Nevai grumbles under his breath and swings again.
The bomb strikes true once again, immediately flash-melting some of the sandman into chunks of smoky glass that drop to the floor. It looks badly hurt, but it's still going.
Nevai finally lands a powerful blow against his flanked enemy!
... To no effect whatsoever.
The creature hisses a laugh as another of Filibus' bolts sails overhead, and slams its massive sandstone-like fist into Nevai's face .
With a dull smack, Nevai's jaw cracks slightly and he falls, unconscious, to the ground.
[color=green]
Ulysses (23/24 hp)
Nevai (17/27 hp, asleep)
Filibus (0 dmg)
Sandman (32 dmg)
Melech (36/37 hp)
[/color]
"Nevai's blade did nothing!" Melech shouts. And why did he go down with one punch?
Melech has no reason to believe that any type of physical attack will hurt this thing, but he now knows for sure that his blade will not. He drops his falchion and draws his flail.
The flail slams into the sandman and sends a huge spray of sand out from the wound. Melech gets the distinct impression of an artery opening up. And yet, this thing is still standing.
[color=green]
Ulysses (23/24 hp)
Nevai (17/27 hp, asleep)
Filibus (0 dmg)
Sandman (41 dmg)
Melech (36/37 hp)
[/color]
"Hey, you helped!"
"Filibus, your crossbow is useless. Wake him up, will you?"
With a final hefty lob, Ulysses' bomb explodes on the sandman's chest, and it detonates spectacularly. Shards of flash-formed glass fly in a spray outward from where the elemental once stood, narrowly missing Melech's face. Nothing remains of it once the smoke clears, aside from bits of occluded glass chunks.
COMBAT OVER!
Filibus rushes over and shakes the cleric awake. "Wow!" he exclaims breathlessly. "I've seen some explosives before, Ulysses, but those bombs of yours are something else! Where did you learn to do that, anyway?"
Nevai stares up at the bright sky overhead. "Do I have to get up?"
He grumbles and sits up. "That was embarrassing. I've never been one-hit KO'ed before."
Ulysses smiles at Filibus. "Many, many years of study and experimentation." He touches the burn scar on his face. "And mistakes that I was fortunate enough to learn from." He checks his supplies. "And I only have two left for the day so let's hope we don't meet anything else that is made of sand."
Melech offers his hand to Nevai. While pulling him up, he chuckles. "At least it had to hit you to put you down. I just passed out being near the thing." Turning to Ulysses, he says, "You saved our asses. Thank you."
Ulysses shrugs and grins, then looks up at Nevai. "Can you heal yourself or should I use the wand?"
Nevai waves him off. "I will take care of it. Save the wand."
He drops a spell to heal his wounds.
"I've been meaning to learn more about the process ever since I met you," the historian says thoughtfully. "Maybe we could discuss it tonight at the Tooth and Hookah."
A cursory search of the inner courtyard finds a skeletal corpse, mummified by the arid desert heat and buried under quite a bit of sand. In fact, it was Nevai who pointed out the body's buried location, thanks to the magical equipment it's wearing.
On the body are the following:
- A golden holy symbol of Sarenrae
- Five cold iron crossbow bolts
- Ten regular crossbow bolts
- A light crossbow (unidentified)
- A suit of scale mail (unidentified)
- 3 pp
- 37 gp
They are a +1 light crossbow and +1 scale mail armor, respectively.
Melech admires the armor. "This is fine armor, but it is not better than what I have now. Nevai, can you use it? And Filibus, this crossbow will make a fine replacement for yours."
"I have some experience with holy symbols. This should fetch 25 gold."
Melech heads back to the northeastern room he was trying to visit before he decided to take a nap.
Nevai shakes his head. "Despite being magical, it has roughly the same protection as what I wear now. Better to sell it for more appropriate equipment later."
Filibus takes the crossbow with near reverence. "Wow! Thanks." He stows the extra bolts in the case strapped to his side and puts his old crossbow in his pack.
To the south, hieroglyphs and images of fantastic beings cover the walls of this small room. A small stone shrine, dusty and thoroughly defaced, stands against the eastern wall.
To the north, two stone tables sit against the western wall, while a third occupies the southeastern corner. A small, square wooden butcher's block stands in the northeast corner, now almost collapsing under its own weight. A stone oven sits in the middle of the north wall. A humanoid skeleton lies beneath the northwestern table, surrounded by smashed crockery. A door to the east exits the room, presumably into the small room where the "drop-bear" solifugid attacked Melech yesterday.
