Sanduro whips another ball of flame at the guecubu.
Sanduro sees Zsofia stagger when the creature hits her, but doesn’t immediately realize what has happened.
Are you OK?
I’ve been better. Feels like I’ve been kicked in the head by a horse. Hang on a sec.
The phantom takes a moment to lash out at their adversary.
That was definitely harder than it should have been!
Garret, Sanduro, and Zsofia bend to the task of bringing down the guecubu; though multiple blows land, the horrid thing seems both evasive and as durable as the earth itself!
+ ROUND ONE +
Jando
Sanduro
Zsofia
Guecubu (-32hp)
Garret
Ketra
Silvia
+ ROUND TWO +
Jando
Sanduro
Zsofia (-10hp; cursed)
Guecubu (-52hp)
Garret
Ketra
Silvia
With heart hammering in her chest, Ketra dodges the guecubu's attack. Seeing what it just did to Zsofia leaves her more determined than ever to finish it quickly, before it can drain anyone else. She lowers her stance, takes a breath, and then sweeps into a practiced flurry of stabs and feints.
Silvia wastes no time, focusing her righteous anger upon the monster (along with a hail of bullets).
Though Ketra's feint does seem to catch it by surprise, its rocky form proves difficult to injure--the dancer feels that only her Sting maneuver really landed. Silvia's attacks are similarly stymied, though sheer weight of fire still tells. Jando joins the paladin in pouring shots into the monster, his arrows seeking out areas where Silvia's shots have pulverized the rock.
For its part, the guecubu surges forward, flowing around and through the interlocking obsidian spikes to sink broken teeth of bone and stone into the sorcerer's shoulder. Garret feels a shock of malicious magic course through him, making his bones ache and his head swim. Suddenly whipping around the monster lashes its claws at Ketra, but the dancer nimbly dodges.
+ ROUND TWO +
Jando
Sanduro
Zsofia (-5hp; cursed)
Guecubu (-94hp)
Garret (-12hp; cursed)
Ketra
Silvia
+ ROUND THREE +
Jando
Sanduro
Zsofia (-5hp; cursed)
Guecubu (-94hp)
Garret (-12hp; cursed)
Ketra
Silvia
Shuddering in pain, Garret calls over the flaming sphere back into the rock monster's square.
He then tries to focus enough to call on his magic to afflict the creature...
Managing to call forth the magic defensively, Garret sounds a sonic blast inside its head!
With the creature seemingly unstoppable despite the absolute torrent of attacks, Ketra hesitates for a moment. However, when it bites into Garret, she realizes she has no choice but to keep up the assault and hope that it flees.
She swirls through a flurry of strikes, relying on one of her memorized routines as her mind tries to keep from panicking.
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While the guecubu is able to once again evade Garret's fiery orb and most of Ketra's flurry of slashes, its dodge puts it in exactly the wrong position to evade the halfling sorcerer's eldritch shriek! Staggering and crumbling, a final blow from Ketra's machete proves too much and the earthy undead finally collapses into a loose pile of debris. A heartbeat later, the ground stops bucking and settles back into place like a sea after a storm, and all the obsidian spikes dissolve into black sand that sinks into the floor like rain in a desert.
Garret sits heavily on the ground and says, ”What was that thing? I don’t feel so good…”
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"The monster? Goo-a-cubu, I think. Never thought I'd see one in person, ever." Ketra lowers her knives after a few wary moments watching the ground. "It didn't seem to hit you and Zsofia too hard, but that draining it was doing... Sanduro, don't tell me we needed to keep it alive to squeeze the life energy back out of it or something. I was hoping it'd snap right back into place when it died." She eyes the ground "It did die, right?"
When the creature doesn't surface, Ketra cautiously says "Dead then." then squares her jaw as if to dare the thing to prove her wrong.
She turns to the others "You two could use some healing - Garret especially. Do we have anything left in the wand? I'll keep lookout up ahead." before trotting over to the north to listen and watch for incoming dangers.
Garret sits heavily on the ground and says, ”What was that thing? I don’t feel so good…”
As soon as the guecubu drops and the fight is over, Zsofia slumps. She takes a couple of steps before lowering herself carefully onto the floor to sit next to Garret.
"Yeah, me neither."
Sanduro lets the ball of fire burning in his hand go out and runs over to examine Garret and Zsofia.
