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Shemmy's Planescape Storyhour #2 (Updated x3 10-17-07)
- Thread starter Shemeska
- Start date
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Explorer
Niiice...
The tomb is deadly, dark and deep
With levels to go 'ere I sleep...
RC
The tomb is deadly, dark and deep
With levels to go 'ere I sleep...
RC
Shemeska
Adventurer
As difficult as it might have seemed, the open entrance to the tomb seemed even darker than the depths of the well in which its prospective plunderers stood. With the doors pushed open, they peered into the interior as best they could, but even with eyes enhanced by heritages fiendish or otherwise, they could discern little at first. In fact, for better or for worse, nothing emerged from the yawning gap but a cold wind that brushed at their faces, licking like a dozen ephemeral tongues from out of the darkness like djinn trapped in Shadow, begging for release.
"That's not right." Marcus said. "The air isn't stale."
Inva was quick to nod. "It's still moving."
Sure enough it was. An initial release of positive pressure was expected when a long sealed tomb was suddenly opened, but even after that first and sudden gust of air when the doors swung wide, there was a breeze drifting out of the entrance at a constant, disturbing rate that couldn't have been natural.
Velkyn smirked as his eyes strained against the dark. "Feels almost like home…”
Phaedra looked at him oddly for a moment. “I didn’t think that had been home for a long time. If you mean home like Sigil, this place really isn’t jaded enough to qualify you know.”
The half-drow nodded. “Original home. But this place lacks spiders, so it’s much more pleasant.”
Off to the side, Odesseron had moved closer to the entrance, ostensibly to examine the doors and the space beyond, but frankly the thayan was curious about whatever personal details the two of them might have been discussing. But by the time he’d moved closer, they’d finished and he was left to speculate.
Holding his conjured light higher up above them all, giving himself a better working light in the process, Victor removed a number of torches from his pack and laid them at the base of each door.
“What’s that for?” Phaedra asked as she watched him hammer the wood into place.
“I don’t like this place already.” The cleric replied. “And I’m nervous about it sealing back up after we’re inside. I’ve got plenty of spells to create light, and plenty of torches in reserve as is. They make convenient doorjambs.”
Inva glanced up at him from where she’d knelt down at the edge of the door, feeling the flow of air and looking for signs of any traps. “It’s a good idea.”
Victor smiled. “Why thank you.”
Her tail tapped the stone a single time. “Welcome I suppose. But that was my free compliment for the day. You’ve used it up…”
Victor looked concerned for a fraction of a second before Inva briefly turned and chuckled.
Their moment of humor aside, they peered down the hallway, hoping to make out finer details before actually entering. The corridor stretched off into the interior of the barrow, dark walls of frosted glass returning their light in scattered, wandering currents, creating luminous little eddies upon the black columns that supported the roof every ten feet. They stared at the play and glitter of the light, because as it refracted within the walls, the walls seemed to move with a swirling of wind from the intricate patterns cut or suspended within their matrix.
"Creepy yes, but you've got to admit." Inva said with a tone of admiration to her voice. "That's something right there."
"Pretty." Velkyn said, glancing at the first set of the columns. "But I'm not going to trust it even more because of it."
The target of his comment, the black and mirror polished columns, gazed back at them from hollow, carved eyes present upon their surface. Each of the columns, every three yards or so, was cut or cast to resemble a dancing figure caught in the wind. The figures, each of them unique, had their mouths open and eyes wide in an expression of either ecstasy or suffocation, a disturbing duality of terror and grace made even more poignant as the corridor's optical illusion made them appear standing in a storm, gasping for breath.
“Phaedra? Velkyn? Any magic in there?” Marcus asked, putting his hand on his blade as he glanced warily at the columns.
Inva turned to Odesseron, "You can feel free to step in and volunteer anytime you know."
“There aren't any wards within the hallway.” The red wizard replied. “At least to the extent of my vision. Just the same currents as the rest of the mounds.”
“But they’re stronger." Phaedra added. "I can’t say what it is, but there's more than just a succubus here.”
Inva glanced into the darkness. “That's what worries me.”
Curious as much as they were worried and cautious, they continued down the hallway as they talked, and all the while the tiefling was a dozen feet ahead of them, testing and probing the walls and the floor for any evidence of mundane traps. Of course her job was made all the more difficult by the fact that the glass of the walls was cut in a bizarre and intricate fashion, reflecting light and shadow, moving and drifting in a way that obscured any legitimate surface features behind its graceful illusions of wind.
"Sh*t." Inva muttered. "Do -not- move."
Velkyn came to a halt. “Sh*t what?”
Inva pointed to a patch of ground that didn’t seem any different. “There’s a pressure plate right in front of us.”
“Where?” Marcus asked. He hadn’t noticed a thing, and he still didn’t even as the tiefling was pointing it out.
