After a brief moment to exchange some discussion of the pros and cons of stopping to fix things, the group agrees that exploration should be done first. At Kuro's nod, they keep going eastward.
Kuro's axebeak has to squeeze through the narrow hall, but at the end it emerges with a pop of floofy feathers into the chamber beyond.
At the center of this room is a pit of flame, suffusing the area with a faint glow. A single passageway leads out (the way you came in).
As you start to enter, the fire's glow seems to dim a bit.
Greyveil and Kuro:
The dimming of the fire is not merely the fire growing low. It's actively turning out in response to your entrance, and you have a sense of a truly impenetrable darkness about to rush in, and you feel the whispers of wind against your face, you hear running water. You think this might be a haunt manifesting.
Greyveil and Kuro are up, restricted to a single action.
M Wayang Alchemist Male Wayang Alchemist 7|HP 60/45 |AC 22 /T 17/FF 17 F+7/R+11/W+3, +2 shadows | CMB +3 | CMD 19 |init +9 | Perc +14| condition:
Haunt! Use positive energy! Greyveil warns as he throws a holy water at what he believes is the source.
Holy Water, Range Tough:1d20 + 14 ⇒ (3) + 14 = 171d8 + 5 + 1 ⇒ (5) + 5 + 1 = 11This includes Point Bland Shot. If is withing 30' or can 5; step to be within 30' then great. Otherwise subtract 1 from both to hit and damage. And I hope I did not flub that to hit roll. It is a touch attack so maybe a 17 is good.
Greyveil, you are currently shaken, -2 to any d20 check basically.
None of you in the room can see, regardless of what senses you possess. Kuro can see, but only as far as into the room's entrance, where it becomes impenetrably black. Just clarifying, Kuro; axebeak is being left in the room?
I don't feel like spoiling this for three characters, so Kuro, just be aware that ICly you don't know or sense any of the following-- for you the chamber is black and silent.
For Greyveil, Gery, and Aatish... You feel you no longer stand on workedd stone, but on soil, earth studded with rocks and pine needles. The sound of the wind through tree branches keens in your ears. It's a cold night, and you have hours to go before sleep-- hours in the deep darkness of blindness, alone but for your....
...a bark rings out in the silence, and you smile slightly. The sound of the bark seems to roll over the terrain around you, bouncing off trees and rocks and a cliff, giving you awareness of where things are. Now you can 'see' the landscape ahead of you-- at least the shapes of it-- ah, the bark is warning you of the rough chasm ahead that splits the terrain at your feet. You'll have to vault it...
Gery, Greyveil, and Aatish must give me an Acrobatics check. I'm aware Greyveil is flying; I'll add a circumstantial bonus on my end for that. Aatish can use her riding dog's bonus if it is better than hers.
Kuro, you can take any action you might wish, just keep in mind you have no idea what's going on in the room ahead.
M Tengu 5|HP 36/36 |AC 27 /T 19/FF 14 F+5/R+12/W+3
Kuro will try to communicate with the message spell.
Regarding the axebeak. In a F2F game Kuro would have cast Carry Companion before entering the narrow halls and removed the axebeak from the board, but for now just let him join the others.
I'm okay with you having the retconned axebeak with you. It's not going to be able to participate in the haunt without you giving it instructions/riding it, so I'm fine with the idea that you cast CC before the narrow halls, but since you've been through a lot of narrow halls, that means that as a default when a battle/event happens upon entering a room, the axebeak won't be out/available.
Gery, Greyveil, and Aatish can hear Kuro's voice whispering in their ears, asking what's going on.
Aatish's dog rebels at the assault on its senses, and it's all she can do to keep it under control, let alone jumping the pit. Gery is stricken by the waves of grief and the supernatural blackness, and struggles with the jump. Kuro's voice seems to come from very far away.... but you can all hear what he says.
