The guardsman wrinkles his nose at the smell and holding his polearm back while leaning away from the room, uses the narrow end of his hammer to try to flip over the recent corpse.
"Ugh... "
Akula carefully scanned the room for hidden threats while Savien wrangled the bodies.
Savien enters through the door and takes a few steps into the room, nudging the body with his hammer. Akula follows him in, immediately scanning the room. Meepo, meanwhile, remains just outside the door, sticking his lit dagger into the room and trying to see into the gloom.
Just as Savien begins turning the body over, he senses more than hears movement to either side of him. At the same time, Akula catches a glimpse of movement and looks ahead to see a particularly large rat preparing to pounce on Savien.
Initiative!
Round 1
Those bolded below may act.
Sureliah
Akula
Red Rat
Blue Rat
Green Rat
Mama Rat
Savien
Julio
Melaphisto
Blitz
Meepo
Blitz looks at Meepo,
"Seriously...does this place keep anything besides rats?"
Akula barks "Rat!" and looses an arrow.
Akula reacts with incredible speed and launches an arrow at one of the rats off to the side. The arrow lodges itself in the rat's shoulder and it shudders from the pain.
Sureliah is already moving forward from the other room and takes an errant shot with her crossbow that might have hit a rat had it not buried itself in a wall instead.
The rat Akula skewered with an arrow finishes crawling out of the debris around it and creeps closer to Savien before baring its fangs and attacking.
Almost simultaneously, another rat that was even better hidden lashes out from Savien's other side.
...but gets a mouthful of Savien's armor.
From ahead yet another rat steps forward and tries to take a bite out of the human...
...but mistimes its attack and bumps into Savien's knee.
The final rat, larger than the others works up some speed and comes hurtling at him. With a quick flick of his arms, Savien barely has time to swing his hammer around at the charging beast.
She is just too fast as his manages to do little more than bump the charging beast with the shaft of his hammer.
...that is just enough to throw her off on the attack.
Round 1
Those bolded below may act.
Sureliah
Akula
Red Rat
Blue Rat
Green Rat
Mama Rat
Savien
Julio
Melaphisto
Blitz
Meepo
======
Round 2
Sureliah
Akula
Fed up with the vermin overrunning the place, Blitz decides to be the better mousetrap. He steps up through his allies and attacks.
Seeing Savien outnumbered and surrounded, Julio moves up and attempts to skewer a rat with is rapier.
Savien grits his teeth and takes a step back, swinging heavily again at the larger rat.
"Too many damn rats!"
As Blitz pushes into the room past Meepo, the color in his vision begins to fade as his eyesight begins to engage his natural darkvision. He spots one of the rats harassing Savien and jabs at it with his short sword, leaving a jagged scratch along its back.
Julio follows him into the room and jabs the same rat with his rapier, seeing the tip sink in a good 3 inches before solid bone stops it. The rat staggers and as Julio withdraws his weapon, dark blood begins gushing from the wound. The rat manages to keep its footing however.
Savien steps back and swings at the large rat. The presence of the smaller rat between the two of them however throws off his swing just enough to save it.
Savien steps back and swings at the large rat. The presence of the smaller rat between the two of them however throws off his swing just enough to save it...or so the big man initially thinks since he does not feel the impact. As he follows through and catches a glimpse of the business end of his hammer, he sees it liberally coated in gore and rat fur. His eyes trail down to the rat itself and at first it is difficult to comprehend what he is looking at until he realizes that the head of the beast has been brutally ripped from the body.
Akula adjusted back and fired at the furthest rat.
Akula's shot strikes true but the rat stays up.
I will go ahead and post for Sureliah/Melaphisto to keep things going...
The elven beauty looks at her eidolon and says, "Melaphisto - get in there!"
Melaphisto ambles forward into the room, joining the rest of the party and slams into one of the rats.
...leaving behind a bloody paste on the ground in front of Savien.
Sureliah, for her part is in no hurry to join the others in the crowded room and tries again to fire through the doorway.
Meepo feels the eidolon push past and says "Whoa there big fella". Then sees what it does to the rat and says [larger]"Whoa Big Fella![/larger]
He then moves further into the room and gestures at one of the rats, sending a blob of acid its way.
The rat rears up...and collapses.
The final rat takes one final bite at Julio...
Under the focused assault of the party, however, the rat goes down in short order.
Savien scowls angrily at his new wound, shaking his head to himself. I need to pay more attention...
"Hey, lizardman. Can you just put that light on my hammer since you seem keen to hide in the back?" The guardsman gives him glare that clearly seems to place the blame for his new wound on the lack of light... and more specifically on the kobold.