Inva noticed the others staring at the spot. “You can’t see it till you’re almost on top of it. They arranged the blocks on the floor to work with the light patterns.”
“Alright.” Victor said. “Everyone keep any light sources you have still, and don’t move.”
Inva nodded. “That’s a start. Stay here and let me make certain that there aren’t any more.”
Carefully, Inva moved one hoofed foot away from the edge of the plate and slowly found its carved edges. A few copper pieces jammed into the seams, and a mark of bright white chalk to mark the borders of the trap later, the tiefling slinked off down the hall, eventually repeating the same process several more times before returning.
“Three more past here.” She said. “I’ve marked them all, and they’re jammed so they won’t trigger with normal pressure.”
Velkyn looked down at the first of the chalk outlines. “Were they hard to find?”
Inva shrugged. “They weren’t easy. The makers did a really good job hiding them. Very sneaky, I approve.”
“Notice anything else up ahead while you were looking for traps?”
“A few things actually.” The tiefling replied, nodding her head. “You’ll see it when we get closer.”
They weren’t let down in any way as they cautiously avoided the pressure plates and approached a wider section of the hall where an elaborate motif was carved into the floor. Artistic patterns of wind and Untheric script swirled around a glittering, reflective plate of sorts.
“What the heck is that?” Velkyn mused, looking at the metallic patch of floor.
Inva peered down at the script that outlined the floor section. “The most holy Nergal – may he find eternal peace… blah blah blah.”
A bubble suddenly broke the surface of the plate.
Velkyn moved forward. “What the hell?”
Another few seconds and another bubble sent a ripple through the ‘plate’. It wasn’t a plate at all, it was a shallow pool of liquid mercury.
“It’s liquid metal.” The half-drow said. “Huh…”
Inva motioned with her hand. “Someone give me their sword. I want to see how deep this is.”
Garibaldi complied and watched as the tiefling dipped the two-handed blade into the liquid. It was deep, and the blade slipped into the mercury nearly to the hilt before it stopped and Inva moved it through the pool with some difficulty, looking for the edges and any features at the bottom.
“So why didn’t you use your own sword?” Victor asked curiously.
The tiefling stuck out her tongue and continued to poke and prod at the depths of the pool. “Because this sword’s longer…”
“Ah.” Garibaldi said. “Well I’m happy to have helped then.”
Inva didn’t reply, she was too busy with the pool and with what she’d found in its depths. There was certainly something there. Deep at the bottom of the pool and situated at regular intervals, there seemed to be a series of holes, probably the source of the periodic air bubbles which rose to the surface, forcing their way through the dense liquid metal once they had built up a critical amount of pressure.
Inva stood up and withdrew Garibaldi’s sword, letting the metal drip off of the surface before handing it back to him.
“There’s some sort of hollow beneath it.” She explained. “What else beyond that… I can’t say. The metal probably blocks any scrying as well.”
“How would we even get down there in the first place?” Marcus asked.
“We’d have to take the metal out.” Phaedra suggested. “It’s too heavy and too toxic to dive into.”
Odesseron frowned. “Easier said than done perhaps. Plus the corridor continues on past here.”
“Preferences?” Velkyn asked.
Phaedra shrugged. “We can always come back, and it’s easier to open a door than… well… do whatever we’ll have to do with whatever that’s down there.”
“If it’s anything.” Inva said. “There’s my obligatory chip of cynicism.”
Velkyn shook his head. “Bah. You’re just as curious as I am.”
“I suggest we pass it for the moment.” Odesseron said. “Like Phaedra here said, we can always come back. Besides, I can ward the thing with an alarm to make sure that we’re aware if something comes out from under it, if there’s anything there at all.”
The others looked around and eventually came to a consensus: move on for the moment and return to the pool of mercury later in the event that they didn’t find anything of greater interest further into the tomb.
Continuing on, they passed through an archway at the end of the hall and turned a abrupt right angle, entering into the opening stretch of a massive vaulted gallery, standing there in awe under the outstretched arms of two massive statues. The statues were carved from the same glassy stone as the rest of the hallway, and resembled humans with avian features: winged arms and wickedly clawed feet like those of hunting falcons. Like snarling, fallen avorals, or perhaps petitioners or divine servants of Nergal, the statues were the largest of those set against the walls along the upwards incline of the corridor, but they were not the only ones.
“Anyone care to place a wager that the statues are animated to attack us?”
Velkyn gazed down the corridor, looking for any distinct magical auras, and found them in abundance. All of the statues glowed, each pair of them to either side of the hall, every twenty feet. Unlike the avian-styled colossi at the entrance of the gallery, the subsequent statues, each of them standing within a decorative niche set into the wall, were carved to resemble warriors dressed in the same style of the spectral warriors who haunted the surface of the barrow high above their heads.
“They’re not golems.” Velkyn said, squinting hard to discern the school of the dweomers. “But they’ll do something if you go past them. Contingencies and such, but I can’t tell what exactly.”
