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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 3021155" data-attributes="member: 11697">***"Don't stare." Victor whispered, intending to make a joke at his brother."I’m not staring!" Came the almost guilty reply though from Garibaldi."...sorry sir..."Phaedra turned and glanced at the fighter, sticking out her tongue. "It's a greater Tanar'ri. Just... eww...""What's wrong with Tanar'ri?" Inva asked with a smirk, raising an eyebrow at the half-loth. The tiefling looked over at the prostrate form of the succubus and then down at her own chest. "I'm some fraction of Tanar'ri too you know.""You don't say." Phaedra replied with a bemused sigh as Inva pantomimed plumping her cleavage.Collectively stepping forward, their own light seemed to dim as it reached into the chamber, almost as if the circle binding the succubus was suppressing it or devouring it. There was light in the room however, a dull, deeply ruddy light that seemed to pulse like a heartbeat, one that had stirred and quickened since they had approached."The Vrock wasn't lying." Phaedra said, noticing the smooth incision on the succubus’s chest.It didn't bleed blood, ichor, or whatever corruption flowed through a greater Tanar'ri's veins, and even if it did, it would have caked and congealed along with the dust into a blackened slurry, and there was only a fine layer of dust upon the fiend’s exposed flesh. But regardless of the fact that the open wound didn’t leak blood, it still pulsed and pumped with a crimson light, the aortal rhythm of the binding stone sunk into its heart.    “So what does anyone suggest we do?” Marcus asked. “Kill her? Leave her alone and tip toe our way around her?”    It was a good question, but unfortunately they didn’t have the chance to reply because the succubus struck seconds later, and in no conventional manner.    The air rippled with a sudden contraction and expansion of air, like the center of the room had been struck with a hammer and behaved like the surface of a drum. A black wave of corruption spread out from that point and washed over the group, though it didn’t affect all of them in the same way.    Odesseron and his entire group didn’t seem phased in the least, and neither did Inva. To them, the fiend’s innate spell had simply been a trick of light and nothing more, but to the others they felt a wave of pain and nausea, ranging from the minor to the extreme. They staggered and verbalized their reaction, and all of them were giving looks of confusion as they struggled to find the source of the attack.    The fiend in the room was the obvious source, but the body of the succubus hadn’t changed at all. She hadn’t stood up, she hadn’t smiled, she hadn’t even twitched, and the pulse of light from her chest had continued without interruption.    “What the hell was that?!” Phaedra shouted. She’d felt the spell’s effect, but it had either soaked against her innate resistance to magic, or she’d managed to shrug it off. But she had felt it, something some of her companions couldn’t say.    “Did we just trip a ward?” Victor asked as he got back to his feet from where he’d stumbled.    “No, not that I can tell.” Velkyn replied, feeling sick to his stomach but not in pain.“Of course you haven’t you idiot.” Odesseron added as he backed up. “You haven’t gone near the edges of that binding circle.”    Then it happened again. The same spell, targeting them a second time, with much the same effect.    “Oh come on!” Victor shouted, doubled over and feeling sick.    Several sickened moans and a grunt of pain echoed through the room as the air cleared. If it was the succubus, they couldn’t see her, and while she wasn’t hurling bolts of lightning at them, her attacks were inflicting damage each and every time.    “Where the hell is she?!” Marcus demanded.    Though she was searching for the source of the attacks, Inva was nowhere to be seen, and Velkyn and Odesseron began to whisper almost at the same time, though the Thayan didn’t seem to have nearly the sense of urgency that the half-drow did.    “She’s not invisible.” Velkyn shouted as he glanced around the room. “I don’t have a clue where she’s at, because she obviously can see us to target us.”    A third time the fiend struck, and this time Velkyn doubled over and retched.     Backlit by the light of the binding stone in the fiend’s chest, Inva stepped out of the shadows cast by the burnt down candles at the edges of the circle. “She isn’t –here-.”    “Excuse me?” Marcus asked, helping Francesca up.    “She isn’t physically manifest.” The tiefling explained, darting her tail to the side and pointing at the corpse. “She isn’t on the shadow plane either, because I just checked, though there was something odd about that but…”    Marcus frowned. “Tell stories later, where is she at?”