The pugwampis start screaming and running around like headless chicken, as they see through the plan. The wood is rotten and has little to offer to resist the sharp blades. As the first rafter breaks, a loud creaking noise fills the chapel as the ceiling slowly decends on the aestern end. With loud breaking noises one rafter after the other gives in and finally the whole thing swings down. It rips off on the other side and crashes down onto the pews, sending dust back up into the room blocking all sight. The screams of several of the ugly dog fey are heard shortly.
[spoiler=GM]
[spoiler]
But it takes along the railing of the balcony breaking off a good part of the balcony itself.
Aithaloessa has just a brief moment to take satisfaction from an impressively effective demolition job, if she may say so herself, before the accursed pugwampis' wretched unluck drastically increases the scope of her interventions. She takes some cold comfort, hearing the little screams, that she's taking a bunch of the wretches with her.
After what feels like an apocalyptic eruption of sound, dust, and a frightful amount of more solid wreckage, followed by a pulse of terrified heartbeats that last an age, Aithaloessa draws a gasping breath from the silence where she's landed sprawled below.
"<Guiding Hand,>" she breathes in Elven, invoking Findeladlara, her people's goddess of architecture, "<save me so that I can build something worthy of your glory. Something without gremlins.>"
She considers just what else she might be able to do right this moment, how hard she can push herself, without passing out.
It’s a miracle that Aithaloessa hasn’t broken anything – well, apart from the better part of the chapel’s upper storey. Still, it’s the worst she’s felt in a long time, and she moves considerably more carefully as she slowly lifts herself up and starts checking for the others.
“Is everyone alright?” she calls, comparatively softly as her badly-bruised ribs limit the amount of air she can draw into her lungs.
A shell-shocked grin that she’s able to (however slowly) walk away resists her best efforts to compose her features as she peers about through the settling dust. Machaera would never admit it, but she’d have loved that. And that was without either powder or magic. Brilliant. Bloody brilliant.
Tariq and Ibhrim flee to the front of the chapel where the ceiling was already broken away and avoid being buried under the rubble. All on the balcony take a hard and painfull fall as the whole structure comes down.
But there is a plus side. Three dead pugwampis lie on the ceiling, that is now the floor of the chapel. The bad news is, that two more are there. Wounded, but still standing. One of them, a fat one, is decorated like it is the leader. It gets up and tries to storm towards the next human, but can't, as everything is covered in rubble.
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Antarah sees the result of their work too late and only manages a glimpse of the balcony before he starts falling. Everything happens too fast for him to plan a safe falling, but luckily there isn't much debris falling on him. As he lands, all the air leaves his lungs and he gets up after much effort. He manages to see that a pugwampi leader is in the middle of the rubble,apparently angry. He decides that it will be easier to walk on the razed ceiling if he was bigger and begins casting an enlargement spell.
Seeing that the other adventurers aren’t the only things stirring in the rubble, Aithaloessa guesses she’s about to find out if either of the two groups is inclined to be forgiving. I can’t die like this. I’d never hear the end of it.
Trying to shake off such unhelpful thoughts, instead of reaching into the rubble around her for either of her last weapons, Aithaloessa takes a leaf from the pugwampis’ book and ducks back down again, bracing herself against the end of the nearest pew and drawing her pistol.
Two can play at this game, she thinks, taking grim satisfaction in the idea that this way she’ll be able to get one last shot off even if she stays low. That is the idea, at least, but her shaking hands suggest that she’s in worse shape than she thought: if she wants to avoid spilling powder all over the place, she’ll have to take her time and load carefully.
After having evaded most of the ceiling falling down on him, Tariq notices the stirring rubble and some other pugwampis emerging from it. He tries to charge there and behead them as he did with the other ones, though the immense pile of debris impede his quick footing.
Yasmeena shakes herself off and gracefully draws her bow, taking aim at the lesser pugwampi first as she dances in place.
The arrow flies and a quick "thud" follows. Slowly the pugwampi falls over backward.
Ibhrim is rather surprised to see the entire ceiling come down and rather worried when he sees his comrades falling with it. Seeing them get up takes away his initial worries and he instead focuses once more on the issue at hand; the pugwampis.