But Greyveil attempts to sail over the chasm. It seems a strange sensation, his own flight overlaid with the sensation of a young, powerful body making a leap of... blind faith, so to speak. He feels bunching muscle and sinew carry him into the air-- and his own magic, that sails him effortlessly through the sky-- doing the rest of it. He lands safely on the other side.
For a brief moment, it feels as though a tongue licks his fingers, in a greeting, and he 'sees' far ahead of him the distant firepit.
Greyveil understand that this haunt seems oddly different from others he has run into. No violent death or deep tragedy has caused an unquiet spirit here. It seems like there's nothing really necromantic at play, so positive energy won't do anything-- this seems rooted, however, in deep emotion, as if you are experiencing the same struggles that the Shoanti buried here once did.
The others (not Kuro though, unless he chooses to enter the chamber) appear side-by-side with Greyveil. Now, the three of them hear a sound of rushing water. Again, a single deep bark rings out, and you can 'feel' the shape of things around you: rocks, jumbled high and steep, broken tree trunks, water rushing white and frothing through the rapids. A bridge is needed, to cross the water...
Strength, Kn Engineering, or another skill (or spell) that you feel would be relevant in constructing a bridge. Again, I'll put in a bonus for Greyveil's flight, but it's not as simple as just getting to fly over the obstacle, unfortunately. It's a weird haunt, thanks for jumping through its hoops.
Greyveil considers the issue of the raging water before them, and grasps how to use some of the fallen logs to cross the rushing, roaring water. In the odd dream-state you have all found yourself, with blackness stretching off in all directions, Greyveil soars through the air, coordinating the repositioning of lumber, until the three of you can cross.
The firepit seems close, now-- just ahead, flickering, waiting.
As you cross the rapids, you feel a suggestion of warm fur against your fingers, a tail brushing your legs, and then gone once more. The blackness presses on all sides, vast and impenetrable. Then a third bark, and again you understand the shape in front of you-- a cliff's face, high and jagged, forbidding.
This time I need Climb, or I'll accept Acrobatics. Again, Greyveil's fly will grant a bonus on my end.
The riding dog, initially spooked by the strange setting, gets back under Aatish's firm hand. She is able to spur the dog to leap from ledge to ledge, switchbacking up the steep cliff-face, until she reaches the top! Gery and Greyveil are able to follow.
As they reach the top of the cliff, the strange blackness dissolves. Kuro can see them again, and they can see Kuro. Gery, Greyveil, and Aatish are right next to the firepit now. It burns with the steady light of magic, and directly next to the fire is a hollow as if something were supposed to rest there.
A sense of deep disquiet, of yearning loneliness and despair, still seems to thicken the air, here.
I'll assume Greyveil is carrying it then, unless Greyveil says otherwise.
The wolf statue is retrieved from the bag and placed carefully into the niche by the firepit. When you do so, there is a sensation as if the room itself had released a held breath, a soft sigh...
For a moment, you see/sense another scene overlaid on the room like a transparent film-- a clifftop with wind-bent pines, and a firepit that burns low and steady, banked against the wind, overlaid onto the real firepit. A majestic wolf lies next to this fire, and stands languidly, leaning forward to lick your hands/the hands of a Shoanti hunter who has just finished the arduous climb.
The view begins to recede, as if an the invisible eye watching the scene was circling and retreating from the forms of hunter and dog. You can briefly catch a glimpse of the hunter's face, their eyes filmed over with the milky white of blindness, their expression once again at peace now that their companion has been restored to them...
I'll move you onto the next chamber later today; posting from work as I get spare moments to do so.
Once they are sure of their senses, the agents double back to the central room with the sarcophagus, and this time follow the south-ward leading passage. It curves immediately westward, and leads you a shut door. When opened, you realize you are looking into the room that Hearth Keeper described as the memorial chamber for the four fallen warriors:
The room contains a pool that no doubt once contained water but is now dry and empty. Shoanti writing hangs over the dry pool, and the magic of comprehend languages reveals it to say "By these waters we overcame our enemies."
