Hi, please dot in! We will be starting when Gameday starts.
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Merya isn't sure why the scholar seems so nervous, but she smiles at the woman in what she hopes is an encouraging way. "Aye," she agrees, her voice surprisingly deep and somewhat gravelly. "Do you know anything about this place?"
"It's foggy."
The interaction draws a wry smile from the flamboyant half-elf against the wall. "It is way hotter then I expected here." He is fidgeting with a strange set of interlinked metal rods.
"T-thank you." Solemnia says appreciatively. "I-I washed my hair last night. Um, you look nice too! The parts that I can see anyhow.... T-the mist really lends you an air of mystery."
Solemnia wanders over to a weaselly-looking Sausage-inna-Bun™ vendor and gets a breakfast she'll later regret while she waits for things to clear up.
The Blakros Museum rises into the night sky, its single black spire severing the full moon in twain. The black iron gates surrounding the exhibition hall grind in protest against the wind. Beyond, the museum’s large oaken doors stand wide open, a silver-gray mist belching forth from the cavernous darkness within. You wonder how you ended up here, standing at the precipice of unknown terrors, and instantly Venture-Captain Adril Hestram’s wide looming face is conjured into your minds’ eye. His booming words ring out from memory as clearly as he spoke them only one hour ago:
"The Blakros Museum is cursed. Some darkness has descended upon the place and those who enter are blasted with evil and left raving through its halls, more beast than men. The curator, Nigel Aldain, is an old associate of the Society, though he chose to leave our organization some years back after a disagreement." Adril looked sheepish then, as if remembering some distasteful incident from his youth. "Nigel has long denied the Society access to the Blakros Museum’s considerable collection of relics and scrolls, using his extensive contacts to nab several excellent finds right out from under us... he always had a nose for the hunt. Whatever is past between Nigel and the Society, he needs our help now. Perhaps if we can come to his aid, he may think on rejoining the Pathfinder Society, or at least offering to share his discoveries with us. Apparently the trouble at Blakros Museum began this morning, shortly after a wayward Pathfinder named Lugizar Trantos returned to Absalom after months spent in the Mwangi Expanse. Supposedly, instead of coming straight to the Lodge to report in, he went to Blakros, sold his finds to Nigel, and then disappeared with a hefty sum of gold. The few who glimpsed Lugizar claimed he was much changed by his time in the Mwangi... gaunt, his eyes yellowed and unfocused, a strange rasping cough that seemed to wrack his now wasted frame. Whatever he brought back with him, we believe it is the cause of the Blakros Museum’s ills. Root it out."
Adril (see slide 1 on the maps for a picture) gives you a map(see slide 2), and recommends that you start out at the offices.
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Igor gestures and speaks a word of power before entering the museum with the others.
OOC: He casts Mage Armor.
OOC2: My familiar will not be an active participant in combat or skill challenges. He simply grants Alertness and +3 hp. As per FAQ.
"You can never be too careful you know."
He nods to the Gnome appreciating his need to paint. This gets him thinking. He fingers his tool belt looking wistful.
"The masonry could use a little work. You see there just around that arch. The stones are beginning to crack. They could use replacing. Some pointing around the main gate would not go amiss either."
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"Goodness, what a breathtaking view!" he says with wide-eyed wonder. "Do you think I have time for a quick sketch? Just to capture the image for later?"
"W-why, thank you!" The thin elf scholar says blushing. "S-so many compliments. My mother always told me this was my best side. Oh, and I can't do anything in the nude--unless it is 'tasteful'. Mother explained to me all about artists."
As the mist clears and Solemnia can at last see Jurmo clearly. The elf looks startled and says "Oh. I thought you were a girl. White hair. Lots of facial tattoos.... W-well, anyhow it is a pleasure to meet you I'm Solemnia Orikrana. I'm as part of a work-study program. This is all really quite exciting isn't it? Though I guess that this Trantos probably just made his way to the museum cafeteria, and just accidentally burned the stew he was making."
"The masonry could use a little work. You see there just around that arch. The stones are beginning to crack. They could use replacing. Some pointing around the main gate would not go amiss either."
"Jeepers. It looks kind of haunted...."
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”Though I guess that this Trantos probably just made his way to the museum cafeteria, and just accidentally burned the stew he was making."
”Oh, you’re probably onto something there!” the gnome agrees, nodding energetically. ”I bet he burned some stew - that would explain this fog. Why, it’s thick as pea soup!”
Putting your heads together, you know the following:
Much of the Mwangi’s darkest interior worships a demon lord named Angazhan, who is described in the Book of the Damned as a thing of primordial darkness, a foul-breathed demon who grunts prophecies of
blood to apes and madmen. The jungle is his beating heart.
