Sanduro is the first to free himself, poking his head cautiously above the rim of the stone box he's in. He sees a low vaulted chamber of smooth stone, perhaps eight feet at its highest point. Sanduro himself is sitting in a now-open stone sarcophagus, the third in a line of six running east to west. Opposite each sarcophagus is an alcove carved into the southern wall, each decorated with an arming stand and small metal hooks holding armor, weapons, and other gear. Sanduro recognizes his bow and armor in the alcove opposite himself.
The other sarcophagi lids thump and scrape open one by one as Ketra, Wallace, and Silvia escape with muffled cries and varying degrees of panic. All of them are wearing the same pale grey robelike burial shroud as Sanduro himself. While you hear several thumps from the fifth sarcophagus the lid fails to budge, and from the sixth you hear nothing at all. Sanduro also notes the sixth alcove is empty.
Ketra falls into a light crouch outside the sarcophagus, looking for a moment exactly like a startled deer. When nothing leaps out to attack her or try to push her back into the stony prison, she breathes a short sigh of relief. "Wh-" Her mouth is dry enough that the start comes out as a whisper. She swallows "Where in the world is this? Not Roslar's Coffer."
"Is everyone alright?" She takes stock of the others that have made it out of their coffins. "We all came here, wherever here is, together." She eyes the coffin causing some noise "And that's probably Garret."
She heads over to aid the halfling.
Garret hears muffled voices from outside. He strains at the lid again hoping whoever is out there is friend and not foe.
Sanduro pulls himself out of his sarcophagus when he sees familiar figures emerging from the others.
"Does anyone know what happened? The last thing I remember is that pulse getting faster as we went up the stairs, then Ketra opened the door and there was a blast of white light. After that, nothing until I woke up in that box, dressed in -- what is this, anyway?"
While Ketra helps Garret, Sanduro walks cautiously over to the sixth stone casket. "Seems as though whoever brought us here was expecting one more guest." He knocks softly on the lid. "Is anyone in there?"
Holding on the side of the sarcophagus, Silvia pulls herself to her feet. She continues holding onto it for support and takes several steadying breaths. She turns her head to Sanduro and Ketra, a frightening look on her face. "I'm not sure where this is, but when I find the person who put me in there, we are going to have words."
After another few seconds, she joins Ketra and helps shove the slab off of Garret's sarcophagus, offering a hand to help him up.
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Wallace hops out of his sarcophagus and looks around. Hmm... Thought for sure we might have been prisoners, but... dressed like this? While the others help Garret, he shoves the lid off of the sixth sarcophagus.
"Before we start thinking about why, let's gear up. At least then if something happens, we'll be ready for it," he suggests, starting to collect whatever of the belongings he identifies as his. Why are we wearing burial gowns if we're alive? Unless...
The first blade he finds among the hanging equipment he uses to prick his finger. Blood, please be blood! "I see a single exit point, anyone have a visual on another?" he calls, hoping to draw the others' attention away from him for a moment.
With a bit more effort the fifth sarcophagus is opened and Garret freed. Like the others, he is dressed in a loose-fitting burial shroud, his equipment arranged in the opposite alcove. There is no response to Sanduro's knock on the sixth sarcophagus, and its corresponding alcove is empty.
Wallace pricks his finger with the blade, and blood wells up from the tiny wound, looking almost black in the dim light.
As you take a moment to collect yourself, you see that across the north wall is a dramatic fresco, depicting a band of heroic warriors battling wth blade and spell against a host seemingly made up of shadow and blood. Ornate scrollwork along the top displays the words, "To the Red Shrikes: Noble Companions in the War Against Evil. Rest Well, My Friends."
The Red Shrikes were a band of heroes led by the knight Ervin Roslar, for whom your town was named. His tomb in the town graveyard was intended to hold both the famous knight and his boon companions, but none of them were ultimately buried there.
To the west is a door, closed and latched from the inside.
