Kvit's whiskers twitch about as he looks into the alcove. "You're close Glyozara. I think this is actually the remains of a teleportation circle. These grooves should have been full of silver but it looks like someone beat us to it. I wonder where it used to go to..."
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"...from the " definitively "Summoning is merely Teleportation at longer range" Lough backs away from Kvit and takes physical sides with Giyozara to illustrate his point!
Lough has never actually heard of the "Nightmare Realm", but especially with the gnome's backing, has convinced himself that not only does it exist, that these runes lead back to there, and furthermore, that "she" is from there as well... that "voice" in his head...
If Kka's eyes rolled any harder, they would pop out of her head. "Nightmare Realm indeed! Lough needs some serious help in the head department. It's only a matter of time before he tries to kill us in one of his deliriums."
"Okaaay. So let's table the Nightmare Realm for now and get on with searching the rest of this plaace. If Kvit wants to go for a swim in the pond with our frogodile friend, then all the best to him, but I'd rather staay dry for the time being."
Kka then slides down the wall to where Giyozara is standing and does her usual door routine to make sure everything is good to go. "Hey Lough! How's that shoulder holding up? We might be needing again here." She stands aside to let Lough go though first and follows quietly on his heels with shortsword in hand.
...If Kvit wants to go for a swim in the pond with our frogodile friend, then all the best to him, but I'd rather staay dry for the time being."[/b]
"Oh nonono. I didn't say I was going to go in there. Do you know how long it'd take to clean and dry my fur? No thank you."
Sam follows, with her bow half-drawn. She makes sure that Lough won't be in the line of fire in case she needs to make a snap shot.
"So many doors." This place is truly quite large isn't it?"
"Truly," Sam agrees, "Makes you wonder who built this place. "
"I've got your back, Lough, " Sam says soothingly, "Just make sure to duck if something unfriendly rushes us."
Being somewhat of a medical professional, Sam knows that soothing words can have an effect on somewhat wild-eyed individuals.
Kka waits at the door, taping her hooves impatiently. <clop, clop> "Come on Lough. This door isn't going to open on its own. Get your aact together and let's go in. Is everyone ready?"
"If Lough doesn't pull himself together soon and open this door, I'm going in without him. The longer we take to clear this place, the more chance something will find us first." <clop, clop>
Kvit is partially okay with Kka and Lough's shenanigans with doors as it gives him more time to poke around in the rubble for anything valuable. However, he definitely doesn't want to still be here after dark but it's increasingly looking like they will be.
He nods at Sam as he makes another stroll about the room. Lowering his voice he say, "Good job Doc, he definitely has several screws loose and it's letting all the marbles out." Squeakers snickers from nearby pile of debris. "Hah! Good one boss"
"Yeah, hey, if you two are done playing with the doors let's try opening it."
Lough opens the door. Thankfully, this door doesn't fall apart, explode, or any of the variants you've experienced before.
The collapsed ceiling at the middle of this room has left a ragged hole in the wooden roof. Rotten tapestries, their designs completely obscured by mold, hang in tatters on the walls between arrow slits and ruined side tables. The remains of a fancy dining table lie mostly pulverized by the fallen ceiling.
Kka follows Lough into the room and seeing no immediate threats, gets down to thoroughly searching the rubble for anything of interest.
Giyozara looks around and frowns, then takes out her biogrophy of the Roseguard and flips through it.
"Kvit, does this make any sense to you? The book just says this was a lighthouse but look. Moat, drawbridge, massive dining hall, arrow slits?. This wasn't a lightouse, this was a keep-maybe even a full-blown castle that just happened to have a lighthouse in it. Am I wrong?"
Kvit frowns, thinking. "While it doesn't make a lot of sense, historically the re-use of large abandoned stone buildings is very common. Why build a whole light house when you can just put a big light at the top of an old castle's turret?"
He starts to rummage through the room with Squeaker alongside him. He mutters to himself a bit as he goes. "Still just a bunch of nothing...Oh look, more moldy bits of something"
"Hey lough, there's some more mushrooms over here. Sam, do you think any of this stuff is medicinal?"
Lough and Kka walk through the rubble, looking for mushrooms. Immediately, six spectral kobolds rise up from the rubble and start screaming and yowling. You can't make out exact words, as all six of them yell at one another, half in panic, half in confusion.
Initiative!
Kvit
Cherry Berry
Sam
Kka
Kobolds
Lough
Giyozara
Kvit, Cherry Berry, Sam, and Kka may act!
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"Zoiks!"
Lough's mind races so fast: Who are these ghosts? What do they want? Why are they here? What were they doing? A small network of veins pulse along his temple as his body redirects all the blood to his overactive brain, robbing the rest of him of timely reflexes to respond with his outer extremities.
