Kalla exclaims something akin to shock, humor, and heaping respect as the skeleton won't go down. "May ya get a mug and a nice companion where ever ya end up, sir" she says but with no magic, instead and focuses her powers and sends three orbs to power to smash into their bony side.
The skeleton shatters! Bone fragments rain down, but with the departure of the dragon's spirit, nothing remains to animate them again.
Searching the area you find a wand of translate and also a small cluster of silver scales that still maintain their luster . Those scales and the shape of the bones make it clear to Nixoret that this dragon was once an oath dragon, a divine creature that is the embodiment of a cause's pursuit. This is just an initial survey of course, but the death of an entity this powerful here will definitely merit further exploration!
"Sharlott!" Ursula leans her head back as blood wells up across her forehead. Without significant treatment it was likely to scar, which Would Not Do.
"That was the only healing elixir?"
"Um, I can check, miss! I think there's...no, this is the darkvision potion. Um, I have your masquerade mask?"
"...Not useful right now, but thank you, Sharlott." Perhaps the effects of said elixir would help prevent scarring for now. Ursula had no intention of having to explain how a skeleton had gotten the upper hand of her at a banquet.
Washing it out and applying pressure with some clean linen at least would help it clot. "Lazslo, I don't suppose you have anything that will heal without scarring? A scar on the body is a mark of honor, but on the face it would gain too much notoriety."
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Laszlo looks longingly at the pile of metal that is Bruit for a second and then turns to Ursula. Deal with the living first, I can take my time with him once the urgent matters are handled. Plastering a fake smile on, he makes his way over to her and Sharlott, pulling out various plants.
"Yes, of course. The key thing is to moisturize well to help keep the skin healthy and healing well. I'll make you a facial paste to wear as you sleep... and provide you with nose plugs. It is very effective but does not smell the best."
Laying out his things, he frowns slightly, feeling Dawn's absence. "I don't have magical assistance so this will take a bit longer than we're used to, I should be able to get us back in fighting shape shortly though. I'll have to see to you all one by one, especially you Kalla, I'm concerned about that fall you had at the start of the fight. Oh and Dehlia give me that mess you call a shield, I should be able to put it back together once I've patched up Bruit."
Kalla says "Thank ya, Las" just a little muffles as she finds herself thudding to the floor. Or at least she thinks that is what happened, or the floor kicked her ass, either one.
Once Las has her packed up enough not to by a mess of her liquids, she breaths in deep and begins to sing soft like a mother holding a crying child, her accent deep in the words like maybe it was her mother. Little by little anything their doctor's attention didn't get cleaned up washed away in soothing melodies.
Nothing troubles the Pathfinders as they heal - probably everything has learned to leave the dragon to their slumber!
The plaza was once a broad paved roadway leading from the archway to the great temple in the distance. The edges are defined by decorative stone pillars and fragments of statuary. The road surface itself is covered with grass and a thick layer of soil, requiring some digging to expose the original paving stones. The statues are so degraded as to be essentially featureless, but it's Kalla, with her hands on experience of the warped nature of the Sarkoran Scar, that notices that if reassembled, many of them would likely not be precisely humanoid...
Dehlia urges Laszlo to focus on healing first as she spends some time bending her shield back into shape. After a few minutes it starts to resemble a functioning shield, but she hands it off to Laszlo for further repair.
She watches with intense focus as Laszlo works on the shield, pulling out tools from his pouch without glancing, until it looks brand new. Impressed with his clearly superior skill, Dehlia takes the shield with a bow of respect. "Truly, you are a skilled smith! I hope to learn more from you as we travel together."
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As they wander the plaza, Dehlia examines the stone pillars and statuary fragments for insight into their construction and destruction.
The fragments are so aged, and well, fragmentary that Dehlia's not able to learn anything further at this time. The rows of low stone buildings that you head to next are fairly regular with one another, but Dehlia does notice a few irregularities. The interiors are mostly rusted pens, with long useless locks that are up higher than they'd need to be to secure livestock.
The fencing and gates seem to be later additions, and there are remnants of infrastructure that suggest were once used to hold grain before being turned to darker purpose. Even the granaries seem to be a later addition though - the rest of the site is laid out on a relatively regular grid that these buildings don't align with.
