Snowy scampers after Clover, eager to eat some toes...
______________
Much of the color drains from Rulean’s scales as the priestly haunt appears.
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Ephie's eyes roll back and he chatters in Mr. Splinters' voice as his mind fails to find a compelling bit of trivia, but his doll does.
I WAS ALIVE IN A ANOTHER FORM, WHEN THE LAST OF THE FIRST HUMANS WALKED THE EARTH. PRAISE ARODEN.
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…AND I WANT BE HERE WHEN THE LAST OF THE LAST FALL. LAUGHING.
Despite being sickened by the nasty aromas, Leaf-On-Wind focuses on addressing the spiritual remnants, recalling some reading from when he was younger and considering a 'long con' to bilk a few Arodenites out of their life savings. When the paucity of their resources was indicated, he decided better about it.
While desperate for money, the acrobat-medic was not heartless...
"....*wheeeze* *glrrk* ...the Last Azlanti did walk the world, not as a *cough* rich merchant, fisher, nor scholar. Nor as *cough* a thief. So He *hackhackhack* treat with beggars that came before him with nothing to their name save their name for He too walked that *coughcough* begging path..."
◈ Inspire Courage
◈
◈
Song-of-Air continues to inspire you with her jaunty dancing that shows you that she has not doubt who will be the victors. She plants an arrow into the gaunt xulgath's upper chest, and the troglodyte coughs out a bit of blood.
Mr. Splinters--or Ephriam, it is unclear who--fails to catch the angered spirits' attention. However, the haunting spirit stares raptly at Leaf-on-Wind as he approaches. Listening to the failure recitation, the spirits disperse. For now.
The xulgath, who gives no sign that he has understood any of your words, spits out a foul string of demonic invectives at Rulean. Then he concentrates on the spiritual manifestation of his deity to continue to punch at Song-of-Air's face. The tengu continues to dodge.
Unholy Rite! Round 5. Bold may act.
Rulean (45/56 68) (immune to stench, -13/32 BT) (drained 2) (Fortitude DC 24 vs. Blindness)
Leaf-on-Wind (78/78)
Ephraim (62/62) (immune to stench)
Song-of-Air (50/60) (immune to stench)
Clover (90/90) (fast healing 3, quickened 1) (immune to stench)
>Snowy (45/48) (immune to stench)
Chani (63/68) (immune to stench)
Gaunt Xulgath (-76 hp) (personal antithesis vs. Chani)
Critical Success The target is unaffected.
Success The target is blinded until its next turn begins.
Failure The target is blinded for 1 minute.
Critical Failure The target is blinded permanently.
Chani looks in concern as Rulean flinches from the theological assault. "Stop hurting my friends," he growls softly. He punctuates the words with crossbow quarrels.
Everything goes dark for Rulean. He uses his shield to feel along the wall and moves away from the xulgath. Although he can’t see, he knows where his vitals are and raises his shield to try and protect himself. Then he sheaths his pick.
“Tell me if it moves out of that alcove.”
"Oh no, enough of that!" Clover cries, able to guess that the xulgath has done something to Rulean's sight. "Snowy, bite his kneecaps off!" She strikes twice at the thin xulgath...
______________
Snowy gleefully scampers past Clover and tries to eat some knees!
______________
“Tell me if it moves out of that alcove.”
A bit frustrated at his lack of proper aim, Chani's disappointment is short-lived as he watches Clover take down the xulgath.
"I don't think he will be moving anywhere any more unless we are the ones doing the moving of him." Chani looks over at Rulean with concern. "You don't look like you are doing well."
“I’ve felt better. At the moment, I am unable to see. If it is the curse I think it is, that should pass in about a minute.”
Keeping one hand on the wall, he admits “It does interfere with my searching the area. Any idea what they were trying to do?”
The xulgath priest lies in a pool of its own blood. The delicate silver circlet strapped onto his head is clearly not of xulgath make. It is set with cracked moonstones. A crude stone amulet hands around his neck with a sigil carved into it .
