Coral and Feena blink out of sight, disappearing entirely.
After their allies disappear, Vlad, Lola and Damian all land at least one attack against the crypt thing while Marya inspires them. The creature nearly drops, but manages to hang on long enough to retaliate against Vlad with two razor-sharp claws.
Coral moves 60' closer to the party.
With Feena disappearing as well, this was definitely not a trick of Coral's! Growing ever more alarmed, Damian looks around quickly to try and spot the two, but with one of the things still clawing at Vlad now was not the time to go looking for them. Best to try and finish it off as swiftly as possible, then.
Lola moves up slightly and attacks with her spear.
Feena didn't understand how she ended up back in the fountain room with Coral. It made no sense but it had happened so she nodded in agreement with Coral and said, "Lead the way."
The combined assault from the party that remain with the crypt thing prove to be too much for the undead creature and it quickly collapses to the ground.
After it's confirmed that there are no more threats in this room, the party sets about looking for Coral and Feena. It doesn't take long to find their location, and the party quickly regroups in the room with the fallen crypt things.
A quick search of the room finds nothing else of interest here, so you push south through the doorway into a private shrine.
A stone dais against the western wall holds a small shrine featuring a carved pair of hands clasped together in prayer in front of a blazing sun. Several dried puddles of wax decorate the dais, with red gemstones scattered among the puddles. The floor in front of the shrine is scarred with charred markings. Doors exit to the north and south.
Coral is already moving to join the rest of the group, and rather nonchalantly takes her place next to Vlad again.
"Sorry about that. Missed me much?"
The hands clasped in prayer in front of a blazing sun is clearly a Sarenite symbol, as would be expected here.
The red gemstones... she is unsure about.
Coral takes a closer look at the charred markings, trying to see what might have caused them. Was somebody trying to either create or destroy a message?
Damian is visibly relieved when the group is reunited with coral and Feena. "What happened? Coral, when you disappeared I thought it was a new trick from you, but then Feena did it as well... Was it those crypt things?"
As they reach the shrine, he takes a knee in front of the altar, saying a quick prayer before rising. "A small miracle that this was not desecrated as well."
Lola brushes a loose hair out of her face, and then mutters something, as it retruns. Sighing, she nods, "I can heal too, but it is not efficent. Just let me know." She examines the gems and the shrine as well.
Damian gets to his feet in a hurried, looking flustered. "Of course, my apologies!" He reaches up to grasp Vlad's shoulder. "You shouldn't have to ask, I don't know what came over me. This place... it feels like we're in a bad dream. I keep expecting to wake up."
When Feena and Coral arrived back where the others were the fighting was over with and she felt a wash of relief go through her that everyone was still alive. "We made it through that fight, that's ultimately what matters."
Coral studies the charred markings and upon closer examination, determines that they are actually letters written in the orc language. It says one word, Trap.
"Ah. It says Trap in Orc."
Coral will search the room thoroughly until she finds said trap.
Marya shrugs. ”Was probably an orc that wrote it. Tangentially related, but we should probably keep an eye out for orcs. Could need help in the best case. But more than likely they’d want a fight, knowing our luck.”
Damian tenses at the conversation, although whether at the mention of a trap, or of orcs, it is difficult to tell.
Feena felt concern at the thought of orcs being nearby. She knew what they did to trespassers, or to enemies, and she knew that the stories all agreed on one thing...don't get taken alive. Feena looked very nervous as the others looked for signs of orcs, traps, or both, and prepared herself to fight if it came to it.
Lola remembers, "espera, there was that man, Jando, he was a half-orc. Perhaps he explored this area before? It does not make sense for any other orcs to be here.' She inhales, then exhales sharply, "but orcs are the least of our worries, si? The most dangerous are those from Belkzen, if I remember, and I have not fought many of those, but even that culture is better than this undead cult. At least they are tangible - real - alive. Marya is right, so let us assume that they need help. Perhaps we can find another ally in this hellhole..."
Coral eventually identifies that the shrine in this room is trapped. Should someone touch the shrine, some form of poisonous gas would release into the room.