Kalla spends a moment at the cages "Don't like the looks of these" she said with grim heavy in her voice. Plenty of bad growing up in slums makes you know the worst exists, even if you hold on to the best with all your heart.
She looks around the dirt of the cages, hoping to see what they kept in there based on the tracks, but she's a little distracted with What Could Be.
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Laszlo looks about the buildings and scowls slightly. Stepping out of the building and assessing the relative positions of the other buildings he hums softly to himself, an unconvinced noise and then returns to the others.
"This is all speculation of course, but I think these buildings indicate the degradation of the Cyclopean society here. The scale and methods used still suggest that these are Cyclopean ruins, though later additions, but the successive repurposing does not bode well for this settlements inhabitants. First, whatever purpose these buildings had, they were clearly to support that structure." He gestures to the domed structure. "The castle in Ustalav had dungeons of course, that we used to store intrepid adventurers, but specimens were always kept near the lab. Ready access was required, especially if galvanic experiments were the order of the day. Lightning storms wait for no homonculus."
"If the inhabitants of these pens were used for entertainment or gladiatorial combat, they would have been placed closer to the amphitheater. I would have assumed that sacrifices would have been placed by the ziggurat there, they're terribly useful for that kind of thing, but maybe it was the seat of government or a museum or something like that. Really though, we won't know for certain until we go inside, and with the degradation we've seen maybe not even then."
"Speaking of degradation though, if these functioned as I suspect, then it shows things went terribly downhill. Granaries certainly could be a sign of a thriving society, but these conversions are altogether darker. You do not repurpose a granary if you are still filling it with food, so either they did not need the food because of a population collapse, or they could not get the food because of environmental collapse."
"If these buildings were for preparing sacrifices, it is even worse. Moving from the sacrifice of prepared foodstuffs to live animal and potentially sentient animal sacrifices are a clear sign of either intense deprivation or near complete moral collapse. Judging by the other signs of battle we've seen, I suspect these people did not go quietly, and it may well have been a result of their own evil acts coming back to bite them."
Laszlo refocuses, realizing that he's been lecturing, almost ranting like the master used to, and addresses the party again. "But of course, this is just a guess. Shall we go into the nearby building and find out?"
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Kalla might consider herself a good friend, but not many consider her (herself included) a good listener. So as Las lectures, she wanders the cages, looking around for anything and then arrives back at his last sentence "Guesses are pure gold, when ya got nothing else." she smiles at him, wonders briefly what he was talking about, but then shrugs it off. "Let's go, professor." she calls back, since she is already moving the way he indicated.
Nix shudders as he inspects the cages and tightens his grip on his mirror. An intrusive thought worms its way through his head, what really separates people from monsters.
Distracted by this contemplation, he mutters "Yeah, let's keep moving" and falls in behind Kalla
Sharlott has taken a parasol from Ursula's pack in order to properly shade her as she finishes up with repairing the damage to her head. If it came down to it, she supposed that she could try bangs...
"I believe working up to the larger buildings and starting small will give us something to look forward to when we see how their proper society flourished during their time," Ursula notes. She scans around as she considers the culture of this society. How did they treat their servants? It was important to know to understand if they were tyrants or liberators. Judging by the cages, she was leaning towards the former...
"Nixoret," Ursula speaks to the kobold as she steps next to him. "That fallen dragon. Do you suppose those skeletons were their slayers or guardians? And do you believe we might encounter more animated corpses?"
Nixoret thinks back to the likely age of the bones, particularly in light of the artifacts wielded by the skeletons. The dragon's death almost certainly predates the humans' by centuries if not longer.
Most likely, the skeletons were the victims of the haunt.
The squat round building close to you is capped with a domed roof. On that roof is a large stone sphere half-set into the floor and perforated with thousands of tiny holes. After close examination, you note that the lower part of the sphere is supported by thousands of stone bearings.
An entrance hatch in the southern end allows you to stand within the sphere and see light entering through the holes. Nixoret notices that these holes recreate a night sky, but not one that's wholly familiar, distant from his knowledge of the constellations by thousands of years. Notably some strange stars above are very striking - they must no longer be visible, or no longer exist!
