Travis shrugs and takes the stone... hefts it in his hand a few moments while he gets a feel for the shape and weight of it before tossing it hard at the mold.
Sholano winces as Travis throws the gem, his eyes tracking its flight. The idea of purposefully destroying an object of obvious value went against the core of the charming thief's being.
As the stone hits the large mold, it unleashes a torrent of icy, almost snowlike liquid. The mold makes a strange sound and shrinks back, slowly retreating until nothing can be seen of it. A few seconds after the icy liquid dissipates, the room begins to turn to regular, room temperature.
The door that was once hidden by the mold can be clearly seen. It is wooden, like the rest, but bears an inscription: "Thou hast made thy own path."
Hound nods and will open the door and take the lead.
This door leads to a kind of U-Shaped hallway. It goes down, to the left, then to the left again at a bit of an angle, then it straightens out and the corridor ends in yet another wooden door, the room to the east. This door also has an inscription.
"“Know your enemy. Shatter all that blinds you and then burn thy adversary to ashes.”
Hmmm...blinding and burning. Vulnerable to flame like the mold was to cold?
"Good to know... did anyone request any alchemical fire? SOmething I did not ask for... On the other hand, shattering things IS within my skill set. Perhaps simple lamp oil and fire might work against whatever lies within if we don't have alchemical fire."
Sholano nods slowly, contemplating the contents of his pack. He frowns. "I requested some, but sadly, none was forthcoming. Unless someone else was more fortunate, we'll have to improvise if fire proves necessary."
I have some torches and a flint and steel. Hound will ease open the door.
Inside, all you can see is black. Complete, utter, absolute blackness. This room is dark like nothing you've seen before. The light from the hallway doesn't radiate into it, it simply stops exactly on the barrier between the hallway and the room. But there is a room there. You can feel it, from the way that air flows, or from putting your hand into it experimentally. It's there. It's just... so dark.
Hounds pauses and mutters. Shatter the darkness? He pauses and listens intently, trying to catch any sense if something lurks beyond.
But falls far short.
You can't sense anything in this room, besides the fact that it's there. It seems that if you want to investigate further, you'll have to enter, or find a more powerful source of light.
Into the breach then.
Hound ties a rope to his belt. As a percaution, so I can feel around and then come back to inform you. He then cautiously enters the room.
Travis watches Hound make his preparations, then takes hold of the other end of the rope for him. He waits patiently, keeping the rope slightly taut at all times, letting it out slowly as Hound moves forward.
The room isn't that large. It can't be larger than any of the other rooms. If you feel around, all you can really feel is a large thing in the center of the room, with a sort of sturdy base, and something sort of smooth and round on it. It's not a very large thing. You could easily walk around it and to the other side of the room.
This thing.. might be what is causing the darkness.Hound describes the object. If we shatter it, we can end the darkness but no doubt it will be another trap. Let us examine the walls to see if we feel a door before we destroy the object.
Watching Hound and Travis play out the rope with a tense expression, Sholano mutters irritatedly to himself. It's not often that he doesn't have much to contribute to a situation, if only encouraging words, but what the hell do you say about someone wandering into the total unknown?
As Hound begins to feel the walls, he suddenly feels a strange brush on his exposed flesh, near the back of his neck.
But the feeling is as quickly gone as it came. Was something there? It's hard to tell in this dark place. There was, however, something felt on the walls. Something like a large iron bar of some sort, somehow placed in such a way that moving it will be difficult to do in this darkness.
[ooc]Roll for initiative if you'd like. I won't roll for everyone this time, as some people may not know if anything even happened. [ooc]
Something touched me I think! Hound is alarmed in any case.
Still on the outside of the blackness, Rose sighed. "Well what did you expect? Either break that thing or get out of there."
There's another sensation in the room, something like a small wind.
And then that thing attacks. It feels like a whip, raw on the skin, but also somehow like teeth. When it brushes up against skin, it drains blood. The feeling isn't immediately harmful, but it's certainly weakening.
Take bleed, and constitution damage. The creature seems to be directly to the west of Hound.
Hound double hands his great sword and smashes the round object
Need some aid smashing this!
The object shatters into shards of volcanic glass, instantly lightening up the room. It must have been an orb of obsidian before it was destroyed. Now able to see the room, it is remarkably similar to the others, except for the podium in the center, two barred doors, and blood-red, glowing cloud coming out from a vent on the floor. The cloud shrieks in a high pitched, terrible voice.
