Tariq knows that, eventually, someone's gonna touch the sarcophagus. All his past experience talks to him and confirms his idea. So he rolls his eyes and grabs his scimitar tight, ready for whatever.
"Were there any specifics about the kind of evil we're searching?" Haleen inquires.
Tariq knows that, eventually, someone's gonna touch the sarcophagus. All his past experience talks to him and confirms his idea. So he rolls his eyes and grabs his scimitar tight, ready for whatever.
Catching Tariq’s look, Aith throws a beaming smile his way, despite Antarah’s warning.
“Haleen’s right,” she says. “I’ll give the builders of this place this much credit: they did a very good job of highlighting places they didn’t want interlopers getting into. Mostly with traps and monsters, granted, but nonetheless. If I were building a lair, I think I’d like to scatter a few traps into bare hallways and the like, so as not to suggest, ‘Oooh, something important here.’ If the villains don’t want us to know about something down this hallway or in this box, I want to know what it is.”
She circles the sarcophagus as she natters on, looking for the likeliest way for her to get in. Her body still breaking down the poison she got stuck with, it takes all of her weight put into the effort, but she heaves at the lid of the thing.
The lid at first hardly moves, but then slowly until the point it tilts and crashes into the floor.
Within the sarcophagus lie the bones of an ancient gnoll priestess of Rovagug. She wears a glistening suit of mithral chainmail, a periapt , and grasps in her bony hands the shaft of an immense greataxe , its wide and serrated blades covering her skeletal feet.
"I'm still waiting for that corpse to jump us. But if you strip it of its gear, it would be our advantage for sure."
Tariq closes in slowly and carefully, sword in hand, in case the skeleton has something to say.
"That... is hollow. There's a pipe there."
He tries to get it and see what's inside. "With your permission" he asks the old priest.
Tariq grabs the tube and moves it carefully out from under the axe. Suddenly he feels the bony grip of the skeleton at his wrist. As he pulls away startled he finds the bony hand falling back into the coffin. He only touched the bony hand by accident and it's not actually moving.
Inside the tube is a large tattered parchment bearing a single immense rune.
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Antarah pulls out the axe so that the remains don't have a weapon, then he removes the armor and says "I have magic to protect me, this should go to either one of you", referring to Haleen and Tariq. In truth, he feels confident to wear heavier armor and still be able to cast his spells, but he realizes his magic has shown itself reliable as a means for defense.
He then asks Yasmeena "Any clue what this means?"
Aith gives a small gasp – rather curiously, only after the reverberation of the sarcophagus lid has died down, so it wasn’t the exertion that provoked it. Tariq’s careful eye, alert for any surprises, beats her to the scroll case at the skeleton’s feet.
She tries to get the feeling tingling up her arm under control, and puts on a very self-satisfied air, “As I was saying. Of course there was something interesting hidden here.”
Her show of smugness evaporates almost instantly, and her free arm reaches toward the scroll Tariq’s extracted, hand closing helplessly as she gets her own gesture under control before she lurches forward too rudely. “The scroll of Kakishon!”
The mage’s brow furrows as she obviously has to catch up to her own thoughts. “Um. I beg your pardon, I haven’t the foggiest where that came from.” Very definitely a lie to herself in an attempt to hold on to some sanity: either her weapon, or her mold, or the weird way they go together, but anyway.
“We absolutely need to take a careful look at the scroll, see what all that’s about.” Her eyes sparkle alarmingly, as if it’s taking all her self-control not to grab the thing and sit down beside the coffin and start trying to decipher it on the spot.
Tariq handles the scroll for Aith to examine it.
"Scroll of Kakiwhat? That sounds like a made-up name."
Aith gloms onto the scroll with the sort of frightening enthusiasm that one might associate with a pesh-head being teased with the stuff for another hit dangled just at the edge of arm’s reach.
“It’s – it’s…” her eyes are wide as she stares at the single large rune, before she closes them and draws a deep breath. There’s no way of explaining it that doesn’t sound really strange even to her, and she knows the others already think she’s more than half-mad as it is.
She sighs. "I'm not really sure. The mold - don't worry, it doesn't talk to me! It only, sometimes, gives me a feeling, or an image, or an idea? 'Kakishon' is what sprang to mind. That, and a decidedly nervous sensation."