He proceed to walk forward, moving slowly through the rubble and heading straight for the fat, uglier one. As he does his form shifts again. He yells, hoping to distract the big one from his wounded allies "Hey you fat mongrel! Come here and let me kill you."
The pugwampi king comes at Ibhrim. Not very far though. He takes a bow and shoots at Ibhrim.
Through the fog of a rough landing – she’ll have to check her head for nasty bumps and bruises – Aithaloessa realizes there’s no odds she’ll be able to load her pistol before the others close with the last pugwampi.
Focus, dammit, she snarls at herself.
Hoping she’ll live to regret it, she scoops up the bow fallen beside her instead, hauls herself up, nocks, fires –
- and promptly collapses as she pushes her battered body past endurance.
Yasmeena notes Aith's condition with a worried expression, and redoubles her efforts against their foes. She fires again, this time at the larger gremlin creature.
Aithaloessa plants an arrow into the pugwampi's neck. Yasmeena hits the critter too, but the arrow barely scratches it.
Tariq moves a bit further, dodging all the rubble in the ground, while he prays for divine power. "Lady, give me power to cleanse your sacred place!"
Ibhrim laughs as the tiny arrow fails to penetrate his hardened skin before closing in on the king. "You'll suffer the same fate that your cruel subject did." And with that he lunges to take hold of the king.
Inhrim grabs the tiny king and picks him up. He doesn't take too kindly to that action.
Ibhrim let out a gasp when the pugwampi king struck him. "Fancy weapon you have there, let's see how useful it is when you can't use your arms." He then tightened his hold.
With effort, Tariq evades the last mountain of rubble keeping him from the "big" pugwampi. "For the Lady!" he screams, his scimitar whistling with the wind as it swings.
The pugwampi king, tightl held in place by Ibhrim can't do much to evade Tariq's blow and falls unconscious.
Prostrated at the end of her pew, Aithaloessa misses the last of the excitement, but at least the bloom of her bruising has slowed for now.
As soon as Tariq notices the dismaying Elf, he runs - or whatever, with all the debris - to her and prays for the Dawnflower to assist her.
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Antarah was running with blood in his eyes towards the pugwampi king as Ibhrim choked it unconscious. Looking down, he says "It seems you're always a step ahead of me, friend."
Afterwards, he uses the remainder of his enlarged time to clear the debris from the nave so that it is easier to walk back and forth. After clearing what he could and returning to his normal size, Antarah says "Now this was unpleasant. Is everyone all right?"
He pats the pugwampi king looking for anything valuable it might have. Then he says "I hope Sarenrae forgives us for doing this to her temple." He goes on and searches the area near the altar. Sometimes temples have secret compartments with valuables or important information.
Yasmeena pants, tired from all of their exertions, and looks around wildly to make sure there aren't any others hiding in the debris. She calms a bit once she is confident they are alone again. "I took a few bruises in the fall, but I believe I will recover once we get a few days sleep."
She joins Antarah in searching the ruin, looking over the fallen timbers and nest to see what had been kept in the rafters before Aith cleverly brought it all down.
As soon as Tariq notices the dismaying Elf, he runs - or whatever, with all the debris - to her and prays for the Dawnflower to assist her.
[dice=CLW]1d8+1
Aithaloessa’s eyes snap open, wide and clear with pain and adrenaline until her brain catches up with her body.
“<*!%!+&$!>” Unfortunately, that means her mouth also recovers first, and for someone who grew up in a desert, she might give sailors a surprisingly good run for their money. When her eyes refocus to reveal the cleric and the temple behind him, she remembers herself and her decorum as an officer and - notionally - a gentlewoman. She rather hopes Tariq doesn’t speak Elven. “Sorry, sir,” she offers contritely, “and thank you.”
Dusting herself off, the elf considers the wreckage. Still more than a bit punch-drunk from her tumble, a hint of flippancy creeps back into her words almost immediately, but her intent is perfectly responsible as she reassesses the situation. “That didn’t quite go according to plan, I have to admit. Is everyone else alright? I’ve got some salves and bandages, but they’ll probably work better when they’re not working against further exertion. In the meantime, I think I have some ideas about making this place more defensible.”
