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Despite Kornel's warning that the skeletons were still active, Haechi cannot find anything in the pile of ash to target. Until he is sure that the skeletons are truly dead dead and not merely undead, he's not risking his neck by running out there.
Instead, he pulls one of the healing elixirs from inside his cloak and holds it in his hand in case he gets a chance to heal his companions.
And pulls back around the corner to give himself more cover from the skeletons when they reform.
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Drazzel scampers between Kornel's legs and gets in a position behind Kornel and next to Haechi. He weaves a symbol in the air and sends out a pulse to detect any magic in the area. He hopes the magic will be able to detect the auras of the undead so that his companions can pinpoint their location.
Me hopes this can detect where skellies are before they's rise again.
Oh! Kornel, I haz heal scroll! Use mine if you'se wants.
He shouts as he pats his cloak pocket.
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With all skeletons apparently destroyed, Darlann runs up to his fallen allies. He gently lays his two hands on Erathiel, channeling a small amount of positive energy to stop the Elf's bleeding and close his wounds.
"Stay with us, Erathiel. Now is not the time to go."
Still wary of the skeletons possibly reforming, Darlann turns toward the nearest pile of ash, shield ready.
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Drazzel concentrates on the mound in front of him, noting a slight necromantic tinge of energy. He opens his mouth to say something, but, with an unholy screech, the ash skeleton that felled Kurvok reforms from the smouldering mound, lashing out with hungry claws at Darlann!
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The group spends a paranoid set of heartbeats awaiting the reincorporation of the still-smouldering mound of ashes into further giant skeletons, but it does not happen.
With Kornel's burst of positive energy from the scroll, Kurvok revives with a wicked headache . Both Drazzel and Erathiel feel a bit worse-for-the-wear from the brutal combat as well .
In the aftermath of the adrenaline surge, the team can get a better look around the blasted - and most definitely NOT pristine - scene. The shrine is dark and stinks of smoke, with coarse masonry walls coated in heavy soot and a 15-foot-tall ceiling. The fitted stone floor is obscured by mounds of burnt wood, broken furniture, ash, and soot. Some of the ash piles still smoulder. A few crumbling stone pillars carved to depict flames still stand throughout this destroyed room.
A large iron brazier large enough to hold a person sits on a platform at the east end of the hall, but it's too far away from any of the party members to see very well.
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"That was... Intense."Erathiel sheathes his sword and moves toward the brazier to inspect it.
”It was something”, Kurvok grumbles. He looks around to make sure everyone is accounted for, before the pillar near him catches his eye.
”Monster faces”, he points out. Looking around the room, he adds, ”Giant skeletons. That thing” He gestures toward the giant brazier. ”Was this a shrine to Lamashtu?” He spits.
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Haechi nervously and a little half-heartedly picks through the piles of ash with his toes to make sure there aren't any other bad guys still hiding in there. Fortunately, no skeletons leap up to gut him, but he does come across a pamphlet that somehow miraculously survived the inferno. Picking it up, he finds it to be an advertisement for the Blakros Museum’s latest exhibit that features Cyclopean relics from Iobaria. Inside the pamphlet is an image of an obelisk that looks similar to the obelisk depicted on the drawing you found on the fire-eye cyclops zombie.
"Um, gentlemen," he calls out, taking his find back to the others. He shows them the pamphlet, and adds, "it appears that the cultists also have an interest in the obelisk at the Blakros Museum. Surely this cannot be a coincidence. I think we may want to visit the Museum soon, before it meets the same fate as this, um, establishment."
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Once the heat of the life-threatening combat dies down, Kornel gathers his usual laid-back composure grin. "Ah hah! Friends, it is not often we get to face ash skeletons. They are created from the immolation of large creatures — quite rare! Pretty lucky we encountered them and got to live to tell the tale, eh?"
The ragged healer does not mind the soot and ash since his outfit is already quite dirty. He walks around the chamber, torch in hand, looking at the ash piles. "Are you thinking that the ash skeletons were born from troll corpses?"
