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Mazul doesn't try to hide her smile at the mention of 'shiny gems.' Hopefully the mitflits think it's a smile of greed rather than of amusement over the thought of this group having anything more valuable than pebbles.
Nevertheless it does seem like Boss Skrawng is being (mostly) honest. At least about the potential dangers in the keep. "Thank you very much, Boss Skrawng. We'll try to avoid your scorpion and Buzzybuzz." (She doesn't like bugs, but the childish part of her still squeals with joy over the sheer cuteness of that name.) "You say the mushroom-eyed people chased you up here a few days ago? Did that happen around the same time the ghost lights started appearing in the lighthouse?"
Mazul doesn't believe in coincidences. If these 'mushroom-eyed people' appeared at the same time the lighthouse started glowing, then they might end up clearing out the dungeons after all. Shiny gems or no.
Skrawng nods. "Yes! The lights started showing up a week or so after those ugly jerks chased us out of our previous home!"
Not immediately then, but close enough for her to still think there is a connection. "Depending on what we find in the lighthouse itself, it might be worth a look." Mazul gives Boss Skrawng a slight bow, (hoping the human gesture translates). "Thank you again. I can't promise we'll clear out the dungeons, but if we do we'll be certain to let you know so you can return to your homes."
She tilts her head towards the others. "Are we ready to check out the lighthouse?"
You head back to the keep's main room and to the door that leads into the lighthouse. The door is stuck shut, but with enough heavy shoves, you are able to open it, causing it to fall to sodden pieces.
The smooth walls of this circular room are painted a light gray with no indication of seams between blocks of stone. A set of iron stairs winds upward along the curved walls before terminating at a trap door in the ceiling nearly a hundred feet above. A red bloodstain glistens on the floor at the room’s center, as though a human-sized creature bled to death on the floor very recently, despite there being no body in sight.
Proto-Wan allows Mazul to make the departing comments to Boss Skrawng and his skrawnlings.
Proto-Wan glances at the blood stain on the floor as he steps inside around the pieces of the disintegrated door, khakkara at his side.
"It appears that a re-decoration scheme has been abandoned in favour of the pre-determined drab grey," he breezes with a chortle. He turns back to the group. "Going up?"
Akkaboo remains quiet even after the group leaves the court of Boss Skrawng, very glad the mitflits didn't discover she took some of their magic pixie mud earlier. Peering around Wan's armored legs, she examines the bloodstain. "You don't think someone lit the light lamp up above and then fell down and bled to death because they were all alone and then some big bug came and ate their body, do you?" she asks nervously, glancing around the room with a worried expression.
"If that was the case, dear goblin-kins, then that bug would have to be up there," Wan points at the trapdoor far above. "Either that, or hiding in plain sight. That door was - figuratively - rubbish! And it is now literally rubbish."
The tengu walks to the foot of the winding iron stairs.
The bloodstain certainly appears unnatural. The fresh blood has periodic ripples; its slick, red surface appears like the top of a deep pool, but it seems to be harmless.
The iron stairs creak and sway alarmingly but are quite sound. Rows of black metal bars encase the circular chamber at the top of the stairs like a cage. Shimmering waves of force flicker between the bars and gives the illusion that softly glowing glass encases this entire area. The room appears empty save for a human‐sized encasement of glass and iron that flickers and glows with an unsettling, almost nauseating pale blue shimmer—Gauntlight’s lantern!
Akkaboo can certainly tell that the lantern is magical. The glow around it is faint, and you are unable to draw any conclusions about its source or what it might portend. It is likely that the glow will be more intense at night, though. Returning here later might yield more clues.
Zin peers over at the light. "There doesn't appear to be anyone here. Any of you able to turn the light off by chance?" He looks down the stairs and trap door to see if they line up with the fresh puddle of blood to see if someone fell.
The bloodstain is not directly under the trapdoor. It doesn't seem likely that somebody falling would have caused it.
"So more kobolds, and a swamp dragon? Probably a Black Scale... that could be bad." Toska thinks to himself as he scurries after the others.
"And now.... ominous bloodstains. Fun."
Mazul freezes for a moment at the sight of the blood, then cautiously approaches. "That's a lot of blood. Like, really a lot. More than one person could survive losing a lot. It doesn't make sense." On a hunch she kneels down next to the blood pool, grabs a nearby piece of debris, and pokes the pool with it.
