As this is a dead end, in regards of walk-able rooms, the other direction is the obvioux choice. The ceiling of this room arches up to a height of twenty feet, yet the thick, rotten smell in the air makes the room seem close and cramped. Three wide benches sit in the room facing a ten-foot-wide dais at the far end. The wall behind the dais depicts an immense carving of a hideous arachnid monster creeping out of a hole in the world the size of a kingdom. The smell seems to be coming from the mounds of decaying bodies heaped to the left and right of the dais, bodies in various stages of decay and caked with wax from the drippings of dozens of fat, sloppy candles wedged in among tangled limbs, empty eyesockets, and battered ribcages.
In the room, waiting for you is a priest of Rovagug, Tamir and three ghouls.
Yasmeena steps in front of Aithaloessa and quickly begins her battle dance. Then she draws her bow, firing it at one of the ghouls.
Yasmeena wounds the ghoul badly, but not enough to destroy it. A ghoul comes to the group and claws at Tariq. Lucky for him the undead are clumsy.
It’s been a long time, since Aith has always been more of a lab guardswoman than one to walk a beat, so she can’t resist.
“You!” She levels her pistol at Tamir. “You’re under arrest!”
She doesn’t pull the trigger – instead, a puff of spores swirls out from her fungus-covered arm and sprouts into a nest of riotously-coloured mushrooms scattered across the foul chapel, doing little enough to liven it up, really.
“Don’t even twitch. Surrender, and you’ll be treated fairly.”
Haleen looks at Aithaloessa with a raised brow. Hippies and their magic mushrooms.
Tamir gets this expression of disbelief, as the elf acts like she had authority in Katapesh. He ignores that agricultural effort to grow fungi and casts a spell, that makes him disappear.
Haleen decides to go for the priest. Those only cause trouble and as long as that one is visible she can give it a try.
That cleric is a more experienced combatant than the thugs. He can take the painful stab. but Haleen has drawn the ire of the undead with her attack on the cleric.
The cleric uses his greataxe on Haleen, but misses.
Yasmeena waits to see if Tariq casts invisibility purge.
Tariq tries to dispatch the undead who just attempted to claw him.
Tariq finds that half rotten ghouls are not very sturdy and fall apart on the first cut.
Yasmeena draws and fires two more arrows at the ghouls.
Yasmeena takes down the two ghouls with two well aimed arrows.
Tamir’s quick, she’ll give him that much, and she supposes technically he’s outside her jurisdiction and all that – maybe she can get Almah to broker some sort of formal agreement at some point about cooperation between Kelmarane’s guard and the big city? – but all that just frustrates Aith all the more in the moment.
She swings her pistol around to follow the halfling and squeezes off her shot, while with a sweep of her free hand, she urges her mushrooms to release their spores. They oblige in clouds to match their various colours, and the mage spares an apologetic glance at Haleen, though she’s pretty sure that the fighter is made of stern enough stuff to handle it as she gets caught in the puffs of spores along with the cultist.
Tamir is surprised as Aithaloessa aims at him and shoots, as if she knew where he is. It is only then, that he realizes, that his invisibility spell didn't work for whatever reason.
He casts a hold person on the annoying elf.
Haleen evades the brute's axe, only to be engulfed in mushroom spores. But anyway, she stabs the cleric some more. She keeps fighting defensively to make it harder for the cleric to hit her.
The cleric scoffs at the spores, but not so much at the stab. He tries casting a spell on Haleen, but fails.
Aith just has time to spin the next barrel of her pistol into place for her next shot when Tamir sends an answering spell her way. It's not as flashy as her fungal conjuration, but it works, dammit, and she freezes in place for the second time in a hot minute.
It's cold comfort - worse, really: adding insult to injury - that, fortified by her forest of summoned mushrooms and a weirdly knowing twitch in the stuff growing on her weapon arm, a searing sureness rushes through Aith's mind that she's not paralyzed by magical fear, but pure enchantment.
For an elf, that's just embarrassing.
With Tamir now visible, Tariq hastily walks beside him and introduces himself.
"Hello. My name is Tariq ibn Ziyad. You stole our property. Prepare to die."
Tariq doesn't leave the halfling much time to prepare before he knocks him out.
Yasmeena fires at the cleric.