The spirits near the pulpit are quiet for now, and you can find a set of Arodenite prayer beads, a leather scroll case with a scroll inside, and a leather-bound book that, upon quick skimming, appears to detail various Arodenite rites and prayers and is in surprisingly good condition. Shortly after finding these and determining that the beads are magical, Ruelan realizes that the blindness is persisting longer than he hoped.
A glorious fresco on the curved wall behind the dais depicts Aroden engaging in several tasks: battling an imperious necromancer, raising a pair of islands from the sea, and standing atop a mountain with his hands outstretched, wreathed in blue flames.
Hideous images scrawled in tar and old blood painted over the fresco tell a vastly different story. A reptilian humanoid climbs a tunnel from the depths to the surface in one scene. In the next, he reaches out to snatch an orb from a tower drawn on one of the islands, then crushes the orb in his fist. This image repeats four times in slightly different‑looking towers, followed by a final scene of dead trees and skulls around the mountain.
Examining the room in detail, you find that the xulgath have also painted Draconic words in tar and blood. The same word is scrawled on Aroden's face everywhere he appears on the walls.
Over every representation of Aroden in the original fresco, the word "Thief" has been scrawled.
Silver diadem (40 gp)
Arodenite Prayer Book (75 gp)
Scroll of Heroism
Standard Holy Prayer Beads (magic item)
After about a minute, Rulean says “It seems this affliction is more severe than I expected. I still can’t see. If this persists until tomorrow, I will need to call on the blessings of Kurgess to restore my sight.”
If that doesn’t work he will use universalists drain for level 2 spells:
Ephie finds his magic ineffective in restoring Rulean's sight.
"Should we head back to the surface and visit a temple?" Clover asks anxiously as Ephie tries to clear Rulean's affliction. "We're near enough that it shouldn't take too long and it'd definitely be safer."
"It would certainly be safer. I would prefer that."
When Ephie tries to fix his sight with Dispel Magic, Rulean mentions “That probably will not work. I know what blessing I would use to remove this affliction. Once the curse has taken effect, there is no magic to maintain it.”
“If we have everything here, we can certainly try finding a priest to heal me. If we can find one, it shouldn’t be too expensive.”
Finding the prospects of exploring the ruins while Rulean is sightless to be too dangerous, you retreat from the ruins and guide the iruxi back along the tunnel and carefully up the sinkhole.
When asked his opinion, Rulean says “I believe that I could be fully recovered after using my spells in the morning. Although I am not helpless, the contributions I can make are more limited right now.”
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"Ehhh...you're not used to living and fighting without your sight though," Clover points out with a shake of her head. "Let's just get you to feeling better and your sight fixed up since we don't know what else is down there. We'll try again tomorrow."
Leaf-On-Wind will take notes of the art and copy the words even if he doesn't know what they mean.
He's broodingly quiet because yet again something has come up that he doesn't have a fix for, and he's not sure how he can make things better.
You return to the circus camp. Several of the circus workers fuss over Rulean. The rest of you busy yourselves with other tasks while you consider your strategy for returning to the ruins.
In the morning, after Rulean's orisons to Kurgess, he prays for relief and is immediately granted it.
"Hmm...I'm not a scholar but we keep running into these xulgaths and I don't think it's coincidence," Clover points out after they leave Rulean to his rest. "Maybe we should go see if there's any sort of history written about them?"
"Maybe we should go see if there's any sort of history written about them?"
"I would come with you if you want. I'll see if I can find anything about the Aroden priests. If they are leaving ghosts behind, it would be good to know how to deal with them."
The desire to take a cat nap continuously threatens to overtake the amurrun as he tries to read through musty old tomes at the hall of records. Clover convinces Ephie to help her make sense of the library in order to search for something to give them insight into the troglodytes.
