Tek breathes a quiet sigh of relief and smiles as the three factions finally start to show some unity. "A fine decision, my friends." He says to the three faction leaders. "And one that shall be remembered in the future histories of Cynidicea."
Maybe they all really would make it out of this desert at some point. He thinks as Myev claps his shoulder. Outwardly he smiles at the big warrior. Inwardly he wants to shout triumphantly at his father and mother. Who, whether they said so openly or not, thought he would achieve nothing without being a student of the arcane like every other Cobblepot. Somewhere within his mind he turned to them. What magics could have brought these three groups back together? It was Words and Deeds and Faithful Companions. Those are the things that bring true, real change to the world. That inner self says.
But his inner reverie is quickly shunted aside as Myev signal's her willingness to explore the depths of the pyramid further. Tek nods his ascent as well.
"If my fellow companions agree, then yes, it seems wise for us to continue our explorations and perhaps clear the way of what pitfalls and dangers we can."
Silas has remained quiet, learning from Tek's example. The gnome had shown fear and trepidation when he first arrived in this dusty place but down below the dunes, his true colors were beginning to show. There was a leader there and the cleric was more than happy to support him. A gentle hand would rest on his shoulder where the red-headed half-elf would give a nod.
"You are shining brightly, friend." He says softly, nodding in agreement with the powerful half-orc. "We shall carry that light below and lead the charge. We will be the morning light over the horizon and we shall illuminate the way to victory."
As you prepare to head down below to continue your exploration of the pyramid, Auriga points out where the Magi's living quarters are and Pandora tells you what lies behind the locked bronze door, the Shrine to Madarua.
Having chosen to leave the private quarters of Magi and chapel of the Warrior Maidens to those particular factions, the group returns to the chapel that had been desecrated by followers of Zargon.
Undoing the pitons previously placed to prevent the ramp from collapsing, or anything else to come up from below, you lower the ramp into the next level below.
Entering the new chamber, you find yourselves in a forty foot by forty foot chamber with a stone door in the north wall. Painted on the walls of this room are court scenes showing a king - Alexander you presume, based on the information you previously received - and a Queen - whom you assume is Zenobia - being entertained by a dwarven jester. A small coffin rests in the a niche in the east wall and in each corner of the room is a four-foot high brass jar.
Myev stays put where she's at and glances around, taking in the paintings and scenery. "Weird," She comments, unstrapping her maul and casually resting it over her shoulder, ready to swing should she need to.
The half-orc woman glances at Tek and then begins to look around carefully, trying to assist with finding any traps or anything.
Searching the area while Tekumbray examined the door for any traps, Myev notices that the brass jars are all empty. Nothing in the strangely painted room seemed unusual - other than the room itself, at least until she noticed the smallest sign of an opening below the coffin inset into the eastern wall.
Knowing the dead are best left undisturbed, Tek does his best to spot any traps while not doing anything to perturb the rest of the ancient nobility.
When Myev points out the small opening beneath the coffin, Tek comes over and gives the area a more complete look.
Myev steps back and out of the way to let Tek investigate after she points out the coffin oddity, feeling a little out of her element.
Prodding the small opening below the coffin, Tek can tell that the opening below is significant, as this metal rod that he would occasionally use to open barred doors from the other side was not long enough to touch either the far side nor the floor of the space.
While Myev had already noticed during her investigation, others too now see that the brass jars are empty. Likewise previous investigation of the stone door showed no signs of traps or locks.
Tek stands up and ponders the opening. Recalling the defiled chapel, he rubs a finger under his chin and slowly nods to Utsuri. "It might be worth taking a look." He says. "Could be these followers of Zargon have dug out a whole new set of passages or something." He frowns with concern. "Still, I don't like the idea of moving that coffin. That looks like a bit of weight to try and shift."
He looks around the room, his eyes finally landing on the urns and his brow grows even more puzzled. "And why are those urns empty? Seems a bit odd. Should be full of ashes or oils or...something. I wonder....maybe it was actually built on purpose."
He starts to gather up several small stones and dirt and then drops the debris into the urns, filling each one about half full to see if anything happens.
"Mmm, I bet I could move the coffin," Myev says a bit boastfully. "Little bit of leverage wouldn't hurt, though."
The half-orc woman, not wanting to feel useless, helps Tek gather debris to fill the urns with to see if anything would happen. She wasn't sure what the point of it was, but Tek hadn't led them astray so far...
Tek gathers a few menial items from the room, intent on filling the urns to see if anything would happen when he fills the jars. To the gnome's surprise everything he drops into any of the jars vanishes the moment it hits the bottom of the urn.
The same phenomena reoccurs when Myev tries to fill the jars as well.
