The cleric moves to the fellow half-elf's side and begins to patch him but. Try as she might however, Tom won't hold still and her work is far from effective.
Tasha takes a steadying breath before racing over to see what Tom has uncovered.
Ashlion charges across the room, missing with his initial attack but catching a xulgath on the backswing. Tasha stabs the same foe with her rapier, then Tom takes it down with a dagger before wounding another enemy. Ruine tends to Tom's wounds while Grelda misses with a hurled projectile.
The xulgaths step to manuever around Ashlion, attacking him with their greataxes. He parries all of their strikes! The leader of the xulgaths redirects his spiritual claw to Ashlion, striking the half-orc before casting a spell to try to blind him!
Success The target is blinded until its next turn begins.
Failure The target is blinded for 1 minute.
Critical Failure The target is blinded permanently.
Tom cartwheels over to flank with Ashlion.
Tom looks right at Grelda and says, "Thank the traveler you could just ask the other wife! All meat, no potatoes, that's what nan would have said..."
"Careful, Tom... That's my husband you're talking about," Grelda says with narrowed eyes. The distraction causes her telekinetic projectile to go wide--she swears she wasn't aiming at Tom!--so she grants Tasha some guidance.
With the damage done to the party being minimal for the moment, she turns to the greenish one to the east and declares "Burn."
With a laugh at the banter, Tasha takes long steps to reach the remaining foe and stabs at him.
Ashlion's angry swing crushes one xulgath's head. Tom stumbles behind the other one but slays it with two knives to the back of its skull. Ruine's fire ray ignites the priest, then Tasha stabs him twice!
Bloodied but unbowed, the burning xulgath directs the spiritual claw to tear at Tasha before blasting her with negative energy.
Tasha tumbles past the priest and then attempts to stab him again.
Tasha’s confident strikes finish off the xulgath priest! His gear consists of a +1 striking spiked gauntlet.
The human corpse on the altar still has an invisible net folded up in its pocket, which the xulgaths hadn’t discovered. This diaphanous item is marked with the “CM” logo of the Celestial Menagerie.
Tom {A}Strides into the room and throws the vial of fire at the makeshift altar to cause a {A}Distraction!
Tasha frowns at the logo on the net. "So how is Dusklight involved in this?" she asks. Shaking her head she puts the folded net in her bag.
"How about we go back and clean the fountain first and then we'll see what we can do here," she says.
You return to the corrupted pool and begin to clean the blood from the murals. As soon as you start, however, the sludge extrudes three pseudopods features that form into horrible creatures! Amorphous blobs of yammering mouths and oozing, fleshy sludge, they begin to gibber madly!
You use all your actions to Strike or cast offensive cantrips, though the GM can have you use other actions to facilitate attack, such as draw a weapon, move so that a target is in reach, and so forth. Your targets are determined randomly by the GM. If you have no other viable targets, you target yourself, automatically hitting but not scoring a critical hit. If it’s impossible for you to attack or cast spells, you babble incoherently, wasting your actions.
Each time you take damage from an attack or spell, you can attempt a DC 11 flat check to recover from your confusion and end the condition.
Tasha looks around with a confused expression on her face as her hand reaches for her blade.
Ruinë calls Tom and Tasha over to heal them before they wander off. "Sit still, the both of you." she orders them before getting to work.
When she sees that isn't enough, she gathers everyone around and heals everyone completely with her magic.
Confusion grips the cleric and she's unable to tell right from wrong.
Despite her confusion, Ruine fires a ray of flame at the gibbering monster in front of her!
Tasha, though, is startled by the flames. She draws her rapier and attacks Ruine, badly wounding the cleric.
Ashlion charges in and scores a critical hit on the nearest creature, his bludgeoning weapon proving particuarly effective!
The monsters attack with their many mouths. One bites and grabs a hold of Tasha while the one Ashlion struck grabs the barbarian.
With a heroic effort, Grelda resists the gibbering and hurls a rock into the creature attacking Ashlion.
Still confused, Tasha looks around, panic beginning to form in her mind.
Tom manages to keep his wits about him, and he takes aim the monster attacking Riune!
Then he beans Tasha in the face with his beanbag drawing her focus away from Riune and on to himself! "Sef! Snap OUT of it, eh!
Tasha ripping into Ruinë only seemed to prolong the confusion as the cleric is unable to come to her senses.
Grelda batters the monster attacking Ashlion before the barbarian finishes it off with two angry hammer strikes! Tom lands a hit on Ruine’s foe before slapping Tasha with a bean bag.
It fails to snap Tasha out of the confusion. Indeed, she escapes the mouther’s grasp and moves to stab Tom! Meanwhile, Ruine lights up Grelda with fire!
The first aberration somehow fails to hit Ruine again. The other one follows Tasha, landing a critical hit and grabbing her once more!
"SEF! SNAP! OUT! OF! "
Tom {A}takes a 5-foot step and throws his knives at the monster attacking Ruine!
Grelda cries out in pain as Ruine's fire scorches her. She grits her teeth and casts another spell to try to paralyze one of the gibbering aberrations before granting Ruine some guidance to try to snap her out of the confusion.