The Gorilla King’s dread city was founded hundreds of years past by cultists who bowed to Angazhan. It is said they captured the souls of monkeys in the wood-grains of strange idols called Tik Taan. The monkeys’ tormented spirits became the slaves and playthings of Angazhan, who murdered their playful whims and replaced them with a deep-seated hate and wild madness. These Tik Taan are rumored to shred the sanity of anyone who spends too long in their presence.
The cultists who created the Tik Taan were hunted by a brave tribe of the Mwangi called the Jambala Jaeg. The Jambala Jaeg created ritual knives, crafted out of bone handles and obsidian blades, to slay the demons inside the Tik Taan. Legends speak of the deadly mists of the Tik Taan, ill humors that invade men’s hearts by seeping into their mouths. Anyone wearing a scarf or other protection against the airborne menace is immune to its effects.
Lugizar Trantos spent the better part of a year in the Mwangi Expanse. At first he wrote letters to his brother and wife, but after a few months these stopped coming and most gave him up for dead.
His letters spoke of a lucrative find at one point, three idols of dark wood carved in the shape of bearded monkeys.
The last of his letters evidenced an unhinged mind, and was covered in strange sketches of monkey paws. He described dark eyes glaring out from the mists. Shortly after his return to Absalom, many of the monkeys and apes in the city’s menageries attacked their keepers and fled into greater Absalom.
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Igor quickly leads the party (if they wish) from the Wise Quarter to Westgate.
"I am from Absalom so I know the way. You can find virtually anything you might need here. My friend Qfir owns a shop here that sells hats and scarves. It is called simply the Oasis. I am sure that she will be happy to help us. Look around. I will be back in a minute."
Igor ducks quickly inside the Overturned Potion to pick up a Blood Boiling pill and then returns to the Oasis.
"I feel that a jungle theme would be appropriate considering the venue but pick out what you feel is appropriate in protective face gear."
Igor picks out a long brown and green patterned scarf for himself and a pocket square with a banana motif for his pet toad. They then return to the museum.
OOC: I am not trying to derail the thread here but to add a bit of color to our shopping experience. If people would like to come along that is fine and then they can narrate their own experience and we can move the thread along.
You open the door to the museum, and find yourselves looking into the entryway.
An unnatural cold permeates this chamber and the tendrils
of silver-gray mist flowing out the front archway into the
courtyard beyond seem to effortlessly pierce the flesh
and gently caress the bone in a cold embrace. The grand
entranceway’s vaulted ceiling is supported by six great
pillars of hewn black stone. Braziers mounted on the pillars
cast white radiance from balls of continual light. The light
glimmers eerily in the silvery haze that fills the atrium,
giving the impression of something alien watching from the
glowing fog.
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”Ooo!” Drelluandast is clearly fascinated by the play of light through the mist, but he comes to his senses quickly enough. ”Oh yeah - best to be protected in case something jumps out at us, right?” He waves his arms like a windmill in a windstorm, and glowing sheets of fabric draped themselves around his short form before flashing and vanishing from sight.
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Jurmo watches Igor and nods, he slides up his right sleeve reviling a Tattoo of a Constellation, three of the stars begin to glow before lifting off to circle his head. He then pulls down the cuff and in a move that looks like bruising down and back up on each arm his colorful clothes turn to dark black and grey.
He reaches into his pack and pulls out a wand, "Are any of you able to activate a Divine Wand reliably?"
Solemnia and Jurmo, will save, please.
Solemnia and Jurmo for a moment feel the mists whispering dangerous things to them, but they steel themselves against the whispers and move on.
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Solemnia and Jurmo for a moment feel the mists whispering dangerous things to them, but they steel themselves against the whispers and move on.
"What's that?" Solemnia asks no one in particular. Then realizing that she said it out loud points to her head and says "The voices." as if that explains anything. Clutching her pan and her journal she moves deeper into the room.
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"Well, we're here!" Drelluandast states cheerfully. "Adril said to go to the office first, but maybe we should see what's behind door number one this door!" He happily points to the closest door on the north side of the hallway, but makes no move to go there first. A particularly thick roll of mist briefly obscures his small form before it recedes and he rises like a monster from the ocean.
Igor finds no sign of problems on the door.
The mists here congeal into a thick and silvery fog that cools the lungs. Arranged throughout this large hall are exhibits on the funerary traditions of several civilizations, along with preserved corpses arrayed in grim stillness. A giant warrior looms from the haze, his arms crossed at his chest, his helm solemn and still. Beyond lie sarcophagi of varied designs, and a few glass cases wherein withered dead are held upright by rods and string; grim exhibits of long-dead citizens whose fallen empires were erased an age past.
A placard above this hall reads “The Honored Dead” in blood-red calligraphy.
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Solemnia waits nervously by the door.
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"Ooo!" Drelluandast whispers softly as he follows Igor. "Who do you think he was? Do you see a namecard or anything with more information on it somewhere? I'm pretty sure all museums have them." He calls back over his shoulder, voice louder to penetrate the dampening mists, "Jurmo, Solemnia! Come look at this!"