"Huh..." Is all the usually verbose gnome can say as the grit disappears into nowhere. "I guess it keeps people from stealing whatever gets put in there."
With no other ideas, Tek hands Myev the crowbar from his pack and steps back to let the big half-orc work.
"Weird," Myev mutters, shrugging over the oddity. She accepts the crowbar from Tek gratefully and wedges it underneath the coffin, putting all her strength into the attempt.
Myev begins the work of gently liberating the coffin from the alcove - as gently as the burly half-orc was capable of at least. Bits of worked stone chipped off of the smallish coffin as it was drug out of its alcove, stone scrapping against stone.
When Myev's work was done, a three-foot by three-foot hole in the floor of the alcove was revealed. In the hole are set of three, half-foot diameter golden hoops and what appears to be all of the rocks and debris that you had previous put into the urns.
Studying the paintings on the wall a bit closer you take special notice of the representation of the jester being a dwarf, glancing back at the coffin, it appears to be appropriately sized for a dwarf.
Myev hands the crowbar back to Tekumbray and wipes the sweat off of her brow from the exertion, inhaling a deep breath. She rests her hands on her hips with a satisfied expression, glancing about at the others.
"Well, I have no idea what to make of this. Any of have any ideas? I wonder if there's some sort of tribute that needs to be made...or if it's just a way to deter us from going deeper."
Tek nods along with Utsuri's thinking. "Possible, possible." He says grabbing a few of the rocks and dropping them through one of the urns, just to see them reappear in the pit. He looks over the paintings, glances at the coffin.
"Also could have been a useful way to get a last laugh on the failing the cities failing leadership. People put coins and offerings into the urns. The offerings then get siphoned into the pit. Where..." Tek begins to tap at the walls of the pit with the crowbar. His ears attuned for any hollow sounding areas or anything that doesn't sound solid in some way. He does the same to the floor as well.
"...someone can then come along and collect them. Assuming there's another way into the pit."
Tapping on the walls of the small pit, Tek discovers a hollow sound on the far wall, although for the life of him, he does not find any sort of mechanism to open up the wall.
"Ahhaa!" Tek says pointing out the hollow sounding spot, but his excitement at the discovery quickly turns to frustration as he simply cannot find any way to open or enter the hidden nook or passage. Finally, he just shakes his head in frustration.
"For the life of me, I can't find any way to get in there short of busting through." He then looks warily toward the exit. "That'd make a lot more noise and we've probably already tarried long enough at this jester's grave."
"We can always come back to it if the solution somehow comes to us in our sleep...or something." The half-orc woman shrugs, scratching the back of her head out of bewilderment. "May as well get a move on out of here."
Pushing the stone door open with relative ease, the party enters an east-west running hallway of well worked stone. Some fifty feet along the corridor a side passage opens to the north. Eighty-five feet beyond that another passageway lies south, and finally twenty feet beyond the southern passage, the corridor turns north.
Looking down the first northern passage, you see that the hallway goes twenty feet before splitting to both the east and west. At the intersection of the first northern hallway and the newly discovered east-west passage is a bronze door, embossed with a shield and two crossed spears.
"North it is." Tek says and starts working his way up the corridor carefully tap-tapping his poking pole and searching for any traps or other hidden dangers.
Myev walks along behind Tek and Utsuri, glancing back every once in a while to make sure Silas and Baheera hadn't been snatched.
Traveling the first northern passageway didn't really cut down on the options presented to the party. The twenty-foot jaunt north puts you in another east-west hallway.
Directly in front of you lies the embossed bronze door. The passage west goes some thirty feet before turning north. To the east the hall goes twenty feet before revealing another hallway north. Continuing east you see a wooden door on the southern wall of the hallway, beyond that the passage goes another twenty feet beyond the wooden door before tuning south.
Tek gives the bronze door in front of him the once over, looking for any sign of locks or traps. Happily, he finds neither.
Signaling everyone to be ready, Tek swings the big door open and peers inside. However, as he pulls the door open his feet get tangled up and most of his effort just goes into remaining upright.
Opening the bronze door reveals a mummified human in plate armor, grasping a halberd laying on a raised slab in the middle of room. Lining the walls of the chamber, stand nine skeletons holding longswords and shields while standing at attention.
"Well, I don't like the look of this." Myev would glance at Tek and then inspect their immediate vicinity with the gnome, careful not to step anywhere that he didn't approve of so as to avoid triggering traps.
The sight of the mummy and its skeletal guards lining the hall causes a cold sweat to break out across Tekumbray's brow. This was all too reminiscent of another city full of the undying and deadly. Hands suddenly shaking, he slowly backs away from the door his head swinging back and forth.