“Joy.” Phaedra said. “Magic generally doesn’t do well against constructs, so don’t mind me if I step back a bit.”
“You’re in good company dear.” Odesseron said, though in truth he’d been at the back the entire time regardless.
Inva held up another coin between two fingers. “How about we do this the fun way? We grab a copper and toss it town, see what happens.”
“Sure.” Velkyn said. “I'll hide behind Victor.”
Francesca and Garibaldi looked at one another and drew their weapons as Inva tossed the coin down the passage. Once again they were going to be at the front line.
The coin clattered down the passageway, rebounding from a wall and flying past the first two sets of statues, finally coming to a rest at the feet of the next pair. The air was still for a moment, cut only by the resonating rattle of the coin as it spun in place and finally stopped.
Velkyn tilted his head. “So maybe I…”
He never finished though. He didn’t need to, as a moment after he’d started to wonder if something would happen, a static charge flooded the air and the first pair of black glass warriors stepped free of their niches, the carved hollows of their eyes alight with a phosphor glow.
“Ok.” The half-drow said, stepping back. “Looks like we do this the hard way.”
Unlike golems, animated objects, or even most servitor undead, the guardians of Nergal’s tomb walked with a fluidity and grace that resembled that of living warriors, elite soldiers of a long-dead tradition. In fact, the statues seemed to dance upon the air, and as they stepped forward without any sound of footfalls upon stone, they were in fact walking upon the air with a liquid cadence that bespoke of intelligence lurking behind their glowing eyes. They were less statues than something akin to the helmed horrors of ancient and forgotten Raumathar.
But perhaps most disturbing about them, something seemed to swim within the glass. Dark, vaguely humanoid forms, like spectral skeletons, the statues almost seemed to present a double image as they stepped forward, almost as if the spirit of the warrior they had been carved to resemble lingered on, trapped within the glass, serving in death as they had in life.
But there was no need to let the constructs approach within melee range, and with a whispered word, Velkyn caused the hallway in front of and around them to erupt in a mass of sticky, silken and stereotypically spider-like webs. The effect was immediate: the first of the glass warriors was caught fast in the webs, immobile while the other struggled to cut themselves free. Looking past the first pair, a second pair of the tomb guardians was likewise hindered and slowed by the spell and their own entrapped fellows.
Arrows flew across the distance, some glancing off of the entrapped constructs, while others lodged deep, sending out cracks, but not appearing to cause extensive damage. Spells however might prove more effective, and that was clearly Phaedra’s thought when she acted.
The sorceress stepped forward and pointed her hand at one of the statues, the furthest one from the others, and one which seemed closest to breaking its way free from the webs. With a harsh word and a smooth gesture, a crackling bolt of lightning burst from her fingertips and connected with the construct, snarling across its surface and incinerating the webs…to no apparent damage.
“Damnit.” She cursed. “They’re immune to lightning.”
Taking cue and taking aim, Odesseron smiled. “Not an issue dear. You simply have to use something not based on the elements. Allow me to demonstrate.”
A burning line of green energy flashed across the distance, and the thayan chuckled as he watched it, knowing that the moment that it struck its target, the target would be reduced to naught but dust. At least that was what would have happened if he hadn’t missed, as the line went wide and burrowed a deep pit into the side of the passage, leaving the construct entirely unharmed.
Velkyn slowly turned and looked over his shoulder at the necromancer and inwardly both smiled and rolled his eyes. So much for Odesseron being a pinnacle of the Art. He was skilled yes, but he was probably more arrogant than his skill justified.
Spells aside, they still had time before the constructs closed the distance, and three of them were still trapped, wholly or partially, in Velkyn’s webbing. Marcus fired his pistol again, striking home and sending a spider web pattern of cracks through the chest of one of the statues as Victor recited a spell and darted forwards.
He wasn’t sure if the prayer would work, and perhaps normally it wouldn’t have, given the composition and magical nature of the statues, but it was worth the attempt regardless. The cleric deftly touched his hand to his holy symbol and then onto the shoulders of the first of the statues, willing the material to weaken, deform, stress and finally give way to his hand like stone trimmed from an imperfect sculpture by a master artist.
The glass warrior’s arms dropped to the ground and shattered into dozens of pieces, but Victor’s elation was short lived. Breaking loose of the webbing, the other statue slashed at Victor with its sword and sent him retreating backwards to avoid further injury.
With the cleric out of the way, the space was clear and Velkyn hurled a bolt of acid while Phaedra sent a cluster of glowing missiles streaking unerringly at the other. The acid ate deeply into the construct, and it seemed likely to last and do a progressively greater amount, but the half-‘loth’s own spell was snuffed as it hit its target.
“Damnit!” She screamed, slipping into yugoloth for a few other curses, upset that none of her spells had actually caused damage.
