"Drot'ook, get out of there!"
As Charles ran forward to assault the Undead warrior, his icy blade flared with a brilliant holy light.
"Abominations circumventing the natural order, I return you to dust!
Drot manages to escape while Gärwin and Charles charge in. Charles decimates one of the warriors - the one with the kopesh.
Meanwhile, Kahtia's spell fails to land.
Tesswyn sneaks in two arrows fired at the Prophet.
The undead warrior turns to face its attacker, sharpened fingers lashing out at Gärwin. Gärwin's shield bashes the hand away.
None.
The prophet advances to just behind the warrior. Dark words drip out of its mouth at it points at Gärwin. Tendrils of purple and white essence are drawn out of Gärwin and into the Prophet, causing the dwarf immense pain while closing the wounds of the prophet.
End of Round:
Being near the Prophet is painful. Charles and Gärwin, make a Strength Challenge Roll or take 1d6 damage.
Also, a correction from last post; this condition does not end in six rounds. It is indefinite until you make three successful challenge rolls or something else removes the condition.
Damage tracker:
Decay: -38
Warrior K: destroyed
Warrior C: -12
Tesswyn takes aim and fires another arrow into the prophet's chest.
Charles resisted the pain from the Undead caster.
He glared at the Undead in their way.
"You will shall be released from this place. You exist outside the mural of this existence! Now together, Garwin! he spoke as he struck at the other Monstrosity in their way.
The battle is a fearsome one. Claws are flashing, arrows are flying, steel is ringing. The group is holding their own, but when the dread Prophet pulls some of Gärwin's life force from his body, Kahtia swears. Kneeling, she opens her pack, revealing almost two dozen neatly rolled scrolls. Each is marked with colored wax that allows the woman to find the incantation she is looking for quickly, and within seconds the mage has unrolled one of the parchments and is reading aloud from it. Her voice rings with power as the words disappear as they are spoken by her lilting tongue.
Gesturing at the horror when she finishes, Kahtia tries to immolate its rotten, decaying vestments, lighting the creature on fire...
The fear faded almost as quickly as it came, but the dwarf was still mired in insects. His movements slowed by their collective mass, Gärwin takes a heavy swing at the Undead spell caster.
With quick strikes, Charles and Gärwin end the existence of the two remaining undead. The flies and other insects immediately start to calm down, many of them escaping into cracks and crevices. Within a few minutes, the room is calm again, except for the soft buzzing of a few flies about the room.
Drot drinks his panacea Potion amd immediately feels relieved.
Breathing heavy and sitting against a wall, Drot briefly rests after drinking his homemade concoction.
"That... Was a miscalculation if I ever had one... I have another one of these potions if it's needed, though the materials are rare and cost me more than I wanted to spend to get them..."
Drot, already looking in rough shape, turned even more somber after his comment.
As everybody recovers from the ordeal, Tesswyn scouts the room on the right.
Watching as the insects scuttle away, Kahtia turns her attentions towards the grand puzzle in the room, to the statues and their positions...
As the insects gave up their single-minded assault upon him, Gärwin could do nothing but sigh in relief. His relaxation was short lived though, as he immediately began to shove cheese and jerky into his mouth. The bitter taste and feeling of tiny legs broken off in his mouth was chased away by nutty cheese and salted meat. Taking a long swig of water, the dwarf looks significantly better.
"I not fixin' to do that again, let's get this over with. I've had enough bugs for one day."
"Is everyone alright? If you're wounded I can help some." Charles calls out to the rest of the group, once the swarm of insects seems to fall away.
He then lets out a small sigh of relief and walks over to Garwin. "Garwin, before we continue much further with our expedition of this place and likely get into some sort of trouble, I do encourage you to view the mural from the view of the throne. There is something more I wanted to look at anyway, so we'll have the time and it may help with understanding some of the more complex things that happen here."
Drot quickly returns to a more normal state, several of the wounds have healed and the scares left behind merely blend in with the ones already covering his body. He makes his way over to Charles' as he was saying his peace to the valiant knight. He put his hand on the Dwarf's shoulder, nodding in agreement.
"The only thing I can add would be a an observation followed by a question... Consider that the throne was built for a man who thought himself a god among men. His throne, when sat upon, floats into the sky and there is no one to witness the ''extravagance'' except him. If you were this man, what would you choose to look upon high atop your throne?"
He raises his eyebrows and shrugs awkwardly, like there is an obvious answer, yet forgetting that there are infinite choices to be made.
"Charles, I would be grateful if you would assist me by mending more of my injuries; thank you. Oh, and I too would like to fiddle more with these stones. Now if we were to rotate....."
Kahtia, Charles, and Drot set to figuring out the rest of the statues while Tesswyn sneaks off on her own, again, into the side room.
been placed in the center. Each of the five walls are carved with scarabs tunneling through bodies, out of mouths and all orifices of the horrific carvings. The top of the room has a stone menhir carved into the ceiling. There are no doors or exists.
