"Suri, get back!"
Kwin whips the staff from his back and leaps towards the thing.
"Hey! Leave her alone! Fight me!"He twirls the staff in a blur and then swings...
... missing handily.
"Be careful." He says to Kwin, without opening his eyes. "There's magic here. Might well be the beetles Koshu is so fond of wearing are the least of our troubles."
Koshukhep shot Ahmed a look of abject embarrassment, which he hadn't shown for anyone else's teasing. "Their carapace would make better armor than their innards," he rallied weakly, shuffling off to the side with his ears down.
***
When the iron cobra bit Suri, the wet catfolk bared his teeth and reached down, his hands darting in to try to rake it, risking its fangs...
...but it was too quick for him. "Torin, Kwin, can you pin it?" Koshukhep asked, jumping away from the cobra's retaliation.
Hearing (but not able to see it from her place at the end of the line) the sounds of an ambush of some kind, Izra spun about, raising her shield, and prepared to defend herself and the party should there be an attack from behind. Her softly glowing blue eyes scanned the darkness, while her mind reached for Divine power.
Djehuti, at the front of the line, pulls out his bow again and wedges himself into the corner of the room to fire past his companions.
"Get it boys!"
Torin doubles moves into the room.
The Band of Black Fire are unsuccessful in trying to harm the Iron Cobra.
Frustration fills Ahmed as the creature attacks Suri and leaves him too far away to be much help. Even as he enters the room, the group has crowded around the snake, and he finds himself outside the circle. As Kwin attempts to come to her rescue, the djinn finds himself wishing he had more power in this cursed form.
Suri meanwhile shakes off the poison as best she can, and rakes her claws against the body of the construct, trying to damage it.
The Iron Cobra ignores Suri as her claws fail to harm its metallic skin. It rears up and attacks Kwin, but misses.
-Posted with Wayfinder
Suri takes two more swings at the Cobra.
When no immediate threat materialized behind them, Izra moved into the room with the rest of the team, keeping her shield ready, but the Khopesh at her belt. She moved past Ahmed, giving him a comforting pat on the shoulder as she did, then squeezed between him and Djehuti while the latter was reloading, to an open spot along the wall. From there, she could reach out and touch any of her companions, except Kwin or Koshu.
Reach out she did, placing a hand on Torin's shoulder and, with a whispered prayer, bringing the dwarf more closely in tune with the will of Fate.
"HAH! snarks Kwin as he twirls the staff over his head. "You have to do better than that!"
He punctuates the last word by swinging down hard with the quarterstaff...
... as if to shatter metal with wood.
"Could we grab the thing and just drop it into an urn? Or perhaps lure it in?" Koshukhep asked, swiping at it with his claws. "Though I would pity the next would-be looter who came to open it..."
Djehuti pauses briefly as Izra squeezes past, then fires again. "I wouldn't care to try to grab it, Koshu. Though maybe we could drop an urn on top of it."
The Band are unable to damage the Iron Cobra.
Seeing how much trouble that his comrades were having damaging the cobra was too much for Ahmed. Tears welled up in his eyes as he imagined them dying one by one at the fangs of the snake. Strong Koshu, witty Kwin. Even Suri. All while he stood powerless.
Letting out a terrifying howl in agony and fear and frustration, the skin around Ahmed's shackles began to glow brightly, and his entire arms burst into flame. Moving his hands together, Ahmed created a large fireball, and hurled it at the iron devil.
Torin tries to distract the snake to help Koshukhep hit it.
The Band are unable to damage the Iron Cobra.
The Band is unable to harm the Iron Cobra. But then Suri and Ahmed manage to dish out a little pain to the annoying construct.
The Iron Cobra rears up his head and strikes at Koshukhep, but misses.
The inability of the party to seriously damage the iron snake had Izra worried. Urgently (most definitely not "frantically"), she racked her memory to see if she had heard of such a creature - or could remember any weaknesses the group might exploit.
Her memory was fuzzy (which couldn't be due to the fear she was not feeling...), and not much of use came to her mind...
Except...
"Torin," she asked the dwarf, "Where did you tuck those flasks of alchemist's fire?"
"Dents! I want dents! We're barely scuffing it!" Kwin shouts as he swings again.
