Hodawan stumbles back in surprise from the weapon's discharge.
"Let's...no touch that, shall we? Who knows what destruction it could wreak if we go firing it off willy nilly." she admonishes the group playing with the deadly energy weapon.
She looks back at the book in her hand afterward, then places it back in the professor's pack with a sigh.
"I can barely understand a word...I didn't expect the Professor's personal journals to be so technical. Maybe one of you will have better luck."
The sudden discharge of the weapon caught Yukarii of guard and she gave a scream of surprise. Here eyes were rather round and the normally unflappable woman had gone pale. "Don't play with that," she snapped. Taking a deep breath to calm herself Yukarii finally regained her composure and said, "My apologies, that was uncalled for. Let's avoid fiddling with those things too much for now shall we?"
With that she followed Zero to look at the professor's journals and the device with the symbols on it. Something about the symbols was naggingly familiar to her and Yukarii was sure she had seen something like them before back home. If only she could remember.
This language isn't from golarion, must be something from the outer planes. In the mean time, let me see those journals. I may have some insight. Harman says ignoring the discharge.
"So...Now what? We've got our journals of the old professor. That's one! Two! When we made this 'circle of water' happen, somethin' came through it. Now we know it was hostile as we lost several men includin' the professor. The question is now, are we gonna journey through that circle of water ourselves or are we tryin' to make more sense of these journals first?"
Amhern delivers the staff weapon back to Harman and offers a silent apology for his curiosity.
"Doin' nothin' here isn't good for any of us. Else we might be better buryin' the damn thing again. Don't think that's what the professor wanted though. Can we make this circle of water happen again?"
He asks the more scholarly types among the group.
Harman sits down with the books. Maybe, I have ways of finding out how, but let's study the journals first.
Yukarii gave up on the symbols and thought about what she could do. She thought through what had happened, the steps leading up to the opening of the ring, and remembered the Professor looking at...."a piece of paper," she muttered quietly. She began to look around on the ground and made her way towards the professor's body looking for the piece of paper.
you search around the dead professors body, and easily find the scrap of paper that the professor was holding prior to the tragic events that led to his demise. you pull the paper from under the professors hip and see it drip with blood.
the scrap of paper, about 1/4 the size of a normal size of paper, is stained with blood. the blood obscures 3 of the 7 sets of symbols that are drawn in the professors own hand. The other 4 sets of seven symbols remain clear and easily identifiable.
Efni stood next to. Yukarii when she found the blood-stained paper. "Hey. That's the symbols on the gate, aren't they?" He moved his head from facing the paper in her hands to the gate and back.
"So, we I assume, and that's not a wild guess, you all agree, that these symbols are kind of a key to activation. There's 7 sets of symbols here. Either they are all one very long key, or it's 7 keys. Because, he would have told us about it, today was the first time he activated the water-thingy. So, I conclude that the first key could be the correct one. Could be. Maybe. "
I like solving puzzles, but is there a way to maybe remove the blood without damaging the text underneath? Some magic, maybe...
She tried to remember her arcane training.
Yukarii found the piece of paper with blood on it tucked into the Professor's pocket. She recognized the four unobscured symbols as being from the strange stone slab and figured the obscured ones were as well. As she stood up with it she found Efni hovering over her and looking over her shoulder and her eyes narrowed in annoyance, she understood his impatience and curiosity so she let it go, and said, "I think I've found part of the riddle to open the ring of stones. We just need to figure out the first few symbols."
Contemplating the paper Yukarii finally decided to try her most common method of cleaning. She spoke several words in a language most humanoids wouldn't be able to speak correctly and gestured. She finished by making a wiping motion over the blood splatter.
Amhern looks on as Yukarii casts a spell to make better sense of what the professor's notes could tell them.
"Well? Anything make sense? Can we make it work again?"
The gruff dwarf says as he leans on the nearby wall, picking his pack for something to eat and chew.
After fishing some dried berries out of the top of his pack, he begins eating them one by one.
"Any ideas what these symbols actually stand for? Perhaps that's a clue?"