Quickly scanning the room Isletta doesn't notice anything weird or magical offhand.. "I don't see anything magical in the general area.. Be careful guys.."
"My bad I somehow missed that the Altar over there is radiating like the sun.. I would be wary of it.."
The altar radiates evocation and evil, CL 20th.
"That Altar is a piece of work.. Whoever wove that magic is of the highest tier and possibly beyond.. It radiates strong evocation and evil.. I would not touch it, or even get close to it for that matter.."
Shadassa prepares Protection from Evil, Communal, ready to release it at the first sign of active evil.
The very first thing that Garret notices when he activates his evil detection is the presence of evil in literally everything around him except for the holy symbols of the beneficent dieties. Then the aura of the altar grows in magnitude in his vision, until finally it eclipses all else. The detection spell shuts off and Garret has no choice but to stand in shock for a few moments.
Garret closes his eyes, turns around and rubs his temples, looking shocked, horrified and a little sick.
Pull it together, Ravencourt. This is your job. Dealing with this sort of thing is why you came here. It's why you're alive. Breath. Turn back around.
Go to work.
Ferrek looks from the drow to the human and frowns. "Avoid the altar. Check. Don't want to have my eyes boil in their sockets. That would be bad." He glances over the rest of the room, the motions to the skeleton. "That thing. Will it stand up and take a swing at us?" He observes what he can from just inside the doorway, but does not yet move further into the room.
"Well I certainly wouldn't put it past this place, but I suspect that the skeleton in there is someone unfortunate who died in there. I hate to say it but we aren't likely to learn too much more by standing in here."
Garret turns back around looking a little wan, but with steel in his eyes. "I can usually tell when a corpse has ben animated. Undead are nearly universally evil, and I can sense that."
"In this place, it would be like trying to look at something that had the sun behind it."
"So..." he said, drawing his bow and notching a blunted arrow.
"Well i think the room should at least be searched for other doors before we move on.." She'll pull out her wand and hit the Sir Garret with Detect Secret Doors again..
Garret's arrow hits the skeleton's skull and smashes right through it, creating a large hole and destroying most of the skull's structure.
On the east wall, the outline of a "secret door" is illuminated by Isletta's wand.
"You take that side, I'll take this one." Garret says to Ferrek. "Looks like there's a hidden door over there." he points.
Ferrek jerkily nods to Garret's suggestion and starts to turn towards the wall. He suddenly stops, turns back, and adds, "Uh, nice shot." He nods once again, then quickly faces the walls and begins searching the disturbing paintings for anything noteworthy. He makes sure to steer clear of the altar as he does.
Feeling his way around the room, Ferrek discovers a few interesting things:
-the pews in the chapel are all hinged, and can be opened fairly easily.
-the final pew is trapped
-the altar is set with double magical traps
-along the wall, where Garret's indicated that there's a secret door, Ferrek notices a small divet in the stone, carved in the shape of an "O".
"Sounds like a place to put the ring.. Can you disarm them traps Ferrek?"
"And perhaps we can have an Unseen Servant place that ring," says Shadassa, still ready to unleash her spell.
I might be able to mage hand it if its not to far.. Shall i try it? She can go 45' with the spell..
"Sounds fine to me." Garret said, "Ferrek, does that sound dangerous to you?"
"Let's not be too hasty, we should finish with searching the room, then we can my assistant place the ring."
"Dangerous? This whole place sounds dangerous. Moreso than anything else? Not really. But lets make sure the traps we know about won't go off in our faces first." He moves towards the trapped pew. To the air (or probably to the party, since who else would be listening?), he says "We should check the other pews while I work on this one."
Garret moves to the first pew and carefully opens it.
Inside the pew lie many piles of carefully stacked silver coins - thousands in total.
"Coins." Garret says. "I've learned not to trust anything in this place though. Can one of you magicy folks sweep for poison and curses?"
"A wise decision Garret. I've heard some awful tales about cursed and contact poisoned coins in the past."
"I have Detect Poison.."
She casts it and observes the coins..
"Coins. A pew full of coins. How oddly peculiar." He goes and starts opening the other pews, since no one else did so. If they're empty to a cursory glance, he recloses them and moves on.
The coins are neither magical nor poisoned, and the other pews contain coins as well. The second contains stack upon stack of gold, and the third contains quite a few stacks of platinum. The last, of course, is trapped and avoided.
All told, there's 8,000sp, 4,000gp, and 1,000pp here.
"Well thats a haul.. Anyone have a bag of holding?"
Garret rolls his eyes. "This Ascerak fellow thinks he's a student of our natures."
"Each pew ramps up in worth, making people think that the last one must be full of even more valuables. Even if someone finds the trap, it would only serve to increase a person's curiosity or greed. Surely if the platinum wasn't trapped, whatever is beneath the trap must be a real treasure."
"But we aren't here for money. Once Ascerak is dealt with we can come back here and decide what to do with the money. For now it's just dead weight."
Garret moved closer to the altar, steeling his resolve and fighting back waves of nausea and anger. He walked around it slowly looking at it from all angles.
"Can someone give me a read on the enchantments on this thing?"
Shadassa looks at the silver coins. "Pulverize those to dust, and I can use them to consecrate rooms. I have enough for three doses at the moment. If we can grind them down via magic, I'll go ahead and dose evil rooms...starting with this one."
"That is a fantastic idea." Garret says with a nod. "Don't get too close here. I think I see where the circle was drawn to set the spells on the altar. Looks like a proximity trigger to me."
Ferrek looks interested for a moment. "Those are always fun to try and bypass. Definitely the hardest kind. But I'm not sure I want to get too close to that altar. I would really prefer to not end up with fried eyeballs."
"Perhaps we should leave it alone for now.. We can always come back before we leave and attempt to destroy it.. Im gonan mage hand the ring over to that slot in the wall.. Ready?"
"No. There's a good chance we'll all die down here. If i'm going out, I'm going to make damn sure that this... filth is destroyed first."
Garret was normally one of the most relaxed and down to earth fellows around. This though, this brought out the zealot in him.
"Well by all means master dwarf, do your thing.. Just let me step back over here first if you please" She steps as far away in the room as possible from the altar and watches what happens..
Shadassa follows suit, counting silver grains mentally.
"I'll do it, Farrek. No reason for you to risk your life over my convictions." Garret says. "Can someone tell me what the spells attached to these triggers are?"