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Antarah ends up falling asleep rather quickly in the soothing environment. "Who knew Rovagug's temple would have such a pleasant place..." He prepares his spells and makes sure he is ready to go on.
He agrees to go further down the tunnel and replies to Aithaloessa [b]"If Rokova cares enough to resurface, we'll deal with him. I prefer to first deal with the problem we know isn't going away soon and finding an alternate route around the worm sounds like a great idea to him.
Antarah thinks a bit about the way down. When he was a child, he read stories that groups of heroes would have someone stealthy to scout ahead, but they don't have anyone. After everyone is ready to go on, he shields himself and steps forward.
"What, why...?" Haleen stutters as she opens her eyes. That for sure didn't feel like a full night's sleep. But to her surprise she feels refreshed. She grabs two more almonds from the tree and eats one. They are a poor replacement for a proper breakfast, but they beat rations every day.
She pulls her shirt and pants into position, shoulders her stuff and grabs the rapier. Once complete she follows the overeager elf to their doom of the day.
Down the stairs, behind the double doors is a strange place. In the center of the room stands a complex metal-and-stone frame that forms a strange bell-shaped cage over the central section of the ground. Eight stone bars arch down to encircle a fifteen-foot-wide section of the room — these bars are five feet apart where they connect to the floor, and around each bar’s foot rise strange rune-like projections and what seem to be screaming faces trying to emerge from the stone.
After rising, Yasmeena joins Haleen for almond breakfast and casts heroism on herself and her friend in preparation for exploring further. She also casts heightened awareness and begins her Peacock dance, to better advise her fellow knights on the strange things they discover.
Hoping to avoid any nastier a surprise than necessary, Aithaloessa makes sure she has her pistol ready as the eastern passage reveals its endpoint. Her brows lift in alarm as she spots the faces in the stone and quickly assesses the runes, before peering into the space enclosed by the arches.
"This is certainly a change of decor," Aith says, trying pitifully to conceal just how unnerving she finds the contraption. Perhaps what is most telling is that she isn't already billing and cooing over it, or prodding curiously at the stonework, though she does check for any magical signatures to sort out with her usual aplomb.
Haleen being curious, but ignorant to the magic part, leans on a stone bar to take a look inside. "What's that?"
On Haleen's touch, the entire device grinds and begins to shift and move, almost as if it were waking up and animating. The stone floor begins to gently ripple and swell, almost like the surface of a wind-tossed lake. Runes written rise up from the floor, only to sink back down and rise again elsewhere.
Haleen pulls back her hand. "Ooops."
Yasmeena stares at the runes, pensively stepping from one foot to the other. "I think this writing is in Terran, the language of the elemental plane of earth. They talk about a pit opening, and screaming. Ghosts are mentioned. And something about a command?" She giggles uncomfortably. "It's a bit ominous, isn't it."
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” Aith admits, after Yasmeena pieces together a rough translation, “short of preparing a spell the next time we rest, if we’re going to stay in the area that long. Or perhaps the troglodytes would have something to say about it?”
“I’m fairly sure there’s something bound inside the thing,” she adds, with exaggerated casualness, “though whether it’s a proper ghost or some sort of elemental spirit that can move through stone isn’t something that I’m able to tell from what we’ve seen so far.”
The true extent of her uneasiness is revealed by the fact that she actually asks next, “The best I can do for now, if it is something undead or unbodied, is the sort of cantrip that helps with skeletons and zombies, and a handful of force missiles. Regardless, it seems our choices are between opening up this kickshaw, either sneaking or fighting our way past the pit in the throne room, or – didn’t the stairs to the garden keep going down? Or is that the poison talking? I don’t think it affected my head, but I might have been thrown a bit more than I thought.”
She glances at the others for their input.
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Antarah says "Or.... our two problems may be the solution to each other. If it is indeed a stone creature or a ghost, the worm's poison would be harmless to... whatever is in here. If we release it and... somehow lure it to the worm, they can fight it out and we take on whoever's the wounded winner?" He knows his plan has infinite holes, but he feels a little sneaky somehow.
"Sorry guys, but the role of standing dumbfounded in front of magical gimmicks is already taken." Haleen complains. Turning to Yasmeena she inquires "Can't you bluff that thing into doing something?"
