Whatever the solution will be, can we leave this open place now?" Kendra objects and turns to leave towards the house again.
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Kendra comes over to join the consultation. "That idea is only half bad. We have a certain lack of skeleton followers to make it really believable, but it might deceive a casual onlooker." She grabs a cloak and a scythe for herself. "It feels kind of powerful, to wield such a thing. If only I knew how to use it properly."
Kendra stays alert in the distance. None of her spells would do a lot good in this situation. But the battle preparation could have been better. A haste could have helped. she ponders.
Kendra takes a look too. "No, they are not especially dangerous to us. But those cultists may be. And it's in the open. If it isn't over quick, others might come to their aid." she assesses the situation.
Kendra identifies the items after seeing it's magic. "The weapon and the armor is magically enhanced. But nothing special." "I can take the next watch if you like." she offers.
Kendra leaves it to Herm to finish the remaining wolf.
Kendra cast haste on the party.
Kendra also gets her dishes. "That's kind of decadent. Such a meal in the midst of a beleaguered ghost town." "I like it."
"I don't have an alarm spell prepared." Kendra tells. "That food smells indeed delicious. Mind to tell us something more about you? Where you're from and what you do for a living. At least when you're not in such precarious situations."
Kendra supports this with a casting of prestidigitation, creating soem small vortexes that pick up the dust.
"Let's set up camp." Kendra suggests. "Could we move this stinking pile of ... whatever it was outside?" she adds, holding her hand over her nose.
Kendra ponders her options, but the room is to small, for big effects. She readies her crossbow to try to interrupt the cultist if she tries anything with magic. Not that her chances are good.
"Let's not stand outside. There, this large house might be of interest. And it might have a good view over the open place. That would be nice for a rest, if we don't want to leave town again."
"The demon wolves are after the cultists. We've seen one cultist already slaughtered in that farmhouse. And I'm no expert on this, but this bite wound could be from a werewolf." "As I see no evidence to the contrary, I'd say the wolves killed another one of those cultists and the bones are probably destroyed undead."
"At least his fate is no longer a mystery." Kendra states. "Shall we look around the town?"
"He wanted us to take to someone. I assume there is someone, but they won't be friendly towwards us. To make a guess, I'd say he's with the wolves." Kendra concludes.
Kendra steps back and leaves the fight to the others, as they seem to have that under control.
"That's a big disappointment!" Kendra states as Duristan turns on the group.
Not having anything to prepare Kendra looks at Herm quizzically.
"I got some bread, cheese and dried meat. If you can make something of that?" Kendra offers.
"This house might have a basic kitchen. We are a bit short on fresh groceries, but we could take the time to whip something up with the stuff we got." Kendra suggests. As she accidentally kacks at something in the little grass that grows here, she bends down and picks it up. "Interesting! Looks like a wand."
One magical inspection later she tells "Wand of cause light wounds? Maybe a Whispering Way cultist lost it here."
"Shall we ignore it then, or deal with it to save others to come?" Kendra asks.
"I haven't seen any of both groups in wolf form. Hard to tell." Kendra muses.
"Well, this here doesn't make any sense. From the look of it, they should be dead. But we all know that dead werewolves no longer look like wolves." Kendra analyses.
"No, I didn't. but this trick seems to work on horses, especially if they are named Roach" Kendra explains.
"Let me help with that." Kendra suggests. She gestures an X in the air and whistles. The horses seem to have hidden in the bushes behind you as they step out with some rustling and approach you.
Knedra nods in agreement.
Kendra uses the opportunity to test her new spell and lays an area of black tentacles into the woods.
"I can offer a featherfall spell, so we could jump down directly." Kendra offers. "I for sure won't crawl down that endless stairs again."
Kendra sighs. "Yes we are done. And we'll be out of your hair soon." She turns to her companions "From my point of view we could leave immediately. Despite the long day I feel refreshed and wouldn't mind to no longer share the company of the werewolves." She hands the mirrow to Herm.
"Thank you for your honesty, I guess?" Kendra replies and takes the mirror. "The silver suits you rather well." She checks her new look. "I guess I have to be even more careful around supersticious folk now."
Kendra looks at Herm, then at Jominda. "Would you lend me your mirror?" she asks the blonde woman.
"That was... unexpected!" Kendra voices. Being all Kendra she checks the magic on the tower again. "It's gone. The magic is gone. Nothing left."