But as she vented her frustration, the fighters had closed the gap and engaged the warriors as they finally broke free of the webbing. Blows were traded and blood was spilt, but more glass than blood littered the floor, especially as one of the four constructs had earlier been reduced to staggering around without arms or weapons. Blow upon blow, the statues seemed more skilled than their living targets, but numbers and circumstances weighed heavily against them, and soon they fell, one by one to mace and sword and lingering acid.
Each broken statue led to elation on the group’s part, but something else sprung from each of those individual triumphs. Each time one of the glass warriors fell and shattered, the dark and ephemeral figure that had swum within them, and which had apparently been the source of the glow in their eyes, maybe even their motive force, they rose up into the air and hovered in the darkness.
Finally the last statue fell and shattered upon the floor, but nearly as soon as it did, yet another wraithlike form sprung from the remains and joined those that had previously leapt out of the others. There was another static hum and the immaterial figures began to congeal into more obviously humanoid forms, the spirits of the dead warriors still served in death, even deprived of their surrogate bodies.
The group stood there for a moment, staring at the spectral creatures, perhaps hoping that they would vanish or dissipate once the last of their kind had been released from its glassy prison. Perhaps the spirits had been unwillingly bound into eternal servitude, much like how the lingering ghosts of Nergal’s funerary procession relived and recreated their ceremonies and eventually their executions in an eternal, nocturnal cycle. But no, the congealing spirits served in death as willingly as they had in life.
“Victor? Are those undead?” Phaedra asked as the figures began to drift forwards.
The cleric gave a very brief nod, but he was already acting to banish the dead before they drew closer. With one quick flourish he drew forth his holy symbol and sent a burning pulse of golden light through the specters, consuming them utterly.
“F*ck off!” He shouted in his own native dialect of elven.
Victor smiled as they gingerly moved through the broken glass, picking through the remains to collect the weapons the statues had held. That had felt good, and despite the wounds he and the others had received, some of them deep, they had performed well, and that was a good portent for what might come later as they moved deeper into the tomb.
There were no further traps or guardians that they encountered, and at the top of the gallery the incline abruptly ended and the corridor continued at a straight angle. Unlike the earlier gallery though, the passage was devoid of the niche-bound statues, but that absence only made them all worry about what might be lurking in their way instead.
They ‘d progressed down the passageway only a few dozen feet before Victor held up his hand for them to stop. “Guys. Hold on.”
Inva raised an eyebrow. “You notice something I haven’t?”
Victor’s hand remained where it was, indicating that they should stop, but also pointing directly up at something in the ceiling: a large engraved stone plug in the glass.
“Must be an elf thing.” The tiefling said, looking up at the plug. “Nice job.”
“Is there anything written upon it?” Marcus asked, peering up and looking at the decorative symbols cut into its surface.
Inva shook her head. “Doesn’t appear to be. But they likely wouldn’t if they’d intended to conceal it from anyone intent on robbing the tomb. That’d be us of course.”
“But they’d probably ward it all to hell regardless.” Phaedra said.
Velkyn shrugged, already looking for dweomers on the stone. “So far as I can tell, there aren’t any magical wards in place on it.”
“Doesn’t mean it isn’t trapped though.” Inva said with a dose of cynicism. “Pull that out and I can just imagine a ton of acid, or rocks, or something worse pouring out on top of us.”
Phaedra peered up at the featureless plug. “Is there any way to tell?”
“I could cast an augury.” Victor said. “But I don’t have all that many of them memorized.”
Inva tapped the wall with her tail-spade. “This sounds like the time to blow one though. Otherwise there’s no other way to avoid the risk.”
Victor nodded and whispered the prayer, invoking his deity’s advice on whether removing the plug would cause them harm.
“No harm.” Victor finally said. “I didn’t get any sense that there was a trap of any sort. It’s just a concealed passage.”
“Let’s go for it then.” Marcus said as he and Francesca took out some rope and other tools.
Though the process was awkward, they eventually managed to hammer a wedge into the gap between the plug and the ceiling. Soon thereafter, with some prolonged effort, eventually they dislodged the plug from its place, sending it crashing to the ground and kicking up a storm of dust from the opened passage above.
First Inva and then Velkyn, the smallest members of the group, they climbed up the hole and examined the short length of corridor revealed.
“…and behind the door… is another door!” Velkyn said as they reached the terminus of the passage.
The object of the half-drow’s exclamation was a second plug. Set flush with the wall, it was more properly a sealed door, though unlike the first one, the second one was covered in an elaborate pattern of golden runes surrounding the holy symbol of Nergal.
Perhaps they’d finally found something.
"That's not right." Marcus said. "The air isn't stale."
Inva was quick to nod. "It's still moving."
Sure enough it was. An initial release of positive pressure was expected when a long sealed tomb was suddenly opened, but even after that first and sudden gust of air when the doors swung wide, there was a breeze drifting out of the entrance at a constant, disturbing rate that couldn't have been natural.