Meepo cocks his head at Savien, "You know I'm not a lizardman right? They are much bigger and dumber." He looks at his dagger and the light goes out, leaving only the dim glow from Julio's sunrod. He then casts the cantrip on Savien's polearm.
"Wow. Giving that thing a little light really brings out the imperfections in its design." He then walks over to Julio.
"Looks like a dead-end here."
Blitz looks along the wall for any concealed paths...
The wall shows cracks and signs of age. Along the north side of the room, the mortar is completely gone in several places and individual blocks in the wall are cracked in a number of places.
Blitz also notes the presence of several piles around the room where the rats likely dragged the remains of unwary victims who stumbled too close to the nest. Poking through some of the piles of rotting clothing, he finds 4 platinum pieces and 43 gold pieces, a dirty, stoppered vial containing a cloudy liquid, and a scroll.
None of the piles that Blitz inspects is in very good condition however. The body that Savien was beginning to inspect is clearly much more recent.
Blitz gathers up the booty and presents it to the rest of the party,
"Look friends, it seems fortune smiles upon us! It's the least those rat bastards could do to compensate us for the extermination process plus health care expense!"
Thr guardsman grunts in response to Meepo and moves to turn over the body with polearm-light. He is not about to get into an argument with a lizard.
Julio looks at the bite on his leg.
"Ruined. I will never be able to mend these pants and have them look as good as they were."
Pulling up the pant leg to reveal his wound he begins to find it.
"I guess I will have to come up with an amazing story for the ladies about this wonderful scar I am going to have. I hope it doesn't fester."
Savien turns over the remains. It's actually quite gruesome what a rat with some time on its hands will do to the exposed parts of a body. At any rate, you can tell it was an average sized humanoid male in studded leather armor. The armor itself probably was fairly decent at one time until the guy died and was left to rot in a giant rat nest. Near his hands are two fairly ordinary daggers starting to show signs of rust. You also find 3 more daggers in various sheathes around his body. A shortbow lies pinned beneath his legs. He also has a pack on him and sifting through the typical adventuring supplies within it, you find an unmarked vial of liquid and a pouch with 17 gold pieces in it. Somehow, one of his fingers remains in tact upon which is a gold ring. Looking at the ring you see it is engraved with "For Karakas My Love".
Akula smiled slitely, deciding in that moment that he liked the snarky Kobold traveling with them.
He gave Julio's pants a glance. They were not in any way sensible attire for exploring an ancient tomb. Humans were strange. Still, Julio had proven himself a useful ally and it cost Akula nothing to be helpful.
"I can fix them." he rumbled. "After we next rest."
Savien gives Julio and skeptical look before shaking his head. The guardsman checks each of the daggers and takes any of them that are serviceable as well as the other loot he finds.
"Ugh... this place is going to be the death of us all... I guess we check the door we passed earlier?"
Savien sighs and moves around the pit traps and moves toward the door just past the jail cells from before.
Meepo tags along with Savien as they go. "Did you know the former owner of that body? It seemed like it hadn't been dead as long as the others. Kobolds have only been here a few weeks but we never saw him."
As the two reach the room with the door, Savien can't help but think something has changed about the place.
Looking around, everything just looks dusty. In fact, as he walks he ends up inadvertently kicking a larger stone that goes bouncing harmlessly down the hall. The stone comes to rest near the first fountain you found. There, along the wall above the fountain is something written in green paint.
Fáilte ar ais, Daonna!
Akula blinked at the writing. That certainly hadn't been there when they had first found the fountain. "Don't move." he said to the others.
He then proceeded to scour the room for clues as to where the paint had come from.
Ugh.. whatever it is, it's talking to me I guess... The guardsman sighs and shakes his head. Savien speaks aloud to no one in particular, at a normal volume while Akula scours the room.
"Hey, can you go back to bugging the kobolds? We're not gonna be here for long anyway."
Akula has little difficulty finding tracks in the dusty floor. They resemble the tracks you found before by the blood smeared floor and end up leading back that way, stopping abruptly opposite the boarded up doorway.
Akula examines the boards to see if they have been moved recently.
"What is through here?" he asked Meepo.
Akula examines the boarded up doorway. Everything looks firmly in place, yet the footprints clearly stop outside of it - if closer to the wall opposite the doorway.
Meepo comes around the corner and says, "I don't know. Goblins boarded up the doorway before we got here. Don't know whose blood that is either. Do you think the thing is a threat? It has never attacked kobolds."
"I have a feeling that ignoring this thing is going to cause us problems later. " The guardsman crouches by where the tracks stop and starts physically feeling around the floor and wall nearby, opposite the door.