"If we want to collect those red gemstones, I could try to disarm the trap."
Coral gets out her tools and sets to work.
Coral goes to work on disabling the trap so that the party can remove the gemstones, but after a moment of working on it she moves away from the shrine and puts her tools down. While she identified the trapped mechanism, she does come away with a sense of relief that she's successfully disabled it, though she is not sure. Whoever put this trap here knew what they were doing.
"Let's just leave it. Not worth the risk. To the south?"
"I hope greed doesn't tempt future visitors..." muses Damian, using a piece of charcoal to write "Danger, do not touch" in Common on the wall next to the altar.
"That should be a warning for anyone else who comes this way, I hope." He nods at Coral to lead the way.
”Yeah, south is good with me.” She flashes Damian a thumbs up at his note. ”Good call, buddy.”
Leading the gems for now, Coral first checks the southern door and then opens it up to reveal an empty room that was likely once a community room. Along, low bookshelf runs along the western and southern walls of this room. The shelf is currently empty save for a few scraps of burnt paper. The center of the stone floor bears the scorch marks of an old bonfire. Two wooden doors stand in the northern wall, one that you just opened and another on the eastern side of the room.
Without much of interest here, Coral checks the next door leading north and finds that it opens back into the main area where your large battle took place the previous day.
Moving back north to where the enraged bear was, you explore the western side of the vestry and find it vacated without much interest.
With that sweep, the entire ground floor has now been explored, leaving the two staircases at the northern end of the cathedral still yet to be explored.
"Let's take the stairs at the northern end. The ones in the northwest."
"Let me tend to our injuries first." Damian raises one hand to get everyone's attention.
Moving up the staircase in the northwest, you wind your way up to the second floor where the hallway turns to the south. Moving south, the hallway splits into two directions, east and south. The southern hall ends after 35' turning east and the eastern hallway continues onward for more than 100'. In the center of the eastern hall is an intersection of another hallway that intersects it, moving north to south. In the center of the intersection is a three-foot-high square marble pillar with some green sparkling gem the size of a human fist sitting on top of it.
Several doorways line the southern side of the eastern hall, two before the intersection and two after.
Like the ground floor, the exterior walls on the upper floor are made of thick stone. The ceilings rise to a height of 12 feet. The doors are made of strong wood. The enchanted sconces in every room provide bright light.
Lola stays towards the rear, as usual, especially since she had ‘advanced’ into being a servant of the psychopomps. She nodded along as the others made the decisions, content to avoid getting herself killed again.
"Let's be careful now..." Damian establishes his links with the others.
Coral will approach the gem, checking very carefully for traps.
As Coral approaches, she begins to see that a black mist swirls about within the gem. She gets the sense that this gem is more than just a plain old gem.
Marya recasts her light cantrip and scratches at the side of her head with the crossguard of her sword. ”Maybe it will suck in the soul of whoever touches it. Or pop out a spirit of its own. Doubt anything that valuable looking would be just sitting around still without a very good reason.”
"Perhaps another trap to punish greed," opines Damian, keeping a healthy distance from the gem.
"Can we determine if the gem is a magic item, or bears a magical effect?"
She looks to Feena.
Feena did not like the look of that darkness when they got close tot eh gem and nodded in acknowledgement of Coral's question. Shoving her glasses back up to better perch on her nose Feena cast a spell and began to examine the gem.
"The worst that could happen is that it sucks out your soul as Marya says, and turns you into a twisted mockery of life, like a wight or something.
You would be screaming for blood and would turn on your friends."
Coral shudders, remembering her friend Salcas from Three Pines Ford.
"If it is evil magic, perhaps there is a way to deactivate it. Channeling positive energy, perhaps. Let's see what Feena has to say."
Feena couldn't understand what was happening as she looked at the object. She even took her glasses off and wiped the lenses before putting them back on and staring at it some more. "It should detect as magical, I am certain of it, but my spell doesn't seem to be reaching it..." She frowned in consternation as she tried to figure out what was going on.