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Yasmeena takes the cleric down with two more arrows. Which leaves both, Tamir and the Cleric, unconscious and dying.
strike, ventriloquism, alter self, false life, arcane sight, gentle
repose, lightning bolt, and locate creature), six small flawed
rubies worth 250 gp each
It takes a heart-pounding few moments, but Aith is finally able to throw off the enchantment bedeviling her, and she takes a jerky step forward in time with a deep breath.
By now, the others have already dealt with the foes, so all that's left for her is to play to recover her aplomb by dismissing her summoned mushrooms with an airy gesture.
"Sorry about that, they were made of sterner stuff than I had hoped," she apologizes, before considering where the two are sprawled on the ground. "What do we think mercy looks like today? I don't know about Tamir, but I don't have much hope for Mr. I-worship-spiders-in-the-pit-of-the-world, whatever that's all about. Goes with the scorpions, I suppose."
Tariq puts his hand to work - the subjects need to live in order to be interrogated. Plus, Sarenrae wouldn't be too happy if he let them die.
After Aithaloessa's comment of the cleric guy, Haleen already reaches back to deal him the final blow as Tariq throws himself between them.
"I know for sure that there are limits to Sarenrae's mercy. And I'm in the impression that her mercy dosn't extend to a worshipper of the Rough Beast." Haleen comments.
depths of space and time, he launched a vicious war that
eventually prompted an unprecedented alliance among
all the gods as they sought to defend all they had created.
While wily Calistria distracted the terror and countless
now-forgotten gods gave their lives to aid her, Torag and
Gorum forged an unbreakable prison in the heart of
Golarion, and Asmodeus and Pharasma drew upon the
power of the planes to fit it with potent magical locks and
wards. When the sign was given that the work was complete,
the great angel Sarenrae challenged Rovagug directly,
taunting him with holy fire. His profane howls of rage and
anguish shook the void as the Dawnflower lured him close
to the world that would be his prison, and with her blazing
sword, sliced a great rift deep into the land’s heart. Power
beyond mortal comprehension, born of the toil of dozens
of gods and paid for with the lives of dozens more, lashed
out and ensnared the destroyer, drawing him into the god-
forged prison. As the cell quaked and threatened to buckle
around its furious captive, Asmodeus used his Hell-forged
key to lock the Rough Beast away for all time.
Bound for millennia, the Rough Beast has nursed his
rage, believing that one day he will break free and feast
upon Sarenrae, the fragments of the world, and the cooling
flesh of all the other gods.
Of course, Tariq - and most probably Sarenrae - doesn't agree with Haleen. But since this seems like an awful moment to argue, he focuses his efforts in bringing Tamir back to consciousness - the handling has a lot to tell them.
Tariq picks a scroll from his satchel and reads a prayer, summoning some positive energy to heal Tamir's wounds.
With the healing magic Tamir wakes again.
Haleen’s wry observation jostles the puzzle pieces into place for Aithaloessa. Too many of the spooky campfire and – in retrospect – protective cautionary tales her mother told her warned about weird demon lords, including some rather buggy ones, so any particular critter takes a while for her to place.
Now, though, the spider-thing in the pit of the world all makes sense. Under the circumstances, she’s rather inclined to agree with the fighter. It doesn’t seem like Tariq is particularly sure about his chances of showing the cultist the error of his ways, and after all, what kind of lunatic – here Aith will happily acknowledge that she is one to know one, albeit with much better intentions – reveres something wanting to destroy the world? And, for that matter, Tariq’s goddess.
“I’m not an expert, but this one looks like a no-hoper,” she says, hand on her hip, hovering above the hilt of her dagger, a silent invitation to anyone who might want to borrow it to help Rovagug’s cleric along a bit more discreetly than with a decapitating sword-swing, say.
She turns to where their own priest is seeing to Tamir.
“I do hope we’re feeling more sensible now,” she sing-songs obnoxiously. “As I was going to say before you decided to be silly, where is your Jackal? Or, really, just our scroll? That’s what we actually want. Unless you’d rather we drag you along to see how he feels about you not stopping us.”
She’s also not entirely sure that the Jackal would shoot the messenger bringing bad news, but it’s worth a try, she guesses, based on the warning of the bard upstairs. In any case, she tries to keep her voice as disarmingly cheerful as she had during Rayhan's party.
"Ah, that's what you like? I can surely bring you to the Jackal." Tamir replies in a similar cheerful tone, while getting up and dusting himself off. Before he falls into a fit of coughing, spitting some blood.