Yasmeena smiles shyly, pleased by Haleen's attention. She shrugs and looks at the others. "I might be able to activate it, if we're agreed that's the best way forward." She turns and looks carefully at Haleen, her head cocked oddly. "You think that's what we should do, Haleen? Are you sure?"
"It can't get any worse than the bug upstairs, can it?"
Aith’s mouth opens round with surprise for a moment before her deadly curiosity catches up with her, and she watches eagerly to see how Yasmeena approaches the challenge of coaxing the strange – cell? door? whatever it is, anyway – open.
Taking it as tacit reassurance that she needn’t feel guilty about the occasional mishap with her own chaotic magic, in future, despite the debacle yesterday, Aith nevertheless braces for whatever might emerge from the cage of stone arches as best she can: pistol in one hand, the other free for a quick spell as needed.
“If worse comes to worst, we can try to lead it upstairs, like Antarah said,” she offers encouragingly, hoping she sounds more confident than she is. “Hopefully, that would cause enough confusion that we could slip away to a stronger position.”
Yasmeena goes over to the device and tries to coax it into accepting a command word of her own invention.
The device isn't impressed at first, but after some tries it gives in to Yasmeena's 'rain dance'. The stone floor inside the 'cage' reshapes into a spiral stair case leading down.
Not knowing what to expect, Tariq grabs his scimitar strongly. The fake Gnoll hasn't shown up since yesterday, but that doesn't mean he's not around looking for the perfect moment. That's on top of what they might find down there.
"Alright. I'll go first. Give me some light."
With proper illumination is provided, Tariq starts descending the stairs quietly.
The stairs are like carved into the solid stone around them, until half way down. There they meet a pillar, around which the stairs run down to the ground of a vast, natural cavern.
This cavern glitters and shines from what appears to be a king’s ransom. Well over a hundred feet across and fifty feet high, the floor of the cavern is a sea of gold coins, lush carpets and tapestries, statues, weapons, armor, immense gemstones, and glittering artifacts. At the center of the cavern, a stone pillar rises forty feet from the treasure-strewn floor, and a stone spiral stairway rises up from the top of this pillar to the roof twenty feet above. A curving flight of stairs winds down from the top of this pillar into the sea of treasure below.
If it’s not a king’s ransom, it could very well be a dragon’s hoard or – as Aith’s thoughts whirl along – some sort of elemental princeling’s castaways? She’s heard the tall tales of Nexian adventurers of the unending wealth of the Plane of Earth and its infinite mines.
That doesn’t explain the reference to ghosts in the cage’s inscription, so Aith descends the stairs rather cautiously, eyes flickering around her for any signs of something amiss.
The magely sheriff pinches the bridge of her nose as her glance falls on another inscription that she guesses must be another elemental language. It looks like grammars and dictionaries will go on her shopping list as soon as she gets back to Kelmarane. For now, she tries to guess if it's just another vaguely ominous snippet beyond her abilities, or an obvious, urgent warning.
She certainly won't rule out a second opinion, so she points the runes out and asks, "Did you see that? The letter-forms are different, so not Terran, which is odd. Ignan would be my guess, though if we're dealing with a garden of all the elements at the base of this temple..."
"If that is a dragon's hoard, then I don't want to meet the dragon." Haleen comments and starts calculating how much gold that must be.
Tariq slowly reads. "So... Shall... You... Be... Mmm... Devoured! That's it!"
His excitement vanishes when he realises what he's just said. "Uh... I guess that's not good."
"Figuratively or literally?"
"This can't be real. The amount of gold here would buy you a whole country."
Yasmeena stares at the hoard, drawing upon her bardic magic to learn more about its properties.
"You are right, Antarah, this is probably an illusion. At least, it looks like Illusion magic to me!" Yasmeena stares at the gold and concentrates.
"I can see something..." Yasmeena says as she concentrates. "Yes, it looks like the room is filled with water, I would say about ankle-deep... and there is some kind of green sludge floating on the surface that I believe to be exceptionally acidic. It will eat away flesh, bone, cloth-- possibly even metal and stone-- within a minute." She gives Haleen a wide-eyed look, as if to say she is very glad her friend did not dive into the hoard.