After all, she now has rubble and then some to work with. At the very least, the stairs into the chapel can be mostly blocked off, so that it can be used as a beachhead for securing the rest of the old monastery.
Tariq helps Aith get back on her feet. "Well, I honestly was expecting a little bit less of architectural damage" he starts, though not looking angry at all. "That said, I guess Sarenrae would rather have a cleansed, simple place without a balcony than a full temple infested with Pugwampi." He starts having a look around to estimate the damage while finishing his speech. "We can always rebuild."
Ibhrim's exoskeleton fades while he continues holding the pugwampi king. When he does a massive bruise appears where the king hit him with the hammer.
His claws remain though and Ibhrim continues to hold the thing and and drives those claws into the tiny body until he's sure the thing is dead and not just out cold.
At Antarah's comment he smiles, "I apologise. I hope we find some other enemies soon so you can fight something. We still have the rest of the temple to check so plenty of opportunity. I promise I will leave those for you."
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To Ibhrim, Antarah laughs and says "If we continue to fight side-by-side, which I hope we do, we may start a competition. I mean, ahem, a friendly competition."
He is thankful for Aithaloessa's offer of bandages, to which he replies "I thank you for your offer. I am bruised from the fall, but I'll live. I think we should bandage you instead. How many fingers am I holding?" He holds three fingers up in front of her. He has no idea what it should mean if she gets the count wrong, it's only something a healer did to him when he fell from a tree when he was young. He hopes he'll magically understand if the need comes.
He comments the pugwampi king's possessions to the others saying "Can any of you find any use for this?"
Later, while looking at the temple with a wondering look, he talks to Tariq "This is a well built and beautiful temple. Its foundations stood even when abandoned. If you take it upon yourself to rebuild it to its former glory, count with my help. I am not much knowledgeable about building, but I will help how I can. I can grow in size for a short time and if we find some semblance of a library in Kelmarane, we may find a book on engineering, which I'll study." He then carefully shows what he found at the altar.
He is thankful for Aithaloessa's offer of bandages, to which he replies "I thank you for your offer. I am bruised from the fall, but I'll live. I think we should bandage you instead. How many fingers am I holding?" He holds three fingers up in front of her. He has no idea what it should mean if she gets the count wrong, it's only something a healer did to him when he fell from a tree when he was young. He hopes he'll magically understand if the need comes.
“Three,” Aithaloessa says, duly impressed by the wonder of magical healing – reserved for far above her pay grade back in Alkenstar, in those rarified quarters where it’s even reliable.
She walks as briskly as her condition permits about the chapel to make sure there’s no imminent risk of further collapse anywhere. Her lip curls in disgust at the desecration of the altar and the holy text.
“Cleanse it with fire?” she asks. “Or however Sarenites dispose of sacred texts when they’re beyond the hope of rebinding?”
“It will be a start to clearing the rest of this place. I was thinking, too, that we might be able to move some of the benches and beams to form a rough barricade. It will be a while before we can hope to build something that would keep anything winged or even particularly determined out, but it should do for most scavengers and would buy us time if it came to that. It would give us a bit more to show off when the rest of the caravan arrives, at least.”
"Eh... ufff..." Tariq takes his hand to his nose to avoid the odor of pugwampi poo. "Poogwampi..."
"I know if some magicians who can wipe the stains from things, but sadly I'm no magician. Maybe we should keep the book... aside... in case Almah can direct us towards one. There's always time to burn it."
He picks the gemstone and shows it to the others, not giving it much importance since there's nothing here they can use it for.
"I'm out of healing, so I'm not sure if Aith would be willing to keep on exploring the temple."
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Antarah says to Tariq "I have probably some adequate spells in my magiks book. After resting tonight, I will be able to prepare some of them to try and restore the book."
After the business with the reconstruction is finished, Antarah starts exploring the rest of the temple, carefully, sword in hand.
Aithaloessa pales, but knows her duty. "So long as I can stay in the back and provide covering fire..."