“She’s nailing us from the ethereal.” Inva explained, belatedly added, “And hell if I can do anything about that.”    “Can anyone do anything about her?” Marcus asked. “Victor? Velkyn? Phaedra? Odesseron? Please tell me that one of you has a spell that can target her, or banish her, or something.”    “Banishment isn’t an option boy.” Odesseron lectured. “She’s tethered to this spot and you’ll be in for a world of pain if you break that circle, and it’ll take hours to dispel it all.”    “…I can.” Phaedra said softly, looking a bit uncomfortable both at the prospect of going after the succubus on her own, and perhaps even using the ability she was referring to.    “What are you planning on doing?” Velkyn asked.    “Thank my mom.” The half-‘loth muttered. “I haven’t tried this for years, so we’ll see if this even works.”    The others couldn’t complain because unless she, or anyone else, could do something, regardless of what it was, they were sitting ducks at the mercy of a fiend who seemed intent on killing them out of magical compulsion or purely out of sadistic impulse.Phaedra gripped her staff warily and gave an uneasy smile. Then, drawing on a rarely used aspect of her heritage, one from the side of that bloodline that was probably more distant than the other, and the one which she least openly patterned herself against, the world blurred and slipped away like a sheet of mist or a bank of fog.    As she looked around, the room was still visible, and quite distinct, as the walls of the tomb seemed to have been constructed in such a way as to make them opaque and manifest on both the prime and the near ethereal. But other details were obscured and indistinct, especially her companions who appeared only as hazy clouds and blotches of color set against the swirling ethereal mists.    “And just who are you?” Came a seductive snarl in abyssal.    Phaedra turned and saw the succubus, naked with her wings extended and lazily swimming amid the drifting clouds of ether. The fiend stared back at her luridly, crossing her arms and propping up her t*ts, tapping her claws across her forearms.    Phaedra didn’t reply immediately, and the succubus drifted closer with a flap of her wings.    The tanar’ri licked her lips with a disturbingly long and forked tongue. “Don’t be so coy darling.”    Phaedra could almost immediately feel the impact of the fiend’s words, a magical charm intended to seduce and influence a victim. But the succubus couldn’t have been aware that another side of her intended victim’s heritage had made her immune to that in the first place.    Phaedra would have replied, but the succubus made the assumption that her victim wouldn’t resist and would happily throw herself into her arms. In a heartbeat the succubus was physically pressed against her, licking up the side of her neck and curling a tail around her leg.    Immediately a cold chill spread through Phaedra’s body and she felt a spell drift out of memory. Instinctively she snarled and lashed out, slugging the succubus across the jaw with the butt of her quarterstaff.    The succubus blinked and spit blood, turning the drifting ether a rose shade of red like she was dumping chum into the mists for schools of incorporeal sharks. She’d assumed that Phaedra was charmed and would have submitted to her carnal vampirism with willing gusto.    Phaedra realized this as well, and in a moment of absolutely inspired wordplay, muttered a phrase that while it made her feel incredibly dirty, it kept the succubus under her previous delusion.    “Oh that was good…” Phaedra said, breathing heavily. “But b*tch I like it rough.”    The succubus’s chest was heaving and bouncing as she licked the blood from her lips and growled like an animal at Phaedra, slinking forward for more, drawing closer for another round of give and take.    But that first hit had been instinctive and without any major force behind it, a shove rather than a haymaker, however not so much for the next few blows she landed.    After a few rounds of abortive coupling, Phaedra was shivering from the fiend’s draining touch, she felt violated and was liberally slathered with warm tanar’ri spittle and possibly other fluids as well. But the fiend was in far worse shape: bruised, bleeding and at the end probably had a broken jaw and skull fractures as she drifted unconsciously through the mist.    “Oh yuck…” Phaedra said with a grimace, spitting to remove as much of the taste of the fiend’s tongue from her mouth. It wasn’t anything to do with gender. As it was she felt rather attracted to Inva, and powers knew that one half of her family tree was rather… bizarre… in that sense when it came down to it, and innate shapeshifting tended to make it superfluous anyways. No, it was that it was a bloody Tanar’ri. She felt like she’d just sucked the tongue of perhaps the filthiest creature in the multiverse, and letting it paw at her all the while hadn’t made it a more pleasant experience in the slightest.     