The troglodytes--the old texts do not refer to them by their proper name--are described as the oldest civilization on Golarion. They were advanced for that ancient time deep in the underground caverns compared to the other early sentient beings. Their rapid maturation, rabid violence, and mastery of occult magic made them a force to be reckoned with when the sekmin and alghollthus first encountered them.
Authors universally describe them as savage, cannibalistic, and ravenous. Their society is brutal and devoid of empathy.
The old temple of Aroden in Escodar was called Moonstone Hall. The halls were named for one or more pools called "moonstone pools," which were rare natural phenomenon that produced water that granted clairvoyance. Pilgrims once came from far away to gaze into them under the guidance of the priests. However, that was long ago.
"Hmm...this is all well and good but it still doesn't give us much more than we already knew," Clover sighs after spending a lot of time poring through books with Ephie. "There's got to be some sort of connection between Aroden and the xulgath; it's come up too much to just be coincidence...right?"
The halfling looks down at the tome she'd been staring at and slams it shut. "Maybe we'll find something new to go on when we go back down there tomorrow. Until then, I think I'm going to head back - flipping through all these pages is making me sleepy..."
With Rulean's sight restored and a good night's rest under your belts, you make your way back to the sink hole. The guards allow you to pass without any difficulty when you show them your writ. Little has changed in the cavern outside the temple except that the blood has dried and a few scavenging creatures have begun to nibble on the fallen basiliks.
Inside the temple, the dead xulgath have not been disturbed. Either nothing patrols here or they have no care about the dead.
To your left is a hall with a doorway on the right hand side and that turns to the right. To your right is a fair sized room without a door. Your light reflects off of something on the ground within. There are also two small doors in the sanctum, you recall, one on the left, and one on the right.
Ephie moves to the sanctum’s small left door.
Chani nods at the guards as they go past. He pays no mind to the scavengers starting their work on the corpses left behind. As long as they don't start swarming enough to become dangerous, they are actually quite useful.
He heads to the door with Ephie and takes a good listen to see if he can detect anything.
Clover also moves up with Ephie and Chani, her fork drawn and the haft extended to give her some extra reach - just in case. "Let's just hope that if anyone else is home, they've not bothered come to the front door since we left..."
Rulean stands ready, shield raised. He nods his agreement with Clover’s statement.
Leaf-On-Wind attempts to get a good night's rest after making sure folks are patched up as best as possible before turning in.
Waking in the morning twilight, the acrobatic medic is ready to continue the exploration, carefully Searching for any hidden dangers.
Since the one doorway is missing a door, he points to it. "Maybe we should check that out first, since we have no good way of securing it. Don't need stuff sneaking up on us from behind."
The left-hand door in the sanctuary leads into a hall that heads northward. There is a small door on the left and a little further down a small door on the right, then the hall turns to left to the west. In the bend, you can see a pile of crude backpacks made of roughly cut leather.
A quick scouting down the hall suggests that this hall connects back to the atrium with the elaborate floor. Ephie senses magic within the pile of backpacks. A search reveals weeks worth of jerked meat--at least you assume it is jerked--but it smells quite unpalatable to you all.
In one of the packs is a shrunken head of some blue skinned gnome or halfling or maybe some fae if it is not actually shrunken. There is also a small pouch with nineteen cracked rubies.
Listening at the door on the right, you hear nothing. Opening it quickly reveals why: the other side is entirely long collapsed stone.
Behind the door to the left, Clover hears a deep voice speaking in Taldane but the syntax is like a child practicing their reading. Between the accent and the odd patterns of words, she cannot make out what is being said.
After listening at the lefthand door Clover holds up her hand and gestures for everyone to fall back slightly. Assuming they do, she whispers, "There's someone in there! They're speaking Taldane but the words don't make sense to my ears; it's like they're practicing a lesson or trying to puzzle out a piece of writing."
"I suppose that Taldane could be a difficult language to learn. Even if nearly everybody in this area of the world does so at a fairly young age."