"And let's try not to be heroes? This place has been abandoned for at least a decade. It can wait a day or two more to be turned absolutely upside-down."
The guardswoman loads her pistol and holds it nervously ready in case anything else jumps out at the group, as she falls in quietly behind the others.
Tariq nods to Aith's words. "Yes, we need to be very careful."
The ceiling here has remained intact over the years, helping to preserve a huge bas-relief statue of a muscular humanoid man with a pointy beard gesturing toward a huge mountain in the background, his face a picture of mortal concern.
A similar statue adorns the eastern wall of the chamber on the other side, in this case with the bearded figure appearing on a hilltop to a group of robed pilgrims. The being holds up his hands, palms out, in a sign of peace. Though many of the faces and limbs on the bas-relief have been worn down or cut away, the expressions of those range from beatific to horrified.
A crude stone stele that seems to have been erected more recently than the abandonment of the monastery stands here as well. Its graven inscription reads: “A ghost of unholy mien was purged from this place by Theodephus Estrovan, servant of Aroden, 4691 ar.”
Moving on to the next obwious passage you find a square gallery around a courtyard
A sweeping bas-relief sculpture along the north wall depicts five bearded, larger-than-life humans riding the wind with triumph carved upon their faces. Though some of their arms and hands are missing, each is clearly meant to wield a distinctive weapon. One of the five warriors holds a large axe, while another holds a fragment of what must once have been a regal staff. In the distance, an ominous mountain looms over the quintet. East of the wall decoration, two open arches lead into small rooms off the north wall. The south wall is little more than a series of open arches that look out into an open-air courtyard.
The eastern cloister walk abuts what must be the outer wall of the monastery itself. The lengthy wall bears a marred sculpture depicting the five figures from the north cloister mural in battle against numerous creatures of evil demeanor. Several of the creatures appear to be composed at least partly of fire, while others are much more difficult to define, being outright monsters of unknown origin or unusual warriors with weapons bonded into their flesh like organic tools. In the background Pale Mountain looms large, and over it two titanic figures lock in a deadly wrestler’s embrace. One has the demoniac visage of a noble efreeti, while the other is a gorgeous woman who could only be a djinni princess. Opposite the sculpted wall, a series of open arches leads out into an open-air courtyard.
An open arch along the southern wall at the eastern end of the corridor leads off into darkness, while a series of archways lines the north wall, looking in on the monastery’s massively overgrown courtyard. The southern wall bears a bas-relief sculpture in the form of a triptych. In the first scene, a heroic-looking bearded figure takes leave of four similarly attired companions, who rise off into the heavens, leaving him to stand vigil over the large mountain in the background. The next scene depicts the bearded figure in battle with a flaming half man, half snake creature wielding a spear. The fire spirit transfixes the bearded hero with the spear, seemingly striking a killing blow. In the final scene, the hero appears twice—once on the ground with a wound in his back and once standing over this form, looking down upon it sadly.
The outer wall of the west cloister passage bears a massive carving. The central figure—the heroic man with the pointed beard—preaches to a variety of human clerics from throughout the long history of the monastery. The first image depicts the figure manifesting in a spiritual manner to a small group of pilgrims of Sarenrae. Another shows the figure conversing with a man in religious finery while the monastery itself is being constructed in the background. Thereafter follows a procession of similar poses, each depicting a visit by the bearded man and the leader of each era of the temple. The depictions of these clerics often also bear an identifying inscription, complete with dates that span the last several hundred years. The most recent carving is from thirty years ago, and while ample room remains for additional carvings on the west wall, the last thirty feet or so are completely blank. Two open arches on opposite ends of the west wall lead out into the ruined nave.
Huge branches and overgrown weeds clog the central open-air courtyard of the monastery’s cloister walk. In better times, the monastic priests would have contemplated the open space while circling the cloister, but today it is barely possible to see a few feet into the tangled mess, let alone all the way to the opposite cloister walk. Here and there the brush thins out enough that a dedicated explorer might be able to create a sort of passage, but mostly it is an impassable mess.
Yasmeena stops where she is as they cross by the courtyard. "A bird?" she says in wonder. "That was a bird call. It sounds quite large!"