The two doors are to the north and the east. Both of them are barred, but the bars can be lifted with effort (a full round action).
Travis moves into the room and stands by Hound's side, ready to attack the creature if it comes close enough to touch.
Rose looks at the shrieking red cloud and then down at her hammer, worried she might not be equipped to fight this threat. Letting her hammer swing down on it's loop she reaches out toward the vent, her hand flaring with deep red energies.
Sholano blinks against the return of the light, and then his eyes go wide at the scene before them.
"Well, that's unexpected," he mutters, even as he swings his pack off one shoulder and begins to urgently loosen the straps holding on his bedroll, "but unusual situations simply call for unusual solutions."
Darting forward, he slings the thick cloth over the vent with a flip like a matador's cape, hoping to cut off whatever the creature was from its source, if only temporarily.
The cloud hisses again as the vent is covered, flying up a little then almost turning about as if its looking for somewhere else to go, but instead more or less staying where it is. It seems mildly harmed by the corrosive touch, but is more or less the same. It strikes again at Hound. Its attack is tiny and whiplike, but as the cut opens and his blood leaves his body, it enters the cloud.
con damage and bleed.
Hound strikes again, fury filling his veins.
Travis lets loose with a flurry of blows on the creature.
but is too thrown off by the creature's cloud-like nature to land a blow effectively.
Rose continues to pour pain into the creature.
Sholano dances a few steps backward, assessing the situation. If he was any judge, he doubted that his rapier would be of much use against a creature apparently made of some sort of gas.
Come on, Gale, think or run, but pick one!
Hands flashing, he rummages through his pack with an increasingly concerned expression, apparently not finding whatever he was looking for. "Oh, Desna's teats, I can't seriously have - Hound! Get out your flint and steel, and that torch if you can manage it!"
I'll do that right away!
The cloud is severely weakened by the full on attack, shrieking its moanful shriek again. As its injured, the blood leaks out of it, becoming just blood again, not blood attached to a glowing cloud. The cloud panics, floating downwards but not completely down. It lashes out angrily, this time at Rose.
Touch
In its weakened state, it swings wildly and misses. The cloud hisses as it sees that it simply hasn't struck true.
Travis again lets loose with a flurry of blows on the creature, this time hoping to connect.
Hound 5' steps away and uses a move action to retrieve a torch from his pack.
Sholano quickly steps over and deftly plucks the torch from Hound's hand, digging out flint and tinder and setting the resin-soaked cloth ablaze. Armed now with a weapon he's more confident about, the half-elf brandishes the flame and prepares to advance.
Rose adjusts to flank the creature now that Sholano has armed himself.
The cloud is barely damaged by that. In fact, was it even damaged at all? Seeing the torch, it hisses, attempting to lash out at the Sholano, the torch-bearer, narrowly avoiding the firey torch he's holding.
touch attack
bleed damage
Con Damage
Secret Dice
The cloud fills with blood, streaming into its core, where most of the blood is concentrated.
Hounds tries hitting it with his sword again.
Sholano hisses in pain, and jukes to the left, across the thing from one of the others, holding his wounded arm close to his side. As he does so, he shoves the torch towards the center of the blood-thing's mass like a thrust with a shortsword.
Seeing that the creature doesn't seem to like fire, Travis charges his first attack with elemental fire damage and strikes with a flurry of blows.
Rose continued to pour terrible crimson energy from her hands into the strange mist creature.
The cloud, badly injured by the fire, drained of precious lifeblood, sinks to the ground, where it becomes merely a puddle of blood.
There are two doors leading out of this chamber. One is to the north. One is to the east. Both are barred, but the bars are easily able to be removed.
Travis looks to the two doors, sighs... "Well, that was unpleasant. Which way now?"
Hound spits at the puddle. North is as good as any other. He moves the bar aside.
Travis nods in agreement. "North it is then." He moves to back up Hound, ready for the next challenge.
Sholano takes a deep breath, then lets it out. "Well. That was bracing."
Setting the torch aside for a moment, he gathers up and re-straps his bedroll. Picking up the torch again, he eyes it for a moment as if wondering what to do with it, then shrugs and nods towards the north. "May as well."