"Does anyone know what happened? The last thing I remember is that pulse getting faster as we went up the stairs, then Ketra opened the door and there was a blast of white light. After that, nothing until I woke up in that box, dressed in -- what is this, anyway?"
"Nope, flash of light and..." Ketra shrugs "After that nothing, like you're saying. Maybe the light knocked us out for a while. The place had an awful lot of magic pulsing about. Or at least I assume that was magic."
She settles herself on the floor and rubs a hand across the burial shroud she's wrapped in, feeling the texture of the cloth. When Wallace pricks his finger, she misinterprets his meaning "Probably not a dream, considering we're all together. And it feels real." Feels real enough, I guess.
With a nod to Wallace, she gets up and recovers her leather vest, machetes, daggers and gloves. She dons the vest over her burial shroud robe, cutting the robe slightly to give a freer range of movement. She sets machetes into their sheathes, dons reinforced gloves and places daggers in their spots along her forearms. "All set." She eyes the fresco to the north.
"Huh. Are we the Red Shrikes?" She looks down at herself, a sudden sense of giddiness rising amid the strangeness of the situation "Do, do I look like a small, angry bird to anyone else?"
At Wallace's urging, Silvia checks around the room. "I just see the one door."
"I've seen you angry, but never seen anyone call you a bird," Silvia says in response to Ketra, as she pulls her own armor on over her head. "Never heard of this bunch, either. Some ancient band of adventurers, I expect." With that, she turns her attention back to the alcove that holds her belongings.
The sight of her own pistol, holstered on the arming stand, draws a perplexed look from her before she pulls it down and replaces it on her own hip. Everything else in place, she finally pulls her cestus onto her left hand, flexing her fingers to ensure a proper fit.
Properly equipped again, and certainly feeling more confident, she moves toward the door. "Wherever we are, we're still probably close to town. They might still need us."
Suddenly, after what seemed like ages, the lid of this box slid off and Garret saw familiar faces. Looking around and realizing he had been in an oversized sarcophagus, Garret shudders and says, ”Wow! What is this place? What happened at the Fort? All the bodies, then the bright flash of light...How are we even alive?”
Scrambling out and over to his items, Garret starts getting dressed. If he sees Wallace struggling with the lack of light, he will offer to light a torch or a lamp if someone has one handy.
"Do, do I look like a small, angry bird to anyone else?"
Sanduro gives her a nervous smile. "If the shoe fits..."
He leaves the sixth sarcophagus and quickly dons his leathers, pulls down his bow and quiver from the hooks, and checks his bowstring. Nodding in satisfaction, he nods to himself.
OK, it's show time.
He clears his throat and says, "I'm sorry, but there is something I ought to do before we try to leave. I just need to sit quietly for a minute, but I think ..." he glances over to Ketra and shrugs uncertainly before continuing, "I think we might need the help. You see, I, ummm, that is, I think it will be easier just to show you. Please wait for me to finish."
The duskwalker sits cross-legged on the floor and leans against the stone coffin he woke up in. He closes his eyes and concentrates.
Time to step out, Zsofia. Please remember the others from Roslar's Coffer are our allies, not our rivals.
Garret watches, fascinated as the manifestation process unfolds. As an aside, he asks, "What's this about Red Shrikes?"
Garret thinks about the flash of light and the pouch, trying to make sense of the magic that could transport them and even change their clothes. He adds, "Did anyone see the pouch on that table before the light? Maybe it is in here somewhere."
Ketra gives a sudden laugh at Silvia and Sanduro's responses "For just a second, I was starting to think maybe I'd hit my head too hard after that light hit us. But I guess not. Or you're just awfully convincing figments of my imagination." She grins, but sobers up when Silvia continues.
"Can we really say we're anywhere near town? Considering that we've got no idea how long we were knocked out, and whoever moved us here to set this whole bizarre thing up had time to put us in those-" She points to the sarcophagi "-and wrap us up, and all of this... really... elaborate..." She trails off.