"Someone turning into the mold's handpuppet?" Haleen inquires with a raised brow. "Is it magic, or just a piece of painted paper?"
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Antarah looks at the situation worried. Trying to think of something else, he says "We should do this conversation elsewhere. Still... It's not uncommon for these type of burial places to have secret passages. I'll look for one."
Unfortunately he was still thinking about the scroll in his search, and he looked mostly at Aithaloessa, worried.
"Someone turning into the mold's handpuppet?" Haleen inquires with a raised brow. "Is it magic, or just a piece of painted paper?"
“I’m not a puppet!” Aith protests, eyes wide and wounded. She holsters her pistol again, letting the mold and mushrooms retreat from her arm as she does so. As soon as it’s back to normal, she wiggles her fingers. “See? All normal again. Perfectly normal.”
It doesn’t sound particularly convincing even to her, so she turns her attention back to the scroll, staring at its rune as if she can force it to give up its secrets by sheer will.
As she focuses on sifting through everyone and everything’s auras to isolate the right readings, she adds, indicating the dead cleric’s periapt, “We should take that amulet too, along with the axe and armour. It’s also magical.”
As Aithaloessa looks at the map in the magical spectrum she freezes in place.
The aura is conjuration. But your spellcraft is seriously lacking in comparison to the scroll.
The scroll flutters from Aith’s fingers as they spasm, surprised open and then closed – too late – again as the parchment flares up in her mind’s eye in a burst of truly overwhelming power latent just beneath, or in, its smear of ink, enough to snuff out her own spell in the resulting resonance.
“Ghuu…” she says, before her tongue freezes and her heart skips a beat, delaying her embarrassment at the inarticulate noise escaping her as her body seizes up completely.
Her blush catches up as she snaps out of it after a frantic few seconds. “Definitely magic,” Aith gasps. “The most powerful conjuration I’ve ever seen. Too powerful. I can’t tell more than that, right now: a summoning? creation?”
Fortunately, even she's not crazy enough to repeat the experiment - right away, at least.
"So we have a dead... person," Haleen's anatomy skills are good when it comes to stabbing living people in a very painful way, but she has no clue if that skeleton was man or woman, or even human. "and a magical scroll. Is anything of this a great evil?"
"Or maybe, just maybe, that a+$&#@& played us again."
Beyond the crypt lies a tangled network of twisting tunnels. Many of these tunnels are lined with burial niches, some of which contain strange bodies that seem something more than human. Some bodies are twice as large as a man, some have additional arms and bestial features, or are strangely undecayed and remain beautiful or handsome even in death.
To your surprise nothing comes to life and nothing living is hiding in there. All put to rest are only covered with a shroud.
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Antarah hopes Haleen is wrong about them being played. He doesn't think his ego can take this beating, so he focuses on the rest of the crypt and comments "Someone put in a lot of work preserving these remains. They must be important somehow."
He wonders what this means considering they're in a temple to Rovagug.
He is worried they might get lost in the tunnels, and even that they are alive. He asks "How are tunnels such as these formed? Is it natural?"
Looking at the floor tiles Yasmeena concludes, that the crypt is not of natural origin, even though the starting point of the labyrinth might have been.
Tariq looks at the tunnels with a not-too-happy face. "Do we need to go in there?"
Antarah hopes Haleen is wrong about them being played. He doesn't think his ego can take this beating, so he focuses on the rest of the crypt and comments "Someone put in a lot of work preserving these remains. They must be important somehow."
He wonders what this means considering they're in a temple to Rovagug.
He is worried they might get lost in the tunnels, and even that they are alive. He asks "How are tunnels such as these formed? Is it natural?"
Aithaloessa carefully stows the scroll away to worry about later, before joining the others to peer into the catacombs beyond. Nervously, she recasts her cantrip once the scroll is safely in the pack on her back, where it won’t overwhelm her senses, and draws her sidearm again, just in case.
The burial niches have obviously been added, but she takes a closer look at the larger opening of the tunnel itself in an attempt to determine if the niches could have been cut into the walls of something’s … burrow?
She's a bit distracted by having to concentrate on her spell, but she says brightly, with irreligious enthusiasm that sits well with her violent architectural interventions in various temples to date, "We could search it for other baubles? Serve Rovagug right."
