Mahzuzi also tries to identify the creature.
Zhalet recognizes the floating head as a Doru (Div), an evil fiend usually used as messngers by more powerful beings. They particularly enjoy corrupting intelligent beings.
Mahz, yes, it spoke in Common.
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According to your studies, this fiend, as most Divs, have particularly thick flesh which can be pierced only with cold iron or holy/blessed weapons.
!Kutlwisi draws his machete and strikes at the awful thing.
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"Goodness!" cries Mahzuzi when he learns of the creature's defenses. Drawing his own dagger, he looks at it with a look of grave concern. Then he hums another strange otherworldly ditty, this one incredibly short, and his dagger glows for a moment. He points the dagger at the doru and the light immediately shoots at the creature's eyes, potentially blinding it. Then he steps up beside it, trying to get in position to flank with !Kutlwisi or Thyste.
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He points the dagger at the doru
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His strike did not crit and inflicted 7 damage!
The bard's spell strikes the doru, but fails to affect its otherworldly nature.
The bard's spell strikes the doru, but fails to affect its otherworldly nature.
Thyste steps forward...
She knocks the bottom of her shield on the stone and growls.
"I am Thyste, Chosen of the Cyclopes, born of death and twice as hardened as any in the arena! You will fall before me like so many before you. Die afraid! I will kill more like you before I am through."
The bard's spell strikes the doru, but fails to affect its otherworldly nature.
As it is blind, Thyste cannot demoralize it, so you can redo your action.
Demoralize: You can use this skill to cause an opponent to become shaken for a number of rounds. The DC of this check is equal to 10 + the target’s Hit Dice + the target’s Wisdom modifier. If you are successful, the target is shaken for 1 round. This duration increases by 1 round for every 5 by which you beat the DC. You can only threaten an opponent in this way if they are within 30 feet and can clearly see and hear you.
Thyste grins. "My bronze is not cold, but it will do!" she says.
She does quite poorly, though.
The blind div floats to the top of the ceiling, 15', provoking AoOs from Ku, Mahz, and Thyste.
Seeing the creature moving, she takes an opportunity to lunge after it with her spear.
Zhalet, who's scimitar IS forged from cold iron, growls in frustration when the div floats up.
And again I'm left behind before I can help in any meaningful way!
"Get it fast!"
The human cavalier ends the doru's life, as it falls disgraced to the ground, blind and dead. Master bedroom contains no other enemies.
Mahzuzi looks around at the others, shaken but no less enthusiastic. "That was outsider creature? Evil thing? We were very lucky. Good show, !Kutlwisi, very glad you are so much warrior!" He catches his breath, thinking. "Think that was the only one? What was it doing here I wonder? Let's see if there's any magic here." He hums a little tune again and gestures.
”I will need to get myself one of those,” says Thyste, eyeing !Kutlwisi’s cold iron.
"Great-great Grandfather Sudi was the first to mandate we all have one. Not a pretty weapon, but it comes in handy."
Mahz detects magic emanating from the hornet's nest.
This spacious room has entrances in the southern and eastern walls. The aged remains of dressers, a large bed, and a divan lie in ruins. The husk of large hornet's nest, gray, papery, and devoid of life, occupies one corner of the ceiling. The spaces in the northeast and northwest corners appear to be closets. Their wooden doors have all but fallen off their hinges, and heaps of disintegrated fabric mingle on the floor. Between the closets stands a single lacquered dresser covered in dust.
Mahzuzi points at the hornet's nest. "Is magic!" he informs the others, and proceeds to search the rest of the room, careful to touch things only with his weapon to avoid getting unpleasant things on him.
"Surely that is not the only enemy we will find in this house," he says to Thyste. "But hopefully the only doru?"
Thyste raises her spear a bit and chuckles. "Not quite the only doru," she says.
She eyes the nest suspiciously. "It looks like it might be empty... but 'gladiator versus swarm of angry wasps' isn't a popular match-up for a lot of reasons. Can you tell if the nest itself is magic, or if there's something magic inside of it?"
Mahz takes a cursory look in the nest, but does not see the source of the magic.
Zhalet regards the div mess on the floor for a moment.
"Well, that turned out to be simpler than I expected. I suppose I should have saved that spell for another time" she adds ruefully.
Zhalet goes back to checking the closet.
Thyste spends a minute searching through the hornet's nest. Meanwhile, Zhalet's keen eyes notice a fake panel in the back of the closet and she finds a locked bronze chest hidden there.
Zhalet is well aware ancient Osirians practically fetishized nasty traps of all types and sizes. With that in mind, she doesn't try to move or open the box. Instead she calls for professional assistance.
"I've found something behind a secret panel! It's a chest! Can someone who knows about locks and such take a look?"
"Me! Friend Mahzuzi can look at it!" Mahzuzi waves his hand in the air (as if to call attention to himself below eye level) and grins. He goes over and makes a big show of looking over the chest.
Thyste crouches down beside him, watching in fascination as he works on it. She's always been curious about the more fiddly work... and nothing's more fiddly than a gnome picking a lock.
Mahzuzi seems to love Thyste's attention and adds extra fiddling, just for her. He pulls a funny face and opens the box with a flourish, ducking as he does so to indicate that there could still be danger inside.
He points at the wasp nest. "What say we knock it down, see what the magic is? Hmm?"
"I always heard hornet nests were meant to be left alone ...a swarm could be rather deleterious."
Mahz gives the chest a lookover and finds no traps. He sets down to pick the lock, but realizes it has complicated tumblers. Unfortunately, Mahz's skills are not up to the challenge of the complex lock and the pick slips from his hands.
Thyste, whose role as Party Fight Lady has been going absolutely terribly today, stays respectfully quiet as Mahz drops the pick entirely.
Mahzuzi looks up as if briefly embarrassed, then grins and flips the tools in his hand. He extends his arms as if to say "Give me room, watch this!" and tries aga-- CONTINUES picking the lock.
After a minute of searching, Thyste finds nothing in the hornet's nest.
After a minute of concentrating and sweating, Mahz....still can't open the lock.
Mahzuzi frowns at the chest. He thinks it is strange to have such an excellent lock on something that has presumably been lying here in the dust for hundreds of years... unless it is somehow more recent.
"This is difficult lock," he says. "Must be something verrrrry valuable inside it, yes? Is worth taking lots of time to open?"
While Mahzuzi continues to work on the lock, Zhalet decides she might as well keep looking around. She casts Detect Magic herself and concentrates on determining the type of magic that the nest is imbued with.
Otherwise she searches any parts of the room not yet covered.
Mahz takes 2 minutes now to meticulously study the lock and its intricacies and patiently unlocks each tumbler until the chest opens, exposing a cocked crossbow mechanical trap which Mahz failed to spot! A bolt hits him in the chest and as he looks down at the wound, he sees the barb covered in poison! He quickly pulls it out and thankfully fights off the poison before it can cause any damage.
The chest contains 20 small gold ingots, each bearing a seal.
Meanwhile, Zhalet's keen eyes spot a taut black band, clipped with a black metal skull in the empty hornet's nest. The headband radiates faint enchantment and abjuration magic.
The timing is almost comical, as Mahz takes so long picking the lock only for the crossbow to give the low pitch of a thick string snapping taut.
"Are you all right?" she asks, somewhat concerned.
Zhalet removes the object from the hornets nest to give it a closer look. She hears some noise from over where the box is being worked on, but she's too busy concentrating to give it much notice.
"Everything alright over there?"
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Mahzuzi blinks several times, staring at the bolt that stuck him. "Shot!" he says conversationally, and he sniffs the tip. "Poison," he adds. "Don't think this chest has been here for years and years!"