Each corner of the room contains a stele carved from an enormous bone to depict a Shoanti warrior in battle, in the stylized art of these battle-hardeened people. Before each stele is a small platform, or shelf, that presumably once held something.
Do you do anything in particular before entering this room?
Kuro suggests that the wooden items be ready and at hand, so that they can be restored to their proper places as quickly as possible. It seems sound advice, so each agent takes and holds one of the carved wooden items.
So the scenario doesn't explicitly state how large the steles depicting the warriors are/if you have to be within a certain distance to determine details like what weapon each corner is supposed to hold. I'm going to say that they're big enough you CAN see them from the door, and I'm also going to assume you're intelligent agents who can think tactically in terms of 'give the items in the far corners to the people who can get there fastest'.
On the map, 1 needs the bolas, 2 needs the earth breaker, 3 needs the klar, and 4 needs the bow. So I assume you'd be giving Gery the earth breaker, Greyveil the bow, and then potentially Kuro the bolas, and Aatish the klar-- it kind of depends if Kuro wants his mount back out or not as to whether he'd be faster than Aatish? I'll post either once people have decided that's okay order for the item distribution, or once I hit mid afternoon tomorrow. It's a tedious detail to slow us down, but it may also actually matter who is holding what, so.
M Tengu 5|HP 36/36 |AC 27 /T 19/FF 14 F+5/R+12/W+3
The extra speed the axebeak would give would kind of be nullified by the squeezing, but as Kuro moves 30 anyway, it seems that 1 would be reachable in a single move anyway? (If not Kuro will cast expeditious retreat to increase his speed to 60) I assume Greyfeil will activate his wings again? Kuro will also use his wand of shield.
Kuro Bolas to 1 Gery Earthbreaker to 2 Aatish Klar to 3 Greyveil Bow to 4
Based on what you can see from outside of the room before you enter it, yes, it is 30 feet of distance to corner #1; but you have some reasonable IC assumption based on the last room that, well, who knows what you'll experience when you enter it.
M Tengu 5|HP 36/36 |AC 27 /T 19/FF 14 F+5/R+12/W+3
GM Dien wrote:
Based on what you can see from outside of the room before you enter it, yes, it is 30 feet of distance to corner #1; but you have some reasonable IC assumption based on the last room that, well, who knows what you'll experience when you enter it.
Ok, Kuro will cast the expeditious retreat (or is it expeditious advance?) and shield
(It's not Gery's day. He's both slow to notice what's happening and slow to react...)
As you enter the room, sensation begins to overlay you-- scent first, the copper stink of blood, and the acrid tang of smoke, and the wet smells of churned mud. Vision comes next-- a grey sky overhead, stained dark with plumes of black smoke rising somewhere over the horizon. The weak sun glints off the shallows of the river, where you stand, shoulder to shoulder with your brothers-and-sisters in arms. All of you bleed from a dozen wounds already. The enemy dead lie all around you-- their bodies clogging the pink water and forming impromptu dams all around you. You cannot step without stepping on the lifeless or dying body of a hated Chelish invader...
...and yet still they come.
Another wave is gearing up for the river now. You see them cresting the hill, riding their horses that are clad in steel armor, the red symbol of the devil-chief upon them. Again their archers ready to pelt you all. Again their horses ready to charge down upon you.
You raise your hands to fight one more time-- but-- they are empty?! Where are your arms?
The vision is vivid, but you can still make out the faint shape of the room through it, like an afterimage behind your eyes. You can still make out the alcoves where each weapon needs to rest.
The entirety of the room is difficult terrain. Placing a weapon into the appropriate alcove requires a move action.
Round 1- Surprise Round Greyveil
Aatish
Kuro
'Chelish Soldiers'
Gery
Greyveil, Aatish, and Kuro can take a single action each. The three of you have recognized this as a haunt, and Greyveil knows that, like the last one, it is immune to positive energy.
