Dolgrin's expertise on underground stone is made obvious as he analyses the torn wall. From his examination, the wall itself is decades old. Whoever tore this down didn't know what they were doing, but was very intent on tearing it down. The tearing down was a one-person work.
"Yes! Killing monsters!" Felicity says in gleeful bliss as the group is ready to leave.
When they get to the tunnel, she casts light on the starknife in her hand. She has an additional starknife hanging at her hip and two more secured to the bottom of her backpack. Again her scarf billows oddly around her as it seems secured to her form rather than loosely wrapped around her neck.
Felicity's light is a warm welcome in the caves. A gecko runs and hides in the stone. A cockroach is still on the bricks and shines in Felicity's light.
A good idea..., she says, kindling a light of her own, and holding the torch aloft in her left hand.
She moved forward, sword drawn, eyes scanning for tripwires, broken glass traps or covered holes.
Dolgrin kicks away some loose stones and climbs through the torn down wall.
Dolgrin leads the group through the torn brick wall. The tunnel continues for about 50 feet, then separates again. The tunnel continues forward to the north, but there are two openings east. From the first opening, Dart hears very light breathing.
"Must be your half-elven ears." Dolgrin answers to Dart who told the group what he hears. "Everyone be ready. Torag protect me."
With his deep voice he announces himself.
"Whoever is hiding around the corner, show yourself and surrender. If you mean no harm, so will we!"
After a while, nothing responds to Dolgrin's call. Then, a terribly looking creature steps out. It looks at the group for half a second and readies to pounce.
Dolgrin is quicker on his feet.
"Uh. That doesn't look friendly"
Shield raised in his left hand and his Warhammer in the other, Dolgrin steps towards the monster. It didn't expect him to react so quickly.
Dolgrin hits the still distracted creature straight in the face. It responds in kind, attacking both with a long weapon and a bite at the dwarf.
The weapon penetrates Dolgrin's armor, drawing some blood. .
Fallacy lightly touches Izumi on the back saying, "Fortune favors you,"
The priestess of the sun closes, slashing...
or for
The blow glancing at best...
Dolgrin acknowledges Dart's inspiring music and hammers again.
Dolgrin's hammer goes down on the creature's flank. The combined effort of the group brings the creature down with little effort, and it dies looking at Dolgrin angrily. The cave it came from has nothing other than a small heap of small animal bones in one corner.
From this vantage point, Dolgrin (and anyone with 60ft darkvision) can see that the tunnel ends just short of 60 feet to the north, but there is a third exit to the east. Dolgrin can see that the second exit continues up to another torn down brick wall. Beyond the wall, the cave is no longer natural and is worked stone with rubble on the floor.
It looks like a demon of yore... just... fouler.
She looks up...
What lies ahead?
"We'll find out soon enough." Dolgrin answers and kicks the demon's corpse to the tunnel wall. Then he marches on towards the end of the tunnel.
He stops briefly in front of the second exit, but decides to enter the third one.
Dolgrin boldly walks north and finds a passage that gives way to worked stone as well. Inside stands a red statue of what seems to be a woman holding a book and a weapon.
Izumi tries to recall religious lore...
AS expected, Dolgrin investigates the statue.
Looking closer, it is a marble statue of a very beautiful human woman who has a monstrously enraged face. Her expression is twisted in fury. Her robes are flowing in an imaginary wind and her long hair is held back from her face by an intricate headdress of hooks and blades. Her left hand holds a large book, the face of which is inscribed with a seven-pointed star. Her right hand holds a glittering metal-and-ivory ranseur.
Upon closer inspection Dolgrin realizes that the weapon can be removed and used as a weapon as well as a work of art.
This is Runelord Alaznist.
Dolgrin doesn't know much about this woman, but he does disarm her. He makes a few slashes into the air before deciding that it is too complex a weapon for him.
There are three exists from this room apart from the one the group used to enter it. To the south, a corridor opens east in two subsequent exits. To the east, a stairway goes up for 15 feet. To the north there is an open door with a wooden platform over a room. To the northern end of that room, there seems to be a few open cells.