Velkyn smirked as his eyes strained against the dark. "Feels almost like home…”
Phaedra looked at him oddly for a moment. “I didn’t think that had been home for a long time. If you mean home like Sigil, this place really isn’t jaded enough to qualify you know.”
The half-drow nodded. “Original home. But this place lacks spiders, so it’s much more pleasant.”
Off to the side, Odesseron had moved closer to the entrance, ostensibly to examine the doors and the space beyond, but frankly the thayan was curious about whatever personal details the two of them might have been discussing. But by the time he’d moved closer, they’d finished and he was left to speculate.
Holding his conjured light higher up above them all, giving himself a better working light in the process, Victor removed a number of torches from his pack and laid them at the base of each door.
“What’s that for?” Phaedra asked as she watched him hammer the wood into place.
“I don’t like this place already.” The cleric replied. “And I’m nervous about it sealing back up after we’re inside. I’ve got plenty of spells to create light, and plenty of torches in reserve as is. They make convenient doorjambs.”
Inva glanced up at him from where she’d knelt down at the edge of the door, feeling the flow of air and looking for signs of any traps. “It’s a good idea.”
Victor smiled. “Why thank you.”
Her tail tapped the stone a single time. “Welcome I suppose. But that was my free compliment for the day. You’ve used it up…”
Victor looked concerned for a fraction of a second before Inva briefly turned and chuckled.
Their moment of humor aside, they peered down the hallway, hoping to make out finer details before actually entering. The corridor stretched off into the interior of the barrow, dark walls of frosted glass returning their light in scattered, wandering currents, creating luminous little eddies upon the black columns that supported the roof every ten feet. They stared at the play and glitter of the light, because as it refracted within the walls, the walls seemed to move with a swirling of wind from the intricate patterns cut or suspended within their matrix.
"Creepy yes, but you've got to admit." Inva said with a tone of admiration to her voice. "That's something right there."
"Pretty." Velkyn said, glancing at the first set of the columns. "But I'm not going to trust it even more because of it."
The target of his comment, the black and mirror polished columns, gazed back at them from hollow, carved eyes present upon their surface. Each of the columns, every three yards or so, was cut or cast to resemble a dancing figure caught in the wind. The figures, each of them unique, had their mouths open and eyes wide in an expression of either ecstasy or suffocation, a disturbing duality of terror and grace made even more poignant as the corridor's optical illusion made them appear standing in a storm, gasping for breath.
“Phaedra? Velkyn? Any magic in there?” Marcus asked, putting his hand on his blade as he glanced warily at the columns.
Inva turned to Odesseron, "You can feel free to step in and volunteer anytime you know."
“There aren't any wards within the hallway.” The red wizard replied. “At least to the extent of my vision. Just the same currents as the rest of the mounds.”
“But they’re stronger." Phaedra added. "I can’t say what it is, but there's more than just a succubus here.”
Inva glanced into the darkness. “That's what worries me.”
Curious as much as they were worried and cautious, they continued down the hallway as they talked, and all the while the tiefling was a dozen feet ahead of them, testing and probing the walls and the floor for any evidence of mundane traps. Of course her job was made all the more difficult by the fact that the glass of the walls was cut in a bizarre and intricate fashion, reflecting light and shadow, moving and drifting in a way that obscured any legitimate surface features behind its graceful illusions of wind.
"Sh*t." Inva muttered. "Do -not- move."
Velkyn came to a halt. “Sh*t what?”
Inva pointed to a patch of ground that didn’t seem any different. “There’s a pressure plate right in front of us.”
“Where?” Marcus asked. He hadn’t noticed a thing, and he still didn’t even as the tiefling was pointing it out.
Inva noticed the others staring at the spot. “You can’t see it till you’re almost on top of it. They arranged the blocks on the floor to work with the light patterns.”
“Alright.” Victor said. “Everyone keep any light sources you have still, and don’t move.”
Inva nodded. “That’s a start. Stay here and let me make certain that there aren’t any more.”
Carefully, Inva moved one hoofed foot away from the edge of the plate and slowly found its carved edges. A few copper pieces jammed into the seams, and a mark of bright white chalk to mark the borders of the trap later, the tiefling slinked off down the hall, eventually repeating the same process several more times before returning.
“Three more past here.” She said. “I’ve marked them all, and they’re jammed so they won’t trigger with normal pressure.”
Velkyn looked down at the first of the chalk outlines. “Were they hard to find?”
Inva shrugged. “They weren’t easy. The makers did a really good job hiding them. Very sneaky, I approve.”
“Notice anything else up ahead while you were looking for traps?”
“A few things actually.” The tiefling replied, nodding her head. “You’ll see it when we get closer.”
They weren’t let down in any way as they cautiously avoided the pressure plates and approached a wider section of the hall where an elaborate motif was carved into the floor. Artistic patterns of wind and Untheric script swirled around a glittering, reflective plate of sorts.