The skeleton does not rise, and nothing of value can be seen in this room.
The only thing of interest in this room is the shrine , dedicated to Abadar, Pharasma, and Sarenrae. It has been thoroughly defaced, in a strange language with hideous, spidery letters that seem to crawl across the shrine when you stare at them too long, and leave a long, greasy trail across your vision.
"This is Abyssal. I can't read it, but, well, I don't imagine it says anything nice. Filibus, do you have any magic that can clean this up?"
Filibus shrugs and shakes his head. "Sorry."
Ulysses thinks for a moment. "Abyssal. Why Abyssal? I thought we were mainly dealing with necromancy and the undead. What do demons have to do with that?"
While it's certainly not the normal language of undead, Melech is not all that surprised that the defacement is in Abyssal. It is, in many ways, antithetical to the three deities enshrined here, particularly Sarenrae, whose doctrine of Redemption generally does not include demons and similar irredeemable horrors (unless said demons specifically request it, an incalculably rare occurrence). Likewise, demons are proponents of chaos for its own sake, something both Abadar and Pharasma are generally against. It may not have been written by an actual demon, simply someone who understood the dialectical significance of using Abyssal for the defacement, and really wanted to stick it to these three deities, or perhaps just deities in general (it's impossible to say which).
"Shall we go upstairs?"
You quickly survey the last two rooms. The first is a stone privy with doors on both the north and south, both of which were wood and have rotted away to nothingness over the centuries. Inside, a headless corpse sits upright on one of the chamberpots, its body displayed in horrific, mocking fashion. One of the other chamberpots has been haphazardly placed over the stump of the corpse's neck in place of a head. Shards of broken glass from a long-shattered mirror and several dead scarab beetles litter the floor.
The head was not severed with a sharp instrument like a sword. The flesh around the stump is loose and flimsy compared to the rest of the skin, as if it was weakened by some organic compound of some sort and then ripped off.
In the farthest south corner room, a large tiled pool sits in the center, surrounded by sloping tiled floors. A few steps descend into the basin, which has accumulated a deep layer of sand on its bottom. Faded murals on the walls depict scenes of life along a river, with recurring themes of running water and aquatic life running through the artwork. In the northeast corner, a tarnished bronze spigot juts from the wall just above head level. An archway to the west leads to the main entry hall, and a stone door to the east leads outside.
The spigot is a magical item that casts create water when the knobs are turned, creating hot or cold water as desired. It still appears to function. However, there appears to be no way to remove it from the wall it's built into.
Nevai relays whatever information he discovers.
"Well, that's f#&&ing terrible."
"Yes, it is," Melech says. "We should return here when we are done and bury this body properly."
You head through the inner courtyard to circumvent the haunted entry hall, then up the wide stone stairway as it splits and curves up to the second floor.
This balcony wraps around a twenty-foot-square opening in the floor. Above, a square skylight in the ceiling provides natural light to the ground floor and ventilation for the entire building. To the southwest, two small staircases ascend from a landing on the grand staircase between floors. Six different sets of doors lead off of the balcony.
Melech and Ulysses slowly approaches the door directly in front of them.
Neither Melech nor Ulysses hear anything beyond the door, and neither sees any traps on it. However, Melech could swear he heard the sound of flapping wings. Not big, slow flaps like from a vulture or other carrion bird, but rather short, clumsy, rapid flapping. He is distinctly reminded of a bat or bird trapped in a room. The sound is not coming from the other side of this door, however.
Melech looks at the others and holds a finger to his lips, then tries to pinpoint the direction the flapping sound is coming from.
Ulysses drinks his mutagen, struggling to stay quiet as its painful effects assault his body, then follows closely behind Melech.
The sound appears to becoming from the northeast somewhere, but for the life of them neither Melech nor Ulysses can figure out if it's coming from the northernmost door or the door below it.
As the two look toward the northeastern doors, Melech could swear he saw something out the window...
Nevai frowns, as if trying to find the source of the flapping as well, then strides directly toward the southeast doors without a word. He seems intent on throwing them open.
"Nevai, what are you doing? Nevai!?"
Melech has probably seen compulsory effects before, likely at the hands of his former master. The addled, slightly confused stare and awkward gait give it away; Nevai is under some sort of compulsion. He grabs at the cleric but can't quite get a hold.