"Anyone else get the feeling that this is just way too complicated? I can't imagine why anyone who wanted us out of the picture, but not dead, would DO all this."
As for Garret's statements, she comments "Don't think anyone here's got a clue Garret. I think we're going to have to go out and check for ourselves." She heads for the door, but stops as Sanduro seems to be entering into a brief trance first.
While he concentrates, Ketra looks around the room for both the pouch, and for any birds, specifically whippoorwills.
Garret and Ketra both note a dearth of whippoorwills--and, curiously, a lack of dust as well. Despite its apparent age, the chamber appear well-tended. Ketra's quick examination of the door suggests that it isn't locked or otherwise barred.
Sanduro sits down and concentrates, and feels the spirit sharing his body stir to--if not life per se, then at least greater activity.
"No, we can't be far from town," Silvia insists, though she doesn't offer anything to back that up. She moves to open the door but stops, watching Sanduro in silence.
After a minute, fog condenses out of the air in front of Sanduro, rapidly forming the shape of a large humanoid woman. The spectral apparition is tall and broad-shouldered - if she had a physical body, she would be wiry, strong and quick. She has short hair and an eye patch, and appears to be wearing leather armor and practical riding clothes, with a longsword and a variety of daggers and other blades hanging from her belt. She wears several rings on her fingers and jeweled cuffs around her upper arms, and a flowing Varisian scarf. She is semi-transparent and mostly colorless, except for a faint sepia glow.
The phantom, floating an inch or so above the stone floor, bends over to shout in Sanduro's face before he can finish standing up.
Misty fists clenched at her sides, she continues, "We're supposed to be looking for my killer, but you let yourself get distracted by this bunch, and look what happened! You're not from that village of stuck-up dirt farmers, you don't owe them anything! They aren't allies, they aren't rivals, they aren't ANYTHING! You need to figure out where we are and how to get us back to Roslar's Coffer to pick up the trail of... of... " Some of the tension drains from her face as Zsofia struggles to remember who it was she wanted to find.
Incorporeal (Ex) An incorporeal creature has no physical body. It can be harmed only by other incorporeal creatures, magic weapons or creatures that strike as magic weapons, and spells, spell-like abilities, or supernatural abilities. It is immune to all nonmagical attack forms. Even when hit by spells or magic weapons, it takes only half damage from a corporeal source. Although it is not a magical attack, holy water can affect incorporeal undead. Corporeal spells and effects that do not cause damage only have a 50% chance of affecting an incorporeal creature (except for channel energy). Force spells and effects, such as from a magic missile, affect an incorporeal creature normally.
An incorporeal creature has no natural armor bonus but has a deflection bonus equal to its Charisma bonus (always at least +1, even if the creature’s Charisma score does not normally provide a bonus).
An incorporeal creature can enter or pass through solid objects, but must remain adjacent to the object’s exterior, and so cannot pass entirely through an object whose space is larger than its own. It can sense the presence of creatures or objects within a square adjacent to its current location, but enemies have total concealment (50% miss chance) from an incorporeal creature that is inside an object. In order to see beyond the object it is in and attack normally, the incorporeal creature must emerge. An incorporeal creature inside an object has total cover, but when it attacks a creature outside the object it only has cover, so a creature outside with a readied action could strike at it as it attacks. An incorporeal creature cannot pass through a force effect.
An incorporeal creature’s attacks pass through (ignore) natural armor, armor, and shields, although deflection bonuses and force effects (such as mage armor) work normally against it. Incorporeal creatures pass through and operate in water as easily as they do in air. Incorporeal creatures cannot fall or take falling damage. Incorporeal creatures cannot make trip or grapple attacks, nor can they be tripped or grappled. In fact, they cannot take any physical action that would move or manipulate an opponent or its equipment, nor are they subject to such actions. Incorporeal creatures have no weight and do not set off traps that are triggered by weight.