“What the heck is that?” Velkyn mused, looking at the metallic patch of floor.
Inva peered down at the script that outlined the floor section. “The most holy Nergal – may he find eternal peace… blah blah blah.”
A bubble suddenly broke the surface of the plate.
Velkyn moved forward. “What the hell?”
Another few seconds and another bubble sent a ripple through the ‘plate’. It wasn’t a plate at all, it was a shallow pool of liquid mercury.
“It’s liquid metal.” The half-drow said. “Huh…”
Inva motioned with her hand. “Someone give me their sword. I want to see how deep this is.”
Garibaldi complied and watched as the tiefling dipped the two-handed blade into the liquid. It was deep, and the blade slipped into the mercury nearly to the hilt before it stopped and Inva moved it through the pool with some difficulty, looking for the edges and any features at the bottom.
“So why didn’t you use your own sword?” Victor asked curiously.
The tiefling stuck out her tongue and continued to poke and prod at the depths of the pool. “Because this sword’s longer…”
“Ah.” Garibaldi said. “Well I’m happy to have helped then.”
Inva didn’t reply, she was too busy with the pool and with what she’d found in its depths. There was certainly something there. Deep at the bottom of the pool and situated at regular intervals, there seemed to be a series of holes, probably the source of the periodic air bubbles which rose to the surface, forcing their way through the dense liquid metal once they had built up a critical amount of pressure.
Inva stood up and withdrew Garibaldi’s sword, letting the metal drip off of the surface before handing it back to him.
“There’s some sort of hollow beneath it.” She explained. “What else beyond that… I can’t say. The metal probably blocks any scrying as well.”
“How would we even get down there in the first place?” Marcus asked.
“We’d have to take the metal out.” Phaedra suggested. “It’s too heavy and too toxic to dive into.”
Odesseron frowned. “Easier said than done perhaps. Plus the corridor continues on past here.”
“Preferences?” Velkyn asked.
Phaedra shrugged. “We can always come back, and it’s easier to open a door than… well… do whatever we’ll have to do with whatever that’s down there.”
“If it’s anything.” Inva said. “There’s my obligatory chip of cynicism.”
Velkyn shook his head. “Bah. You’re just as curious as I am.”
“I suggest we pass it for the moment.” Odesseron said. “Like Phaedra here said, we can always come back. Besides, I can ward the thing with an alarm to make sure that we’re aware if something comes out from under it, if there’s anything there at all.”
The others looked around and eventually came to a consensus: move on for the moment and return to the pool of mercury later in the event that they didn’t find anything of greater interest further into the tomb.
Continuing on, they passed through an archway at the end of the hall and turned a abrupt right angle, entering into the opening stretch of a massive vaulted gallery, standing there in awe under the outstretched arms of two massive statues. The statues were carved from the same glassy stone as the rest of the hallway, and resembled humans with avian features: winged arms and wickedly clawed feet like those of hunting falcons. Like snarling, fallen avorals, or perhaps petitioners or divine servants of Nergal, the statues were the largest of those set against the walls along the upwards incline of the corridor, but they were not the only ones.
“Anyone care to place a wager that the statues are animated to attack us?”
Velkyn gazed down the corridor, looking for any distinct magical auras, and found them in abundance. All of the statues glowed, each pair of them to either side of the hall, every twenty feet. Unlike the avian-styled colossi at the entrance of the gallery, the subsequent statues, each of them standing within a decorative niche set into the wall, were carved to resemble warriors dressed in the same style of the spectral warriors who haunted the surface of the barrow high above their heads.
“They’re not golems.” Velkyn said, squinting hard to discern the school of the dweomers. “But they’ll do something if you go past them. Contingencies and such, but I can’t tell what exactly.”
“Joy.” Phaedra said. “Magic generally doesn’t do well against constructs, so don’t mind me if I step back a bit.”
“You’re in good company dear.” Odesseron said, though in truth he’d been at the back the entire time regardless.
Inva held up another coin between two fingers. “How about we do this the fun way? We grab a copper and toss it town, see what happens.”
“Sure.” Velkyn said. “I'll hide behind Victor.”
Francesca and Garibaldi looked at one another and drew their weapons as Inva tossed the coin down the passage. Once again they were going to be at the front line.
The coin clattered down the passageway, rebounding from a wall and flying past the first two sets of statues, finally coming to a rest at the feet of the next pair. The air was still for a moment, cut only by the resonating rattle of the coin as it spun in place and finally stopped.
Velkyn tilted his head. “So maybe I…”
He never finished though. He didn’t need to, as a moment after he’d started to wonder if something would happen, a static charge flooded the air and the first pair of black glass warriors stepped free of their niches, the carved hollows of their eyes alight with a phosphor glow.
“Ok.” The half-drow said, stepping back. “Looks like we do this the hard way.”
