Marya raises her sword to inspire her comrades once more.
Bolstered by Marya's display of skill and confidence, Damian looses his arrow at the wall of corpses.
Feena looked at the living wall in horror and tried to figure out what to do about it. "We will have to kill it and cut a path if we want to get past." Feena finished explain the nature of the wall before she sighed and looked at the thing sadly, "We need to end it. If we stay back a short way I can try a spell or two and see if that will do it."
Coral will take a shot with her bow, then drop it and draw her sword while waiting for Feena's spell to do its work.
With a gap she could exploit and avoid her friends Feena cast a spell and sent a fan of flames washing over the creatures.
The living walls proves to be resistant to much of the standard attacks the party throws at it. Both Damian's arrow and Feena's fire seem to do less damage than normal.
Both walls dislodge from their position and glide across the floor towards the party. The wall that was struck by the party closes up some of its wounds, healing itself as it moves forward. Closing in on Gerdish's first skeleton (Bill), the walls slam into it repeatedly, again and again.
Dead Bill shatters into thousands of pieces of bone at the onslaught, but it's clear he wasn't really a skeleton, as the bone evaporates when destroyed, as if he were made of gas. Certainly, something that is quite odd. Gerdish chuckles to himself, "heh, sorry Bill, I'll bring you back soon though. Hey Bob, take a swing, would ya?" clattering, with a silly salute, Dead Bob moves past Damian to the wall that obliterated his brother and swipes at it.
Just after this, Gerdish moves to help Bob, and shambles over and takes his own swing with his big shovel.
He grumbles to himself quietly, "mmm, not undead..."
Gritting his teeth at the meager effect that his arrow had on the creature, Damian drops his bow and moves to Vlad's side, drawing his scimitar in the process.
Marya takes a step closer, drops her sword momentarily, and calls upon a blessing of the Inheritor to empower her allies’ weapons. ”Let’s hope this works.”
She then pulls on her weapon cord to bring her sword back to her hand.
Realizing her flames weren't working Feena backpeddaled from the wall and tried something different. She chanted and gestured and a pulse of positive energy burst out from between the two things. She wasn't sure if she could get them both or not but she was going to try.
Coral moves up and stabs with her short sword.
The party puts together an impressive assault against their foe, with everyone landing their melee attacks
Feena's spell seems to have no effect on the towering wall.
The wall to the north slides a few feet to the south, adjacent to the other wall. Both walls reach into each other with flesh-like matter and link, joining together to form one massively huge creature!
Coral successfully evades two attacks that come her way and Damian dodges one, but gets slammed with one . It tries to grab a hold of him after the attack, but fails to find purchase.
Gerdish lifts his shovel in an effort to dismantle the thing, swinging it in a wide, cutting arc.
Bob keeps scrabbles at the horrible wall, trying to tear it apart.
With how understandably easy the others are hitting the wall(s), Marya refrains from the inspiration and joins the others on the frontlines, hacking away with her longsword with all the grace of an axe.
Coral is unfortunately not in position to defend Damian, having elected to remain next to her usual melee partner Vlad.
And there doesn't seem to be a way to get in position to help Damian.
So Coral continues striking at the wall.
Feena realzied her spells just weren't doing any good. She got back further as she pulled her dagger and then threw it at the nearest of the two walls.
Damian grits his teeth as the creature's retaliation rattles his teeth with the force of the blow, but he continues to hack at it grimly.
Everyone but Feena lands their attacks on the wall, each party member cutting free limbs and sections of bodies that compose the huge creature.
The wall heals a small portion of its wounds before slamming the party again, both skeleton-Bob and Damian getting targeted. Between the four slams from the wall, Bob only gets hit once.
You can tell from your last round of attacks and the amount of destruction you wrought on this wall that another such round would do it in.
Coral again stabs at the wall.
And, while her short sword is not all that effective at damaging the construct, it does a decent job of swatting away corpse limbs in order to defend Vlad, Feena, and Dead Bob.
Gerdish grits his teeth as his odd bone pal is damaged, but keeps hitting, slicing his shovel into the wall furiously. He seems to be sweating a little bit, and is grimacing with his mouth closed.
Bob tears at the construct in front of him, trying to deflect the scrabbling arms.
Feena was glad to see one of the walls fall and caught her dagger when it returned. She turned right around and threw it again at the remaining wall in hopes of helping finish it off.
Marya presses the attack, seizing the chance to break these damn walls once and for all.
Damian feels that he had barely been scratching at the thing, the scimitar feeling awkward in his hand as he crowds in alongside everyone else in a frantic attempt to dismantle the macabre wall before it bashed them all to pieces.
Just as Marya begins to move, the huge creature-wall collapses all around of the party from all of the damage done to it by her companions. Cutting a path through the remainder of the wall, you make your way into the empty crypt to find a large stone dais that occupies the western end of this room, and the stone of the curved wall behind it has been carved to resemble hanging draperies. The dais is bare, save for a few pieces of stray rubble.
