Vildran is still not ready to approach any of the statues so closely...
He points his staff past Autumn.
Watch out!
He then pulls a slender bone wand from his belt.
Autumn watches San being dragged around the corner with a dreadful sinking feeling, a feeling that is not helped when Morga is battered by both horse and snake. But there’s no time for despair, not when she needs to dodge a spray of venom on one side and slide out of the way of Vildran’s staff on the other. The resulting burst of flame is a most welcome shift in the tide of battle. “You sure have a way with fire,” she murmurs to the elf, visibly impressed by the miniature inferno.
First things first. The sorceress half closes her eyes, blocking out the blood and fire and chaos while she concentrates on a memory of her mother. With an effort she projects her soothing emotions into San’s mind, trying to gently coax him back to consciousness. As much as she’s tempted to cut and run, she just can’t let that statue thing eat him.
“San, get up!” she shouts in a commanding voice. “Kill that thing before it kills you!” Encouraged by Vildran’s crackling arc of electricity, she tries to follow her own advice. Pulling the trigger, she unleashes a quarrel at point blank range.
Why is it always like this? Adventurers' tales usually involve them bragging about *not* dying despite the odds; her group can barely survive. Knowing what's coming next, Morga tries to wrench herself free of the not-horse's grip, then ducks behind her shield.
With a wash of soothing magic from Autumn, San is brought back to consciousness, though he's in a precarious position lying on the floor with a hungry "statue" about to eat him. Autumn's bolt against the Sandpoint Devil statue thuds into a wing solidly. Morga struggles against the grasp of the not-horse's jaws, but finds herself pinned awkwardly between two long teeth and can't get free.
|||| INIT ||||
Vildran (22 dmg)
Morga (42 dmg, grabbed, enfeebled 1 - venom stg1)
San (55 dmg, prone)
Autumn
Wooden? statue of a man (67 dmg)
Wooden? statue of the Sandpoint Devil (40 dmg, 3d4 persistent fire)
Two-headed snake (7 dmg)
San's eyes flutter open as he's being dragged away from the rest of the group. He sees Morga fending off attacks from both a snake(?) and the horse statue while the beat up man statue is pulling him away while also on fire(?)... I was only out for a few seconds?! What's happened? He also spots his bow way over there out of reach.
Deciding on a course of action, he kicks himself out of the statue's grasp while retrieving his spear. In a desperate move, he plunges the many points towards the beast.
-
-
-
On the other side of the room, the other statue struggles with Morga for a moment before its jaws extend and it swallows her up. She's once more surrounded by painful stomach acid. Meanwhile the mimic (now with a full belly) extends a set of "wooden" pseudopods to try to extinguish the flames on its torso. It has little luck and continues to burn.
The snake, denied access to Morga, spits a wad of acidic spittle at Autumn, then slithers over to bite Autumn as well. Her blood magic wards off some of the harm, but can't stop the creature's fangs from injecting her with their venom.
She's strong enough to fight it off.
|||| INIT ||||
Vildran (22 dmg)
Morga (62 dmg, swallowed, grabbed, slowed 1, enfeebled 2 - venom stg2)
San (55 dmg)
Autumn (10 dmg)
Wooden? statue of the Sandpoint Devil (48 dmg, 3d4 persistent fire)
Two-headed snake (7 dmg)
Release Morga!
Success The creature is unaffected.
Failure The creature must spend the first action on its next turn to obey your command.
Critical Failure The target must use all its actions on its next turn to obey your command.
--------------------
Despite the sternness of his command it does not give him the confidence to forego his shield.
With their dwarven bulwark swallowed and a two-headed snake right in her face, Autumn instinctively takes a step backwards, only to bump awkwardly into Vildran. She glares at the elf blocking her escape, quietly cursing his presence under her breath, then conjures a glowing orange shield from her tree-shaped tattoo. “Fine,” she spits out the word like a curse, resigned to standing her ground, at least for now. Her one eye decays into a blackness darker than midnight, and as if in sympathetic response, a bleak curling shadow wafts out of her unloaded crossbow, stretching and twisting until it looks like a hideous claw. Channeling her magic through her weapon, the sorceress thrusts the crossbow at the snake, driving the ominous claw into its scales.
“Mind if I borrow your health?” she mocks the creature. The shadowy claw trembles as it sucks away the animal's very life force, draining its vitality to empower the sorceress instead.