"Possibility A: this is a real bloodstain from a real person who just happens to have been dragged off without leaving any sort of trail. Seems unlikely. Possibility B: this bloodstain doesn't actually exist and it's one of those illusion things meant to scare people off. Possibility C: neither of the above and it's some other sort of magic thing." She pulls out the board and examines it. Real blood would cling to the board. Fake magical blood probably wouldn't.
Once at the top Mazul circles around the eerie light, biting her lip. "So we found it, but are no closer to figuring out what's causing it." She isn't entirely sure what she'd expected, but she knows what she'd hoped to find; a neat explanation for what was causing the lighthouse to glow tied up with a pretty ribbon explaining how to stop it.
"Those 'shiny gems' Boss Skrawng talked about probably don't exist, but we might want to check out the dungeons anyway while we're here. I don't like the sound of those mushroom-eyed people." She gives the light one last distrustful look, then turns away.
”Is the trapdoor up there stuck or something?” Wan calls out to Mazul. ”It would seem that we might want to check on the other side of a door, given that we’ve already set the precedent of destroying other doors to explore.” Proto-Wan gestures at the remains of the lighthouse door on the ground.
Zin stares at the dim light unsure what to do with it. "Seems we may have to come back at night when it is brighter." He looks around. "I am up for looking below while we wait."
"I mean, OF COURSE we've explored past the trap door - whatever are you on about, Mazul?" Wan covers for his gaff by dunking his khakkara into the centre of the pool of blood to try to determine its depth. "This looks to be deeper than it is --- ew." The tengu unceremoniously scrapes the gore off of his cudgel and onto the wall.
"SIGH," Wan sighs, kicking his head-piece back so as to make eye contact with the others. "It appears vanishingly unlikely that we'll be able to avoid these 'mushroom people', doesn't it?"
"Probably magic, I wouldn't poke-" Toska starts before he sees all of his compatriots prodding and touching the blood. Thankfully none of them had tried licking it.
Yet.
"If the person was dragged off for disposal the blood would have smeared and trailed," he belatedly responds to Mazul's suggestions in order to refocus.
At Wan's complaints the kobold just shrugs. "Expect the worst, so you're always prepared. And sometimes surprised."
"Rather fight mushrooms than dragons..." he adds under his breath.
"Dissolved, maybe?" Akkaboo suggests from safely behind Wan's legs. "Or maybe it came up from the ground. We... could look below?" Her voice trembles as she eyes the pool again, clearly not really wanting to see what kind of underground aquifer of blood might be present in this ruin.
"I'm sure it's fine, the blood is probably just an illusion anyway." Which actually doesn't help, come to think of it. An illusion implies a caster, which implies someone trying to scare away visitors.
Maybe someone is using illusions because they're too weak to face the group in actual combat? That could definitely be it, and is far more reassuring than some of the other options.
"Anyway! Just because the mites don't like the mushroom-eyed people doesn't mean they'll cause us any harm. For all we know the mites attacked them first. They might even be friendly!" Mazul gives Akkaboo a wink while she talks. (She very much doubts that anything in this keep is friendly, but wants to reassure the nervous goblin as best as she can.)
She turns her attention to Zin. "You're the resident expert on weird glowing spiritual stuff. If you think coming back later will make a difference, I trust you. And the dungeons are basically the only other lead we have. So unless anyone has any other ideas, I'm going to start heading that way. Okay?"
Mazul heads through the door to the east. The ceiling has collapsed in the southwest corner of this room. The walls bear several shelves, but the books and papers once kept here have rotted to ruin long ago, as have the desk and chair in an alcove to the northeast. Another door exits to the north.
Searching the room, the half-orc notes a hidden drawer that has fallen partially open, revealing a few still-potent alchemical elixirs: a lesser comprehension elixir, a minor elixir of life, and a lesser skeptic’s elixir.
She also discovers a hidden door in the east wall, where a rotating shelf functions as the door’s handle. Beyond, a flight of stairs leads down into the darkness...
"I do hope that dear Wrin recognises the efforts that we are going to in order to alleviate her fears ---- OOOOOH! A secret door! How WONDERFUL!" Wan's passive-obsessive sentiments break off as Mazul triggers the rotating shelf and opens the door onto the stairs.
Proto-Wan rushes over to the secret door, intent upon uncovering its secretive mechanical design. "Excuse me, dear Mazul - just a moment, please."
"Well hello there," Mazul purrs as she uncovers the elixers. She doesn't know much about magic, but she does know that elixers sell for a pretty penny. Admittedly a penny that probably won't amount to much when split five ways, but still. It's a good sign that there might be even more valuable objects ahead. If the looters had missed the elixers in front of the hidden door, who knew what might still be behind it?