Startled by Ahmed's fiery blast and fierce howl, Koshu swatted at the cobra a moment too late to connect hard enough to deal any damage to the iron snake. "Would it dishonor the dead very much if Kwin were to throw Torin's fire from atop the sarcophagus?" he asked, ready to back away from the cobra should Kwin need the room to throw. "He would have the advantage of a clear view and possibly be out of its reach there."
Djehuti fires his mostly useless bow at the iron cobra again through the scrum of his companions.
Suri takes some more swings and misses the creature terribly.
"Right the fire"
Torin steps back, pulls out the blask and lobs it at the snake.
Izra suddenly called out, "Iron cobras are guardians - constructed by wizards, mostly - they are resistant to magic and to physical damage. But energy will hurt them. Fire, acid, cold, any of these things - if you have them, use them!" She looked mildly apologetic, suddenly. "I don't know why I didn't remember that before now."
"I got nothin'!" shouts Kwin as he continues to bob and jab at the thing in an effort to distract it from Suri.
"Nor I." Djehuti draws another arrow and nocks it to his bow, waiting for an open space in the crowd of his companions.
And with a grunt of finality, Torin lobs the alchemist fire on the Iron Cobra. The construct seems to shriek in pain before it shudders violently and becomes nothing more than inanimate melted slag.
The mummified body of Akhentepi is interred in this room along with many of his riches. The urns are made of bronze and appear to have once contained leaves or incense, but now hold nothing more than ashes and dust.
#Loot
Treasure: The gold leaf decorating the sarcophagus is worth a total of 100 gp, if enough time is spent to salvage all of it. Inside the sarcophagus, Akhentepi’s mummified corpse wears an exquisitely crafted gold funerary mask worth 500 gp. One of the chests contains Akhentepi’s armor (see below), the magic suit of padded armor he wore in life. The other chest holds a disintegrating cloth sack filled with 500 gp, as well as a small, well-preserved darkwood coffer worth 50 gp. Inside the coffer is a potion of darkvision, a potion of lesser restoration, an ornate lapis and carnelian pendant worth 70 gp, and an assortment of carnelian, lapis lazuli, and turquoise semiprecious stones worth a total of 55 gp.
AKHENTEPI’S ARMOR
PRICE 5,235 GP SLOT armor CL 7th WEIGHT 10 lbs.
AURA moderate transmutation
This suit of +1 stanching (UE) padded armor is of traditional Osirian design, consisting of a quilted cuirass of lightweight, breathable linen; a linen kilt; and a teardrop-shaped groin guard of stiffened linen. Besides its anti-bleeding properties, Akhentepi’s armor grants its wearer a sense of impending danger. Once per day as a free action when the wearer attempts an initiative check, the wearer can add a +3 insight bonus on that initiative check.
CONSTRUCTION REQUIREMENTS COST 2,695 GP
Craft Magic Arms and Armor, anticipate peril (UM), stabilize, cure critical wounds or lesser restoration
As soon as the threat is dealt with, Ahmed begins rifling through the urns and chests, throwing aside coins and ignoring the armour and potions. "It's not here!" He shouts in frustration. "There's NOTHING here!"
Koshukhep yowled and jumped back when Torin's alchemist's fire spattered those surrounding the iron cobra. Patting at the burning spots in an attempt to put them out, he shot Torin a flat-eared look, but the demise of the cobra softened his expression. "Good aim... mostly," he contented himself with saying as they began to spread out to examine the tomb's contents.
At Ahmed's outburst, he set down the darkwood coffer full of gems, and approached the trapped djinn cautiously.
"It would have been enormously good luck to find what you seek in the first place we looked, but hope is not lost because we did not," he said in a quiet rumble, reaching out to touch Ahmed's shoulder with a careful paw. "We may have better fortune at the next site we are given to examine, or the next after that. The necropolis is large, and there are many tombs. We will find it, my friend. Do not lose hope."
"Nicely done, Torin!" says Kwin with a smile as he sheathes his blade. But then Ahmed's pained exclamations reach him, and he turns with a frown.
"Ahmed? What's wrong? What's not here?"
Izra frowned. She wasn't terribly opposed to looting the tomb (that was the primary reason they were there, after all), but she wasn't going to be desecrating the body. The question was, what constituted "desecrating the body?"