After another moment she adds breezily, as if the implications aren't terrifying, "Or, if we just turn around, if nothing's happened yet, you don't think this place is designed to go off if anyone tries to remove - well, probably the scroll, I would guess?"
"Bah, what can go wrong?"
"At least this place seems to be done trying to eat us."
"I wonder though what caused all those mutants. Or you think this is a collection of sorts?"
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Antarah is still suspicious of the walls, despite the others' theorizing. "If this is a collection, who is the collector?" He imagines it is some old priest to Rovagug, maybe one of these corpses. Deep down, he doesn't disagree with Aithaloessa, he would actually like to leave. Especially since the group isn't sure what they are looking for in these tunnels.
Instead of going with his instinct, he says "Well, let's be sure. Let's walk all the tunnels. If there's anything to be found and... get rid of... then we need to be sure. I'm sure the tunnels are ok with you taking the scroll." He has grown accustomed to Aithaloessa's idiosyncratic behavior and doesn't really mind her relationship with the mold inducing weapon.
Lookking at long dead people gets boring quick even if you can play 'find the mutation'. The feeling of impending doom that won't go away, despite nothing actually happening, also isn't helping.
Haleen leaves the labyrinth tunnels behind and takes a closer look at the open sarcophagus again. "Can we go back to that nice garden where our tent is? If there is nothing left to do here, I'd rather leave."
"I wonder though what caused all those mutants. Or you think this is a collection of sorts?"
“I thought making monsters was more of a Lamashtu sort of business,” Aith says, “but then again I suppose they could serve for destroying the world if arranged suitably. Anyway, let’s just take a quick look, like Antarah says? If you hear something that sounds like a screaming elf, that will probably be me, regretting another poor decision.”
With that, she swings herself briskly into the catacombs, moving quickly enough that her cantrip has just enough time to make sure there isn’t some evil relic tucked away among the mutant corpses.
Once they're finished with the tunnels, Tariq wipes the dust from his shoulders. "Well, as much as the visit was - or wasn't - pleasant, we should be going now. There's a giant worm waiting for us out there."
As there is nothing found beyond the obvious the group leaves this lower level and returns to the magic elevator.
Why try something new, when you have a way that works. And so Yasmeena dances, gestures and babbles possible incantations until the magic elevator moves the group back to the upper level.
But the elementals are not stupid and someone who not just casually walks through or curiously looks at the area but insists to make it work somehow obviously wants to use the elevator. Especially this group, that already used the elevator and were pleased with the result.
Nevertheless, being bound in an area where no one came for decades is rather boring. And so the elementals enjoy the dancing and babbling for a while before they fulfil the obvious request.
Once up, a short walk up the stairs leads back to the underground garden. The cavern there is still as peaceful, with the gentle breeze and the aroma of the blossoming almond tree.
Yasmeena laughs and claps for the earth elementals, appreciating their labor as she pretends to be able to communicate with them with her bardic magic.
"Rather useful" Tariq comments on the dance.
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Antarah can't help but feel a little disappointed. He was hoping to defeat some sort of great evil. Never mind the fact that the group can't think of a way to defeat the mean worm upstairs, and a "great evil" would certainly be more frightening than the worm. Unless the worm is the evil, but that doesn't make any sense, it's just a mindless creature., he thinks.
As they're in the calm garden, he says "Well, this is probably one of the few respite we'll get. Anyone wants to change into that chain mail?", referring to the one they found on the corpse.
He continues thinking out loud "I still can't figure out what Rokova wanted with us. He went to so much trouble to bring us here, creating the illusion of a wandering cleric back in Kelmarane. I still think he might be the great evil that the troglodytes mentioned." As it seems, he is still looking for a great evil.
Aith watches, bemused, as Yasmeena charms and cajoles the lift into compliance. She wonders how it’s actually meant to work, though she’s not sure how much longer she wants to stay in this wicked temple to find out. Translation spells to handle informative inscriptions are looking like a better and better tool to bear in mind for next time.
Back in the pocket garden, she also considers what to do about the monster upstairs.
As they're in the calm garden, he says "Well, this is probably one of the few respite we'll get. Anyone wants to change into that chain mail?", referring to the one they found on the corpse.