An incorporeal creature moves silently and cannot be heard with Perception checks if it doesn’t wish to be. It has no Strength score, so its Dexterity modifier applies to its melee attacks, ranged attacks, and CMB. Nonvisual senses, such as scent and blindsight, are either ineffective or only partly effective with regard to incorporeal creatures. Incorporeal creatures have an innate sense of direction and can move at full speed even when they cannot see.
Format: incorporeal; Location: Defensive Abilities.
Sanduro winces at Zsofia's initial shouting, but otherwise remains impassive in the face of her tantrum. He has dealt with her temper long enough to know she will wind down quickly enough. When she does, he responds quietly, as though trying to calm an overtired child.
"Zsofia, I promise we will continue to hunt for your killer, and that I will still help you find your rest, but first we must figure out where we are and how we got here, and how to get back if we are no longer in town. We need your help to do that. Here, let me introduce you to our new friends. This is Garret, Wallace, and Silvia, and you know Ketra already. We all have to get back together, do you understand? We can't just run ahead without them."
Turning to the others, Sanduro says, "I apologize. Zsofia has been cooped up inside my head for too long, and she becomes very demanding of my attention if she thinks I have been diverted from our shared quest. She is a spirit, but she has not found her path to the Boneyard yet. We are bound together until she does. She can be very helpful; in her spectral form, she can look through doors - like that one - before we open them, but she can also take on a more tangible shape and fight by our side if that becomes necessary." He is obviously embarrassed by Zsofia’s outburst and anxious about the group’s reaction.
He thinks for a moment and says, "Maybe a demonstration before we check the door? Zsofia, please look inside the last stone coffin in the row - the one with the lid still closed."
The phantom grunts in annoyance, but glides just above the floor to the sixth sarcophagus and sticks her head through the lid.
Zsofia finds the final sarcophagus to be empty, devoid of any objects or persons living or dead. It's not even dusty.
Her peek through the door to the west is more fruitful; four more sarcophagi line the walls of this small chamber, but their lids have already been pushed aside and they sit open. One of the sarcophagi has a strange amalgam of bones piled next to it, looking as though it were cobbled together at random from the bones of several other humanoid creatures. The pile is utterly still, and the only other thing of interest in the chamber is a wooden crate not quite covered by the drop cloth draped over it.
"Hmph!" Zsofia floats back through the door, shaking her head. "Congratulations, you lot. Looks like you're late to the party; another group got here first." She describes the open sarcophagi, the jumble of bones, and the partially-covered covered crate.
Ketra gives a wry smile to the phantom. "Well, nice to meet you too Zsofia. I hope we can work together to get both the dirt farmers and the more important people out of here." And to Sanduro she adds "She's just like you described her. For better or worse, huh?" Her smile turns sly as she regards the spiritualist.
The lack of a nearby whippoorwill leaves Ketra a little concerned. The mostly silent guardian of hers had always managed to show up when she was faced with danger, going all the way back to the fateful night when she'd encountered her Shoanti kin for the first time. Being separated from little Verun was strange, compounding the strangeness of the situation.
'I hope the sad little guy managed to stay somewhere safe...'
At Zsofia's description, she comments "Sounds safe enough then. Lets get going." She steps to the door and opens the way to the west.
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Wallace frowns at Zsofia and Sanduro, but it fades when he hears the explanation. "That's an honorable path you walk. Not many would seek to fulfill the wishes of the lost so that they may reach their rightful judgement," he says, nodding slowly. Never thought he'd have the resolve for that kind of work, considering he hauled kegs for a living. I'm impressed!
Raising his familiar armaments, he slowly approaches the sarcophagi. "I'm not going to lie, I don't know what to suspect here, but it looks to me like this sarcophagus is more than meets the eye..."
