Do you speak Orc, Varus? Sharla and I do not. Anders? If one of you do, then I think that's the best plan, Galenus comments.
Otherwise, I'm with the pit plan, but this is you're guys' call.
Anders, still in a rage, hacks at the fallen She-Orc in an attempt to finish her off.
Oh. Well, I guess that's that.
After attacking the orc, if its dead, Sharla will retrieve her dagger.
Anders goes to bury his axe into the orc,his blow landing in her chest.
She roars herself awake, apparently still alive, but before she's able to act, Sharla attacks her and finishes her off.
Sharla investigates the body. "Well, that was fun."
"Maybe we should go back to town and take a rest."
As you stand above the defeated orc, you notice something strange... Her skin almost appears to darken, except it isn't just a new shade to her skin. No... A dark smoke, or thin black fog begins to roll off of her corpse, roughly in a humanoid shape, and within moments it is gone like a shadow at dawn.
A vision flashes in each of your heads...
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You are sleeping on your cot. It is day, and outside of bright and uncomfortable, even with this strange haze that lingers long in the sun.
You wake from a dream of frustration and fear... The idiots outside have no idea what happened to some of your soldiers, and your thoughts are filled with the sounds of another... Creature... Breaking out of the stone building across from your own sleeping chamber, the room you took for yourself and had Iggzock rig up with the human's weapons to protect you while you slept.
Your dream was of the things *within* breaking through the boards and chains yet again and dragging more of your soldiers off to whatever fate...
You hear the breaking of boards and chains... Distant... You wake. Were those sounds real? Sneaking off of your cut, you lurk over to the door, unhitch the trap and peak out...
Who are those people, and what are they doing?
Suddenly, a dagger in your stomach. Slamming the door shut, you rearm your trap and hurry over to the shelf near your cot. You pull the dagger out, dropping it to the floor, and drain one of the two potions. You ready yourself for a fight.
Fight you do, cleaving at the small, weak people as their attacks mostly bounce off of your armor. Suddenly, everything goes black, and then the pain! It hurts so bad and you awake to find yourself on your back with an axe in your chest. Then you feel one more sharp pain before you can act, and-...
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As soon as it came to you, the vision is gone. You think only a moment has passed, but it takes just a brief moment to regain your composure after this memory of the dead's final moments.
Anders shakes his head as the rage leaves his body, but is replaced by some other vision. Able to see first hand the chaos that he brings through the eyes of his enemy, he simply smiles while attempting to catch his breath.
Galenus' face turns ashen.
Well. F*!!.
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"Yes I speak O--"
Then the world goes crazy. The barbarian shops into the orc like a slab of wood, the bard finishes her off, and then they are forced to re-live the death they just caused!
"Um...yes, okay, yeah, we should rest for a bit. But not here. Let's search the room, then just retreat a spell into the woods."
Varus also searches the body and the room.
"That...didn't feel-so good." Sharla says, dropping to her knees. "I didn't like that. Hurry with the searching," She pleads, "More will surely come soon to see what happened to their leader."
Galenus will go check whichever room didn't have a pit trap in front of it.
Anders searches the body of the female Orc and investigates the armor and weaponry.
In the orc woman's room, you discover the items previous described, including two crossbows which, if unattached from the barrels, seem perfectly usable.
The orc woman's greataxe is sharp and decently, though savagely, made. Her armor however is crude, improvised, and it's obvious it would never survive a refitting.
Inside the chest are several polished gems, 1 platinum piece, 12 gold pieces, and 72 silver pieces. There is also a scroll case filled with papers. The papers range from random journal entries and other pages in a very crude, nearly illegible common. The polished gems are worth a total of 220 Gp.
Anders tosses the papers to Galenus.
Not sure you can make anything of these?
Galenus fumbles a bit as he tries to catch the slew of papers.
Hey! Be careful with these things; you never know what value they hold.
Happy wth his own "treasure," Galenus starts rifling through the paperwork to see what he can make of it all.