In a loud tone, he adds, "If you just tell us what you want and why, we might be able to work something out."
All the constant careful searching is driving Blitz crazy, he's had enough. He starts hacking away at the boarded door with his scizore.
"Well then, if these boards are of goblin fashion, then it won't offend the kobolds if we knock em down!"
Akula backed up and let Savien and Julio check for secret doors. At the suggestion of tearing down the barricade, Akula looked to Meepo questioningly. "Any reason we should not?"
Meepo just shrugs to Akula's question. "No. We've never been that way."
Blitz makes fairly quick progress in tearing down the barrier. His scizore gets a new knick in the blade which may in the end help it to be more useful than it has been lately.
The door itself opens easily enough and on the other side is the first sunlight you have seen in almost half a day. As your eyes adjust to the light, you see a partially demolished stairway leading upward.
For his part, Savien ignores the rest of his party and starts to search around the spot. There, on the wall near the floor is a small mark, maybe a couple inches tall. At first you think it is a blood splatter from whatever else happened here but as you look at it, you recognize that it has a specific shape...and you recognize that shape as a word in Sylvan that combines the feelings of a warm fireplace, confidence and safety. The closest common word to it is "Home".
Akula made his way forward into the room with an arrow notched, stepping quietly. He eyed the blood and dirt on the ground carefully.
Akula makes his usual cautious entrance into the small stairwell. After all of the ruckus created by Blitz dismantling the barricade, it is unlikely that anything that might have been inside would be unaware of your entrance, but a little caution is never a bad thing in a dungeon.
The blood spot continues under the door and into the stairwell where it becomes much more faded. Your best guess is that whatever left this stain either died or was severely injured some time ago (months or maybe even years ago). It also wasn't too large of a creature. It could have been a kobold or a goblin or even a human. Certainly nothing oversized like an ogre.
The walls here are entirely nondescript and the stairs themselves are in a sorry shape, weathered by continued exposure to the elements. They lead upward to the hole in the ceiling.
You definitely see some footprints along the edges of the room where they haven't been washed away by the weather but they are certainly not new. The only new tracks in the room appear to belong to small birds and vermin.
Turning away from the writing with a thoughtful expression, Savien joins Akula in the next room.
Why would something want to live here?
Taking a quick assessment of the room, the guardsman gives the stairway and the opening at the top a dubious look.
"Doesn't look dangerous, but then again, I have several injuries due to rats, so I might be wrong. Anyone wanna go peek up there?"
He doesn't seem particularly interested in going himself.
"Seems pretty unlikely that we'll find the people we're looking for this way."
Before Blitz commits to going up a level, he asks Meepo if he has any extensive knowledge about the doors they neglected to check from the room they found him in, as well as the ones going from the passage after.
"Do they lead deeper in on this level? I mean, to a degree worth checking on..."
Akula put away his bow and drew his axe, then moved to the staircase and scanned them carefully as he made his way up to the hatch.
Still in a funk about ruining his paint Julio move to the stairs and look up them.
He holds back Akula and says, "Let me go up first. I am lighter than you and these stairs do not look all sturdy."
He hold is sunrod high and tests each step before putting his full weight on it.
Julio makes his way up the stairs, a few of which creak ominously. You make it to the top and raise your head out of the opening.
ruffling of feathers erupts around you as small birds take off in flight. Cracked and broken rubble is heaped about you as you make your way outside again. Between the piles of rubble and the small size of the hole, it makes sense that you couldn't see this from the surrounding cliffs.
"It looks like this might be another way into or out of the citadel. That would be the reason that they boarded it up."
Meepo looks at Blitz as he asks his questions. "Well, Kobolds live in most of the rooms around Yusdrayl. There is also a cracked wall that leads to a place of never ending caves. I think you call it the Darklands...The other door that is south of the entrance is locked. Kobolds haven't entered it but I think it is just a key lock. Not a magic lock."
Blitz listens to Meepo's description. Mention of the opening to the Darklands sounds fascinating to Blitz enough to where he takes everything the kobold says at face value.
"Well, I guess we should look somewhere else." The guardsman shrugs and walks back into the citadel with his light-tipped polearm.
"I'm checking the door we passed up here."
Savien doesn't look all too happy, in general.
"Who knows, maybe we'll get lucky and there's something useful and not at all deadly behind here..."
He rolls his eyes at himself.
Savien had done a good job ignoring his wounds. Akula hadn't noticed until he saw him walk away under the light of his polearm.
"No. We rest. Three of us are injured. Too risky to move forward."