Unwelcome Visitors- part 1
The intruders walked through the entrance chamber without faltering once. They simply ignored the carvings in the wall- obviously they hadn’t come to the tomb in order to admire the craftmanship.
When they reached the fork the leader paused. He examined the wall for a moment and then gave orders to his followers, who split up into three groups. Two stayed with him and two groups with three Mormo-worshippers each went into the corridors left and right. Then, however, something unexpected happened: The mass of black writhing snakes split in three and where there had been one big mass before, there were now three smaller masses.
By now, Ben and Niklas were alone in the control-room. When he saw that the intruders were looking for traps at the fork, Ben spoke the command word to turn the trap there off. If they would find it now, they would see that it was defunct and probably think that the heroes had disarmed it earlier (as Torn really had). However, if they went into the temple, they would probably not check for traps again once they returned.
When he saw movement in the mirror showing the greenhouse, they changed their position to watch how the worshipers of the serpent queen would handle that. Even though the adventurers had initially avoided that room, they now knew of the insidous trap within: on a desk in the greenhouse, there was a bottle with poison under which there was a piece of paper describing it as an antidote. Once anybody went close to the desk, a force field would seal the room and a gas cloud would fill the room. However, the cloud was harmless: the only poison was in the small bottle.
As two men who were lead by a stern looking tanned and darkhaired woman entered the room, exactly that happened. The room got sealed, gas started to fill the room, and one of the men grabbed for the bottle- only to get his arm grabbed by the woman, who effectively stopped him as he was merely inches from the bottle. Looking around suspiciously, she shortly inhaled and then as she filled her lungs, a grin spread on her face. She pointed at the bottle and said: „This is the poison!“.
Meanwhile, the other group that had been sent out had crossed both pits in the other corridor, and they were now entering the room full of bones. That was the other room the group had only entered once they had used the proper deactivation word. It was a cell-room full of old bones, and a moment after the three titan-worshippers had entered, a horrible entity rose among the bones.
The three intruders and the small pile of snakes found themselves opposed to a tall humanoid skeleton with glowing green eyes and an oversized collarbone from which three long iron chains which ended in manacles. They turned around to leave, but the Shackledeath, as it was called, shot it’s chains at one unlucky man catching him with all four. Now the others turned around and attacked the undead as their companion tried to free himself. However, they saw that their weapons were useless against it- their swords just bounced off without even splintering the bone and so they turned around and ran for it.
Ben and Niklas watched and suddenly the one they had left behind fell to the ground- even though the shackledeath hadn’t touched him once, he was quite clearly dead. After a while, while the monk and the incarnate grimly thought that now they wouldn’t have to fight this one anymore, the shackledeath sank to the ground again, hiding among the other bones in the room as if nothing had happened.
Again they switched their attention and watched through a mirror how the three groups reunited at the fork. By now, the druid and his cronies had found the mechanism for the door and after listening to the reports of his two sub-commanders, the now reunited troop entered the corridor to the temple.
As they entered the temple, the behaviour of the intruders changed remarkably. So far, they had pretty much behaved like disciplined and seasoned soldiers- avoiding any unneccessary risks and going about their business with the impassionate professionality of the experienced veteran. Now, however, seeing the images of the gods, they weren’t able to contain their hate and immediately started defacing the walls and collums, intent on destroying all images of the gods.
When the allips came, they were hit by surprise. The druid ordered his troop to retreat, but it was already to late: half of the intruders stood around numbly, temporarily having lost their minds due to the babbling of the undead. The cultists fought with magic and the snake-construct. To the surprise of it’s invisible watchers, who were still looking through the mirrors, the construct was even able to hurt the intangible ghosts by forming strong arms which were hard as steel. It used two of those „arms“ like spears, thrusting at the alips.
But even with the druid’s magic and the strength of the serpents there were losses. When the allips were defeated, one of the men was completely catatonic. He had been touched a few times by one of the allips, and now he had completely lost his mind, and he had to be taken by the hand in order to leave the temple with his fellow titan-worshippers.
As they returned to the fork, Niklas spoke the command word for the trap in the fork and the first Mormo-ranger was surprised by a spike that shot up and drilled itself into his leg. The druid walked up to the wounded man, and after looking around suspicioulsly, he healed the man.
Now the woman that had lead the troop in the greenhouse spoke to the druid: „Saddayat, I don’t understand that those undead and traps are still here. Are you sure the scum went in here?“
He nodded: „I am sure, Jhevarra. The crows had watched them ever since those Kharkets had left Vesh. They went in here this time yesterday, and either they are dead or still alive somewhere in here. I think that they had simply not entered neither the temple nor any of the other rooms. This means they must have found a way we haven’t. Let’s search the corridors“.
That’s what they did and after finding the elemental cavern and fleeing it after the first elementals appeared, they finally found the secret door in the first pit. Jhevarra and another ranger went down into the narrow pit, and after looking for traps, they opened the door.
Little did they know at that moment that in the corridor right behind the door, Trepat was kneeling in front of Torn and both had a bow ready . The sorceror had enchanted their arrows with the shocking missile spell in preparation, turning their arrows into deadly electrically charged missiles.
Nothing like using the control center of the bad guy against the other bad guys! 8)