None are alive after that series of rolls. Though the impression you get was that they aren't precisely chatty anyway.
"Once we're all together, let's go find the remains of Coriana Heavenscape."
"I reckon thats a good plan, but keep an eye out for magical wards. They seem the type to leave a few souvenirs around the place of a magical variety"
"Good thinking."
Perception
"I agree, I think we've had enough surprises for one day."
Connell softly sings a few arcane words until his eyes begin to glow. With a look of concentration he begins looking around the area, first at the fallen sisters then the rooms around them.
After catching his breath and thanking Connell, Bejis motions at the corpses. "Are we sure we got all of them?"
Bejis will listen for other creatures.
If everything seems to be under control, Bejis will join the others in the overall search.
It doesn't take long to find the urn you are looking for. Labeled clearly and quite well maintained with the words Coriana on it.
Pouring out the contents on one of the tables and lighting one of the grave candles the ashes swirl briefly before the small figure of a woman appears above them floating slightly and looking expectantly at you.
Seeing the spirit, Connell says a brief prayer for aid before stepping forward. He gives a slight bow. "Coriana Heavenscape, we too are enemies of Thrune and seek your aid. That evil House has brought ruin onto Westcrown but we believe the key to breaking their tyranny lies locked away in Delvehaven. You and the other Pathfinders were wise to seal it off, to protect its secrets from them, but the city needs those secrets now."
"How do we get through the wards to safely enter the Delvehaven and continuing your valiant work against House Thrune?"