Swiftly, before the stomach acid can end her life, Morga wrestles her way toward the horse's mouth.
Popping out beside it, she slaps some salve on her wounds.
Then she runs away. Shame burns her as she abandons Autumn and Vildran to the snake and the horse-thing, but she can't afford to get swallowed again. It might literally be the end of her. And dang, but that snake's venom stings!
He points his staff at the snake.
San grips his spear and dashes toward the remaining foes. Stopping short of the horse mimic, he strikes out before retreating back to stand by the recovering Morga. He holds his weapon at the ready in case the mimic comes after him.
-
-
-
-
Firing his fire past Autumn, Vildran narrowly misses the two-headed snake. San dashes in an scores a good hit with his spear before slipping away. The strike unfortunately doesn't reveal much else for him. The statue of the Sandpoint Devil gibbers in a panic as the momentum of the fight turns against it. It awkwardly canters toward San and delivers a gurgling "Mercy mercy! Spare me and I'll become a statue that'll celebrate your victory."
The snake on the other hand shows no sign of understanding surrender. It viciously attacks Autumn. Autumn blocks its fangs with her shield spell the first time, her magic slowing it enough that it only nicks her. Her stolen vitality protects her from any other injury. The snake follows with another bite that breaks through fully, slicing her arm.
Venom immediately starts burning the wound
|||| INIT ||||
Vildran (22 dmg)
Morga (47 dmg, paralyzed 1rd - venom stg3)
San (55 dmg)
Autumn (25 dmg, enfeebled 1 - venom stg1)
Wooden? statue of the Sandpoint Devil (57 dmg, 3d4 persistent fire)
Two-headed snake (17 dmg)
Vildran shifts gears and swaps wands.
A slick sheet materializes below the snake.
Area All solid ground in the area is covered with grease. Each creature standing on the greasy surface must succeed at a Reflex save or an Acrobatics check against your spell DC or fall prone. Creatures using an action to move onto the greasy surface during the spell's duration must attempt either a Reflex save or an Acrobatics check to Balance. A creature that Steps or Crawls doesn't have to attempt a check or save.
As the statue mimic approaches trying to beg for his life, San tamps down any thought of mercy to strike out at the thing.
Perhaps it's the threat his allies are facing, perhaps his rage at being knocked unconscious has focused his aim. Either way, San strikes out with savagery to down his foes.
As a spiderweb of fine cracks spreads across Autumn's magical shield, splintering and fracturing into arcane dust, a leaf slowly falls from the tree tattoo on her arm. But it is the serpent's second attack that jolts her instincts to the surface. With a wide, bloody gash slashing her tattoo in half, the sorceress ignores Morga's paralysis, the statue's pleas for mercy, and everything else—the only thing that matters is her self-preservation. At least she's learning—she won't go down the way she did against Ripnugget.
Brusquely pushing Vildran aside, she retreats behind the wizard and grabs her healing kit, dashing some salve on her wound in an attempt to slow the burning poison. For good measure, she invokes a charm from her pendant to fight off the pernicious venom coursing through her veins.
Ughh! Can't move! How humiliating: a dwarf overcome by poison. Aren't her people supposed to be hardier than this? Her eyes flick back and forth between the two-headed snake and the not-horse-thing. She wracks her brain trying to remember anything that would help her and her friends survive this.
She just hopes the poison doesn't kill her before she can share what she knows.
-
Though the snake manages to stay upright in the face of suddenly slippery ground around it, it's caught off-guard by San. The fighter critically strikes, carving one of the snake's two heads with a nasty wound. His second attack is even more brutal and the now headless snake falls.
Thanks to Autumn's multi-pronged approach to halting the venom running through her blood, she manages to stymie its progression and overcome the attack. Morga on the other hand spends her moments frozen trying to remember what she can of the foes you've fought. The two-headed snake she can't remember the name of, but its venom seems a short-lived thing. If she can neutralize it the tinctures in a healer's kit, it shouldn't be too difficult to fight off what remains of it. Though the thought isn't immediately applicable, it seems to strengthen her spirit and she solidly fights off the paralysis .
|||| INIT ||||
Vildran (22 dmg)
Morga (48 dmg, enfeebled 1 - venom stg1)
San (55 dmg)
Autumn (25 dmg)
Vildran stops concentrating and the glorious sheen of grease dissipates.