A moment later she shifted back to the prime as she brushed at her robes and continued to spit with a rancid expression on her face from the Tanar’ri’s kiss in every manner of speaking: the disgust, the violation, and the sapping of the energy drain.    Of course the questions came quick.    “She hasn’t done anything more, did you manage to handle her?” Marcus asked.    “Are you alright?” Velkyn asked, noting that she was shaking.    “What exactly happened?” Inva asked.    “Nothing!” Phaedra stuttered back a little too quickly. “Absolutely nothing! Nothing happened…”    Velkyn raised an eyebrow and chuckled, letting his mind paint its own picture of what might have happened, but he spared her any more embarrassment than what might have been implied already as Victor walked over to heal what of the succubus’s damage to her than he could.    “A good night’s rest should heal you the rest of the way.” The cleric said. “But let me try that again in the morning after I’ve gone through my prayers again.”    Once Victor had moved away and they’d all approached the archway leading into the next, and last, main chamber in the tomb, Inva slipped up behind Phaedra and nudged her with her hip.    “Nothing happened?” The tiefling softly giggled. “You don’t lie very well when you’re blushing.”    It was a succubus! Yuck! Ewww! She was nasty!    Inva snickered and poked her in the ribs, grinning at her expense one last time before letting her off the hook for the moment.    Beyond the archway past the binding circle, the final chamber was not as large as that which had held the succubus, or at least that was how it appeared since there was little space in which to stand. A huge stone sarcophagus dominated a significant footprint of floor space, and much of the remainder of the floor was covered in a sprawl of sparkling grave goods.    “Impressive…” Inva said, lithely stepping over towards a pile of overly decorated ceremonial weapons.    Velkyn glanced at the treasure and then at the coffin itself. “No wards in here that I can see, so feel free to take a look I suppose.”            “Keep the lid held down.” Odesseron ordered to no one in particular as he stepped past them all and approached the sarcophagus.            Marcus looked askance at the wizard. “What exactly are you planning on…” But as he spoke, the heavy stone lid began to shudder, kicking off an inch of dust as something inside awoke.            With that sudden and obvious reminder, Garibaldi and Francesca dashed forward to keep weight on the top of the sarcophagus, but before they reached it, the motion abruptly stopped.            “Huh?” Francesca said, stepping back from the coffin with some confusion.            “Don’t worry about it getting out.” Phaedra said, holding up a hand and staring directly at the coffin lid. “It’s not going to budge an inch. I’ve got it handled. Just don’t get in between me and it.”            Indeed, as Victor stepped closer, the orb of light floating above him showed a considerable disturbance in the dust filtering through the air as their movement kicked it up. As the billowing dust passed through a wide path in front of Phaedra, who had a look of firm concentration on her face, it was abruptly being shunted towards the suddenly still lid of the tomb by a line of force.            But of course, while the lid itself was being held down by a considerable pressure, the occupant of the carved stone vessel itself was not under any such restrictions, and it was venting its considerable frustration as it realized that it was trapped in its own sepulcher.            *SLAM!*            The sarcophagus rocked gently as its occupant slammed itself against one of the sides, followed shortly after by a bellowing, hollow roar.    Odesseron grinned and strummed his fingers atop the stone triumphantly. “Anger will get you nothing but pain, whoever you happen to be.”Whether or not it had understood the thayan’s words, the animate corpse a few inches of stone separated from him roared again, but then abruptly stopped once the wizard chanted a series of phrases that pulsed with necromantic power.    “You will answer my questions or you will feel pain.” He whispered. “You will tell us all that we wish to know and you will survive without becoming shackled to my will for the rest of your promised eternity. Submit and tell me what I want to know.”    Velkyn gave a respectful nod. Odesseron was using a twisted version of a spell that the half-drow was familiar with, but at the moment had not managed to master. It reached into the mind of intelligent undead and forced them to do what the spellcaster desired, and in this instance they desired, they needed, information.    “First of all, who are you? What was your name in life, and what was your capacity in the service of Nergal?”    A moan of agony rattled the sarcophagus and Odesseron inclined his head as if he were listening to a far off voice.    “What’s he saying?” Velkyn asked.    Odesseron waved a hand idly and held up a finger, motioning that he’d relate the answers to them momentarily.“Well, he wasn’t royalty and he wasn’t a priest.” The Thayan finally said.    “That doesn’t bode well then.”    “No, it’s even better.” Odesseron replied. “This is the tomb of Nasrek Appenhat, chief royal architect and stonemason to the priesthood of Nergal. This is the man who built the damn barrow mounds.”    The grins on all of their faces were nearly audible as the necromancer asked his next questions.    “Now my next question: we are looking for Nergal’s tomb. Where is it?”    It was a simple enough query, and it should have been a simple enough answer, but the look of confusion that passed over Odesseron’s face indicated that something very different was the case.    “What the problem?” Inva asked.    Odesseron ignored her and rephrased his question. “Which barrow contains Nergal’s tomb? And where is the entrance to that barrow located?”    Again the wizard seemed puzzled, though this second time around he seemed more satisfied with the answers that he received.    “Nergal’s tomb is here, in the central barrow mound.” He said, turning away from the sarcophagus and relaying it to the others. “But Nergal’s tomb is also –not- here.”    “Huh?” Marcus asked.    Likewise, Phaedra’s mind contorted with the logical flaw in the statement. “Wait. What?”    “That was the answer.” Odesseron flatly stated. “Nergal’s tomb is both here at the barrow mounds and also not here. The architect couldn’t say anything more than that, and that duality was rather clear.    “And the entrance to that barrow mound?” Velkyn asked.    “On the second tier of the mound, but where on that tier I couldn’t gather. Or rather his answers said it pointed towards a place which I’ve never heard of, and probably not a soul alive today has ever heard of either.”    “Auril’s breath.” Phaedra said. “That’s what the fiend was trying to tell us before.”    Odesseron blinked. “What’s this about Auril?”    They hadn’t mentioned their encounter with Severesthifek to the red wizard.    “The wind.” Victor said. “It’s cold and always blowing in from the north. Isn’t Auril the Torillian goddess of winter and ice?”    “Where’s this coming from?” Odesseron asked.    “From one of the fiends bound into one of the other barrows.” Inva replied. “And I’ll bet that the barrow entrance is on the north side of that second tier.”    “Hmm… we’ll find out I suppose. Assuming the fiend was truthful.” The Thayan said and turned back to his conversation with the mummy. “What protections are there on the tomb? Are there wards on the entrance? And how do we bypass the wards?”    The necromancer first looked confused, then frowned, and then smiled.    “Who or what is Severesthifek?” He asked, both to the corpse and openly.    Phaedra frowned even before the wizard gave them the architect’s answers. No need to necessarily tell him that their clue to the mound entrance was that very same Severesthifek.    Ignorant of that information, Odesseron relayed more of the mummy’s answers, though they had to assume that he’d relayed them truthfully and without selective edits.“There’s a fiend named Severesthifek bound into the central mound.” He said. “Though Nasrek doesn’t know what type, just that it’s very powerful. And the entrance is heavily warded once you find it, but there’s a ritual we can perform to allow us entry. Oddly enough he knows the ritual because he was part of it when they sealed the central tomb. They seem to have buried Nergal first and then constructed the other mounds later, keeping their slave labor alive till the very end.”    The others nodded.    “Any other questions?” Odesseron asked. “Otherwise I’m through with Nasrek and we can commence taking his things.”    “The Codex.” Velkyn said. “Ask if he knows where it was, or what it looks like.”    Odesseron nodded and did so, but he began to shake his head almost immediately.    “He doesn’t know of anything like that. Or at least he didn’t know it by that name, and he wasn’t privy to what was buried with Nergal and Nergal’s most senior priests. But we don’t have to f*ck with the lesser mounds now that we know how to get into the central one, though we may spend some time finding that entrance.”    Inva tapped a hoof against a stone column. “Out of curiosity, what was the name of the place that was mentioned for where the entrance was?”    “Arkephen’s Tower.” Odesseron replied. “I’ve never heard the name before, either as a person or in connection with a tower. I suppose it might refer to the keep of an old wizard of Imaskar, or possibly a natural landmark they Untherites knew by a different name. Do you recognize it by any chance?”    