He continues thinking out loud "I still can't figure out what Rokova wanted with us. He went to so much trouble to bring us here, creating the illusion of a wandering cleric back in Kelmarane. I still think he might be the great evil that the troglodytes mentioned." As it seems, he is still looking for a great evil.
The mage squirms a bit as something occurs to her. The mold didn’t … mention it, so to speak, but, “I hate to ask, but you don’t think the scroll could be that, do you? I can’t say I’ve ever heard of Kakishon, but maybe it’s something bound into the parchment?”
She looks somewhere between horrified and fascinated at the thought, and quickly changes the subject. “Or maybe he was just lying to buy time. And he seems to have vanished into thin air, so I should probably start thinking about ways to prevent planar travel, in case he's not done toying with us.”
“And there are still the doors off the throne room, though we have to find a way to get past or rid of that giant vermin. I think I’ve figured out how to let us all move a bit faster at the critical moment, but it won’t last long, and I can speak from personal experience that being bitten is extremely unpleasant.”
"To summarize what Zayifid / Rokova has done so far..." Haleen thinks aloud.
"First, he killed Rokova, then disguised as him to get into the gnoll tribe."
"Second he disguised as a priest of Sarenrae, so we would trust him. He made us believe, that there is a threat that we should take on early, by killing the carrion King. This got him the leading position in the gnoll tribe. But the preparations for war were a lie."
"And now he lured us into the lower levels by claiming that there is a great evil down there. And we got the elevator to work, got rid of the mold and the tentacle monster and found a magic artifact."
"Assuming Zayifid / Rokova had all the relevant information and just played us, we need to ask outself, what he really wants, and forget about what he told us."
"I, ehm..." Tariq send a bit overwhelmed. "This guy has gone a long way, it seems, to get here, right? I wonder if he's still around somewhere..."
“We will have to be very careful as we finish exploring,” Aith agrees, as she mulls over Haleen’s level-headed summary of the basics, before interpretation starts accruing.
“He’s been busy,” she says, with grudging admiration of his wheels within wheels, wondering how she and the others might out-manoeuvre him. “Whatever he’s planning, I think he must have wanted to weaken possible sources of opposition by his meddling. The gnolls would just distract and destabilize the region without much of a nudge, but we know now that he wasn’t working in their interests, based on what the troglodytes said. Whether the gnolls managed to hold on or someone like us dedicated significant resources to deal with them, that would be two parties less able to intervene in whatever he’s up to.”
“It does sound like he was interested in something in the catacombs, but not so much that he necessarily wanted to risk shadowing us to try to get it back immediately. Which is rather ominous, but hopefully not catastrophic. The scroll seems like the likeliest thing, so I’ll have to see what I can learn about it. Based on what he’s been doing so far, it seems like it’s either an intermediate step-” What is Kakishon? she thinks again, frustrated with herself. “- or a wild card to sow more chaos, or both.”
She shrugs her shoulders under the weight of her pack, as she works through the uncomfortable implications. On the one hand, what might happen if the scroll … goes off? On the other hand, it’s obviously not so dangerous that Rokova couldn’t let it fall into their hands.
Shaking off the pull of a maze of speculation, she asks, “We still need to get out of here. Do we want to try running for it? Leave that horrible thing in its pit while we search anything left? Or try to find a way to confront it with the least risk? I have some ideas, but I could go through my spellbook again to see if I’ve missed something.”
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Antarah adds his thoughts trying to convince the others and himself that he can think as well. He says "Well, it would be convenient for us if it is the scroll that he wants. I do wonder about some things. First, what was stopping him from getting down there? Just those creatures we found in the garden? If I remember correctly, they were the only challenge between upstairs and the scroll. Remember that the scroll was here on top of the elevator. I don't think it's the scroll. He wants something that is beyond the kraken, I believe. It can only be something in that labyrinth..." He waits for some ominous chilling breeze to come and make them all uncomfortable, but the air is very much static.
"We're acting like crybabies. Let's take a rest and then beat that thing up. Last time we came from a big fight. We'll just step up to the beast and end it. It can't be worse than the kraken."
"By the way, we were suspecting, that Rokova ran down here. As we didn't find him, he either tricked us there too, or he is still somewhere around, just invisible."
"Na, I don't think so..." Tariq lies while he asks for divine intervention.