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Drazzel pulls the front of his cloak away as he looks in shock at the scars from the magically healed gashes across his chest.
Yessa. Verrry intense. Me thought me-sa was goner.
Still a bit wobbly from the combat, he takes a look around the room with the others. He casts detect magic here and there hoping to find any auras.
No more magiks around-sa here. We's have time to take a break? Me-sa needs some rest.
He looks up at Haechi when the kobold comes back with the pamphlet he found.
Da museum? Ohhh. Obelisk must has powerful magik inside. Then we's definitely go to museum next. After me's take a rest, first.
Drazzel goes to lie down on the bottom step of the chamber's stairwell to take a power nap.
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The team takes their time to sift through the ashes and patch up their wounds.
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During his rounds of searching the chamber, Drazzel finds a scroll in a revealed compartment.
Me's find scroll!
He shouts to his companions as he waves the scroll over his head.
He runs over to regroup with the party and unfurls the scroll. Looking at it with a puzzled look and rubbing his chin, he cannot make out the words in the elegant script.
He holds the scroll out for the others to inspect it.
Can any of you'se read what scroll is?
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The spell looks familiar to Haechi as well, but he cannot makes heads or tails of it.
According to the rules for Scrolls: If you find a scroll, you can try to figure out what spell it contains. If the spell is a common spell from your spell list or a spell you know, you can spend a single Recall Knowledge action and automatically succeed at identifying the scroll’s spell. If it’s not, you must use Identify Magic (page 238) to learn what spell the scroll holds.
So if it is a common spell from the arcane spell list, then Haechi and Drazzel will automatically recognize it regardless of what level spell it is.
Only if it belongs to a different spell list (divine, occult, primal), or it is an uncommon spell, will Haechi and Drazzel need to do Identify Magic to figure out what it is.
The next section states that: To Cast a Spell from a scroll, the spell must appear on your spell list. Because you’re the one Casting the Spell, use your spell attack roll and spell DC.
So if it is an arcane spell, then Haechi and Drazzel can cast it regardless of what level it is. It does not have to be part of their repertoire or a spell in their spell book or even a spell of a level that they have a slot for. The scroll supplies its own spell slot.
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The group finishes up at the shrine near the docks and makes their way with speed through the afternoon-into-twilight streets of Absalom northwards into the Wise Quarter. The district is a centre of learning, thronged by students, professors, and lawmakers, with the Blakros Museum at its heart.
The skies darken unnaturally as the team draws near their target site, the streets eerily stark, an occasional haunted-appearing citizen hurrying along a side street marking a creepy mood that grows worse as out-of-place thunder sounds ominously from up around the corner. With a further storm peal, you all turn a corner to see an unnatural storm spiralling around the Blakros Museum, battering the building with torrential rain. A barrage of lightning strikes just outside the doors and windows and the gardens around the building are aflame, burning despite the deluge, the vegetation blowing wildly in response to wicked winds.
A large crowd of people gather around the periphery of the streets outside the lightning storm, trying to talk to one another over the din, but unfortunately barring your free passage forward. As your eyes light on the main entrance to the museum, a male dwarf hurries out of the Blakros Museum. The heavy winds at his back make it hard for him to control his movements, and as you watch in horror, he is tossed down the stone stairs and over an abutting wall onto a lower rampart, grotesquely fracturing his leg in the process. The crowd murmurs in fright at the injury, yet no one steps forward for fear of the vexing weather pounding down on the museum.
Just at that moment, hail begins falling from the sky near your position, pelting all citizens with blueberry-sized balls of ice. The crowd shrieks and breaks.
When it rains, it pours.
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Drazzel gets excited after Haechi identifies the scroll.
Oooo. Red dragon bouncy ball! Me's take it or someone else take it?
Drazzel reaches for the scroll as his eyes sparkle in anticipation.
Haechi hands the scroll back to Drazzel. "Well, Drazzel, since you discovered it I can't think of a better person to hold onto it. Use it wisely when the time comes, my friend."