Kendra hands Herm the scroll containing the ritual. "Would you please read the rites?" she asks.
Kendra stops in her work. Staring into the distance she thinks for a long moment. "You're right." She leans the hoe at a column and sits down on the stairs. She takes her spellbook out of the backpack opens it and studies a page for some minutes. She shuts the book, takes a deep breath, and with a word and a gesture a dozen tiny vortexes appear on the ground. They run over it and suck in the dust and small debris that lies around. "It's - I don't know - a decade since I last used this spell?" "Magic is the mighty force, used to gain knowledge and expand your wisdom. No cheap tool to avoid work. Or so I learned it from the unspoken laws in our household."
"Then let us see to it." Kendra says. She looks around what tools are found and decides for a how that is rusty, and only has two thrirds of its handle left. It's not good, but better than nothing. She climbs through the hole, back into the side room. "Herm, would you bring the corps of the cultist outside? I'll start with the remains of the eating orgies that seem to have happened in the amphitheater." She rakes the bones of deer and whatever lies there from the corners to 'clean' the dirt floor.
Kendra looks a bit tired, with dark rings under her eyes. Obviously she didn't get much sleep last night. "I don't know." "From what I've read, we are in a temple - nothing new here - and would need to perform a religious ritual on top of the tower to activate the magic that is built into the tower to call for a blessing of Desna." "First thing I deem necessary would be cleaning up the temple, to make it look like a temple again and not like a werewolfs slaughterhouse. Second would be a re-consecration. Which we'd have a hard tíme to do, with no cleric of desna around. And last we'd have to perform the ritual. Which is mostly a series of prayers. But I guess there is some divine magic involved here." "Shall we try it, or do you think it's not worth our time? As we might as well fail. I would like to, but it's not for me alone to decide."
Kendra dusts off the workbench and spreads the papers sorting them in the right order. Then she studies them. First the pages of faded notes taken from the Desnan priest’s ancient journals, which provide a harrowing account of the priest’s attempts to cure his son of lycanthropy. The Stairs of the Moon was an ancient temple of Desna constructed in the Shudderwood during the first half of the Age of Enthronement. For over 800 years, the temple administered to those of Desna’s faithful among the settlers of the Shudderwood, until the Whispering Tyrant came to Ustalav. At that time, the high priest of Desna at the temple had a single son whom he loved dearly. During the wars against the Whispering Tyrant, the priest’s son served as a missionary, but when he returned home some years later he had changed, for at some point he had contracted a particularly virulent strain of lycanthropy. The priest tried everything he could to save his son. He imprisoned his son in a secret chamber beneath the temple and conducted experiments upon him, desperate to reverse the curse. When his research failed to yield positive results, these experiments turned dark and terrible. The priest developed a serum from his son’s blood that he used to infect his congregation with lycanthropy in order to study the disease’s effects. Kendra summarizes the content of the pages to those interested. Then she continues with studying the pages from the second scroll case that holds an ancient scroll containing a communion ritual that can be performed atop Highthrone to activate the Dusk Moth, an ancient artifact built into the Stairs of the Moon. "I think this would be easiest, if we had a Priest of Desna here." Kendra tells mostly to herself.
"I wasn't offering to make more, I was asking you to take over sandwich making duty?!" Kendra replies confused.
"In that case... you could free me from my duty to make sandwiches, so I can study without Miss Fallenbridge starving to death in the meantime." Kendra suggests.
"Maybe help me with your expertise then? I guess there is a lot to learn about this building and its religious relevance." Kendra asks.
"I will do some more studies with the papers here, but you lot can go to sleep." Kendra suggests.
"There!" Kendra points carefully from a safe distance off the edge into the 10-foot-deep pit. Somewhere between those rusted manacles that lie scattered about the floor near the edge of the pit. The disgust of the idea to have to get down there is clearly visible on her face.
"Well, maybe try a hammer?" Kendra suggests.
"I haven't seen one myself. But I guess a canopic stone will not be too large. It might be a polished stone, or a vase, or soem other shape, but I'm sure it's made of stone or clay." "But maybe it can be found by searching for magic, or evil, or undead, or something like that."
"We need to find the Vilkacis canopy stone, or it will reappear in a day or two." Kendra comments from the back. "We can pause a bit, but I think we should take care of that right away."
"Herm!" Kendra shouts in panic. She casts another disrupt undead. But she is so out of her mind, that she fumbles it.
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