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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3138578" data-attributes="member: 143">Hopefully today's post answers this question!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> EDIT: I've also updated the Rogues' Gallery thread.* * * * * Chapter 26BLOODThe ghasts came forward toward Varo, eagerness flaring in their shining yellow eyes.  A last ghoul, unwilling to pass up easier prey within reach, reached with equal eagerness for the helpless form of Velan Tiros. Varo showed no fear or doubt as he lifted his symbol once more.  “Dagos commands you, you pathetic wretches!  As you were small before His gaze in life, so are you nothing before Him in death!” Violet energies flared.  For a moment, had his companions been able to see him, Varo would have resembled something far different than the unassuming, ordinary-looking priest that they knew.  Power surrounded him like a cloak, and the ghasts, despite their fury and passion and hate, could not withstand it. Fortunately for Tiros, the last ghoul succumbed to it as well. Varo looked down the corridor.  Ghouls and ghasts were everywhere, unable to approach him; but likewise he knew that he could not go near them either, lest he sunder the effects of the rebuke.  Dar and Tiros were on the far side of the two nearest ghasts; he could not go to them.  “This will be close,” he said, taking his mace into his hand.  He waited, as seconds passed. Dar groaned.  At once, Varo’s voice cut through the corridor with the stentorian echo of command.  “We don’t have much time; the first rebukes will begin to fade within moments.  You must destroy them all, now.”The fighter pulled himself to his feet.  He looked around for his sword, lost in the clutter of bodies, but finally just drew out the heavy club he’d taken from the dead barbarian guard.  “Which ones go first?”“I do not know... just start killing,” Varo said. And Dar did.  He didn’t stop to help Tiros, who after a few more heartbeats stirred as well, pushing the cowering ghoul off him.  He hacked it down with Valor, but it was Dar that slew the rest, surging down the corridor like a madman himself, crushing skulls, knocking broken bodies left and right into the rough passage walls.  He ended with the two ghasts still facing Varo, taking one down with a blow that smashed its head like an overripe melon, and following with a sideswipe that caved in the torso of the second.  “Is... that... all?” he asked, his chest heaving. Varo nodded.  He touched Dar, channeling healing energy into him.  He did the same for Tiros, granting him a more potent spell that closed the terrible wounds that he’d suffered in the brief but violent battle.  The short passage resembled an abattoir, with blood and bodies everywhere.  It sucked at their boots, as they walked.  Varo was the only one not splashed with it.  Tiros, still suffering from the sickening effect of the ghasts’ presence, bent over and voided his stomach. “Come on,” Varo said.  A hint of the power he’d summoned still hung about him, giving him an added measure of presence.  “Let’s see what these monsters were guarding.”   The room beyond the door was shaped like a giant five-pointed star.  A smaller pentagram was set into the floor in the middle of the room, surrounded by battered wooden coffins, some little more than scraps of wood clinging together hopefully.  There were bones everywhere, layered almost half a foot deep in some corners of the room.  There were also numerous mounds of assorted trash, and the occasional glint of metal from their torches.  The place smelled absolutely foul, and was almost as rank as the chamber where they’d encountered the dung monster, above. “No exits,” Tiros reported, once he’d given the room a quick scan. “What have we here,” Dar said, kicking a pile of refuse and lifting a short sword.  The weapon was cast in an antique style, with a thick crossguard and a dense single-edged blade, but to his surprise, when he tested it he found it still razor-sharp.  “This is Olmaran steel,” he said.  “This sword has to be ten years old, if not twice that.  A masterwork blade.”Varo, standing at the edge of the pentagram, looked around.  “I would imagine that these monsters have been collecting from the remains of their victims for quite some time,” he said.  He looked sad, but he turned away from the others, perhaps unwilling to share the source of his gloom. “Hey, there’s gold here... a lot of it!” Dar reported.  Tiros, looking around, had come up with a light steel shield that was etched with the sign of a rearing lion.  “There does seem to be some useful material here, but it will be hard to find it with all this junk about.”“You got a more pressing appointment?” Dar said, kicking away more bones as he continued to search.  In addition to the sword, he’d filled a small sack with coins, and he uncovered more as he kept sifting through the mess. “I can help,” Varo said.  The cleric cast a detect magic spell, and began pointing to areas where magical auras were located. The spell revealed a good deal.  They found a quiver of arrows buried under a heap of bones that radiated magic, a punching dagger, a throwing axe, a hefty warhammer, and three vials that contained magical potions.  Varo took the potions, while the two fighters argued over the weapons.  Tiros, equipped with Valor, had little interest in most of the weapons, but he took the throwing axe, and a silvered but otherwise mundane dagger that he turned up.  Dar took the rest of the weapons, except for a heavy mace that was also of masterwork quality, that he turned over to Varo as a replacement for the shoddy weapon he’d drawn from Sobol’s cache.  The fighter also found a shortbow with a still-viable string, obviously a recent acquisition by the ghouls, and a new breastplate to replace the suit he’d lost before.“Now I feel properly dressed,” Dar said, as he rejoined the others.  The fighter was positively bristling with weapons, with several jutting from his belt, slung across his back, or sticking out from his backpack.   “Can you handle all that weight?” Tiros asked.  The fighter had found a good quantity of gold and silver coins among all the trash, and once he’d filled his sack, he’d just started dumping handfuls into his pack.  “Don’t worry about me, marshal.”  They’d searched the room for more secret doors, but it didn’t look like there were any other exits.  “I guess it’s back out into the dungeon,” Dar said, as they gathered again near the door. “We need to find water soon,” Tiros said.  “And we’re almost out of torches.” “Cheer up, marshal,” Dar said, as they made their way out.  “We’re alive, we’re armed to the teeth, and we’re reasonably rich.  It could be worse.”He had no idea how right he was, as the three of them made their way back into the main corridors of Rappan Athuk.</blockquote>

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