Breathing heavily, San looks to Vildran an Autumn first. Seeing they are moving around normally, he looks back to the frozen Morga. Rushing to her side, he tries to figure out something that may help. The best idea he can come up with is casting a charm to bolster her resilience for a short while.
"Ugghhh... That poison is bad." Morga groans as soon as she can speak again. She fumbles with her healer's kit for the tinctures that ought to help, applying them with hands that feel far too weak. "Thanks, San."
"Autumn? Vildran? You guys okay?"
Vildran nods.
"I think you got the worst of it. I was happy we could whittle them down somewhat quickly from back here."
He leans his staff against the door-frame to straighten his cloak before picking it up again.
"Is the poison gone?"
Once Autumn manages to quell the poison, she peeks out to see how the others are faring. “Fetch,” she exclaims admiringly when San single-handedly eliminates all of their enemies, severing two serpent heads with a single deadly blow. She reloads her crossbow as a precaution before gingerly making her way to join the others.
"Autumn? Vildran? You guys okay?"
Autumn grimaces from her wounds. “I could definitely be a lot better, but I guess I could also be a lot worse. At least we weren't all knocked out this time.” She turns her head towards the fighter, looking him in the eyes. “Thanks San,” she exhales gratefully. “I don't know what we would've done without you. It was looking real bad for a while there.”
◆ Medicine to Treat Poison, Robust Recovery, Guidance]1d20 + 13 + 4 + 1 ⇒ (13) + 13 + 4 + 1 = 31
Treating her own wounds, Morga overcomes the last of the venom and emerges from the ordeal worn out but still kicking.
The guardians of this room lie defeated on the floor and you're all still standing.
Though your combat was furious, there's no obvious audible or visible sign of anything else coming to investigate the entrance - at least not for now. Large wooden double doors, each painted with images of the same winged creature, stand to the north and south of the room, while a smaller door to the north bears no decoration at all. All are closed, but don't appear to be secured or locked in any visible way.
“What are these things?” Autumn asks as she starts to cautiously poke at the dead bodies, on the off-chance that the 'statues' might have swallowed something valuable. “We should make sure there's nothing else under that platform,” she adds, looking to one of her stronger companions to shove it out of the way to get a better look at the pit underneath.
Meanwhile, Vildran slowly walks around the room, searching for any signs of magic.
Morga nods at Autumn's suggestion. "Right, but I'm going to patch up our wounds before risking another fight. Just stay back from it if you're not sure, okay?"
It takes a good 40 minutes to patch everyone up to Morga's satisfaction. After she tucks her healer's kit away, she begins helping look over the room.
A few cautious pokes reveals nothing interesting in the remains of the mimics. With the help of the group working together, you're able to shift the platform over further and inspect the pit below. Its deep enough that you need to shine a light down into it to get a good view, but what you find isn't too exciting. About 10 feet down is the nest of the two-headed snake, made of scavenged wooden scraps, old bark and dry leaves.
Vildran detects no magic. You take your time to heal your wounds afterward. Your rest is accompanied by the occasional whistling of the wind outside and the spluttering of the room's burning lanterns.
After finding nothing in the pit (both a relief and a disappointment), Autumn has an idea about the mimcs. “They mentioned goblins … I wonder if they ate one of them?” Taking out her dagger, she conducts a more thorough search, carefully cutting open their corpses to see if anything—or anyone—is hidden inside.
Rather surprised that Autumn is actually getting her hands dirty without first trying to get someone else to do the job, Morga rolls up her sleeves to help.
Poking around the interiors of the mimics, you find a collection of half-dissolved bones, most looking like they came from animals. There is however a set of bones that look like they came from something larger... maybe dwarf-sized rather than goblin sized. Dissolved as they are, its hard to tell. If those creatures that were eaten had anything on them, it too has been dissolved and digested, as you find nothing else inside now.
Once Morga joins in to help, Autumn happily steps back into a supervisory role and lets the dwarf do the majority of the hard work. She shrugs, disappointed that there is no treasure to be found, but not entirely surprised. Looking at the dwarf-sized bones, she turns and looks at the cleric. “So glad that wasn’t you,” she says with what appears to be genuine relief and affection.
While the others search and heal, Vildran happily browses through his spellbook, making sure that it’s unharmed and preparing some more spells. After he’s completed his preparations, the wizard points his staff at the smaller undecorated door to the north. “Perhaps we should try that door? It’s different from the others.”