She's also pleased to have found the hidden door in the first place. Without her, who knows if the rest of the group would have ever been able to make their way downstairs?
"Ta da! One dungeon entrance coming right up. Or down, depending on how you look at it." Her grin is smug. "Shall we go pay our mushroom people a visit?"
Zin smiles, "Great find Mazul." He looks back up at the glowing light, his face grim as he is just as lost on how it could have been lit. "Any one of these creatures could have accidentally ignited it." Opening his palm Zin releases the four large glowing stars down below to illuminate their path. "Let's hope they are just as friendly." Zin looks back once more at the light before descending. This nagging feeling at the back of his mind that he is missing something. A connection between the voices from above and this.
"Great work, Mazul," Toska says before blinking a few times to readjust his eyes as Zin summons light for the others.
"Hopefully it's just the mushroom people, and they're friendly. And not the dragon's lair. With a not-friendly dragon in it."
The stairs lead down into a small, dark room. Three plain wooden chairs sit along the east wall of this otherwise empty room. A door leads out to the west, but a closer look reveals that the middle chair is leaning against a portion of the wall that pivots outward. It is a secret door that leads into a long, ten-foot-wide hallway with 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.
Zin looks at the pale green light as it catches his eye. "This appear to be similar to the light coming from the Gauntlight?" He kneels down. "Or something else entirely..."
Zin isn't sure what to make of the light. It is definitely suspicious, though!
Wan geeks out again at the second discovered secret door. "It's like this place was built with my aesthetics in mind!" he murmurs to himself as he analyses the pivoting wall section.
Entering into the large hallway, Wan gives a low whistle as he cocks his head at the ceiling. "I cannot speak for you all, but I eat my vegetable regularly and I've never encountered a mushroom large enough to reach up there. And what was hanging from that ceiling, hmmmm?" Proto-Wan moves into the room and tries to reconstruct what once was hanging from the ceiling from the shattered fragments on the floor.
Glancing up from his investigation at Zin's words, Wan mutters, "All in good time, my pale darling..."
It appears that the empty frames may have once housed some small, swiveling devices, but it is impossible to tell exactly what they might have been.
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"Someone has been tinkering in the realm of the mechanique fantastique!" Wan announces melodramatically. "I will have words with whosoever has mercilessly destroyed these contraptions."
Mazul is also excited by the discovery of another sealed door, albeit for completely different reasons. "You'd think any explorers would have just left the doors open. I mean, what reason could they have to close them? Unless..." (she pauses for dramatic effect), "Unless no explorer has ever made it here!" She rubs her hands together in glee. Sure, she's mostly here as a favor to Wrin, but if she happens to make a little money along the way she certainly won't complain.
She coughs when Zin mentions the light. "Right. Of course. We're here investigating the light. We should probably head towards that. The light. Which is the opposite of the advice people usually give, but hey. Desperate times and all that."
As they move on Mazul casually makes her way to Akkaboo. She could of course direct her question to Wan, but she suspects she wouldn't understand the answer. Meanwhile Akkaboo's smart, and she's Wan's friend, and she usually uses words Mazul understands...
"What the hell is 'mechanique fantastique'?"
Wan looks up from his perusal of the rubbish on the floor as Mazul moves past him down the corridor. He huffs, replacing his head-piece as Proto-Wan, and stands up, ready to follow where Mazul goes.
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!
"Otari? Like the town? or the Founder?" Zin is confused as the words form a glowing string of words across the frame. He is even more surprised when the words slide off the wall and quickly rush across the floor.
Without a thought Zin takes off after the word serpent. "Don't let it out of your sight!" He rushes to the door that the words slithered underneath and shoves it open.
Mazul pokes her head through the door, only to see a strange light form into...words? Which then turn into a ribbon of light and start moving?!
"What the actual f@$+!?"
She still considers Zin the resident expert on glowing spiritual things, so when he calls to chase after the light she follows. "By the way, what do we plan to do when we catch it?"
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!
"No clue, but we need to see where it goes before it disappears!" Zin had no plan and truly no idea what was happening. What he was sure of was the voices from above were leading him to the truth.
Zin skids to a halt as the skeletal bones begin to pull themselves together. "Oh no!" He slams to the ground as he can't stop in time where he begins scrambling to his hands and feet where he shields himself, swinging his sword at the pile of bones.