As the group moves each statue, the same *click* is heard each time the statue is set in the supplicant position, as if it is worshipping whoever sits in the throne.
When the final statue is set, you can hear stone grinding against stone.
Tesswyn returns to the group. "Hey, a wall in the other room just opened when you moved the statues!"
Kahtia has bandaged her self-inflicted wounds and quaffed a healing elixir by the time Charles and Drot'ook also begin assisting with what is clearly a grand puzzle. She is a physical being, not shy about bracing herself against Charles as he helps her move statues into place, and always stopping just inches from Drot when they work together, clearly aware of his sensitivity, but evidently intent on testing it.
"Gärwin," she says before Tess returns, "the sights you will behold from the throne are terrible, do not doubt it -- but there is a truth in them not to be missed."
When Tesswyn returns, the mage smiles she picks up her pack and staff before heading for the passage.
"Come," she says to the others, "let us get to the bottom of this wretched place, so that we may return above ground and once again feel the sun and the wind on our bodies."
Surrounded on all sides by his allies, Gärwin was nervous. The dwarf sighs heavily, "I'm not goin' to hear the end of this am I? The things I saw from the ground were quite 'orrible enough, there's somethin' off about this 'ole thing. But alright, I suppose there's no-" Then Tesswyn returns, exclaiming about the next room.
"I'll be right over Tess! Let's get to th' bottom of this hidden passage, who knows if 'ol King Amenhotep is risin' outta the grave even now!" Gärwin runs for the next room as fast as his stubby legs can take him.
"Ah well, maybe it's not for everyone then. Let's go!" Charles said, then he followed after Garwin for the eastern room.
Marching order:
Gärwin
Tesswyn
Charles
Kahtia
Drot
Everyone leaves the throne room, Gärwin in a rush not to have to look at that horrid mural.
You enter into a five-sided room; a large stone scarab has been placed in the center. Each of the five walls are carved with scarabs tunneling through bodies, out of mouths and all orifices of the horrific carvings. The top of the room has a stone menhir carved into the ceiling.
One of the walls is open and leads to a hallway beyond. As you start to head down, a *click* is heard. Drot is stopping on a depressed stone. Stone grinding is heard, and you look up to see the stone menhir start to fall.
Tesswyn maintains her composure in the face of the carvings, but she is completely caught off-guard when the menhir falls. She only has time to scream before she is buried under rubble.
Despite the horrific carvings, Charles scoffs and maintains his cool under the pressure. He noticed as Drot'ook seemed to step and sink behind him with the audible click. Instead of wasting time, he began to run. The shattering stone menhir smashing into Tesswyn behind him.
"Gragh, Tesswyn! Are you alright?!"
"Yeah. I didn't need those bones anyway," Tesswyn mutters weakly, her body covered with cuts and bruises, "Ow."
"Alright everyone gather around I'll perform some healing now."
Gärwin, in his rush, barely even notices the carvings on the wall. As the dwarf rushes into the following hallway, he hears the crashing of the stones behind him and the knight whirls around to aid his fallen compatriots.
"Oi! We'll get yah out, don't worry!" The dwarf begins to move the rubble burying his allies.
Kahtia is on the ground covered in rubble as the dust clears. The horrific graven images had no affect on the woman, but the same cannot be said for the thundering stone!
Tess accepts Garwin's hand and lets the dwarf pull her free of the rubble. She watches as he does the same for Kahtia. Still alive. Damn.
Charles' prayer heals most of her wounds, and once everybody is up again, she sighs. "Come on, let's finish this damn thing already."
Drot, now having a better time, was admiring the dedication this unhinged king had to a theme, and making notes about the room and art in his notebook. Suddenly everyone stopped, which caused him to look up, just in time for his brain to think he could lunge forward and save his sister and new companion. Instead he managed to kick his own leg, tumble forward, and land square in line with the falling statue, taking the brunt of the force with his everything.
After the dust settles, one distinct noise is heard under the rubble.
"Aaaaoooowwww..."
"Alright Drot, yer turn. Yah gotta keep yer nose outta that book sometime, might save us the trouble of diggin' you out of traps." The dwarf chuckles to himself, not admitting he hadn't noticed the pressure plate either.
You pick yourselves up and dust yourselves off before continuing beyond the Scarab Room.
Beyond the doorway the hallway turns upon itself multiple times with sets of small stairs, each consisting of five steps, descending further down into the depths.
Eventually, the stairs stop and turn into a long hallway with ten doors. The first door is on the right, the second on the left a few yards down. The doors repeat right and left, right and left, each one a few yards from the one next to it.
Arcane and ancient etchings line the walls ranging from astrology, astronomy, and signs of ritualistic sigils. Each door has a symbol carved into it.