"Glad that turned out ok in the end. But it almost wasn't. Are we sure we want to press on right now? I could use a good nights sleep... But while we're here, maybe we can check out these doors."
You try the single unmarked door and open the way into a dark room, lit only by the light spilling in from the entrance corridor. When you illuminate it you can see that it appears to be some sort of research room. To the northeast, a bookshelf sits against one wall near a small desk and a wooden chair. A round table in the southwest corner has dozens of scrolls and maps heaped upon it. All of the furniture has a rickety look, as if it had been cobbled together by inexperienced hands. An unlit lantern sits on the round table, and there is another on the bookshelf. It definitely doesn't look like the kind of place a goblin would build, but none of the furniture looks like the kinds of pieces left by the Ancient Thassilonians.
The door to the west from this room is ajar and opens to a smaller chamber with four pits along its sides - two at the north end and two at the south. A thick coil of knotted rope hangs from a hook on the west wall, while a bucket of what looks like sand sits near the southwest pit alongside a stack of chamber pots. The entire room stinks of waste, with the smell wafting out into the research room.
"Whew!" Morga closes the door to the pit toilets. "We can check that later. Or not. I'm up for some nice, safe reading after all that. Heck, if I'm lucky it'll put me to sleep." Before she settles in to read, however, she pokes around the room for anything less-than-obvious.
"We can check that later. Or not.”
“Definitely not.” Autumn wrinkles her nose in distaste at the stench from the toilets, thankful that the cleric shut the door. She has no interest in the books or maps, but takes some time to examine the scrolls to see if they contain any useful spells. Otherwise she spends her time searching the room for any hidden valuables.
As for the notes, it doesn't take you long before you realize that despite the repurposed torture devices this room is still used for cruelty. These scrolls and ledgers paint a picture of a series of abductions conducted across several months, most of them lone travelers captured while they traveled along the Lost Coast Road. Five total travelers were seized this way and, according to the exhaustively detailed notes, brought to the Pit to become sacrifices. The scrolls describe each sacrifice in gruesome and sadistic detail, mentioning how each bled out at the steps of the altar as true offerings to the Sandpoint Devil, before their bodies were tossed deeper into the Pit.
Compelled by the frankness of these notes, you can't help but read further. The other tomes and scrolls speak in grand terms and with an almost sermon-like fervor. They speak of the author's earnest desire to help the Sandpoint Devil ascend by offering it the right "types of sacrifices". The notes also make apparent that the author and their associates have grown impatient with snatching lone travelers from the roads and soon plan to start making late-night raids on Sandpoint itself to find their final victims. It's clear from the detail with which these documents describe the town that the author has wandered the streets of Sandpoint, watching and taking notes so as to identify those who possess the qualities needed to quicken the Sandpoint Devil’s ascension. There are open mentions of names you know - Father Zantus, Brodert Quink, Alma Avertin, and others. Each has come under the author's consideration but their verdict on who to abduct and how has not yet been recorded.
The central tenet of the author's faith is repeated again and again among the documents. They are certain that the Sandpoint Devil is on the verge of becoming a god, and they expect to gain its favor now for that inevitable ascension. If the notes weren't so thorough, exact and lucid, they'd seem the ravings of a madman.
"We...need to get back to Sandpoint and warn them. Pack up all these notes. They'll need time to tighten their defenses. Even if the Sandpoint Devil isn't real, these kidnappings are serious." Morga starts stuffing the notes into her pack. "We can come back here later to finish what we started, but if we die before getting word back to them..." She shakes her head, unwilling to consider that option.
At the site of the pile of scrolls on the desk, Vildran gets excited. Even before the others have decided to spend time he sits down to pour over them. He creates a globe of light just above the desk.
Then his expression begins to fall.
What sick mind...
Once he gets over the descriptions of torture he thinks about the implications of the goal.
Now I really hope the Sandpoint devil isn't real. I need to speak with the Runewatchers...
He scratches his beard in thought as Morga starts to suggest they pack up and leave.
"Agreed, warning first. We can try to track down this cult after. Or whoever was doing the sacrificing."
Autumn nods in wholehearted agreement with Morga and starts helping to pack up the various notes, tomes, and scrolls. She leaves the heavier books for others to carry but does assist in transporting some of the scrolls out of the pit and back to Sandpoint. “We should tell the Sheriff first,” she suggests as an obvious choice, then shakes her head in exasperation. “Where do all these cultists come from?” She thought she’d seen the last of such things in Rusthenge.