Freezing in panic!
↺) Shield Block (Hardness 5, HP 20/20)
"Look out! Spirits! I- I- uh- I don't even know if my magic can affect them! Squeakers, do you know anything!?" He runs into the corner. "I hope this works!" And hurls a glob of acid at the mass of spirits.
"Lough! Snap out of it! They're just ghosts, just uh, swing at them"
Kvit's aim is true and splashes one of the ghosts, but it doesn't seem to bother them at all. They're still yapping at each other, the din in the room unbearably loud. The room is a vortex of chaos, with kobolds flying throughout the chamber and chasing each other, flying through everyone without even noticing your presence.
There might be more going on than a simple fistfight...
"Oh, this might be something I can handle."
◆Stride to my current position.
◆◆ Good Damage
Kka is startled by the appearance of the ghostly kobolds and shrinks back from them nervously as she braces for their attacks. But the attacks never come; the spirits don't seem to register the group's presence; not even after Kvit's serious provocation with his acid attack. Kka begins to think that perhaps they were not dealing with actual creatures, undead or otherwise, but by some spectral re-enactment of people who had died tragic deaths here and not been properly put to rest.
"Uh, guys? If this is whaat I think it is, then I don't think attaacking it with weapons is going to do much for us."
Over many years of conversations with Wrin, Kka had picked up a fair bit of religious training from the tiefling elf, including some instruction on how to put simple wayward spirits to rest. "I hope this stuff Wrin taught me works, otherwise we're seriously screwed here."
"Hold up a moment! I'm going to try a simple banishment ritual to see if it does the job, otherwise we maay want to maake a run for it." Turning to the wailing kobolds, she fixes them with her red eyes, and raising her hands high, says, "By the power of Pharasma, I order you restless spirits to leave this plaace. The Mother of Souls awaits you in the Boneyard to give you your finaal judgement and put you to rest. Begone. "
Cherry Berry forms a lance of holy energy and chucks it at one of the kobolds. Like Kvit, her aim is true, but it simply passes through the kobolds and shatters against the opposite wall.
Kka recognises these as indeed not actual creatures, but as psychic imprints of the last moments of their lives. Her prayer has the desired effect: the ghostly kobolds hear the words, breathe a sigh of relief (did the room got a bit colder all of a sudden?), and sink back into the rocks.
Combat over!
Now that you know what to look for, you indeed see several bones sticking out of the rubble.
By the way, the Religion check was 21, so well done! :P
Sam steps to the door, bow half drawn in hand. She drops into her archer stance and fires two arrows at the spectral kobold in front of her.
Kka is somewhat surprised that her begones did the trick. "Holy Pharasma! I can't believe that worked. That Wrin really knows her stuff." Doing her best to hide her surprise, she stands and brushes the dust off her clothes nonchalantly, as if this was something she did every day. "That should taake caare of them for a little while, but to properly put their souls to rest we'll need to find their remains." She points to the bones she sees sticking out of the rubble. "That's probaably some of them there. These types of spirits tend to stick close to where they died." Then, turning pensive, she adds, "I wonder whaat a bunch of kobolds were doing up here anyway? Up to no good I bet. Looks like they met a sticky end though."
Dodging some untimely arrows ("Whoa! Steady there Saam."), the rogue then gets down to the nasty business of extracting as many of the bones as she can from the rubble and then trying to figure out which of them might belong to kobolds. Good thing she'd spent a fair bit of time reading the anatomy books in the Dawnflower Library, or she wouldn't be able to tell her tibias from her ulnas.
Kvit watches the spirits settle back into the ground at Kka's words looking confused and a little embarrassed. "That's uh. That's it? Maybe dealing with this sorceress's ghost won't be a problem then."
He sets about looking through the room and sees Kka collecting the bones. "Is that necessary for something? Seems like they've already left."
After taking some time, Kka assembles most of six small skeletons back together. They've died too long ago to determine their cause of death, but the collapsed ceiling was certainly at a later date.
Kvit and Sqeakers search the room. They find 3 gp, 20 sp, a box with components for a caltrop snare, a Wolf Fang, and a vial of thick black liquid with "YUM" written on it.
Giyozara rummages through his Roseguard book and gets a quizzical expression on his face.
”None of this is in the tale of the Roseguard. And what would cause a bunch of Kobolds to form a haunt? Doesn’t something like. . . Super bad and unfair have to end a life to create a haunt? I dunno, I’m not an expert or anything, but it seems to me this, combined with the whole this-is-a-castle thing, is really making me think something else is up here.”
Kvit takes a closer look at the vial. "Those mitflits think they're so funny. This is obviously not "Yum". Looks like venom of some kind, possibly black adder if I had to guess by the color and the viscosity."