Inva shook her head. “Not a clue.”    “Not to be had I suppose.” He said with a shrug. “And… Phaedra? You can release the lid now, I have him under sufficient control.”    The all seemed to relax once the sorceress relaxed her pressure on the lid and nothing happened. True to his word, Odesseron’s magic had the long dead architect under control, and they had some manner of answers.    “So what’s this ritual you mentioned?” Victor asked warily.    Odesseron gave a mirthless chuckle. “Some chanting and a sacrifice performed in Nergal’s name placed on top of the seal on the tomb entrance.”    “Sacrifice?” The cleric asked. “What kind of sacrifice?”    “A living creature killed by suffocation.” The necromancer replied. “You then remove their heart and use it to smear their blood atop the seal before it cools.”    Victor gave a frown. “We can find an animal. But let’s at least cook the rest of it rather than just killing it for our own convenience.”    Odesseron rolled his eyes, and in return received a stare from the cleric’s brother and their own cohorts as well.    “We can worry about that later.” Velkyn said dismissively, preempting any arguments. “Right now I think we’ve gotten all that we can get out of this tomb.”    “So what now?” Phaedra asked, noticing the greedy look in the eyes of the thayans as they looked at the royal architect’s grave goods.    Glancing at the objects scattered around the room herself, Inva looked back up at her companions. “How about a quick catalog of the rooms that we’ve already opened and then maybe a cursory split of anything we might be able to immediately use.”    “Not a problem.” Odesseron said. “I can even have my apprentices spend time this evening identifying anything overtly magical, just to be of help of course.”    “I’m fine with just making sure we’re not missing anything major here.” Velkyn said. “But I’d prefer to go looking for the entrance of the center barrow before nightfall.”***            Odesseron had a very pleased look upon his face after they’d exited the gore-spattered entrance to the barrow. After all, he had only lost a few servitor undead and he’d found tomb goods enough to double his own personal wealth, even after his newfound compatriots had taken their fraction off of the top. And even more, there were over a dozen more barrows of at least equal wealth, given that the occupant of the tomb he’d just left had not even been a member of the royal family itself, nor a member of the priesthood.    He was still smiling once they’d hiked up to the base of the central barrow mound and gazed up at its western flank. The hillside of the massive earthwork danced in slow tune with the wind as the tall, dry winter grasses rustled with rhythmic, erratic waves while a patchwork network of ancient pits and exploratory trenches long eroded, crisscrossed it like old scars.    It was a massive, imposing and oppressive thing, purely on size alone, and the knowledge of what it was, what it was built to contain, and what lurked within, bound by magic to defend it from looters made it even more so. Those looters, and there had been many given the hundreds of trenches and pits scattered like rose petals on a grave, many of them had fallen victim to the specters and fiends who guarded the site, falling and joining the restless dead themselves.    But unlike many of those would-be grave robbers dreaming of the gold of ancient kings or wizards, the group that stood looking up at the central barrow and tomb of Nergal, they were prepared with advance warning of just what guarded the tomb and lurked below the soil. Not only that, but they had a firm idea of where the tomb’s entrance was, and so they wouldn’t spend days or weeks combing the flanks of the mound and adding more and more false starts to so many prior before they too fell and added their own names to the barrow’s list of dead. No, they had no such intention of failing as all others had before, and their knowledge of the barrow might just make certain of that.But even with their knowledge, they didn’t immediately find the entrance, though they did uncover something else. It wasn’t a second entrance but rather something else covered by a foot of earth and sod: a block of glass embedded in the hillside, reaching down into the ground too far to remove.    “What the heck is that?” Phaedra asked. “This can’t be the entrance.”    Odesseron eyed it warily. “It doesn’t match anything that our dead tomb building friend described. Whatever it is, it might not be important, and it’s not magical by any means.”    