The sphere moves gently as you examine the area, balanced such that you can with effort rotate it by forcefully running within the sphere and
rotate it under your weight, changing its alignment to sync up with a series of pictographs along the circumference of the sphere.
"Neither" Nix lets out as he turns to Ursula. "They were it's prey, and we are lucky we aren't just a couple more hateful bones in the same pile. It looks like no progress is going to come in this place for free"
The final building is a stepped pyramid that rises nearly to the treetops, a hundred and fifty feet above. Each layer of stone is assembled from huge blocks of basalt, mostly covered in moss and vines. Richly carved pictographs adorn the stone, wherever visible among the patches of vegetation, either finely detailed depictions of the moon and other celestial objects, or harsh splashes that eclipse the earlier works. A steep staircase sized for giants rises up one face of the ziggurat to the upper platform, where a small shrine with a partially collapsed doorway crowns the summit.
Debris almost entirely fills the entrance, but Nixoret and Dehlia could fit through without much difficulty. For the rest it would be much more chancy.
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As Kalla does what she does best (blundering forward, this time lifting and throwing rocks), she asks whoever is behind her "Wasn't there something about stars and patterns way back when ago, before you know, we came here?"
Even seeing that he could scramble his way through, Nix angles his mirror through the debris and apparates a copy of himself through the obstacle. "Come on everyone, don't think we want to waste daylight in this place"
Sizing up her taller companions, Dehlia makes sure to enter first. "I'll take the lead with Nix and warn of any dangers on the other side."
With little effort she squeezes through the debris to investigate.
Laszlo joins Kalla in shifting the stones about. "Hmmm... I think you're right, but we'll still probably have to recalculate some. The constellations on the dome don't match up to the night's sky we know. Either the stars may have changed over the years or perhaps it is meant to represent another location... maybe even another plane. Oh, try putting this rock there, it can act as a keystone."
"Sharlott, stay out here with Kalla and Laszlo," Ursula directs her maid. She slips up to the opening in the debris, then squeezes through carefully to avoiding tearing any delicate fabrics.
"Miss Ursula, please be careful!" Sharlott requests of her mistress as she follows Nix and Dehlia.
Even with Laszlo's expertise and able hands working from both sides of the obstruction, it's still the better part of an hour before you're able to widen the gap in the doorway enough for you all to easily effect entry.
The inside of the shrine is nearly bare, though you can see the remains of colorful murals, and gouged out inlays that have an occasional fragment of silver, and in one case Laszlo finds a piece of lapis lazuli along the inside edge of one of the stone blocks . In the center of the room a smooth circular shaft 10 feet in diameter descends 20 feet before turning into a 10-foot wide spiraling staircase that leads down further into the ziggurat.
After taking a moment to appreciate the murals, Dehlia grabs a rock from the rubble and walks over to the shaft. Peering over the edge, she drops the rock and listens for a response.
After about a second she sees and hears the rock bounce off the stairs.
Laszlo studies the murals, trying to either make out their narrative, or to see if any of the images match the iconography of the mechanical observatory.
Quickly finishing his examinations, he pulls out a torch and lights it, turning to Dehlia. "You seem quite excited, would you like to go first and I can light your way?"
Kalla chatted the entire time she hefted the rocks Las pointed to. Chatted about What? Very hard to say. The topic shifted constantly, the words sometimes made up, the metaphors bouncing like spilled grapes, but it was entertaining somewhat, which might have been the goal.
At the stairs, she watches the rock bounce, bounce, bounce "Wantin to spring something? Like when you go GAAAA! at one of the badges so others can scatter? Just with no living stuff?"
[b]"It's a shame so much of this has been destroyed over time. The Decemvirate representatives won't be happy about this but maybe they'll have someone who can put this back together better than I can."[/dice]
The bottom of the shaft is covered with a thick layer of fine, grayish-white dust. A few scattered fragments of bone protrude from the dust. the northern wall is carved with a huge bas relief of a massive beast eating the sun, while a huge stone portal is centered in the south wall.
Laszlo notes that this bas relief seems to celebrate an eclipse as a time of destruction and darkness - very out of character for traditional cyclopean theology, which did revere the celestial bodies, but saw eclipses as communions of two heavenly bodies.
The stone portal itself is quite stuck.