Erekose's Savage Tide - Act 1: There is No Honour

[Rystil Arden]

(OOC: If the gaffe is that the door is actually locked on the inside, I'm totally okay with you changing it

More seriously, though, I'm guessing it's something more secret that you can't tell us yet (off the top of my head, I still think the 'vanishing' of that other ring is suspicious, so maybe one of the bad guys was supposed to have it after all? Anton Chekhov once said 'If you see a gun in Act I, you know it will be fired in Act V'). You probably can't let us know what it is yet, but I'm curious to find out later, when it isn't a spoiler.)

 

[Erekose13]

occ: that and has used it already...

 

[Rystil Arden]

(OOC: Wow, I was right? Score! One more for Anton Chekhov and dramatic tropes. Yeah, that should have been in the ledger, I guess. No big deal, though. It does take Alix from 99% to 100% on the whole Vanthus thing, since the bloodline was required and the other Vanderborens are dead. Also, if the treasure isn't gone when we get in there, it means they still need the combination from Alix, so the plan will still work, with some flourishes. Alix can play dumb and still pretend like his possession of the ring is a crucial asset as well, since that will either lure Rowyn/Vanthus into revealing their foul play or else force them to pretend that they don't have it)

 

[Erekose13]

With the metalic snake safely out of the way for now, you all start looking around for where to go next. The room is large, but there are no obvious exits beyond the one you came through. Tereg waits outside the door just in case. It takes a while to notice but the pillar embedded in the wall directly across from the front door bears a strange snake pattern that is different from the ones on the other pillars. Checking over the recessed pillar, Julian finds a hidden switch.

 

[Velmont]

Jerrell looks around. As Julian make a note about the hidden switch, he just look at the otehrs, waiting there call. All that sound too strange and unfamiliar to him, who has lived all his life in the street or on a boat. He prefers to let others makes the decision, even if there is something about Alix he doens't like, as he always seem to be three step ahead of everyone and keep too much for himself to Jerrell's taste.

 

[Manzanita]

Julian searches nervously, and only if Lavinia doesn't take the lead. Evidently, their patron hasn't been here before & doesn't know where the treasure is.

"I've found a switch here. But there's probably as trap." He makes sure Lavinia is safely behind him and wearing the ring before he triggers the switch.

OOC: As 'safely behind him' as you can be behind a 1st level bard!

 

[Rystil Arden]

"Nice work, Julian. And the good news is that there probably will not be a trap at this point, if our intel is correct. I think we're probably getting close."

 

[Erekose13]

When triggered, the snake designs animate. They writhe aside like living creatures, forming a coiling archway that opens into an octagonal room supported by a single large pillar with dozens of deep grooves along its sides. The seven walls of this room each bear fantastically detailed bas-relief carvings of exotic monsters in threatening poses. Starting at the wall immediartely to the west of the entrance to the room and moving clockwise, the carvings depict a tentacled monster with a glaring red eye and a mouth full of teeth, a looming dragon, a fish-like creature with three eyes and four tentacles, a two-headed giant wielding a pair of immense clubs, a spherical creature with four eyestalks and a bulging central eye over a drooling maw, a gorilla-like beast with a fanged maw and six eyes, and finally a towering black spider with seven eyes. Each monster's eyes consist of a glittering red stone. The ceiling above is only ten feet high, with the now-familiar eight-pointed star pattern radiating out from the grooved pillar. The arms of this star are black, save for the one pointing south toward the entrance, which is red.

 

[Rystil Arden]

(OOC: I think I got the answer from the way the description arranged them in order from one to seven and paid so much attention to eyes--I'm assuming this was copied from boxed text, but they should have probably like mixed them up a bit I guess)

"This is a combination lock, so each of these pictures probably corresponds to a number. The note mentioned 'looks to', and these are arranged in order from one to seven eyes, so that is probably the mapping between beast and number on this end of the combination. Unfortunately, the note included a different set of monsters. We may be able to map both ways, though. The chimera is six because it has three heads, the cyclops is one, the medusa is questionable because all the snakes in the hair have many eyes, but we'll just try two first and assume the maker of the combination was not so clever, an umber hulk I don't know for sure since I don't know much about it, but we can try each possibility there, and the basilisk has two. Sunrise means we turn east, so maybe right, and sunset would be turning left. We know this umber hulk thing can't have two eyes because it sits in between medusa and basilisk, so we don't have to try that."

(OOC: I doubt anyone has the right Knowledge to know in character that an umber hulk has 4 eyes, but eventually they will try the combination 6-1-2-4-2, which I believe to be correct.)

 

[Manzanita]

OOC: I must admit, I'd completely forgotten about the note. Good thing RA caught that. Here's what the note (in post 379 said) that we found with the ring:
Chimera looks to sunrise
Cyclops looks to sunset
Medusa looks to Sunrise
Umber Hulk looks to sunset
basilisk looks to sunrise

IC: Julian stands silently looking up at the ceiling for a while.

"We need to get up there and see if we can turn that 8 pointed star." He says. "I don't recall seeing anything that will get us up there. We may have to form some kind of human pyramid. Maybe we could raise Tereg."

"From there, if we look at the red point of the 'star' as the sun, then it towards the chimera eastward, then ...that two headed thing would be an ettin, not a cyclops, do you reckon?"

OOC: Do we need to make knowledge checks to recognize these monsters? Julian has Knowledge(arcana)+4 &, of course, bardic knowledge. We would also like to figure out which direction is East.