Aatish: It's a surprise round; your dog cannot double move. The dog could single-move, and then you could theoretically fast dismount as a free and use your action to move, but at best that would get you adjacent, it looks like. And it doesn't look like you have Ride trained, so that'd be a fairly steep Ride check to make (DC 20, essentially a Dex check for you).
Can't access the scenario right now so I'll post in a few hours, but that'll give you time to determine if you want to try and do that
I adjust Aatish's position on the map as per above. If you want to try the ride check, we can retcon you being all the way in the corner, but either way you won't be able to slot the item this turn.
The three heroes rush into the room, augmented by magic in some cases. As they enter, they find themselves nearly tripping over the river choked with the dead and the thick oozing mud that exists at least spiritually, if not physically. Greyveil's wings of flight serve him well as he can sail over the battle entirely.
But despite your rushing, the hordes of the Chelish soldiers charge.... phantasms sweeping through the room with their spears flashing, the pennants of Asmodeus snapping in the air...
The four Shoanti are cut down like beasts. You feel the stab of ghostly weapons pierce your own bodies.
Kuro's magic and dodging help him avoid the Chelish weaponry. Greyveil dodges clumsy arrows that try to bring him down. But Aatish is struck by ephemeral blades.
Force damage to Aatish:1d8 + 1 ⇒ (6) + 1 = 7
Gery unfortunately doesn't get to act in the surprise round, having not made the original notice check. But now it is round 2: Kuro, Aatish, and Greyveil would be up again, this time with full round actions. It's meaningless really if Aatish managed to get up to the corner last turn or not, because this time nothing stops her from getting there. As per the Discord chat, I'm going to assume Kuro and Greyveil slot their items with a move (leaving a standard open) and that Aatish continues to her item and slots it, using her entire turn.
As each item is placed into its slot, the spectral Shoanti rise again from the battlefield-- this time clutching their weapons and bellowing defiant challenges to the circling Chelish ghosts. Three of them now stand armed! Only one man still needs his earthbreaker. But before Gery has a chance to slot it, the Chelish specters wheel and charge again.
M Tengu 5|HP 36/36 |AC 27 /T 19/FF 14 F+5/R+12/W+3
As I think Gery doesn't have the speed to reach his corner, Kuro will move there instead with his standard action. If Gery throws/drops the earthbreaker next to Kuro, Kuro will pick it up and slot it next round. The others can leave the room.
Condition: Male halfling fighter (Ustalavic duelist) 3 | HP 28/28 | AC 21/22 , T 15, FF 17 | F: +6, R: +5, W: +3 | CMD 17 | Perc. +4 | Init. +3
Looks like it will take Gery a double move to reach the alcove, so he can drop the weapon next to Kuro. Sounds like a good plan to me. Gery will also activate his corpse dodger ability as a swift action here.
Cool ability! I feel it should get to apply here, definitely. But if you want to save it for anything else in the scenario I will also allow that, since the threat will be neutralized before it attacks again.
The agents call out coordinating tactics-- Gery can move in and drop the earth breaker so that Kuro is ready to pick it up and put it in!
Just for bookkeeping: that would end round 2, we'd start round 3, then, and Kuro would be able to act again before the haunt, meaning...
Explore, report, and cooperate-- the four agents do a masterful job with the last part of this, forming an impromptu relay that gets the earthbreaker into Kuro's hands before the Chelish phantasms can charge again.
As he places the large weapon into the stele, all four of the weapons seem to glow for a moment, and the outlines of the Shoanti seem to solidify, almost near enough to touch. They gaze across time and space and seem, for a second, to actually see you-- a hint of a nod, a brief-if-stern smile-- and then they turn as one to face their enemy, this time with a kind of grim joy. Armed, they raise their bloodied weapons in defiant challenge. The Chelish horde thunders down the river bank, and as they do, a surge of water barrels down the river as well, called by the four voices of the Shoanti. It seems to resemble a giant snake, barreling down upon Shoanti and Chelish alike. The Shoanti welcome it with a cry of victory, and the water thunders past you and over you, battering you with imaginary force though it leaves no wounds.