"This is a nasty curse. I can heal their wounds, but the curse... I don't know. I think they might at least have a chance to snap out of it in the morning."
She turns to the others "You two could use some healing - Garret especially. Do we have anything left in the wand? I'll keep lookout up ahead." before trotting over to the north to listen and watch for incoming dangers.
"I think we're down to five charges on the wand, but we'll only need one or two just now."
With yet another prayer to Pharasma -- "Please heal my friend today so that he might live to meet his fate tomorrow!" -- the druid casts a minor healing spell on Garret.
Pulling out the wand, he activates its magic and taps Zsofia on her ectoplasmic shoulder.
"Another day, another new horrific undead," Silvia says with a sigh. "I shall pray for the both of you, in hopes of a swift recovery from this curse."
Garret looks at his wounds, fully healed, but still feels like death warmed over. "Indeed, a curse it may be," agrees Garret.
Standing up, he says, "Let's move on".
Sanduro gives Ketra and Silvia a worried look but nods. “OK, sure. But I’m not sure that this place is going to lead us to an exit outside the dome over town. We’ve gone down, and a little to the left, but…”
"I doubt the lar was lying. Can beings like that even lie at all?" Ketra shrugs "Still, we've got to believe this tunnel exists. If it doesn't, we're walking through the necromantic barrier fog instead... and I'm not excited to give that a try."
With your wounds tended to and no way out but through, you gather yourselves and venture forth. Almost immediately, Garret's constant monitoring for magical auras pays off as he notices the glow of enchantment from the alcove's cracked stone shelves and empty cupboards immediately north of the mural room . After some cautious checking, you retrieve the source of the auras: a white candle flecked with gold, and a small brick of incense that smells of jasmine.
Treasures in hand, you turn to the next chamber which appears to be a burial room not unlike the ones you saw in the Boneyard--stone niches carved into the walls intended to hold the bones of those who seemingly didn't rate their own sarcophagus. None of them are occupied, however--it seems the common wisdom about town that Roslar was never actually interred here were true; certainly no one else seems to be. A sweep with magic and mundane senses don't reveal anything of interest here...though the next room may be another story...
With a mild shock of recognition, you see the rows of sarcophagi--though only two, rather than the six you awoke in the Boneyard. Jando, noting your reactions, raises an eyebrow in concern. "Umm, everything okay? You know who's buried in there or somethin'?"
Garret fights to concentrate on his training through the fog of the curse clouding his mind…
”The incense is Incense of Meditation,” says Garret, describing its function (per the spoiler).
Ketra nods to Garret, but turns her attention to the room with the row of sarcophagi ahead. "All good. But it would be appropriately creepy if we found another set of us in those sarcophagi." Her voice is a little strained - it was decidedly strange to be retracing the group's steps in a way back to where they'd all "undied".
She looks out for any traps or hazards, and then if things seem safe she advances forward to get a better look at the sarcophagi.
"Fewer of them, aren't there..."
"I'm sorry, another set of you?" Jando gives you a look like you've sprouted a second head. "And fewer than what? What are you talking about?"
"Don't worry about it, just a bit of an in-joke. We'll explain the whole story later."
"Short version -- after the necrotic explosion we woke up in sarcophagi in the boneyard parallel to this room. Good times," says Garret somewhat flippantly, apparently in too much of a fog from the curse to bother explaining more completely.
"It's a bit like walking into the wrong barracks after a night in the cups," Silvia says, musing. "It's familiar enough, but it's also wrong."
"It's a bit like walking into the wrong barracks after a night in the cups," Silvia says, musing. "It's familiar enough, but it's also wrong."
“True. To be fair, ‘familiar, but wrong’ is a pretty good description of everything we’ve seen since we got back.”
"Good times... heh." Ketra winces as she heads over to inspect the two remaining sarcophagi. For better or worse, she feels obligated to check if there isn't someone else trapped inside, as illogical as that instinct might be...
Garret focuses on the curse, trying to push it away and out of his mind by using the “Love is thicker than Blood” ability.
"Woke up in...? Sure, why not," Jando shakes his head, clearly not sure what to believe, but he drops the subject. He watches the sarcophagi warily while Ketra investigates more closely.
The dancer doesn't notice any traps, and rapping on the sarcophagus draws no response. If anyone's inside they're either unwilling or unable to respond.
"Nobody home," Silvia observes, feeling dumb for even saying it. "Press on?"