It's a maze down here, Dolgrin thought. While he was stowing the strange weapon at his back, he looked around in all directions.
"Which way you want to go? Maybe we let Fate decide?" He asked the first question to eerybody, but the second one was clearly meant for the new group member.
After a few moments of thinking he says, "Let's check this way first. that's about the direction we were coming from, I believe." He points south.
I trust your judgement... lead on
Dolgrin sees how the tunnels extend. The northern one continues for a few feet and seems to open into a larger room. The southern one turns south in just a few feet.
Dolgrin runs further south expecting to reach a point they've already seen. If he was right he will acknowledge this as an obvious fact and return to the tunnel just north of it.
Dolgrin's assessment is correct, and there is a door that separates this corridor from the room with the rubble.
After returning to the other corridor, the tunnel widens into what appears to have once been a small shrine. What indicates this is a platform to the northeast which can be reached with a few steps. Sitting atop the platform is an ancient altar, little more than a jagged block of black marble with a shallow concavity on top of it. This basin is filled with what appears to be filthy water.
A stone door is visible to the southeast.
Fallacy closes her eyes for a moment, whispers a prayer to Desna, and opens her eyes scanning for magical essences.
After concentrating for a few moments, Felicity realizes that the water in the basin detects as magic, exhaling a strong conjuration aura.
These are Waters of Lamashtu, a special type of unholy water that makes the drinker either mad or very very sick.
What is it?, she asks.
Good enough for me... at best it's dirty water... at worst it's inhabitanted by evil Kami.
Fallacy looks uneasily at the water and says, "I think you should not drink it. Yes. For certain, it is not for washing and probably also don't bathe in it." She then nods in satisfaction as if she's shared extremely profound logic and looks around at the group saying, "So, moving along?"
She then looks very nervously at the ceiling, as she has a tendency to do, before nodding in satisfaction and looking around at the group again.
,
"I concur. But who here thought of drinking this unknown magical water?" Dolgrin said surprised.
As he moves along to the stone door, Dolgrin's subconscious keeps thinking a little bit more.
"Wait. I know that kind of water pool arangement. They are Waters of Lamashtu!" With no more further explanation needed, he begins destroing the small shrine. He'll first try to just kick it over, but if it is too massive he'll begin working onthe foundation with his pick.
Izumi nods in approval.
After a few first severe cuts to the stone structre, Dolgrin stopps. "Ok, if you think so. But we need to make sure no one find it in the meantime. We need to be thorough down here."
He then returned to the stone door.
Dolgrin realizes that the stone door is easy to open. It doesn't have any elaborate devices such as a lock or a trap. Beyond, he hears a hollow sound, as if the room beyond is large.
Izumi puts her shoulder into it, pushing it open.
This huge room looks like nothing more than an immense underground cathedral. Stone doors stand open to either side of the main entrance showing each a small empty room, but beyond this, the walls are carved with strange, spiky runes. In the center of the room is a large pool, with a ring of polished human skulls balanced on stone spikes arranged in a circle around the deeper midsection. At the far end of the room, a pair of stone stairways leads up to a pulpit with an orange light from which wisps of what look like heat and steam rise from what sounds like a bubbling pool. The room itself is deathly cold.
A tiny creature flies over the elevated orange segment of this room and a few moments after the group enters the room and start to take it in, it screams "You! How daaaare you intrude the Motherrrrr's sanctum?" What feels like the beginning of a discussion suddenly stops as the creature pulls an equally tiny dagger and slits its own wrist. A drop of its blood falls. From the angle it seems that it fell into the bubbling orange pool. The orange glow diminishes noticeably.
The creature looks suddenly worried at the diminishing glow.
A growl can be heard from the pool. Suddenly, a creature similar to the one the group has fought in the entrance of these caves steps out of the pool and is about to charge the group.
This is a quasit, a fairly weak demon. Their primary function is being familiars to wizard as they are created as such, although if any escapes the servitude, it becomes more dangerous. Their weaknesses are cold iron and good aligned weapons. Other types of weapons have difficulty penetrating its skin. Like other demons, it is usually a bad idea to attack it with electricity, poison, acid, cold or fire.