As the slayer grasps at Nevai, the source of the flapping is suddenly made clear--as well as why neither of you could figure out which room it was coming from. The flapping was coming from both rooms; two horrid, fiendish heads with bat-wings and disgustingly long tongues come bursting through the cracked-open doors and flying at the party!
Don't worry about it.
[color=green]
Ulysses (23/24 hp)
Head Flap-Flap 1 (0 dmg)
Melech (36/37 hp)
Nevai (27/27 hp)
Head Flap-Flap 2 (0 dmg)
Filibus (0 dmg)
[/color]
In addition, vargouilles hunt their prey by using a supernaturally powerful shriek that paralyzes all non-vargouille in 60 feet that hear it. It generally then kisses the target to infect them.
"Oh shit. Vagouilles! Don't let them touch you with their tongues!"
He takes a few steps forward and throws a bomb. He only has two left but these things need to die, and fast.
The first of the vargouilles, flames still licking off its badly-burned body, swoops towards Ulysses. Instead of whipping its tongue out at the gnome, however, it opens its mouth and lets out an ululating, horrific shriek like shattered glass amplified a hundred times.
Three of you shake off the effects, but Filibus freezes in place, white-knuckle grip frozen onto his crossbow.
[color=green]
Ulysses (23/24 hp)
Vargouille 1 (10 dmg)
Melech (36/37 hp)
Nevai (27/27 hp)
Vargouille 2 (0 dmg)
Filibus (0 dmg, paralyzed 6 rounds)
[/color]
Melech steps forward, studying the hideous creature, and swings his falchion.
Melech's falchion leaves a long, brutal gash along the vargouille's side that spews some horrid, violently neon green fluid. It warbles in a disconcerting fashion, but doesn't drop.
While Melech is preoccupied, a tiny floating creature appears next to Ulysses and bites down on his neck. It appears to be a sort of small floating head with shaggy fur, six curling horns, and a humanoid mouth full of jagged teeth. Its eyes burn with an angry light as its teeth sink into Ulysses. It doesn't get much traction on the gnome but Ulysses can feel something in its saliva seeping into the wound...
Ulysses shakes off whatever horrors awaited in that bite.
The creature leers and says "Grk'x horrgroth makl, draegoth."
Neither Melech nor Ulysses understand the creature, but Filibus lets out a whispered groan of horror at whatever he just heard.
[color=green]
Ulysses (23/24 hp)
Vargouille 1 (23 dmg)
Melech (36/37 hp)
Imanish (0 dmg)
Nevai (24/27 hp)
Vargouille 2 (0 dmg)
Filibus (0 dmg, paralyzed)
[/color]
Nevai throws open the door in front of him and steps in, steadily moving through the rubbish and detritus here, examining carefully.
The second vargouille screams.
Once again, all three who were already unaffected remain so. The floating ram's-head thing seems to seize up for a brief moment, then shake it off.
When Nevai enters the room, a third vargouille flies haphazardly through the open window and directly at him, snapping him out of whatever command he'd been given but also giving him a face full of vargouille tongue to deal with. The cleric can't quite duck the writhing appendage and it latches onto the nape of his neck and injects... something under the aasimar's skin before emitting an ululating croon that sounds far too much like pleasure to be comfortable.
Nevai feels... unclean.
Filibus continues to be frozen in place.
[color=green]
Ulysses (23/24 hp)
Vargouille 1 (10 dmg)
Melech (36/37 hp)
Imanish (0 dmg)
Nevai (24/27 hp, feelin' real gross)
Vargouille 2 (0 dmg)
Vargouille 3 (0 dmg)
Filibus (2 dmg, paralyzed 5 rounds)
[/color]
"Doru div! My bombs won't hurt it!"
He sidesteps, pulling a tanglefoot bag off of his belt, and tosses it at the vargouille that is hovering over the courtyard.
The vargouille lets out a startled cry as it's covered in some weird, sticky goop and drops twenty feet to the ground below . It lands with an audible wet papf! on the ground below, twitching once and then laying unmoving and bleeding.
[color=green]
Ulysses (23/24 hp)
Vargouille 1 (26 dmg, unconscious and dying)
Melech (36/37 hp)
Imanish (0 dmg)
Nevai (24/27 hp)
Vargouille 2 (0 dmg)
Vargouille 3 (0 dmg)
Filibus (2 dmg, paralyzed 5 rounds)
[/color]