"Probably not..." Ketra is pressed by that same sense of irrational duty to push the lids aside and just, you know, double check that there isn't anyone currently suffocating within. Assuming that reveals nothing exceptionally interesting or hazardous, she leaves the sarcophagi behind and sneaks her way to the southern breach in the wall to take a peek at what lies that way.
Leaving the sarcophagus behind, Ketra creeps up to the broken wall to peer through. Immediately before her is a room ringed with smaller sarcophagi, each capped with metal at the corners and several of them damaged--likely by whatever disaster collapsed the walls and ceilings of previous rooms. Rubble is strewn all about the room, but a door set in the opposite wall at least offers a way out.
Ketra takes a look around the second room with the smaller sarcophagi. This part is definitely new, at least as far as her muddled memory is concerned. She inspects the room carefully for hazards before entering and rapping the new sarcophagi. It takes a lot of effort to not ask "Hello, anyone in there?"
Ketra will be trying to stay out of sight of the room to the south, cautiously avoiding exposing herself to too much danger in one dose.
"Hey! I think I feel better!"
"So if this the real tomb, where were we before? An echo of the tomb, like the echo of the town in the Boneyard?" He frowns. "Layers wrapped around layers, like a spiral. But are we heading out, or deeper in?"
He and Zsofia move up to peer into the next room behind Ketra and Silvia.
The unfamiliar room puts Ketra on high alert, and her careful scan reveals two items of interest: first, a faint scratching and thumping is coming from one of the sarcophagi against the far wall--as though someone were feebling trying to escape the heavy stone enclosure.
Second, Ketra feels a prickle along her skin like a static charge--a telltale sign of a magical trap placed upon that same sarcophagus!
Once Ketra makes him aware of the situation, Garret focuses his Detect Magic spell on the sarcophagus in question.
Ketra quickly points at the magically buzzing sarcophagus and whispers "Something in that one, I think! And a trap of some kind. Might be keeping them inside... but I don't know if that's good or bad for us."
Alerted to the danger, Garret studies the sarcophagus with his arcane sight--a trap, sure enough, a blending of necromancy and evocation not entirely unlike his own sonic shrieking--the noise and impetus provided by a fragment of a soul rather than the caster's will. It's considerably more potent than his own version of the spell, however, and would doubtless do considerably more damage.
The scratching and thumping continues, though--and Garret's gaze is unable to fully pierce the thick stone, or else who(what?)ever is within has no magic.
”There is a spell linked to this sarcophagus—opening it will trigger a burst of sonic energy. I do not have the proper spell to unravel the magic, though perhaps its triggering mechanism can be manually disabled, someone else can dispel the magic or envelop the area in silence,” says Garret.
"Before we risk setting it off, let's try to find out who -- or what -- is inside and scratching to get out."
Sanduro concentrates for a moment and Zsofia fades to incorporeality.
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"It's gonna be gross, isn't it? More giant bugs or a zombie with its head on upside down or something, I just know it."
Still muttering to herself ("Dammit kid, I'm a bandit queen, not a stone coffin inspector!") Zsofia glides over to the sarcophagus. Fixing a broad, obviously fake smile on her face, she sticks her face through the lid and looks inside, blinking to speed up her eyes' adjustment to the darkness.
Poking through the sarcophagus, Zsofia blinks as her eyes rapidly adjust to the darkness, and she beholds a skeleton. Still wrapped in its burial shroud, it scrapes for a few seconds against the stone lid trapping it within, then pauses. After a few moments it raps its fleshless fists against the stone a few times, then pauses.
Zsofia's sudden arrival doesn't draw its attention in the least--nor do any other antics she tries. It just keeps alternating scrapping and knocking...and after several minutes and perhaps half a dozen different combinations of scratchings and knocks begins to repeat the pattern.
"So skeleton in a magically trapped coffin. Everything I'm hearing says 'don't even think of opening this one'." Ketra nods once, firmly "How about we give it a wide berth and keep going?"
”Agreed,” says Garret, following along carefully. The curse sits on him like a hazy cloud on his vision, making everything he tries to do just that much harder to accomplish.
“Yes, let’s get out of here. That trap seems disturbingly well-targeted to us in particular.”
"Well, so long as it won't trigger by us moving by, let's keep our distance." Ketra follows her own advice and makes it to the southern doorway. Sticking to the edge of the doorway, she peeks into the room beyond from relative stealth.