Thalasou stays well out of blast range of the door while Sara checks it out and opens it. Inside the room he helps the others search.
"A SOUP spoon!!!" Sara says in true and deep wonder. "I was hoping for the teleportation circle but this is worth the delay."
"What do you mean 'soup spoon'?" With a little magical detection, Thalasou figures it out and his eyes grow wide. "This is amazing. You know what would be even better? How about a dessert spoon." Thalasou grins eagerly.
"The sending scrolls were likely the Count's way of contacting that wizard. Let's go find that teleportation circle."
"Agreed." Aerith said. Such baubles as the spoon were common enough at her parent's estate, so finding them did not cause any excitement. That is, except over the idea of being able to use them again. Being subjected to human cooking (especially commoner human cooking) felt like a severe punishment had been imposed on her. It was truly worth the gold to alleviate such a heavy burden.
Capricia takes charge, leading the party back a ways to a door they'd skipped previously. She tries to help Sara look for any traps on the door.
Hargus followed along with Capricia.
Sara hunkers down in front of the door, looking at where Capricia points and comments as possible traps, "you could do this, you know? But..." she finishes up, and flashes her friend a grin.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Capricia smirks while Sara works.
"I've got pretty sharp eyes and can spot traps just fine...but I don't have a clue how to disable them without springing them," the warrior admits. "I don't know a doohickey from a whoozeymuwhatzit from a...well, let's just say I'm not mechanically inclined!"
Thalasou trudges along behind. His anxiety grows and he expects that at any moment a whole unit of guards will come walking down one of the hallways and attack them all.
The chairs in this room are unusually sturdy and feature a motif of bear paws. This space serves as a waiting room, or perhaps a reading room.
Seeing her gnomish ally dutifully searching the room, she asked, as innocently as she could manage ”So…find any enchanted chairs?”
Capricia nods at Bimble's direction as she heads to the western double doors and helps Sara search for traps there. Another smile plays upon her lips when she overhears Aerith's quip to the gnome, but inside she's starting to get a bit worried at how long the search for the teleporter is taking.
Sara follows quickly behind Capricia and looks over the door.
As you begin to examine the chairs, one of the chairs transforms into a rather flat-looking wooden bear!
It growls and looks for a target to attack.
”Well!” Aerith exclaimed. Her joke suddenly didn’t seem so funny. She immediately weaved a spell…
It doesn't seem phased by the slumber hex.
Capricia recovers from her flabbergasted state rather quickly and takes the fight to the faux-bear, interjecting herself between it and Bimble (or Aerith) if possible before hacking at it. Her plant foot slips, however, and she misses her target badly!
for
"What, in the ever-loving biscuit, is that?" Sara exclaims with a questioning look at Bimble in hopes he can enlighten them all. She hurries to the other side of the chair if she can, to flank with Carpricia, made even better by her amazing distraction techniques of faking to foot slip.
Thalasou doesn't hesitate. He pulls up the crossbow, aims, and fires.
Hargus moves forward and tries to smash the bear chair.
Sara and Capricia both miss with their attacks, as does Thalasou with his bolt. Hargus manages to slam it with a very solid thud, although it doesn't look like it did much more than a scratch.
The bear swipes at Hargus. He narrowly dodges the first attack, but the second is more easily deflected.
Seeing that her magic had no effect on the construct, Aerith decided to instead use it on someone of flesh and blood. Capricia, to be precise. She subtly altered the fickle winds of chance to make them more favorable to the swashbuckler.
Hargus frowns and continues hacking at the wooden bear, as well as bashing it with his buckler.
Hargus hits it with two solid strikes, but both barely scratch it.
"This chair bear is rather hard to hurt. Hmmm..." Sara pauses in thought, not to contemplate how to hurt this thing, but at the amazingness of "CHAIR BEAR! I love that name."
Capricia regains her footing and delivers a pair of much-improved strikes, the first of which is borderline glorious.
for
for
for
Thalasou loads another bolt in the crossbow and fires again.
Capricia whittles the wooden bear into a series of toothpicks. As it falls, Thalasou plants a bolt in it's face, as if to accentuate the point.
The wood golem is no more.
Realizing that the manor was going to be more dangerous than it first appeared, Aerith continued to weave her magics, enveloping herself and the majority of her comrades in protective enchantments.
Thalasou takes a few moments to calm down before he speaks. "You're so right, Bimble. Capricia, that was awesome."
Sara smoothers her friend in a congradulatory hug. "best part about enemies like this, is the clean up is sooooo much easier." she uses her foot to sweep the chair bits out of the way. "Now where?"
Capricia blushes at all the praise from her comrades.
Guess I really have improved by leaps and bounds since I've come into Lady Lotheed's service, the young swordswoman reflects. My instructor back on Little Oppara would be proud of my progress!
In response to Sara's question, Capricia moves to the door leading west and does a quick scan for traps.
H24. County Archive
The shelves and files of the archive room contain a record of every major birth, death, contract, and financial transaction dating back centuries, with spillover shipped to Cassomir’s provincial library for long-term storage.
H25. Chapel
The palace’s private chapel is dedicated to Abadar but also includes many distinctly Shelynite motifs, such as blooming roses and songbirds.
Thalasou rummages through the papers in the archive room but doesn't notice anything interesting.
Bimble finds nothing more searching the area, and Thalasou gets bored reading dry records, not even sure what he might be looking for.
Darkwood paneling reaches high up to a frescoed ceiling depicting First Emperor Taldaris’s noble conquest of Cassomir. A desk, carved from dark purple wood to look like owls with their spread wings supporting the work surface, occupies the center of the room, while plush, burgundy chairs surround the remaining space. A family portrait on the western wall depicts a dozen scowling nobles—a teenaged Bartelby among them—and a single hound, though the dog is clearly a later and more amateurish addition to the otherwise high-quality artistry.
"I hope the desk does not come alive. It is much too lovely to hack into bits." Sara gushes a bit, before starting to look through the drawers.
Hargus takes a quick look through the county archives.
He then joins the others in the Count's office.
"This is a fancy office and some nice paintings. Those are all nobles, right? They don't look very happy. And I wonder what that dog is doing there." Thalasou steps closer to the portrait to examine it.
"I imagine this is Count Lotheed's office. These must be pictures of the Lotheed family."