"L...l..let's not d-d-disturb the old k-k-king right now, shall we." He says. The blood is gone from his pale face even as his heart pounds madly. The dying pleas and screams of prior companions echo in his mind.
Myev stops short of stepping into the room and backtracks a couple of steps, looking down at Tek with furrowed brows and a frown. She crouches down in front of him and puts a hand on his shoulder gently, squeezing lightly. She recognized the reaction; she had seen it in many of her comrades in the short time she had served.
"Hey, man. We won't disturb him. You need a minute?" She pitches her voice in low and soothing tones, an odd juxtaposition against her rather fierce face, her protruding tusks distorting the concern etched on her features.
The party backs into the hall, away from the grave and its skeletal guardians, and closes the bronze door.
Giving Tek a few moments to regain his composure, the party heads off down the western passage. After twenty-five feet the passage turns north and then goes another thirty before turning west again.
At the end of the hallway, another eighty-five feet down the hall is a door made of silver, or at the very least plated with silver. Tekumbray, as per usual searches the door for any sort of traps, but finds none. Given how shaken Tek was mere moments ago, Myev has a look for herself and concurs before opening the door.
This room has scenes of warfare painted on the walls. It also has a large, silvered sarcophagus standing upright along the chamber's southern wall. Painted on the outside of the sarcophagus is the picture of a warrior in armor. Squatting on each side of the sarcophagus are large, white-furred apes.
Seeing you enter the room the pair of apes roar, stand and begin beating on their chests.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Tekumbray slowly regains his composure. His hand coming up to rest appreciatively on Myev's as the half-orc grips his shoulder.
"M-my thanks." His says quietly using his other hand to wipe the sweat from his brow. Tucking his kerchief back in his pocket he gives an embarrassed sigh.
"It was the mummy you see." The gnome glances carefully back at the now closed bronze door. A part of him waiting for it to burst open. Waiting for the screams of fear and pain to start echoing down the hall. His voice takes on an almost dream like quality as he starts to walk back down the corridor.
"The expedition to Sokkar was a large one. The caravan stretched for nearly half a mile. Holy men and warriors seeking to cleanse an unholy place, wizards seeking lost knowledge and secrets, swordsman testing their skills, and more than a few graverobbers simply looking for gold and trinkets that could be sold. We even a had one or two minor lords and a lady. They were out to gain further renown and fortune for their holdings and families. Or maybe just bored. You never know when it comes to nobility." Tek says.
"When we entered that long doomed city of death, we were a force to be reckoned with. A grand sight indeed." He closes his eyes, swallows. "After establishing an initial camp and scouting, the expedition divided itself into three branches. The first would strike for the heart of the city, try to reach the main palace and royal chambers and archives. The second, mostly consisting of wizardly folk, their guards and servants, would veer toward what was suspected to be the Grand Library and Tower of Stars. Home and tombs for Sokkar's greatest seers and sorcerers. The third, the group I'd been assigned into, would explore a large but unknown structure near the center of the Temple District. Oddly, the structure was not mentioned in any of the records, nor was it on the ancient maps the expedition had gathered and acquired over years of research. This made it a puzzle worth answering."
He glances around at the cut stone corridor, the dirt and sand coated floor. Sniffs the chill, dry, earthy air. "The interior was much as this place. Ancient stone. Buried and unused by living kin for centuries. Reginald, a warrior priest of Illmater, believed it to be an early temple of Oghma or maybe Mystra." Tek snorts. "Bloody fool he was."
"The place was filthy with undead. Skeletons, wraiths, ghouls, ghasts. But all relatively minor threats to a large party such as ours. Some wounds taken here and there. But with powerful priests like Reginald, Lorna priestess of Eldath and Ysmir annointed of Torm, most of the undead would flee before us as they called upon their gods time and again." He shakes his head.
"Fodder. That was all those creatures were. Simple fodder to slowly weaken us. You see the place was immense. A massive maze of winding, twisting passages and tombs. Tomb after tomb after tomb. Each one filled with bones and the ghosts and spirits that once inhabited those bones. And the malevolent force at the heart of that foul, unholy place used them all. We battled our way forward passage by passage. Soon enough the losses were starting to mount. The von Tack brothers died, their souls and life breath sucked from their cold bodies by a quartet of wights. Old Emery found himself cut off, out of spells and was struck down by a mere skeleton's rusty blade."
"Then we reached it." He puts a hand out against the wall to steady himself. "The central crypt or whatever they decided to call it. I don't really remember much. Except it was huge. Ceiling ten times the height of a full grown man. A circular room with a great sarcophagus of solid gold set all about with precious stones. It was massive. Made for a giant. Yig bin Xant, Supreme Sorcerer of the Void Travelers was the title Lorna deciphered right before she died."