Unlike golems, animated objects, or even most servitor undead, the guardians of Nergal’s tomb walked with a fluidity and grace that resembled that of living warriors, elite soldiers of a long-dead tradition. In fact, the statues seemed to dance upon the air, and as they stepped forward without any sound of footfalls upon stone, they were in fact walking upon the air with a liquid cadence that bespoke of intelligence lurking behind their glowing eyes. They were less statues than something akin to the helmed horrors of ancient and forgotten Raumathar.
But perhaps most disturbing about them, something seemed to swim within the glass. Dark, vaguely humanoid forms, like spectral skeletons, the statues almost seemed to present a double image as they stepped forward, almost as if the spirit of the warrior they had been carved to resemble lingered on, trapped within the glass, serving in death as they had in life.
But there was no need to let the constructs approach within melee range, and with a whispered word, Velkyn caused the hallway in front of and around them to erupt in a mass of sticky, silken and stereotypically spider-like webs. The effect was immediate: the first of the glass warriors was caught fast in the webs, immobile while the other struggled to cut themselves free. Looking past the first pair, a second pair of the tomb guardians was likewise hindered and slowed by the spell and their own entrapped fellows.
Arrows flew across the distance, some glancing off of the entrapped constructs, while others lodged deep, sending out cracks, but not appearing to cause extensive damage. Spells however might prove more effective, and that was clearly Phaedra’s thought when she acted.
The sorceress stepped forward and pointed her hand at one of the statues, the furthest one from the others, and one which seemed closest to breaking its way free from the webs. With a harsh word and a smooth gesture, a crackling bolt of lightning burst from her fingertips and connected with the construct, snarling across its surface and incinerating the webs…to no apparent damage.
“Damnit.” She cursed. “They’re immune to lightning.”
Taking cue and taking aim, Odesseron smiled. “Not an issue dear. You simply have to use something not based on the elements. Allow me to demonstrate.”
A burning line of green energy flashed across the distance, and the thayan chuckled as he watched it, knowing that the moment that it struck its target, the target would be reduced to naught but dust. At least that was what would have happened if he hadn’t missed, as the line went wide and burrowed a deep pit into the side of the passage, leaving the construct entirely unharmed.
Velkyn slowly turned and looked over his shoulder at the necromancer and inwardly both smiled and rolled his eyes. So much for Odesseron being a pinnacle of the Art. He was skilled yes, but he was probably more arrogant than his skill justified.
Spells aside, they still had time before the constructs closed the distance, and three of them were still trapped, wholly or partially, in Velkyn’s webbing. Marcus fired his pistol again, striking home and sending a spider web pattern of cracks through the chest of one of the statues as Victor recited a spell and darted forwards.
He wasn’t sure if the prayer would work, and perhaps normally it wouldn’t have, given the composition and magical nature of the statues, but it was worth the attempt regardless. The cleric deftly touched his hand to his holy symbol and then onto the shoulders of the first of the statues, willing the material to weaken, deform, stress and finally give way to his hand like stone trimmed from an imperfect sculpture by a master artist.
The glass warrior’s arms dropped to the ground and shattered into dozens of pieces, but Victor’s elation was short lived. Breaking loose of the webbing, the other statue slashed at Victor with its sword and sent him retreating backwards to avoid further injury.
With the cleric out of the way, the space was clear and Velkyn hurled a bolt of acid while Phaedra sent a cluster of glowing missiles streaking unerringly at the other. The acid ate deeply into the construct, and it seemed likely to last and do a progressively greater amount, but the half-‘loth’s own spell was snuffed as it hit its target.
“Damnit!” She screamed, slipping into yugoloth for a few other curses, upset that none of her spells had actually caused damage.
But as she vented her frustration, the fighters had closed the gap and engaged the warriors as they finally broke free of the webbing. Blows were traded and blood was spilt, but more glass than blood littered the floor, especially as one of the four constructs had earlier been reduced to staggering around without arms or weapons. Blow upon blow, the statues seemed more skilled than their living targets, but numbers and circumstances weighed heavily against them, and soon they fell, one by one to mace and sword and lingering acid.
Each broken statue led to elation on the group’s part, but something else sprung from each of those individual triumphs. Each time one of the glass warriors fell and shattered, the dark and ephemeral figure that had swum within them, and which had apparently been the source of the glow in their eyes, maybe even their motive force, they rose up into the air and hovered in the darkness.
Finally the last statue fell and shattered upon the floor, but nearly as soon as it did, yet another wraithlike form sprung from the remains and joined those that had previously leapt out of the others. There was another static hum and the immaterial figures began to congeal into more obviously humanoid forms, the spirits of the dead warriors still served in death, even deprived of their surrogate bodies.