1. This door has the symbol of a tiet on its surface.
2. This door has the symbol of a comet upon it.
3. This door has the symbol of a crescent moon on it.
4. This door is carved with a constellation on it.
5. This door has a pentagram carved on its surface.
6. An exploding star is carved in this door.
7. A cloud is carved on this door.
8. A camphor tree is carved on this door.
9. A single cobra is carved on this door.
10. An eye has been roughly carved on this door.
"Argh, more puzzles. I don't have the head for this kind of stuff. What do yew think Drot?" Gärwin stands in front of the constellation door, scratching his chin through his beard. "If I had t' guess, that last hallway was all twistin' n turnin' round, so maybe this constellation is the same pattern. Should I give it a go?"
Limping a bit from the injuries she suffered when the whole damned roof caved in, Kahtia examines each of the doors in turn, casting Sense Magic to aid with the investigation.
Everything that the orc seems to be experiencing can be spiraled around into a single word thus far. Struggling.
"Ah, not quite Gärwin. You can see where there would have been different turns here, and here. This angle would have also been impossible... Here. "
Drot holds his estimation of the path they've made against the lines of the constellation, demonstrating how they didn't add up very well.
"This first symbol is of life... Comets represent life in a lot of tales... The moon, pentagrams for summoning perhaps, stars... These trees and their kin are often used for relief... Snakes... An eye..."
Many moments are spent on pondering the relation of all of these things but nothing would be done until some interaction was made.
"Charles! It's difficult to say for sure, but perhaps we must use life magic to an extent somewhere among these passages. In any case, are you prepared to cross a threshold? I'm right behind you."
"Go ahead Garwin."
He turned to Drot'ook with a puzzled expression. "I'm not really one for stars and constellations,Drot. Your guess is probably better than mine. If anyone finds something of note call out." he paused, then looked to the first door.
"Let's see if you were right".
Tesswyn waits beside Charles, eyeing the doors nervously.
After searching the first door for traps, the rogue nudges it open.
After quaffing another pair of healing draughts, Kahtia is practically leaning over Tess' shoulder as the woman opens the first door, trying to see inside. "There is no magic here, or behind the second portal," she says softly.
Charles stood, shield at the ready expecting some sort of trouble as Tesswyn opened the door.
As Tesswyn opens the door, a pencil thin spike shoots out from the door at waist height.
Meanwhile, Gärwin opens the other door. Two spikes shoot out, one from the floor and one from the ceiling.
"Look out!" Tesswyn shouts, twisting out of the spike's path!
"What?!" Charles said stepping into motion as he'd been ready to but towards rather than away from danger.
Charles grimaced as he was shot in the waist area. He grimaced and pulled out the spike.
"Ah, that's not great." after a moment he reached into his bag, retrieving a potion and drank it's contents. Feeling a wave of relief come over him.
"May the grace of the new god relieve they wounds." he said, casting a small prayer to himself. After the smaller secondary wave of healing, he seemed fully recovered.
Drot heard the distinct noise of a trap going off and flinched out of the way. Seeing that his good friend might have taken the brunt of the damage from the darts, Drot immediately inspected the first one removed for any signs of poison.
"Do you feel normal Gar? Tell me if anything changes. I have prepared antidotes."
Gärwin ducks the incoming spikes as best he can, but the stout dwarf wasn't built for agility. Both spikes sink into his flesh.
Shortly afterward, whatever magicks Charles had cast seemed to fade, leaving the dwarf feeling the weight of his wounds. He shakes his head and focuses himself, readying for what was hopefully the last push.
"Well, shite. I'm guess we got th' wrong one." The dwarf laughs darkly as he pulls the spikes out of himself, attempting to staunch the blood flow with some spare cloth. "Nah, whatever poison these things used to have has long since faded."
Spikes pop out of everywhere at these doors as people.nump away and others get hurt.
Behind door 1 is a tiny "room" that's just large enough to hold the spike. There is nothing behind door 4, the entire door was a pressure plate to set off the trap.
What's next?
1. Trapped
2. This door has the symbol of a comet upon it.
3. This door has the symbol of a crescent moon on it.
4. Trapped
5. This door has a pentagram carved on its surface.
6. An exploding star is carved in this door.
7. A cloud is carved on this door.
8. A camphor tree is carved on this door.
9. A single cobra is carved on this door.
10. An eye has been roughly carved on this door.
"Door number two, perhaps? Everybody else, stand back." Tesswyn looks for traps before opening it.
"Well that's disheartening. I think Drot'ook was saying something about a comet being a celestial beginning. Might as well give it a shot... although now that we know we're looking for let's check to make sure."
Tesswyn easily discovers the pressure plate in front of door 2, which undoubtedly causes a trap of some sort to go off.
"That one's trapped."
Tesswyn checks door three.
"Bah, I'm not waitin' around for 'ol dusty bones to get up 'n kill us! Stand clear!"
Gärwin picks a door seemingly at random and gives it a heavy kick.