"The lid of the sarcophagus flew upward in a blast of malevolent power that rolled over us like a wave. I was thrown back against the wall. Rising from that dark pit of death was a massive, mummified giant. It towered over all of us radiating waves of terror and power. Power greater than the lich fiend those of us who survived would encounter later, deeper in the city as we tried to find some way of escaping the hell we had willingly entered."
"Reginald roared his defiance and struck at the bandaged wrapped horror. Yig bin Xant uttered some ear bending syllables in his ancient hellish tongue and proud, defiant Sir Reginald was promptly turned into a pile of ash that slowly drifted to join the centuries of dusk coating the tomb's floor. Lorna was next to go. Immolated in cold blue flames that destroyed heart, mind, and soul. Ysmir lasted the longest. The light and power of Torm burning unholy, undead flesh and bone. But in the end she was no match, only living long enough for a handful of us to flee, to warn the others if we could."
The story told, Tekumbray pushes himself forward step by step, the haunted look slowly fading in his eyes.
"I...I am sorry for my failure back there." He says quietly. "I'd thought such memories buried deep enough they would not bother me. But it seems this place." He tips his head back toward the bronze door. "Seeing another mummy, even if minor in nature compared to the unholy lord of horror. It has all come back, real as if it were only yesterday."
Having unburdened himself, the gnome seems calmer, more at peace. So that when Myev opens the silver door and he sees the great growling white apes, he actually lets forth a sigh of relief as he draws his sword.
"Curious place for apes to reside, but at least they seem to live, breath, and I hope, bleed." He says, waiting to see if the others wish to tackle the beasts.
Myev listens intently to the gnome, understanding the need to get such a story off of one's chest. She stands as he speaks, eyes widening here and there at the trials and tribulations that the gnome described.
Her life, up to this point, had been relatively tame. Normal upbringing and loving parents despite their poverty. Myev's time with the guard had her witnessing her own kind of special horrors; the kinds that highlighted the dark underbelly of a big city. Nothing she had gone through came close to the gnome's experiences. She felt in awe of him and shook her head vehemently at his self-described failures.
"Nobody was hurt because of you. There is no failure to speak of." She pauses, smiling softly down at Tek, and nods. "Some of my comrades said talking about it helps. I'll listen anytime."
When the silver door swings open, Myev hefts her maul, glancing at her companions with a grin. "Let's find out."
"I am sorry for the loss of your comrades. While the sun shines brightest, the shadows are at their darkest." Silas said quietly before giving a prayer for those lost against the forces of darkness. Straightening up, he gave a breath and nodded. "We have your back, friend, no matter what."
The door opened and within laid the growling, silvery apes. They beat their chest and Silas would raise his shield as he wrapped his holy symbol in his hand. "I am ready when you are."
"My thanks, my friends." Tek says with a relieved smile to Myev and Silas. Listening to the words of Utsuri, the gnome looks thoughtful and truly appreciative of the monk's advice. He dips his head to old master. "Wise words good Utsuri." He says. [b]"And something I will certainly contemplate once we deal with these belligerent apes."
With the party choosing the remain in the chamber, the apes go from standing and threatening to charging at the party.
Myev grins at the group and then charges in, swinging her maul heavily at the ape closest to her .
But as per usual, she misses.
Tekumbray steps deeper into the shadows of the far corner of the room drawing his bow and putting an arrow to the string. Unfortunately, he is still a bit rattled from his memories and the arrow ends up clattering off the back wall. He then does his best to meld into the shadows.
Silas moved into the room, standing in the middle of it with his holy symbol in hand. Raising it into the air, he calls upon the power of Lathander to smite his enemies. In the space where the white ape opposing Myev stood, a brilliant flame would coalesce.
Myev rushes in at the angry apes, bringing down her maul but only strikes the floor, sending shards of broken stone flying nearby. Utsuri glides in, attempting to strike the ape with mixed results - one strike lands, but the first one left the silver-skinned monk open to a pair of clubbing blows from the white-furred ape that nearly drop the monk to the ground.
Tekumbray lines up his shot, but still rattled by his recent encounter with what he assumed to be vast amounts of undead, his shot goes wide of his intended target.
Silas utters a quick prayer to the Morninglord, and is rewarded with a brief brilliant burst of light that scorches one of the apes, while Baheera calls upon her elemental nature and unleashes a thunderous bolt of force to wound the same creature - unfortunately for the party it still stands.
The second ape lumbers over to Myev, swinging heavy blows with its arms, but the half-orc warrior is able turn and twist with the strikes so that little more than incidental contact is made.
(due to the nat 1)
Myev takes a deep breath, trying to employ Utsuri's teachings from before to center herself before swinging at the badly hurt ape in front of her.
Gorn Steelbreaker