Silvia visibly stiffens as Zsofia manifests, and her eyes harden still further at the following outburst. Silvia still steps back to give the spirit a wide berth as she checks through the door. She manages to tear her eyes away from Zsofia to see the bundle of bones that Wallace is referring to. "Maybe the lair of some animal? These bones didn't mix themselves up, at least."
Wallace approaches the final sarcophagus wth blade held at the ready, shoving at the lid with his shield-arm and pushing it aside a few inches at a time. The stone top crashes to the floor with an echoing DOOM in the small space...but just as Zsofia had reported it is completely empty.
Ketra boldly pushes the door open and reveals the next chamber. The pile of bones seems to resent the intrusion, for it shudders and rises to its feet--all three of them. Indeed, far from being an intact humanoid skeleton it appears to be a bizarre fusion of random bones from multiple humanoids.
ROUND 1
Sanduro/Zsofia
Garret
Skeleton
Silvia
Ketra
Wallace
"Oh, hello." Ketra blinks at the rising skeleton. She glances back to Zsofia. "Friend of yours?"
Garret moves up to see what is going on and catches a glimpse of the bones rising from the ground--looks like a skeleton of some kind.
Thankfully, Garret has a spell for just such an occasion--and one that won't hurt anyone if it goes awry. Looking through the forest of legs, he times his shot carefully and emits a beam of positive energy from an outstretched finger, hoping to hit the bones and disrupt the negative energy animating them.
Confirm?
At the rattle of bones from the rising skeleton, Sanduro's eyes narrow in disgust. He swears under his breath in Varisian, then calls, "Zsofia, you've wanted a real fight for weeks, this is your chance."
Sanduro makes an effort of will and the phantom's ghostly form solidifies, solid ectoplasm replacing the transparent mist. As soon as the transformation is complete, the druid looks around him for any loose pebbles on the floor or near the sarcophagus.
"Oh, hello." Ketra blinks at the rising skeleton. She glances back to Zsofia. "Friend of yours?"
The phantom snorts and spits a wad of ectoplasm that disappears before it hits the floor. "Not hardly, girl." She looks at her hand for a moment and gives a thin smile as it fills in. "That's more like it."
The late bandit leader stalks past Ketra into the smaller and stops in front of the animated amalgamation of bones. "Back off, skinny! I'm supposed to be the scariest thing around, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna let you take the title away."
Zsofia pulls back her fist and aims a punch straight at one of the creature's jaws.
"Not hardly, girl."
"Oh good. Nice punch by the way. You should teach Sanduro." Ketra winks at Sanduro, happy to stoke Zsofia's ego for his sake.
Garret sends a bolt of disruptive energy directly into the center of the strange skeleton, waves of energy rolling over its bones--but the creature appears entirely unaffected. Orienting itself towards Zsofia, the creature knocks the phantom's arm away and rakes at the phantom with long clawed arms.
ROUND 1
Sanduro
Zsofia (-3hp)
Garret
Skeleton
Silvia
Ketra
Wallace
”Okay, so it’s not actually undead,” says Garret, clearly disappointed that his spell had no effect on the creature.
"No? I've seen a few undead, and this fits the profile." Ketra eyes the skeletal thing. Before now, she's always had the help of other Shoanti to identify and plan out attacks on roving packs of undead. Mirhet's sharp intuition would have already worked out exactly what this thing was, and probably devised seven ways to destroy it.
'Here though, its just us.'
Ketra steps lightly, skipping into range of the skeletal thing. She raises one hand in a boxer's guard while she uses the other to draw a machete. Once she gets close, she delivers a straight punch.
"Damned if I know what it is," Silvia says, striding into the room, "but it sure looks undead, and I know how to handle their kind." Initially drawing her pistol, Silvia decides against firing it in such close quarters. Instead, she steps forward and delivers a powerful blow to its torso with her gloved hand.