Kvit looks at Giyozara with a raised eyebrow. "maybe you're reading too much into this? If this place was inhabited by an evil sorceress then there are tons of ways those things could have died. Or maybe it was the so-called heroes from before. Slaughtering them and leaving them to rot "
Kka looks down with no small satisfaction at the carefully assembled skeletons of several small humanoids. "Looks like there were six of them, which maatches the number of kobold specters that we saaw. From the look of the bones, I'd say they've been here a loong time." She puts her hands on her hips and falls silent. "Uh. Now what do we do?" Kka racks her bird brain to try and remember what Wrin said to do with the physical remains to permanently pacify the associated souls.
While her brain is being racked, Kka sees Lough snag the caltrops snare from Kvit. "Hey Lough, you might as well taake the Wolf Fang talisman as well while you're aat it. It'll work best for you." "Just don't 'accidently' trip one of us when you activate it."
She also gives the vial a glance, but doesn't recognize it. "Not sure I like the look of that vial though. Anyone know whaat it is? Thaat label looks sus."
When Kvit recognizes the contents of the vial, Kka's eyes light up and she sidles up to the wizard. "Black adder venom you say? That's good stuff. Are you likely to use it?" She looks at the ratfolk expectantly.
Kvit looks at the hopeful tengu and hands the vial over. "Most likely not. I'd rather not get close enough to something to use it. And you're right about this talisman. Lough! catch!" As he tosses it to the distracted fighter...
Making happy cooing noises, Kka takes the vial from Kvit and tucks it into a pocket where she can get to it quickly.
The racking of her brain finally produces results. "Oh! I remember now," she exclaims, then realizing she said it out loud, continues in a normal voice, "Um... I mean. Burning the bones down to ash will free the kobold spirits from this room and aallow them to head to the Boneyard. Anyone have a quicky fire spell availaable?"
"No? How inconvenient. Oh well, if you want a job done right..." She finds a dry corner of tapestry and piles the bones on it. She then pulls out her Flint and Steel and after a few strikes, the tapestry catches fire. Pretty soon there is nothing but a pile of ash where the bones used to be. "There! That should do it." She looks up at the smoke exiting through the open ceiling and waves. "Bye bye now, you unhaappy dead kobolds."
She puts away the Flint and Steel and takes her shortsword in hand. "Where to next? How about we go though that door there?" She heads over to the door in the south wall and goes through her usual door checking routine.
As the smoke clears, you feel a pressure falling off your shoulders you hadn't even noticed before, as if the haunt in this room was weighing you down. The room feels more comfortable now, somehow.
"That was a very kind thing to do Kka." Cherry says. "I guess I got over-eager. I will have to do better."
Cherry looks around the room. "Hmm, this might be a safe place to set-up camp if we need to in the future. And given the size of the structure, we might need to. Let's make sure to close the doors as we leave to reduce the chance of something else moving in."
At Cherry's suggestion that they might use the kobold room to camp at the complex, Kka gives an involuntary shiver. The thought of staying overnight at the Gauntlight does not appeal to her, but if they're forced to do so, then this room was as defensible a location as they're likely to find. "Good idea Cherry, but I really hope it doesn't come to thaat."
Kka looks satisfied and steps aside from the door. "Looks clean to me. Ok Lough, same drill as before. You first and I follow."
Lough opens the next door. Again, Lough has to apply some force to open the door that has swollen stuck in its frame, but the door opens without any problems.
A collapsed wooden staircase in the northeastern corner ofthis room winds up to a moss‑shrouded hole. The expanse of the Fogfen is visible through a total collapse in a stone wall to the west. A dead frog the size of a horse lies sprawled in this collapse, its back legs bitten off at the hips.
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"No thank you. I do not want to sleep here. Under any circumstances" his tone is almost petulant, but below that, a thick layer of fear.
Lough nods to Kka and proceeds to open the door, shield at the ready. Seeing the creature, he startles "I've seen this beast before! He followed me!"
It is unclear whether or not even our paranoid hero believes himself, or is mixing his terrible memories together. In either case, he avoids the amphibian.
You do see slight movement below the skin, as if something's still inside the frog, trying to break free.
"Draw your weapons." Cherry says to the party. "Something in that corpse is moving."
Kvit doesn't want anything to do with whatever bit a giant frog in half and stays back behind the rest of the group. At Cherry's warning he takes a stance to start casting unsure of what might appear.
In a lowered voice "What do you think it is? More mitflits?"
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"I am immune to mitflit magic!" Lough proudly declares.
He readies his shield to defend himself against the swamp's denizens what crawled through that opening...
When you take a better look at the dead frog, you can see something straining against the skin of the creature. It looks like something (or multiple somethings) is trapped inside, pushing and contorting the frog in unnatural shapes as it wriggles about.