The group stood there for a moment, staring at the spectral creatures, perhaps hoping that they would vanish or dissipate once the last of their kind had been released from its glassy prison. Perhaps the spirits had been unwillingly bound into eternal servitude, much like how the lingering ghosts of Nergal’s funerary procession relived and recreated their ceremonies and eventually their executions in an eternal, nocturnal cycle. But no, the congealing spirits served in death as willingly as they had in life.
“Victor? Are those undead?” Phaedra asked as the figures began to drift forwards.
The cleric gave a very brief nod, but he was already acting to banish the dead before they drew closer. With one quick flourish he drew forth his holy symbol and sent a burning pulse of golden light through the specters, consuming them utterly.
“F*ck off!” He shouted in his own native dialect of elven.
Victor smiled as they gingerly moved through the broken glass, picking through the remains to collect the weapons the statues had held. That had felt good, and despite the wounds he and the others had received, some of them deep, they had performed well, and that was a good portent for what might come later as they moved deeper into the tomb.
There were no further traps or guardians that they encountered, and at the top of the gallery the incline abruptly ended and the corridor continued at a straight angle. Unlike the earlier gallery though, the passage was devoid of the niche-bound statues, but that absence only made them all worry about what might be lurking in their way instead.
They ‘d progressed down the passageway only a few dozen feet before Victor held up his hand for them to stop. “Guys. Hold on.”
Inva raised an eyebrow. “You notice something I haven’t?”
Victor’s hand remained where it was, indicating that they should stop, but also pointing directly up at something in the ceiling: a large engraved stone plug in the glass.
“Must be an elf thing.” The tiefling said, looking up at the plug. “Nice job.”
“Is there anything written upon it?” Marcus asked, peering up and looking at the decorative symbols cut into its surface.
Inva shook her head. “Doesn’t appear to be. But they likely wouldn’t if they’d intended to conceal it from anyone intent on robbing the tomb. That’d be us of course.”
“But they’d probably ward it all to hell regardless.” Phaedra said.
Velkyn shrugged, already looking for dweomers on the stone. “So far as I can tell, there aren’t any magical wards in place on it.”
“Doesn’t mean it isn’t trapped though.” Inva said with a dose of cynicism. “Pull that out and I can just imagine a ton of acid, or rocks, or something worse pouring out on top of us.”
Phaedra peered up at the featureless plug. “Is there any way to tell?”
“I could cast an augury.” Victor said. “But I don’t have all that many of them memorized.”
Inva tapped the wall with her tail-spade. “This sounds like the time to blow one though. Otherwise there’s no other way to avoid the risk.”
Victor nodded and whispered the prayer, invoking his deity’s advice on whether removing the plug would cause them harm.
“No harm.” Victor finally said. “I didn’t get any sense that there was a trap of any sort. It’s just a concealed passage.”
“Let’s go for it then.” Marcus said as he and Francesca took out some rope and other tools.
Though the process was awkward, they eventually managed to hammer a wedge into the gap between the plug and the ceiling. Soon thereafter, with some prolonged effort, eventually they dislodged the plug from its place, sending it crashing to the ground and kicking up a storm of dust from the opened passage above.
First Inva and then Velkyn, the smallest members of the group, they climbed up the hole and examined the short length of corridor revealed.
“…and behind the door… is another door!” Velkyn said as they reached the terminus of the passage.
The object of the half-drow’s exclamation was a second plug. Set flush with the wall, it was more properly a sealed door, though unlike the first one, the second one was covered in an elaborate pattern of golden runes surrounding the holy symbol of Nergal.
Perhaps they’d finally found something.
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Hmmm.....interesting...a bubble of air out of a vat of mercury...I'm not very good at physics, but such things are not supposed to happen imo (it won't pass, even with 1mm sq. applied pressure...the vat is about a meter deep...brrrrrrrr...creeeepyyy)
Creeepyyy...the Breath of Nergal...brrrrr
Creeepyyy...the Breath of Nergal...brrrrr
Inconsequenti-AL
Breaks Games
This is a really excellent arc to the story... seems like a fun place to be exploring! Did it manage to make the players at all nervous?
Loved statues btw.
And thanks for the writing!
Loved statues btw.
And thanks for the writing!
Ohtar Turinson
Explorer
Are the statues homebrew? If not, what are they from?
Shemeska
Adventurer
Zarnam said:
*waves hands dismissively with a major sense of irony* Stupid laws of science! Always getting in the way of cool sounding ideas! Bah!
Ohtar Turinson said:
The description is original. The stats I used for them were cannibalized from the stats for Helmed Horrors in Lost Empires of Faerun (originally printed in Monsters of Faerun), but I shuffled some traits and added/removed some to fit the Nergal theme. The wraiths being released upon their destruction was my own thing as well, and they were just standard wraiths with some boosted hitdice.
In retrospect I -really- enjoyed this particular arc and location.
recentcoin
Explorer
Nothing like a quick jaunt through a nasty tomb to make you wonder what the other assignments would have been like.
RC
RC