Chani ponders for a moment. "Though this wouldn't be my first choice of places to practice my lessons at. The smell is terrible, if nothing else."
Rulean does back up when indicated.
He considers what Clover has said before responding.
“Well, they are at least trying to learn to communicate. Even if they are a xulgath, that indicates a willingness to talk. Let’s give them a chance to talk.”
Clover nods. "Yeah, that's fair. I'm willing to talk if they are. And it might not even be a xulgath, it could be someone or something else. Maybe a prisoner."
Assuming that everyone else is in agreement, Clover waits until everyone is ready and then gently tries to open the door (or opens it for Rulean or someone else if they want to take the lead).
Chani nods at Clover as she opens the door. He pokes his head into the room and takes both a look and a listen to see what is there. "Mrr. Hello?"
"If they don't speak our language, I have a spell that will solve that problem." Song says practically. "We just have to find them."
The nauseating smell of xulgath immediately assaults your senses as Clover opens the door. The halfling, Chani, Song-of-Air's brother, and even Snowball manage to endure the pungent air with little more than mild eye watering. The rest of you feel your throats tighten in anticipation of vomiting.
The room contains only a scattering of splinters and a bookshelf with several tomes. A tall cabinet has fallen on its back, its doors missing and its interior filled with mosses and shredded cloth to serve as a nest. A spiral staircase to the northwest ascends into darkness.
The hulking form of a xulgath spinesnapper stands guard over a smaller xulgath with a book in his hand. They both look toward the door as Chani speaks. The smaller xulgath hisses and the larger one growls.
You have the jump on them.
Interrupted Studies. Round 1. Bold may act.
Rulean (68/68) (sickened 1)
Leaf-on-Wind (78/78) (immune to stench)
Ephraim (62/62) (sickened 1)
Song-of-Air (50/60) (sickened 1)
Clover (90/90) (immune to stench)
>Snowy (45/48) (immune to stench)
Chani (63/68) (immune to stench)
Spinesnapper
Smaller Xulgath
No specific weaknesses.
Critical Success:
No specific resistances.
Rulean turns his head and retches as the fumes assault his senses.
He then says “I guess they aren’t interested in talking.” as he raises his shield.
Chani's ears droop a bit. "Unfortunate." He peeks around the corner of the door frame and inspects the two xulgaths there.
Then he presses himself against the wall next to the doorway.
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Ephie decides a fireball is yet again a colution to the problem here.
He then whings his gramma's old axe at the big guy.
Clover groans internally as the door swings open; close-quarters combat is always a risky proposition. She focuses her attention on the larger of the two xulgath, marking it as her prey and then takes a step into the room before jabbing her fork at the large xulgath.
______________
Rulean prepares himself for the inevitable assault. Chani figures the right way to take down a spinesnapper and considers what else he has learned overnight in his books.
Ephie fills the room with fire, though the spinesnapper is able to contort himself enough to shield his more sensitive bits. The smaller xulgath, however, cleverly uses the bulk of his body guard to escape without any real harm .
Clover charges in as the fire fades and jams her fork deep into the hulking xulgath's chest.
Interrupted Studies. Round 1. Bold may act.
Rulean (68/68) (shield raised)
Leaf-on-Wind (78/78) (immune to stench)
Ephraim (62/62) (sickened 1)
Song-of-Air (50/60) (sickened 1)
Clover (90/90) (immune to stench)
>Snowy (45/48) (immune to stench)
Chani (63/68) (immune to stench)
Spinesnapper (-40 hp) (p.a. 5)
Smaller Xulgath
◇ Lingering Performance
◈ Inspire Courage
◈ Stride
◈
Song starts up a dance, moves and shoots her bow at the offending Spinesnapper.
◈ Stride
◈ Recall Knowledge on Blue (Society +9; Religion +12)
◈
Leaf moves up to where he can just barely see Blue, recalls knowledge and shoots.