With two of her teammates pummeling and stabbing morlocks with extreme efficiency, Zetty just keeps up her work and sends a piece of rubble spinning up and over them to fall upon whichever morlock remains.
With well-placed strikes, you quickly finish off the two remaning morlocks!
There doesn't seem to be anything of value in this room.
Bella took a breather for a minute, and then started healing herself and Grem. "It's too bad that the morlocks are so hostile. I wish we didn't have to kill them, but there doesn't seem to be much room for negotiating."
Once she wad finished, she started exploring the doors to the east.
This long, ten‐foot‐wide hallway has a vaulted ceiling arching to a dozen feet high. Three broken metal brackets hang from the ceiling; one to the south, one to the north, and one in the middle, although what the frames once held is unclear. The floor is strewn with pieces of rotten wood and twisted metal. To the north, pale green light shimmers around a closed door’s frame.
Grem takes 10 minutes to meditate before he gets up and joins Bella. He examines the strange glowing doorway, not wanting to interact with it directly. "That," he rumbles, "is not natural."
While Bella is patching people up, Zetty heads around the room and makes a few notes of its contents. When she gets to the door with the pale green light, she focuses her magical senses on it.
"It is kind of crazy how quick these guys are to stab us. And I thought the king was short tempered! Hopefully there's some non-morlocks we can at least talk to down here."
Zetty does not detect any magical auras nearby.
"More spooky things this way then?" She grins to Vengis "Sounds kinda fun. If something gets loosed, we'll just have to smack it." She waits for the rest of the group to bandage up.
Bella said to Vengis, "I guess we need to find out what it is; I'm going to have a look." She quietly moved to the door with the green light, opened it a crack, and looked through.
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The door opens onto a ten‐foot‐square washroom features an iron bathing tub to the north and a commode to the southwest. The northern wall glows and shimmers with ribbons of eerie green light.
As you watch, the glowing energy, slithers into letters to read, “I was Otari... save me from below!” A moment later, the words slide off the wall and form a green ribbon of light that slithers across the floor like a serpent with a speed of 20 feet. It moves past you and down the hall to the west, disappearing under the door!
Bella followed the strange slithering energy, opening the door that it passed under. She didn't have the words to express her surprise at this bizarre twist.
You follow the light through the door and down a hall, where it slips under another door to the west. That door leads into a room. A ruined table and several destroyed chairs lie in a heap in the middle of this room, along with several large bones.
The ghostly trail dances and flicker around the center of the room where a minotaur’s skeleton is entangled with the ruined furniture. It passes under another door to the west, but as it departs, the bones shudder and begin to pull together!
Bella recited a prayer to the Dawnflower and moved to flank the skeleton with Grem. She studied the assembling bones and tried to relate it to her knowledge of undead.
Zetty blinks in surprise and excitement as a bunch of glowing words form across the wall, but she doesn't have more than a moment to jot them down before they start running away. "After those words!" is all she manages as she follows after Bella.
The sight of a minotaur skeleton forming causes her to skid to a stop. "Alright, skeleton smashing time again! Let's do this!"
Grem tries to move into the room to get a better position before he drops into his defensive stance.
◆ Stride
◆ Mountain Stance
◆ Parry
Eyenia steps into the doorway and says, "We will put you to rest!"
She fires a blast of holy energy at the creature, though she misses. It's not it's time to rest quite yet.
Vengis bashes the skeleton with a hurled rock, splintering bones. Eyenia doesn't hit. Bella recognizes the skeletal giant's defenses--aside from the usual undead immunities, it is resistant to cold, electricity, fire, piercing, and slashing damage.
The minotaur skeleton finishes its assembly, standing up and attacking with its horns. Bella blocks some of the damage with her shield.
Bella was thankful for Sarenrae's protection, although the horns still hurt. She relayed what she knew about the skeletons' defenses, "I think it's resistant to cold, electricity and fire! Blunt weapons are best!" Although she knew her rapier wasn't the best thing to use against it, that was what she had; she stabbed repeatedly, trying to find a weak spot.
Bella lands a critical strike, following up with a second sneak attack, and even though the skeleton resists her blade, it is still severely damaged. Vengis finishes the skeleton off with another smashing rock!
"Turn around, you big overgrown meat rack!" Grem bellows out to the skeletal creature. I'll give you something to chew on!"[/b]
◆Ki Strike (Flurry of Blows)
"Oh good, that wasn't too bad at all!" Zetty looks around the room "Now where did our strange green writing go?"
Before leaving, she spends a moment looking around the room for any evidence of why the words would linger here . She also sends out of probing pulse of detect magic to see if there are any strange auras here.
Bella's first instinct was to open the door and follow the green light, but her caution got the better of her, and she stopped to bandage her wounds.
Feeling better, she opened the door that the green light passed under, looking to see where it went.
Beyond the door, stairs lead down to a muddy beach overlooking the flooded cavern where you fought the river drake. Bella spots the green glow fading away beneath a crack in the wall to the west.
Searching the wall, you find a secret that door opens when the rise on the top step is pushed a certain way. Past the secret door, stairs lead down to the next level of the dungeon...