It didn’t give off light, nor was the glass serving to plug another, wider tunnel leading down into the barrow. No, it was the entirety of the shaft, a single inches-wide octagonal solid. They puzzled over it a few minutes, but finding no apparent purpose for it, they eventually pressed on.Heartened that they’d found something on the hillside already they set about their task again, digging with gusto. But still, it took them several hours of probing and digging before they found the putative entrance to the barrow, and only then because of what they knew from the cryptic answers of the tomb's architect and the barely lucid ravings of the fiend that was likely bound somewhere within."Well this is different..." Velkyn said as he crouched at the edge of the excavated section of hillside.The wizard waved his hand through the air and watched as his movements, and his image, were reflected back at him on the polished surface of a flat plate of black glass. Thick and octagonal, the tomb plug had been concealed by several feet of hard packed earth and was flush with the top of a vertical shaft.Inva tapped her tail's spade against the surface with a light metallic tang. "So much for stairs."    “We have rope.” Marcus said. “Assuming that it’s a straight shaft down we’ll just have to anchor it nearby. And if the soil doesn’t hold, well I know that some of you can magically fly. It shouldn’t present a problem.”    “It shouldn’t.” Victor added, nodding to his brother. “But what is it actually.”"It’s the same stuff that we found earlier." Phaedra said, tapping the glossy surface with the end of her staff."It's obsidian." Odesseron explained. "Volcanic glass, probably from the planes of ash in western Unther, one of the volcanoes there."Inva nodded. "Makes sense. The church of Gilgeam used that area to bury their priests, and before most of the rest of that pantheon was killed off or left Toril, they might have done the same. So no surprise that they might have carried some of that area's symbology here with them for building Nergal's tomb."Velkyn looked up at the fading light in the sky and gathered their attention. "So who cares to open this up now, and who wants to wait till morning?" "Let's leave it for the moment." Phaedra said. "I'd rather not release anything from the tomb, or try to sleep while cursed.""In any event the ritual..." Victor gave an unpleasant tone to the word, "The ritual is somewhat involved, and we'll need to hunt something for it. So yeah, let's leave it till the morning."The others had no complaints really, and though it was obvious as they left for their own camp that the thayans were eager to break into the tomb, in the interest of being polite they raised no objections. And besides, they risked less harm to themselves if they cooperated rather than breaking the seal in the dead of night.***Morning broke without incident sending the long white rays of dawn stretching like knives across the barrows, but it was still bitterly cold like the polished claws of a chained and caged beast. And true to that imagery, as they woke and gathered at the base of the mound, to some of them, those with telepathy or fiendish blood, the air seemed tense, almost as if something were watching them, watching their actions and holding its breath.Minutes later they clustered around the tomb plug and watched their reflections in the glass, waiting for the Thayan and his ilk to meet them to open the entrance for the first time in millennia. He was late, and he was the only one of them who knew the full details of the ritual to open the tomb with relative safety.“So for the ritual and the sacrifice…” Velkyn mused. "What lives out here anyway?”Inva shrugged. “All we needed was a heart from a snuffed creature so I figure anything should work.”"Don't bother." Odesseron said, stepping around the ridge and into view.The wizard held a ceramic bowl in his wet and bloodstained hands. A single heart, fresh and bloody, steeped in several inches of crimson fluid filled the bowl, sloshing ever so slightly with the wizard's steps."I wanted us to get started early." He said, holding out the bowl like an offering. "So here, problem solved. No need to go hunting."The wizard smiled as his apprentices and several of his undead joined them all at the edge of the entrance. On a mental tally there were three undead, several familiars, and several crimson robed wizards. One of the apprentices was missing. There was a fresh heart and one less wizard. The youngest and most junior of their group was absent and the reason was sitting in the bowl in their master's hands.