"Oooh, I'll take a crossbow!" Sharla says, grabbing one, "Oh, it's heavy. Never mind. We can still take it back to sell, I guess."
Flipping through the notes (as there are many), they almost all appear to be written in common, and seem to be talking about unessential day-to-day goings on pre-orc-invasion.
The ones written in an unusual hand seem almost like gibberish. They are comprised of common characters, drawn poorly, and sometimes in orders that don't form words. It reminds you of a child's handwriting when trying to learn a language, but without organized function
A successful investigation check during a short or long rest is required to further analyze these notes, as it will be a time consuming process.
It will take some study to parse all this documentation. I can get a solid read on all of it right now. Some of it is log entries for daily activity before the orcs took over; some of it looks to be like someone was trying to learn to read and write. Galenus looks at the Orog as he says that last part.
But it will take time to gleam the meaning out of it. Maybe an hour or longer. I'm ok with us staying and continuing on if that's what we want; at the very least I can look over these tonight or the next time we take a break.
Wherever they spend their time, Sharla hums a little ditty to keep everyone's spirits up.
Galenus studies the notes.
The party shuts the door to the orc leader's room, and attempt to get some rest. Galenus pours over the notes from the chest, Sharla sings, Varus gathers the weapons and straps them to his pack for later resale, and Anders rests deeply.
An hour later with no interruption, the group feels a bit more ready to continue.
Galenus isn't able to gain any important information from the notes. There seems to be some information regarding the day-to-day of the temple pre-invasion, written by the same person, and ending probably shortly before the orcs attacked.
Finally, there is a missing lack of tactical information you would expect to see if this orc woman was the leader of the entire temple. It seems more likely that she was a kind of officer within the orc's ranks.
Sharla looks at the vial of fluid, trying to discover what it is.
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Varus breaks out some trail rations and nibbles on them as he straps together the bails of weapons and equipment. Satisfied that everything can be carried the distance back to town, he catches a short nap and awakes feeling refreshed.
"I still have no more power within me, so let us not try to tame to fierce a tiger, but we can certainly look for a wee bit more trouble."
It's difficult to parse most of this, but from what I can tell, this particular Orc was some sort of military officer, but unlikely to be a leader as there's a distinct lack of any tactics present. Again, though, I could be missing something. This is very difficult to translate. We should give it to the priest when we get back. Maybe he can make heads and tails of it.
Anders wakes from a deep sleep cat nap. He stretches his arms over his head and looks at the others as he checks his armor.
Well, should we make our way back across to the door with the pit that we were about to enter?
Agreed. Let's start there. Care to take a peak outside to ensure we aren't ambushed? Also, I'll be using my spells for charming them; maybe we can get some valuable information via interrogation. If you hear one that speaks a language one of us can understand, or see one that looks like a leader type, let me try to charm them before we attack.
"I'll take a look." Sharla says, peeking stealthily around the corner.
Peaking into the room, Sharla sees....
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Scene - Goldenfeather Family Crypt
The room within is 30 feet squared, the walls taken up with square alcoves. About half of them are empty, the other half are sealed off and are labeled with a golden plate. The center of the room opposite of the door is a large statue.
Features
Painted on the floor is a device of a golden feather over a field of white-speckled black, like a night's sky.
The statue is of a tall woman bearing a gold feather in her stone hand. She stands upon a grey stone base with a golden plaque.
Near the base of the statue, obscuring part of the device as well as more of the floor, is a fairly large burn mark, the stone blackened.
Occupants
The room appears empty.
Sharla looks back in. "There's gold in there. Should we go in?"
Sure, why not? No one suspects anything yet, so I think we can take some time to look into it.
The group enters the room. What do?
Those scorch marks look like a trap, I'm not sure this particular gold is something we should take. I bet it's the only the the orcs couldn't take. Perchance the scales are hidden here? Let's take a look around.
Hack also begins to search the room, tryingvto be wary of traps.