Once more, Grem takes the time to meditate, centering his Ki, before getting back to his feet and following the adventurous halfling.
He looks down the stairs, through the secret door. "Should we head straight down?" he asks the others, "or shall we cover the rest of this level first?"
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Vengis strokes his moustache as he watches the others uncover the secret door.
"This green light--whatever it is, it seems to animate the dead when it comes in contact with it. It almost seems sentient."
Responding to Grem, he says "I suggest we finish our explorations here before heading down. I don't want to be trapped and unable to get out of this place. It's dangerous and filthy, albeit full of riches."
"Oh, rest of this level for sure. That zippy green light's probably way ahead of us now, and I wouldn't want to come back up from an exploration below and find ourselves all surrounded by angry morlocks or undead or acid crabs!" She nods to Vengis "Plus, maybe we can find a clue about why the writing said what it did before it slipped off the wall? Or we can find someone who's willing to talk about the Gauntlight!"
Bella nodded and returned to the room with the destroyed minotaur skeleton. She looked though the ruined furniture to see if there was anything interesting in the debris. Once she was satisfied that there was nothing of value there, she returned east and explored south.
The door you have chosen opens into a large room. Broken-down torture instruments lie in half-collapsed heaps on the floor here. To the north slumps a ruined stretching rack, while to the south a pillory lies fallen on the floor. Rusty tongs and chains, frayed and rotten whips, and other instruments of torture lie on shelves that look about to collapse.
Little of use remains here, but Bella notices a secret door to the south, which opens when a rusted ring on the wall is pulled down sharply. Beyond is a short T-junction hall. There is a door to the west, while only a blank wall to the south. Further searching uncovers another secret door there, however.
"Ugh, some kind of torture chamber? Little reminder that that Belcorra person wasn't all that friendly." Zetty follows after Bella as she discovers the secret door to the south. "Who wants to take bets on what kind of place would be hidden away by not one but two secret doors? One leading out of a torture chamber. My bet's on a secret prison."
Zetty probes the environment with her magic sense, trying to get some forewarning this time if more green letters show up.
The walls of this circular room are smooth and gray. A ribbon of pale blue light coils and slithers through the air, connecting the floor at the center of the room to the ceiling fifteen feet above. The points where this light touches the stone above and below seethe and writhe, as if the stone itself were suffering from an infection. The desiccated remains of an enormous worm lie slumped around the ribbon, forming a crescent of shriveled and tattered purple flesh.
Zetty detects the presence of magic in this room.
"Definitely not natural," the dwarf grumbles again, as they take in this strange room. He is careful not to touch anything, but looks to see if anything can be found.
Grem notices a telltale bulge in the dried worm's carcass. Perhaps the remains of its last meal are still inside of it?
Bella tried to determine what sort of supernatural forces might be at work here, and examined the the carcass.
Grem approaches the bulge cautiously, motioning the others over. "Could be a bad idea," he cautions, but motions for Bella to start carving.
Based on your position, you think you might be directly under Gauntlight now. Perhaps this energy is related to the power that allowed it to animate the dead and teleport monsters?
Digging into the dried worm’s carcass, Bella finds the remains of its last meal: a dwarf skeleton still clutching a +1 warhammer. It seems the bludgeoning weapon didn’t help the unfortunate victim cut his way out of the worm’s gut.
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As Bella cuts the dried worm open, Vengis averts his gaze, not wanting to see the partially-digested dwarf.
"A terrible fate, to be sure," he muses.
Looking up toward the ceiling, and the Gauntlight that must be above them, he says "If the light itself is causing things to animate, we must figure out how to turn it off. Perhaps this is more difficult than it seems, but perhaps we could turn it off by destroying it."
While he is grateful for nothing happening, Grem looks at the dwarf body with a mild sadness in his face. "No way for a dwarf to go," he rumbles, mostly to himself. He picks up the hammer and gives it a few swings, but shakes his head. "Never did get a feel for these things. If no one else can use it, we should find some way to make use of it. He'd want that." Grem gestures to the body, indicating who he's referring to.
Zetty moves around the room, focusing on her detect magic spell each time, trying to work out if the magic she sensed came from the warhammer that was trapped inside or if it was something else.
"I like that idea Vengis. Maybe there's a way to block it in the mean time, before we go down to turn it off? I'd hate for more undead to show up in town while we're wandering about here." She looks at the warped, writhing stone above and below and shakes her head. "But I guess stone doesn't stop it. Maybe a sheet of lead if we can find one here or in town? That usually blocks magic stuff."
She takes a few minutes to draw the desiccated remains of the worm and to capture the spiraling light as best as she can on the page.
When everyone was ready to move on, Bella explored through the door on the south side of the chamber.
This five-foot-wide hallway features three alcoves along each side. Stone sarcophagi stand upright within each.
As you enter the crypt and start looking around, a shadowy figure emerges from the central sarcophagus on the west wall. The feminine shade's eyes burn with white light as she floats towards you menacingly!
Before you can react, the shadow flies up to Bella. Negative energy courses through the halfling's body as the undead creature pulls on her shadow, trying to tear it free!