When the vision clears, the room is empty of all the carnage you previously saw. The steles emit a faint glow of being at peace. The pool has magically been refilled-- the water looks inviting, though, crisp and clear.
I believe only Aatish took any damage there. Two charges of a CLW would see her healed (no need to roll), and not significantly interrupt your running buffs. I'll move you guys to the next room once I know if you're doing anything else in this room.
Female CN Humanoid (Gnome, Orc) follower of Gorum | Sorcerer 5 (Tattooed Sorcerer archetype / Orc bloodline) | HP 48/48 | ‘Besuuz’ Familiar HP 24/24 | AC 18, T 13, FF | CMD 10 | F: +8/+10 vs. death eff., R: 5, W: +6/+10 vs. fear | Init: +2 | Perc: +2, SM: +0, Dipl: +18, Bluff: +15 | Darkvision 60ft & Light Sensitivity | Spells: 1st 6/8, 2nd 2/5 | Reroll 1/1 | Ghermez (riding dog) HP 13/13 | Active conditions: None
Aatish looks at her wounds and smiles.
"Good that Aatish could feel pain of war!! And see warriors dying and fighting!! Yes! Great mission for Aaatish!" she shouts.
Thanks for the healing GM but Aatish uses her wand of infernal healing with 1 charge and it will take 1 minute although she does not wait and continues.
Noted re infernal healing rather than CLW. Doesn't sound like anyone wants to do anything else in the room so I'll move you on....
To the east, the room leads into a narrow hallway of unworked stone that plunges deeper into the mountain. Natural alcoves are filled with the statues of departed Shoanti warriors-- Kuro can read Shoanti names at the base of each, but, you move forward in accordance with your plan to check for any foes or active danger before getting down to studying.
The chamber beyond features four sarcophagi, their lids removed, cracked to pieces on the floor. As veteran Pathfinders, you all tense in preparation of possible risen undead... but the bones that lie here seem only forlorn and pathetic, half-spilled onto the stone floor, the dignity of their repose shattered like the lids of their tombs. It would take some time to piece lids back together.
The chamber beyond seems to be some sort of a meeting room-- a carved stone table is ringed by chairs, but it seems that if anything was here, Lumketel took it without damaging the room or the furnishings, at least. (Nothing to do in this chamber.)
Doubling back, you investigate the only room you have not yet been to. Statues here are in a state of half-completion-- they remind you of Memory Tender, with her bone staff and her vulture-- but this room looks as though it has yet to be finished, and was never ransacked. Nothing to do here either.
I updated the map somewhat. The two gold stars represent the rooms/haunts you have already cleared. (I accidentally had the firepit room mistaken for the one below it, sorry, but it changes nothing mechanically.) At this point, you detect no active threats or haunts or fights and can buckle down to the process of starting to repair rooms. I've noted relevant skills on the map-- I'll do a bit more description of whichever room you select to start with, since otherwise this post would have been a very long wall of text and I'd rather break it up into each room as-you-get-to-it. So, someone pick a room to start with, and I'll update accordingly.
Confident that immediate threats have been vanquished and you are under no time constraints, the group takes their time returning to one of the earlier rooms they saw. The shards of once-fine pottery jars, which probably held grave goods for the journey to the Bonespire, lie mixed and broken together on the ground like the remnant's of a child's tantrum. Fortunately for you, geometric designs on the pot exteriors allow for canny eyes and fingers to sort them each into their respective piles-- this one seems to have the blue wavy lines, and this one the red, feather-like strokes...
Kuro perhaps has a streak of magpie in with his tengu heritage. His deft fingers manage to quickly pick and pile the respect pieces together.
After that, it is a simple matter of using the magic of the scavenger's stone to unite the broken pieces of each pile and make them good facsimiles of the original five jars that once graced this room.
This room only needed one successsful check, so Kuro's will manage it. -5 charges from the stone, 45 remaining; pottery chamber completed.