“Lead on, by all means,” Aith encourages, keeping her pistol trained on Tamir almost apologetically, at least until they find a way to bind his hands.
“Interesting friends,” she says conversationally, once everything’s ready for moving on. “I try to be a live-and-let-live sort of person, when it comes to everyone’s favourite gods, and I guess there does seem to be something pointless about chasing coin above everything else, but the Rough Beast? The Worldbreaker? That sort of apocalypse seems kind of bad for the bottom line.”
Yasmeena is also struck by this apparent paradox. "I suppose (since you can't take it with you) that once you have all the money, you want to make sure no one else gets it after you?"
"Or you never grow out of the destructive tendencies little kids have and later find there is even a deity that has that desires."
"What are we doing with the priest?"
Since he was frowned upon when trying to stabilise the priest, Tariq now shrugs at the question of what to do with him. He's probably dead by now anyways.
To Tamir, he throws a darting smile. "I am watching you."
Haleen interprets the shrug of Tariq, that she is free to apply a permanent solution to the problem at hand. A stab through the lung, without big gesture.
She also bags all valuables the priest got. "Another axe. I'm seeing a pattern here."
"Don't move." Tariq proceeds to remove everything the Halfling is carrying other than the most basic vestment.
Unless they're magical, of course
Tamir isn't fond of leading the group in his underwear, but he doesn't feel like arguing with Tariq either.
And so he leads the way out of the backdoor of the sanctum of Rovagug. With Aithaloessa behind him he strides through the long corridor towards the next door.
Once he got the impression that the elf's attention isn't completely on him, he speaks the word and is gone.
Once the group sets off, Aith settles in to watch their prisoner, only to get outmaneuvered by a quick word. It’s magic that is just beyond her reach, so before she can quite register what Tamir’s saying, let alone pull her trigger, he’s already gone.
It’s cold comfort, but, “That answers that question: a short-range teleportation. I suppose it was the same trick with the scroll. It could take him up to the surface, or anywhere within a furlong or so. Hell’s whiskers, though!”
She sounds rather fascinated by the idea, and is clearly restraining herself from just nattering on in a way that would only be of interest to people inclined to nerd out about planar geometries and such, and probably not under the circumstance of someone slipping between the worlds to sound the alarm or set up an ambush.
"Er. Pressing on on our own, then?"
The direction is given, as there are no alternatives to move on. Behind the next door is also the sea. Much of this room is submerged in water. The water’s edge laps restlessly against two shores connected by a stout-looking wooden bridge. The floor of each shore is uneven, as is the ceiling, giving the room the appearance of lying at an angle.
The bridge is moist and slippery.
As she hurries forward, a frown settles on Aithaloessa’s face and furrows her brow. There’s no sense in crying over spilt milk, but she really doesn’t like how large this underground complex seems to be, especially now that Tamir got away. She adds gagging to the list of countermeasures to take with every spellcaster she might apprehend from now on.
She takes a cursory look around the sea cave, and then braves the slippery bridge at speed.
She turns once she reaches the bridgehead in case any of the more heavily armoured fighters are at any risk of losing their footing, and pauses as something else catches her eye.
She points off to one side of the midpoint of the crossing and asks, "Am I seeing things? Or is that really a fancy sword down there?"
Despite her hesitation, she eyes the spot as if considering the depth of the water there and whether a quick dip is in order.
Peering around curiously, Yasmeena follows Aithaloessa across the bridge.
"I see it too, but that is not the bottom beneath it-- that is a spherical creature with large eyes."
Yasmeena’s warning makes Aith pay more attention and, sure enough, something seems to be stirring down there.
Or, alarming, not so far down as one might like, and the elf brings her pistol up in case whatever the thing is surges out to attack any of her friends.
Yasmeena, keenly aware of the danger, casts a spell and subtly changes her footing into her battle dance.
Haleen quickly passes over the bridge to see if it is possible to leave the room on the other side without confronting, whatever it is that lurks in the water.
The door Haleen is standing in front of is made of stone and decorated with a carving of a jackal-headed man holding a hatchet in one hand and a hand-sized spider in the other. It is locked.
The golden sword disappears and the creature emerges.
Aithaloessa successfully shoots the thing, but in return is hit by a ray the beast shoots from it's eye.
Yasmeena draws her longbow and attempts to remove the eye monster before it can use its gaze attacks on them.
Tariq feels useless by standing on the dry while the aquatic aberration keeps itself safe in the water, so he decides to contribute with some prayers.