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Drazzel starts pushing through the crowd but it's quite difficult with all the bodies pushing back. Not wanting to hurt anybody but knowing he needs to get to the museum quickly, he decides to channel his inner dragon power. He lets out a roar louder than the crashing thunder and his eyes begin glowing red. His body bulks up as it takes on a more draconic form and his scaled skin shimmers with the effect of dancing flames.
He snarls and growls at townsfolk as he pushes his way through.
Drazzel is quite shocked at how fast some of the townsfolk run away in fear.
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Haechi is pretty sure that he'll get trampled by the stampeding crowd unless he can clear a way through them, but how? He wasn't the most physically endowed person, so forcing his way to the museum wasn't going to work. He had to somehow get the crowd coming towards him to move aside and let him through.
An idea comes to him and he immediately puts it into action. He puts on the most menacing-looking face he can think of and starts moving his arms in wide and impressive-looking motions while repeatedly saying "turba timeo ignis".
As he advances towards the crowd with arms spinning dangerously around him, balls of flame appear in the palms of his hands and fly upwards to harmlessly burst into impressive-looking fire balls above his head. Between castings of his spell, he shouts out at the crowd ahead.
... ...
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After getting through the crowd of people, Drazzel notices Haechi pop out from the crowd about a dozen feet away. Haechi dismisses the flames in his hands and Drazzel sees townsfolk also running away frightend by Haechi. Over the peal of thunder, Drazzel bursts into laughter at the sight of townsfolk running away in fear of the kobolds.
Hahahaha! We scare silly hoo-mans!
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Even though Kornel always tries to construct an air of friendliness and likeability around him, he is not a man who likes being the center of attention. But neither is he a man of action, a fact that is evident to anyone familiar with his easy-going and slow-paced attitude. And so the challenge of bypassing a thick and panicked crowd is a cause of much stress for the phlegmatic Ustalavic sorcerer.
Kornel weighs his options, and a frown appears on his face. He mutters, "I did not want to do this, but..." and his sorcerous bloodline powers begin manifesting and warping his appearance in subtle ways.
His face changes to that of an older person, one approaching the end of their life: his facial features stiffen, and his eyes become dull like those of a dead fish. Even his balding grey hair turns a few shades paler.
"Death! Death and woe! AAAAAAAAH!" he moans and wails, shrieking like a banshee.
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Kornel's terrifying visage thins the crowd considerably at his location, allowing the middle-aged sorcerer the ability to stride swiftly towards the museum steps alongside most of his team.
Darlann takes a detour to the fallen dwarf as the rest of the team makes a beeline for the stairs to the open main entrance of the museum. Powerful winds blast out from within the building, almost as if they're trying to prevent your entrance.
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Haechi is not particularly strong and not even slightly athletic. He's having a hard time pushing against the winds. He yells to the others over the noise. "I'm afraid that I will require assistance to get any further. Can one of you stronger gentlemen make it into the museum with some rope and help pull the rest of us in?"
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With the crowds now behind him, Drazzel looks at the imposing museum through the raging storm. With winds buffeting him at hurricane strength and flashes of lighting crashing all around, he bends low to make himself more aerodynamic as he makes a mad dash towards the building. Occasionally, he gets lifted up by the winds but is able to keep going by somersaulting or tumbling through the strong gusts and dodging debris whipping past. Suddenly, an alley cat caught up in a thin vortex of wind hurtles towards Drazzel, its cries of fear screeching over the raging storm. Just as the cat is about to collide with Drazzel, he does a forward flip over the cat and through the vortex, his body corkscrewing so it doesn't get caught up in the whirlwind. He does a forward tumble as he hits the cobblestones then continues running towards the museum.
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As Haechi calls out for assistance and Darlann attends to the fallen dwarf, Drazzel and Kurvok make considerable progress through the windstorm, moving roughly halfway up the path to the main museum entrance.
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Haechi dodges hail while he watches Drazzel successfully advance towards the main museum entrance by sticking close to the floor, using his claws for purchase, and making quick sideways movements to avoid the flying debris.
Feeling like the other kobold was showing him up in some fashion, Haechi puffs up his chest. "If he can do it, then so can I."