“Oh you son of a b*tch...” Velkyn snarled to himself, turning away to look west and hide his expression.Odesseron knelt down in front of the seal and held the heart in his hands. "Let's begin shall we?"They had little choice in the matter. What was done was done, though Victor still held out hope that they might raise the slain thayan from the dead after they left the barrows. But it all of course hinged in how he'd been slain, if they could keep a bit of his flesh intact till then, and if the rituals to propitiate a dead god, a sacrifice, might impact it all in the first place.Their anger and distaste though mattered little to the necromancer and with little preamble he began to chant. There was a sympathetic hum and vibration from the thick plate of glass, each syllable spoken causing one of the cuneiform glyphs embossed on the surface to shudder like a bell rung or tuning fork struck, each building towards something as the words were recited and the ritual performed. Finally, with a conspicuous silence from all gathered, near the liturgy's end the apprentice's heart was placed atop the seal and there was a hiss, a brush of air, cold and sterile at their faces, a death rattle invoked. The plug flickered with a pulse of light and vanished, leaving not so much as a trace of itself behind, and the entrance shaft into Nergal's tomb yawned wide and threatening."No explosion, no screaming ghosts, no released fiends." Inva said, gazing down into the black depths of the shaft. "After an uneventful night I'd been expecting some drama."Gathering around the margins of the pit, they could see that it was not intended for easy egress, at least not for most mortals without the favor of the dead god buried within. The shaft was a sheer drop down, unlit, without steps or handholds. In fact the walls of the pit seemed to be made of glass, as if the sand of the barrow had been struck by lightning and fused in place, a local reproduction of the obsidian of western Unther's burial provinces.But there was more... the smooth, slick surface of the shaft was not a uniform shade of dusky black, it was marked by places where the glass was distorted. Like ancient flies trapped in amber, there were shapes and markings held and etched within the material."So who wants to go first?" Marcus asked."Well I suppose that depends on how deep is it." Velkyn peered down the shaft, and despite his own drow-descended eyes, he couldn't pierce the gloom to see a bottom."One way to find out I suppose." Inva said, holding up a coin between two fingers. "Well... two ways maybe.""Two ways?" Victor asked."Yeah." The tiefling replied.Velkyn gave a confused look. "I get the coin but what's the second way?"There was a sudden tap of Inva's tail again an armored shin. "I kick garibaldi over the side."The fighter stepped back from the edge as Inva waited a moment to chuckle and break any sense of seriousness."I like the coin idea much better." Garibaldi said."No fun at all..." Inva said with grin as she stepped up to the shaft and dropped the coin.The tiny silver disk dropped out of sight and vanished into the darkness. Nothing untoward happened, no tripped wards or mundane traps, but neither was there the expected chink of metal on stone to signal that it had struck bottom. Surely the shaft couldn't be that bloody long..."No sound." Velkyn said, giving a sideways glance at the shaft.A few seconds later though, one of Phaedra's ears twitched involuntarily."It just hit bottom." The sorceress said. "But damn that's deep.""At least nothing happened though." Victor said. "The ritual... well it worked."Odesseron smiled despite the discomfort his actions had provoked. "Someone go ahead and toss a rope down and let's see what there is.""No, don't throw the rope down yet." Inva said, waving him off. "Any wards might not trigger against something that isn't alive. I'm not convinced that it's safe yet."In response to that, Velkyn reached into a small bag at his waist and pulled out a tiny white object, a tiny white object that squeaked."Again?" Victor asked, looking at the mouse sympathetically.Velkyn shrugged, glanced at Inva, and then back to the cleric. "Would you prefer garibaldi instead?"The fighter of course took another step back from the edge and tried not to look at the growing smirk on Inva's face."Go ahead." Victor said, looking away. "You've got a point."Velkyn gently tossed the mouse down the shaft and waited for any evidence that its passage had triggered any wards. But, just as with the coin previously, nothing happened."Care to drop that rope now?" Inva asked, glancing to Marcus. "I'll drop down and make sure there aren't any physical traps along the sides."Marcus nodded and took out the rope and several iron spikes to secure it at the top."Tie it to one of the zombies." Odesseron said, pointing to the reanimated ogre standing several feet away. "It's heavy enough to anchor it on its own, and if need be I can have it pull her back up to the surface."Velkyn chuckled as Marcus tied the rope around the zombie's waist. "Make sure not to get a gooey part!"Inva tied a second rope to the end of the first, not knowing how long the shaft was, and stepped up to the edge."You care to have anyone come along with?" Phaedra asked, emphatically hovering a few inches above the ground for a moment. "I can go down