“They’d have better luck with an illusory library,” Aith chimes in, perking up in grateful relief that she’s been saved from an unpleasant dip. She hopes. She peers down at the suppositious treasure in an attempt to catch the illusion out.
She tries to sort out what's real from what's not as best she can, but it looks very convincing. Surely the whole room’s not just a shallow pool of acid? She murmurs, further distracted by speculation as to just how much she can stretch Kelmarane’s militia’s budget to scrolls and spellbooks and the like, if none of this is actually loot for the taking, “I can’t think what we’d need to neutralize so much of it, and abjurations aren’t my strong suit…”
“I do have my comfortable shoes, though,” she adds, kicking out a bit to show off her slippers.
"Okay, so now it's clear what they meant by 'being devoured'."
"What are you talking about?" Haleen asks kicking some coins, sending them flying. "That's a perfect pile of gold."
The coins make the typical 'pling' noise when landing and slide to the lowest point and everything. There is nothing to support Yasmeena's words.
"Haleen, step back! You are in danger!" She impulsively begins dancing a special bardic performance to try and bring Haleen back from the edge.
"Haleen, by the love of all that's sacred..." Tariq facepalms at his friend's brashness.
"Look at your boot - it's wet, can't you see it? Can't you feel it?"
Looking shortly at her boot Haleen mumbles "That's strange." but her attention is on Yasmeena anyway, as she decided just now to do a dance performance, which is also strange.
Those who aren't fooled by the illusion anymore notice a few more things after a while of checking the cavern. There is an open archway at the southern end and there are a dozen or so flat-topped, cylindrical stone posts that rise from the caustic sludge, each spaced 5 feet apart and presenting a dangerous hopping route there.
Just for a second, Tariq considers throwing Haleen to the green slime. Then he decides to use something else.
"Here" he says showing a piece of wood or metal to Haleen. "Look at it and, now, give me some seconds..." He submerges the material in the water where the slime is and waits for it to start eating the item, then shows it back to Haleen. "Get it now?"
"Wow!" Haleen says staring at the wood. Then she looks at the 'treassure' again. "Wow, s~&@!"
“Maybe some of it’s real, or whatever Yasmeena’s seeing is the trick?” Aith asks, distracted by the coins Haleen pours through her fingers, and sounding alarmingly like someone trying to convince herself in a direction that Yasmeena and Tariq would not approve of. “At any rate, a patchwork sort of approach would have some advantages…”
Besides, Aith knows, Haleen’s much more grounded than she is, so what are the odds that she would insist so strongly if there was any doubt?
Fortunately, Tariq's at hand to provide another cooler head and also has a knack for curbing magely enthusiasm.
"Here" he says showing a piece of wood or metal to Haleen. "Look at it and, now, give me some seconds..." He submerges the material in the water where the slime is and waits for it to start eating the item, then shows it back to Haleen. "Get it now?"
"Got it," she agrees, eyes wide, at least until something else catches them. "Oh, look over there!"
"Gold or goo, if we don't want to deal with it quite yet, we can probably skip our way across on those posts. At least, I think I could, if I were feeling better, or if I were travelling more lightly."
The arcanist is even more pale than usual, still, after taking that nasty bite, and she turns a pleading look at Antarah's magically capacious luggage.
"I could easily jump that, but the hell I#m going there alone. How about you do some magic and make the goo go away?"
"I could easily jump that, but the hell I#m going there alone. How about you do some magic and make the goo go away?"
“I would like nothing better,” Aith says, more seriously, “if I could think of a way. I haven’t been expecting to have to deal with large bodies of water out here, and I’ve yet to come to grips with combining a wide area with a strong effect…”
Her brow furrows. “It also depends on whether or not that slime is some sort of oil, or whatever else it’s made of, so that we can sort out the best way to break it up. Do remind me to prepare some cardice oil when we’re back in town, though.”
She rummages in her pack for a mundane test, for now, extracting a flask of lamp oil which she promptly pours out off the foot of the stairs to encourage combustion, if the slime is flammable, sending a magic spark into the spreading fuel from her pointed finger with a flick of her wrist.