While she was puzzling the question of ethics through her mind, she almost idly reached out and touched Koshu, sending a wave of grave-cold healing energy through him.
"The mask, we can take - it's worth quite a bit," she said aloud, "but I'm not sure we should be scraping the gold leaf off of the sarcophagus, that just seems... excessive."
She turned at Ahmed's antics and shout.
"Koshukhep is right, Ahmed. I gave my word that we would seek your freedom. I will not abandon your quest."
"We are not going to stoop to scraping the gold leaf off the sarcophagus. I do not object to taking the mask or the armor out of the chest, but leave the body itself alone." Djehuti frowns at Ahmed when he starts flinging things around the room but stays out of the discussion. Instead he concentrates on writing down what was in the room when they opened it, updating their map of the tomb and describing the architecture and decorations.
At Koshu and Izra's reasonable responses, Ahmed calms down, looking embarrassed by his outburst. "You are right, of course." He says sheepishly. "I merely hoped... Ah. well."
As Suri begins to explain to Kwin, Ahmed holds up a hand to stop her. She smiles, pleased to see that he's interacting with the others more. It has taken him even less time to come around than she had imagined it might. She quietly moves over to the sarcophagus, staring at the body with a strange kind of curiosity.
"The magick which has imprisoned me is very old," Ahmed begins, "and I know it must be buried somewhere because Suri, and the rest of our people, remain free. So far as I know, I'm the only D'jinn to be bound in thousands of years." Suri nods a confirmation at this, with a sly smile that seemed to say, 'Of course you had to be the first.'
He continues, "I can remember so little from that time, it only comes in fragments, but I have a feeling that the answer is in one of these tombs. The slightest bit of paper, the smallest incantation, that will change my life back to what it was. I shan't rest until I find it."
One vulpine ear twitches. "So you don't even know what you're looking for? That's harsh."
Seeing the sorrow on Ahmed's face, Kwin solemnly clasps the Summoner's shoulder. "But don't you worry. We'll help you find it." He looks around at the others.
"All of us."
Torin looks up from the sarcophagus, gold scraping dagger in hand. "But it's gold. It's just inlaid on there. Pops right off. I mean we're taking his funeral clothes. Seems a waste not to be thorough."
Djehuti frowns and shakes his head. "The mask alone is worth five times as much as that little bit of gold." He gestures at the chest with the armor. "And that has to be worth even more. The gold is practically irrelevant with all this other treasure."
Torin scratches his beard and looks confused. "But it's gold. It's not really something that you can have too much of. If it'll make you feel better, I can take your share."
"No," Izra said, firmly, though not rudely. "We leave it. If you object so much, Torin, take it out of our shares."
Torin gives Izra skewed glance, "So you're going to pay me to leave behind treasure? Good enough I guess. I don't understand you longshanks at all."
Giving the lovely sarcophagus one last look of longing, Torin packs up and makes ready to leave.
"Taking what he no longer has need for is one thing - desecrating his resting place is another," Koshukhep agreed. "If necessary, I will forego my share in trade for the mask of Sekhmet. I know one who would be grateful for such a relic." His belly growled audibly, and he looked around sheepishly. "Of course, if the mask is not worth a whole share, I would not complain to see the rest of it..."
Djehuti looks curious at Koshu's suggestion. "Are you thinking of a specific dealer? I know Belloq would pay for it, but grateful is not a word I would use to describe him."
"It's not so much 'paying you to leave it behind,'" Izra said, a slight smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, "Think of it more as Djehuti and I choosing to spend some of our share of the treasure putting gold leaf on the man's sarcophagus, and choosing to save the cost of hiring an artisan to do the work. After all, it's already there, why go to all the bother of scraping it off, melting it down, and hiring an artisan to put it back on? No, this way is much cheaper. And a time saver, too."
At this point, Izra did smile, and if the faint blue glow in her eyes seemed to flicker with mirth, so be it.
Djehuti looks curious at Koshu's suggestion. "Are you thinking of a specific dealer? I know Belloq would pay for it, but grateful is not a word I would use to describe him."
"Not a dealer, but a priest," Koshu corrected. "Some of my tribe still believe in the old ways. I only wish it were more. Someday, it will be all of us," he said with conviction.