Looking at the map, I'll take the liberty of moving you to the damaged pillar room, since the other immediate option is the STR check one and this is not a high STR party...
With the pressure of time off them, the Pathfinders make their way back to the hall of the pillars. Name upon name, in angular Shoanti script, decorates these pillars, but the violence of Lumketel's entrance has blasted fragments off the pillars and obliterated entire stretches of names. Furthermore, you have already pieced together that the magical battle that took place here has inflicted structural damage that makes the room hazardous to explore-- segments of the ceiling might collapse upon you at the slightest provocation.
I'm trying to walk a line here between keeping some engagement vs the fact that this room's checks are honestly trivial for two of you. It's a DC 20 Perception to notice the hazardous spots, and Kuro and Greyveil will both succeed on that any roll higher than a 5. It makes little sense to make you all roll and wait hours-to-days for those rolls to appear, given those chances of success. Taking ten seems the simplest way to keep this moving.
Caution wins the day. Kuro and Greyveil, both incredibly keen-eyed, scan the pillars as they move in, stepping lightly, and they're able to pinpoint four more spots in the pillared chamber where careless movement might have brought the whole thing down. With those pillars pointed out, all four agents are free to pick through the dust and debris more safely. They manage to gather little pieces of name-graved rock and bones that had been blasted loose in Lumketel's fight. Once again, the scavenger stone proves valuable in fixing the room's ten damaged pillars.
35 charges remaining.
The sarcophagus waits for you in the central chamber yet-- you know from your cursory inspection of it that brute force is the simplest way to get it hoisted, but you also know that you are not a group with much in the way of brute force among you. Perhaps inventive thinking can come up with some other method to maneuver a heavy stone object? Don't people do clever things with rope and pulleys? Or magic? Perhaps.
Or you could put it off for now, and go back down to the hall with the statues and the four coffins to the south. Or you could go see if Hearth Keeper's spirit has any suggestions.
M Tengu 5|HP 36/36 |AC 27 /T 19/FF 14 F+5/R+12/W+3
As a large str20 creature the axebeak has a maximum carrying capacity of 800lbs, so it might even be strong enough to just carry it without making a roll. Otherwise I could cast anthaul, which would triple it to 2400lbs. However that would be tomorrow, as Kuro hasn't prepared it for today.
Plenty of rope would be a great idea! Except it looks like nobody in this party is carrying rope. *insert laughing GM face*
(Seriously, I don't see rope on any of your sheets, and I just went through them all. If you have some, let me know, it is possible I visually missed it.)
Another issue at hand is that the axebeak does not have the Work trick trained. (Work: "The animal pulls or pushes a medium or heavy load.") Without that, you'd need to push the axebeak with a Handle Animal check (DC 25) to get it to do a trick it doesn't know. And without rope, you guys would need to improvise some sort of harness or something to justify how the axebeak is moving a large, unwieldy stone sarcophagus.
Greyveil considers the engineering aspects of things. If he had a block and pulley tackle set-up and a few lengths of strong rope, this might be doable.... but it appears, as you all discuss amongst yourselves, that... rope? might not have been packed. Unless it's hiding at the bottom of someone's pack.
Greyveil's roll was great, but I'm gonna be That GM and say that while it will absolutely give you the knowledge to succeed with the appropriate tools, you do have to at least have some tools that could be reasonably used for purpose. I will allow his great engineering roll to convey a bonus on all future checks you guys might do for this challenge.
Also, Greyveil is OOCly not wrong that you COULD break the sarcophagus into more manageable pieces if it's the only way you guys have. If you want to go that route, it might be good to repair everything else first, so you can work whatever charges remain.
To sum up: STR checks are still a possibility. The DC is solid, but not impossible for you guys, with lucky rolls and/or successful aids. For solutions other than the written one, I'm open to them, but they will have to take into account that the axebeak would need to be Pushed and some sort of harness/hauling device would have to be improvised from your gear. Again, if someone DOES have rope, I just missed seeing it, so speak up if I did.