Searching the rubble, you finds a stone tile several inches across. The image of a thin blade, similar to a rapier, is carved into one side of
the tile. Seemingly out of place, you pick it up and add it to your collection of tiles you've picked up through the other rooms.
With nothing left of interest here, you move south from where you fought the living walls into another unusual room that is decorated to look like a stable, with the image of a large window overlooking a grassy meadow carved into the eastern wall. Another carving along the southern wall depicts most of a sturdy horse, though the beast’s head has been chipped away. A message above the carving reads “No Greater Friend,” but the rest of the words are missing. Fifteen feet above you, a gaping hole in the ceiling appears to open onto another chamber.
Coral looks up.
"I do have this potion of Spider Climb if we need it. Once one of us gets into position and anchors a rope, we can bring the rest up."
"I'm not too bad at climbing myself, but there is an advantage to having longer reach."
Gerdish nods, "could have Bob try climbing, heh. He's bad at it but... it's not like him getting hurt matters much." He moves his jaw to the side a bit, with his mouth closed, "but Vlad seems suitably strong for such a challenge."
Marya pats—more slaps—Vlad on the back. ”Well, get on up there, buddy. Iomedae has got your back.”
Feena looked at the room and saw teh engraving of the horse with it's head broken off as well as the text that was partly lost. She wondered what it meant as they discussed how to get up to the hole.
Vlad inspects the area and determines that while Coral's potion could be used, that he should be able to get up there using the wall as support.
Doing just that, he just manages to make his way into the area above.
As he takes his feet, an he sees unusual circular sigils are carved into the walls of this chamber. A four-foot-high pillar lies toppled in the center of the room, cracked into several pieces. Near the fallen pillar is a human skeleton. A small stone door exits to the north, and there is a large hole in the floor leading to the area he just climbed in from.
Sensing movement, a nauseating carpet of wriggling white grubs undulates outward in a pallid wave of hunger from the corpse, swarming Vlad. Vlad staggers back a step, but is confronted with the drop behind him which gives the hundreds of grubs the opportunity to swarm him. As the creatures crawl up his legs and make contact with his body, they try to burrow under his skin and infest him.
Feena gave a scream of fright at the grubs as Vlad fell with them trying to burrow inside of him. She jumped back in a near panic and then cast a spell sending a bead of fire up into the air. She was careful, despite her near panic, and made sure the explosion was high enough it wouldn't catch anyone but Vlad and the swarm in the area. She just hoped he'd forgive her for this.
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Vlad, caught off-guard by the grotesque swarm, reels back briefly. But he is able to wipe them off violently before they are able to bore into his skin.
Sensing danger, the warrior decides to risk damage from a fall and launches himself down to the group.
"Spread out!" he exclaims. He then draws a flask of acid from his bandolier.
Oh, hell. Not much I can do here.
Coral will draw her flask of Alchemist's Fire and move back 20'.
Damian focuses on staying out of the way and keeping Vlad alive through the maggot assault.
Marya curses to herself and tries to get a good look at the bugs when it inevitably comes down.
”Spread out!” She practices as she preaches, moving to an empty corner of the room where she can still channel if need-be. She readies to cast a spell to relieve Feena of nausea, should the swarm attack her.
Gerdish mumbles something and steps back, as the cheery lantern that follows him glows a bit. It looks like something is going to be drawn from it.
Vlad jumps down below, swatting grubs from his body as he does so.
About the time Vlad hits the ground, Feena sends a fireball upwards, exploding with a tremendous WHOOSH in cavernous area above.
Coral backs up and Gerdish starts casting a spell while Damian established a protective link with Vlad.
As hundreds of crispy creatures begin raining down from the area above all over Vlad, Marya identifies as a swarm of rot grubs, known for their ability to burrow into your skin and infest you from the inside, quickly consuming your organs in under a minute. Of particular note, she remembers hearing of a crude remedy that if you become infested, it is possible to burn the creatures out of your body.
Gerdish's elemental appears where the rot grubs are, and immediately spins itself into a whirlwind, trying to pick up as many of the horrible grubs as possible.
Gerdish and Dead Bob step away, to spread out and prevent the grubs from getting more than one foe at a time. He calls out gruffly, "get away if you can..."
Coral hesitates, not wanting to land a direct hit with the Alchemists' Fire on Gerdish's new ally.
Feena saw the pattering fall of the grubs and screamed again when she saw them trying to burrow into Vlad's flesh. This time she really freaked out as tehy were coming closer. She sent up a spray of fire from her hands to wash over Vlad and the grubs as she burst into flames to keep them away from her.
Damian is trapped between the seething mass of maggots and the wall, with nowhere to go. He slashes with his scimitar at the grubs.
Marya takes a deep breath and switches over to inspiring, seeing Vlad could use some help enduring the barrage of flames and bugs.