with you."Of course the double-entendre of the last phrase elicited a round of soft snickers.Phaedra rolled her eyes. "That's not what I meant!"Of course Inva had already dropped down the shaft and out of immediate line of sight of the others. Phaedra could only stick out her tongue when she looked down at the snickering tiefling suspended in the air, dangling on the rope and looking back up at her with a puckish grin.After having a moment of amusement at the expense of the half-'loth who admittedly, she was attracted to, she slipped down the rope and vanished into the darkness. Descending foot by foot, checking the glass walls for any evidence of traps or wards, it didn't take her long to notice the glow of magic, albeit magic that seemed dormant or suppressed."Hey guys - so you know - we've been cursed!" Inva shouted up to her companions.The symbols set within the walls were lines of text placing increasingly imaginative curses on violators of the tomb, and the script of each was woven through with magical wards set around the circumference of the shaft roughly every ten feet. Without undergoing the needed ritual at the surface, a fall down the shaft would have been hideously lethal far before their corpse hit the bottom.Warded increment by warded increment, Inva slipped down the rope further and further. At each step she passed yet another line of suppressed glyphs and wards and lines of stigmatic verse aimed at any would-be vandal.When Inva finally reached a solid bottom, fully 420 feet below the lip of the shaft, she stood on the bottom of a gently sloping hemispheric well of glassy stone, polished to a mirror shine to reflect the faint light from above."I've reached the bottom!" She shouted up at the others before turning and looking at her surroundings, pausing only to retrieve Velk's stunned but very much living mouse."What's down there?" Came several shouts from above.The tiefling didn't immediately answer them as she stared at a massive pair of onyx and silver double doors on the south side of the well. The basin of the shaft was cold, black and secluded. Inva was alone and in her element, and for a long moment she simply closed her eyes, spread her arms and reveled in the sensations. There at the doors to a dead god's tomb, she felt particularly close to her goddess, and that moment of selfish contemplation was simply too much to pass up. The others could wait a second, a moment, a minute before she called them down."There's a pair of doors down here." She finally called back up to them. "And there aren't any traps, so come on down as you will."Phaedra, Velkyn and the thayans were the first to join the tiefling there at the bottom of the shaft, bringing several globes of conjured light with them as they descended. In truth though, the magical light was more for the benefit of the others that followed who lacked the ability to see in darkness as well, and required the light to judge their position during their descent by rope."I don't see any sort of handle or locking mechanism on the doors." Marcus said as he ran a fingertip along the silver margins of the seal.Odesseron gathered his robes and grumbled. "The architect we spoke with yesterday didn't mention a single dusty word about their being any sort of second ritual for a second door.""Now Inva," Victor said, point to the door. "You said that the writing on the shaft on the way down was just a series of curses, but what about the writing on the door."Inva was a step ahead of him there and was already trying to make some sense of it, at least enough to gather what it was loosely saying."It's a prayer. A liturgy actually." She said, running her finger along first one line of cuneiform and then another. "This line is for a primary reader, and then the next is a group response.""Might it not be trapped?" Odesseron asked. "The wording is laced with magic, though it's divine and I can't say that I'm ultimately familiar with the patterns.""I doubt it." Inva said. "The prayers seem pretty genuine, even if I don't really get it word for word. It probably unlocks the door."Victor nodded. "Give us a transliteration into common to read and we'll handle the chorus."Inva nodded and scribbled the dozens of lines on parchment, indicating those for the primary speaker and then for the response. Being more familiar with the tongue, she began and they responded, line by line, waiting for something to happen. They didn't have to wait long though.As each line was incanted, the glass began to glow with an inner light, reaching a zenith and then fading back to darkness as the last line was spoken, ending with the whisper-soft click of a locking mechanism falling loose and the opening of the doors by a single inch.A cold wind brushed at the their cheeks from the open gap, and the dark interior of the tomb beckoned.***</blockquote>

Verification