As the party presses in on the skeleton Silvia finally lands a solid blow that splinters bone and sends pieces tumbling across the floor. Reeling, the skeleton staggers but remains standing.
ROUND 2
Sanduro
Zsofia (-3hp)
Garret
Skeleton
Silvia
Ketra
Wallace
Garret moves into the room and draws his crossbow, preparing to fire. Hopefully the beefy types will shatter this strange creature before he has to bring his pitiful weaponry skill to bear. Could this be some kind of construct?
"Anyone seen a beast like this before? Intel to share?" Wallace asks as he pushes to the front. "Sanduro, can your charge be hurt? I suggest caution while we learn more about it."
"Yes, she definitely can. Not easily, but that thing's claws will do it."
What is that thing?
Sanduro moves into the smaller chamber and draws his bow.
When Silvia lands her punch, Zsofia's eyes narrow. "Good one," she snarls through a clenched jaw. The phantom glances at the others who have moved in to surround the bony creature, and slides a step over toward the wall to leave room for Sanduro to fire at it. She lets out a piercing battle cry and hammers at the pile of bones with her glowing fists.
Sanduro knows of a type of creature called an ostovite; a beetle-like extraplanar pest that raids graveyards & corpses in order to assemble "bone chariots" fused together and piloted by the strange beings. Somewhere in that strange wobbling skeleton is a tiny buglike controller!
Zsofia's fierce counterattack knocks several vertebrae out of the skeleton's spinal column and the thing collapses, shudders once, and then is still.
ROUND 2
Sanduro
Zsofia (-3hp)
Garret
Skeleton
Silvia
Ketra
Wallace
"Watch out - that pile of skeleton parts is being driven by an ostovite inside it! It looks like a bug and puts together 'bone chariots' to ride around in, and it's still in there!"
1. Movement once the bone chariot is broken?
2. Defenses (outside the bone chariot)?
3. Attacks (outside the bone chariot)?
Ketra tries to spot this tiny desecrator of bones, based on Sanduro's description.
She relaxes a little. Knowing this isn't an undead monstrosity on the loose, but just some bug, leaves her with a false sense of confidence. "It's puppeting a pile of bones? Think we can reason with it?"
1. So special movement types, though it's faster than it looks.
2. Ostovites are immune to cold damage, as are their bone chariots.
3. They have a vicious bite that does additional acid damage.
"I can sear the whole thing with fire if that helps," volunteers Garret, looking to Sanduro since he seems to know what this thing is...
Unsure just how dangerous this thing might end up being, Ketra readies to strike if it jumps out of the now battered bone pile to attack the group. Just in case, she says "If you can understand us, we don't have to fight."
Wallace and Ketra stand at the ready, but the pile of cracked and ruined bone remains still and inert.
"Fire works, I think - anything but cold," Sanduro rubs his neck in thought. "It's fast, and has a nasty acidic bite. That's all I know. Zsofia, would you try to root it out, please?"
"A bug hunt? Fine." The sepia-tinted phantom shakes her head, then gestures to Ketra, Silvia, and Wallace. "You lot ready?"
Without waiting for an answer, Zsofia begins pulling bones from the pile, giving each one a quick shake before tossing it into the sarcophagus.
As Zsofia begins to pick through the pile of bones, a piece that Ketra would have sworn was just a mostly-intact skull uncurls and the red-eyed beetle-like creature lunges at the phantom! The mandibles sink in to ectoplasmic flesh, but it's the sizzling black acid that does the most harm.
Wallace and Ketra's weapons flash, the knight's sword clanging off the stone mere inches from the ostovite, but the dancer's machete splits its carapace open and cuts it in half!
Prying open the lid, you discover a few supplies seemingly left over from the tomb’s construction—forgotten after centuries of abandonment. The crate contains a variety of dried-out and useless paints, a crowbar, flint and steel, three common lamps, two hammers, one hooded lantern, eight pints of oil (somehow still good!), and a dented pewter mug.