AC 16 (Enfeebled 2; -3 to saves, Grapple, Shoved and Forced Movement)
HP 14/14 | +0 Temp HP
Hero Points 1/3
Focus Points 2/2
Curse Stage: Moderate
Spells (1) 2/2 |
"Wait, are we stopping? We're stopping. Because there's a big scary skeleton right there. Got it." Mazul skids to a stop close to the western door, promptly dropping behind the ruined table in the hope of hiding from the newly arisen minotaur skeleton. In case that plan fails, she also raises her shield protectively.
Wan pops open his head-piece as he gazes in astonishment at the glowing words. "Well, now we have an answer for Wrin! The green, glowing energy is a signal of distress from someone or something that once was Otari. I am glad that we've solved the mystery---"
The ribbon starts moving. Of deeper concern is that the elf chases after it.
"Zin, your thorough nature in this effort is most appreciated and will be commended by....he's not listening to me, is he? " The tengu lets out an irritated chirp before, with a heavy sigh, fitting Proto-Wan's helmet back into place and chasing after him, weapon drawn.
As Zin skids to a halt and lashes out with his sword at the bones, the tengu whines. "This is what you always get when you chase glowing green words that turn into snakes through doors of abandoned keeps!" As he pronounces the sentence that has never been spoken before, a fast-paced whirring sound emanates from Proto's form, and Wan steps into position on the opposite side of the elf.
Proto-Wan clucks metallically to himself. "I must've de-calibrated the evecular nozzle..."
”Yeah, chasing after the dead lights was such a good plan,” Toska thinks aloud as they come across the skeleton beginning to reanimate. ”Spirits and Skeletons, what next?”
Dropping his sword he takes out his mail and moves up on the unruly bones.
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Akkaboo rounds the corner, then swiftly ducks back behind it as she spots the moving bones. "Eeeek!" she shrieks. "What is that!?" Quickly she conjures a translucent disk of force to hide behind.
Akkaboo knows that the giant skeleton, like most skeletal undead, is mindless and resistant to cold, electricity, and fire. It also resists damage from slashing and piercing weapons. As she and Mazul find places to hide, the rest of the group moves in to attack. Zin and Toska miss, but Wan lands a solid blow!
The skeletal minotaur assembles itself and rises up to a towering height, brandishing its horns!
Toska lifts his head up, and up, and up as the Minotaur forms. ”Show off.”
Focusing his rage, or rather, annoyance and spite, he tapped into his strife and drive as memories about harrowing tales of the dragons of old filled him with conviction. ”Know your place!”
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Mazul takes full advantage of the fact that the minotaur formed facing away from her. She quickly grabs her light mace and strikes before the creature has a chance to react.
Which is great in theory, but in practice doesn't work out so well. Mazul is not used to fighting things bigger than her, and it shows in her technique. Or lack thereof.
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While Mazul misses, Toska scores two powerful hits, each one bolstered by positive energy. The skeleton is badly damaged, but it lowers its horns to gore the kobold!
It scores a critical hit, eviscerating Toska and dropping the barbarian! It then turns on Wan, tearing into the tengu as well.
"Toska!" Mazul is horrified by how quickly the solid kobold falls. She's grown quite reliant on him and his ability to kill anything they encounter.
If he's down that just mean she has to step up and kill this thing quickly so Zin can heal him. She bares her tusks in a feral snarl as she continues swinging wildly.
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Mazul lands two good hits on the skeleton’s vulnerable joints, causing it to collapse to pieces!
Zin shields himself as chunks of bone go fling around the room. "Apologies, though we can't let the signal out of our sights...." Zin stops short as he finds Toska lying in a pool of his own blood. Zin rushes to his aid.
Kneeling down beside him a small radiant light seeps into the injury while Zin pulls another roll of bandages out of his pack.
Seeing that Toska is going to be alright for now Zin tosses the last of the bandages to Wan. "Toss that around you injury."
AC 16 (Enfeebled 1; -2 to saves, Grapple, Shoved and Forced Movement)
HP 14/14 | +0 Temp HP
Hero Points 1/3
Focus Points 2/2
Curse Stage: Minor
Spells (1) 1/2 |
Toska twitches and blinks as Zin stabilizes him and brings him to. ”Did anyone loot me?” he groggily asks.
Finding all his possessions till on his person, Toska stands and rejoins the party as Zin leads the way after the light. Beyond the door, stairs lead down to a muddy beach overlooking a flooded cavern. The elf 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. The stairs beyond the secret door lead down to a hall. Across the hall is another staircase leading back up. The hall ends at a door to the east, while to the west, thick clouds of white mist fill the hall entirely, making it difficult to discern any details.
Splintered, rotten wood lies scattered around this hall. Of the glow, there is no sign.