Grelda's guidance helps ensure that Ruinë does indeed snap out of it. She rubs her head as the fogs fades away and she tries to figure out what is going on. "Sorry. Sorry. she says to Grelda
Looking around she notes that everyone is injured, so she channels energy to only her allies, healing them.
The confusion clears from Tasha's eyes and she turns to stab at the amorphous creature.
Grelda's spell temporarily paralyzes the monster attacking Ruine. Tom scores two sneak attacks on the paralyzed creature! Ashlion smashes the monster beside him before Tasha stabs it twice. Ruine heals the party.
The gibbering creature grabbing Tasha chews on her again before attempting to engulf her, drawing her inside its squamous body!
Escape DC 22, Rupture 8
Grelda sends another rock hurtling heedlessly across the room.
Still reeling from the confusion, Tasha is quickly engulfed.
Pulling a dagger from her belt, she proceeds to slash away at the creature.
Three more daggers at Ruine's blob!
"Tasha! Oh no!" she calls out, fearful her wagonmate was just engulfed.
So she does what any reasonable, scared cleric would do, she burns it with fire and shoots a ray at it.
Ruine scorches and Ashlion smashes the creature engulfing Tasha, and it melts into a pile of sludge, releasing the tiefling. Tom sticks three daggers into the last monster’s body.
The last monster misses Ruine yet again, then it tries to engulf her!
Tom {A}Strides over to better his shot!
Recovering her rapier, Tasha approaches the thing that's trying to swallow Ruinë.
Tom stabs the monster with two daggers, then Grelda finally connects with a projectile, smashing the creature into a lifeless puddle!
Tasha pulls the half-elf out of the muck and futilely attempts to wipe the filth off her. "You should know better than to let something like that try to eat you," she says with a grin.
"Now let's try to clean this up," she says to the others.
Tom looks at the how the flour bag turned the tiefling's purple skin white, and laughs HARD. Oh Sef, YES, LETS!"
Tasha looks at Tom with a confused expression. "What's so funny?" she asks, before his mirth becomes contagious and she begins to smile as well. She looks to Ruinë to see if she knows what the man is laughing at.
Ruinë shrugs, having no idea what is going on. So instead, she gets to work. The cleric heals again to get everyone back where they need to be to continue.
"Whew. That one took a lot out of me. Do you think we have much further to go?"
Fortunately, nothing else emerges from the pool, and you are able to finish cleaning the murals. Once cleaned, the mosaics depict three day‐to‐day tasks considered sacred to Aroden: a carpenter building a chair, a musician playing the lute, and a scholar copying a text.
"Hmm... I can try the first couple," Grelda muses. "Got to patch up my clothes now that they've been scorched, anyway."
The half-orc strips down to her undergarments and pulls out needle and thread, setting to work sewing the rents in her damaged clothing. She recalls the star's predictions about the day to guide her hands, and soon, her outfit is looking in much better repair. She nods in satisfaction and gets dressed once more.
"Now, as for Aroden, he was the immortal Azlanti human who raised the Starstone from the bottom of the Inner Sea in 1 AR, founded the city of Absalom, and became the patron deity of humanity. When he walked the world disguised, he took on one of twelve guises: artist, beggar, craftsman or artisan, farmer, fisher, hunter, merchant, scholar, shepherd, soldier, tailor, and thief."
The witch nods again. "Alright. Now we just need one of you to do a trick."
Tom pulls out a couple of apples and starts to {A} Juggle.
"dear Aroden, I hope you like apples, because I'm famished.."
Then he tossed one to each companion and takes a bite!
With each successful task performed, the water leaking from the Eye of Aroden becomes a little clearer. After Tom's performance, the water is finally free of its corruption.
Grelda kneels and studies the moonstone pool. "These waters are used to store memories. If we have the proper key, we can see the memories within. Perhaps we will find it elsewhere in these halls."
Here's what I can recall of Aroden "He was born in the tumultuous final days of Azlant. According to legends, he was an unrivalled blacksmith and Azlant's premier swordmaker, and personally wielded many of his swords to defend Azlant from the chaos in its last decades. He was a follower of Acavna, the Azlanti moon goddess, and Amaznen, god of magic. His most famous creation during this time was the Azlanti Diamond, a clear jewel-bladed sword intended to be the weapon of the next Azlanti emperor. When the then-emperor failed to choose a successor from a pool of unimpressive candidates, he asked Aroden to decide for him, and Aroden took it upon himself to keep the Azlanti Diamond."
"Aroden then led the Azlanti survivors east to the empire's colonies in Avistan and tried to salvage the empire's vast cultural legacy, especially its unparalleled magical developments. Somehow, Aroden became immortal even as his contemporaries bred with other humans and died. Thus, he is considered the "Last of the First Humans" because he was ostensibly the last "pure-blooded" High Azlanti to die."
Grelda nods. "Well said, Ruine. Shall we continue onward, or do we need to rest? I still have enough magic left to press on."