[Nexus] Temples of Dalachrech I

[Asha'man]

[Reformed Temple]

Serph finds the area dark and uses a flow of air and fire to make a glowing bulb of light float. It provides enough light. He decides to check out the contents of the boxes in the corner first, even though he's found nothing of use before It can't hurt to try.

[Earl of Purple]

Reformed Temple

The first box is filled with smaller boxes, each heavily padded and containing one delicate-looking white sphere. One of the eggs has hatched; crawling in that box is a six centimetre long baby centipede. The box beneath that is filled with bottles of pale green liquid, and the final box has been filled with square, beeswax candles dyed a dark purple colour.

[Asha'man]

[Reformed Temple]

Serph closes all the boxes except for the one containing green liquid. He takes a bottle and pours a few drops on the floor just to see what would happen.

[Earl of Purple]

Reformed Temple

Nothing happens to the floor, and a faint scent of Stilton emanates from the bottle.

[Asha'man]

[Reformed Temple]

He returns the liquid into the box an closes it. Next he examines the contents of all the freezer rooms one by one.

[Earl of Purple]

Reformed Temple

No taste test? Huh.

Inside the two walk-in freezers closest to the door are racks of hanging meat, and other frozen goods being stored. The third is closed, and powered down. The fourth is home to ten coffins, each stacked individually.

[Asha'man]

[Reformed Temple]

Taste testing random liquids is not a smart thing to do. So there.

The only things of interest are the coffins. He sets one aside and opens it with air while still invisible.

[Earl of Purple]

Reformed Temple

Inside the coffin is a corpse. This corpse is old, and badly decayed, even though it's in a freezer to keep it fresh. Its flesh is a pale grey, and its eyes are missing. It's wearing steel armour- specifically, a breastplate, greaves, a helmet, braces and a skirt of chainmail. It's all slightly rusted, but still in quite good condition.

[Asha'man]

[Reformed Temple]

....Well frozen corpses. Serph can only imagine what foul purpose these things will be used for. Still he needed to check what the rest of the coffins contain. He places the first coffin back in its place and one y one examines the contents of the other coffins.

[Earl of Purple]

Reformed Temple

Eight of the remaining nine corpses are similarly decomposed and garbed. The ninth is much fresher and actually recognisable- he was a plain half-elf, with a two-tailed scorpion tattooed across most of his feminine face. He's wearing a brown tunic, green trousers and a silver amulet depicting a two-tailed scorpion, matching the one daubed across his face. His hands are resting upon his chest, gripping a black iron sickle with a polished oak handle. On one finger is an ivory ring set with a chip of amethyst, and a polished glass orb about the size of a tennis ball rests next to his head.

The half-elf's body is awaiting ressurection; the other bodies are there for other purposes.

[Asha'man]

[Reformed Temple]

Before physically touching anything he uses Saidin with a flow if spirit to check the sickle, ring and orb for signs of magic. He is checking for both traps and value among the items. Simple prudence.

[Earl of Purple]

Reformed Temple

The ring protects against poison, hence the ivory- it's alicorn, the stuff a unicorn's horn is made of. The orb enables telepathic communication to several similar orbs that are linked to it, and can also change its size. The sickle has a blood-enchantment- the user moves faster the more blood shed with the sickle. All three are linked to the collective corpses currently behind Serph.

[Asha'man]

[Reformed Temple]

Zombie guards. Well looks like he'll have to deal with the corpses before getting the magical items. Serph tries to tear open a hole in the pattern. This is the skimming weave not as good as travelling but he had a different purpose in mind. If he managed to make it work.

[Earl of Purple]

Reformed Temple

Alas, no. Teleportation is also blocked by the warding- it's designed more to prevent people suddenly appearing inside somewhere with magical traps and locks on most of the doors, but works equally well at preventing people disappearing from inside somewhere with magical traps and locks.

[Asha'man]

[Reformed Temple- I Hope This Works]

Serph clearly needed to find a way to loot the corpse without waking the zombie guards to alarm the whole place of him being there. Clearly Skimming did not work. Too bad, throwing the coffins in a dark abyss would have made things easier. Serph uses a flow of air to place the coffins on the far side of the freezer room while keeping the coffin with the loot beside him. In front of the piled coffins he tied off a weave of air that made a solid invisible wall of air that should stay for a couple of hours even if he leaves. Second he ties off another weave this time of air and water where the coffins were. Since they were in a freeze room and his weave would make that area behind his air wall even colder the corpses should crack or completely freeze if they animate. After that he decides to nab the sickle, ring and orb. If successfully taken he buckle the sickle on his belt, wear the ring and place the orb in his cloak. He of course wraps the orb in a flow of spirit to jam its abilities for now. Once out of the room he'll close the door and make sure that it can't be easily opened by tying off another weave of air by the door. This process will tire him somewhat as air and water was better weaved by women. He will take a break in the storeroom that he stumbled into earlier, the one with the trapdoor.

[Earl of Purple]

Reformed Temple

Since the body of Reverend Narahar the Twice Martyred is at the back of the walk-in freezer, what Serph has just done is put a wall between himself and the zombies, but also the door. The bodies are animating, too; they've been programmed to wake at any disturbance of themselves or Narahar. The ice weave isn't too effective; they ignore every injury done to them. Plus, once it's obvious that they can't reach Serph they stop moving, propping themselves up on the wall.

Oh, and I've just remembered; a bit of ambient magic is clinging to the holy symbol around Narahar's neck, left over from every time it is used to direct the flow of Dalachrech's energy.

[Murkus]

Underside Temple

Deep underground, in the city of Underside, Ordo the psion heads toward Dalachrech's place of worship. He walks beside the young girl Shanaya. An odd contrast, indeed - Ordo's a tall, if raggedy looking fellow, with a bit of scruff around his chin and a shock of bright red hair.

"Okay, what I wanna know is, why would anyone wanna eat a purple slime in the first place?"

[Asha'man]

[Reformed Temple]

At the moment Serph had some time as the zombies were stopped by his wall of air. He takes this chance to grab all of the items of worth on the corpse. After doing so he forms the weave of air and water to try and make the zombie side of the freezer go colder by the moment, this he ties off. The wall remains as its weave is tied off as well. Another weave of air and fire is used on his side of the freezer, not hitting the elf corpse just himself, so as not be frozen as this was a cold room in the first place. Assuming that nothing has interrupted him yet he makes one last weave of air to make sharp invisible blades of air making the side of the zombies a cold blender. Alongside the weave of invisibility that he is maintaining all of it strained him. he won't add anymore complicated weaves for awhile.

[Earl of Purple]

Reformed Temple

The zombies are sliced up and frozen, whilst Serph loots a dead dude awaiting ressurection. The zombies will fall apart, though if the blade's sharp enough they might not overbalance and remain standing up even after they've been diced.

Underside Temple

This construction is quite a distance from the actual city, to protect it from those that mean it harm. This is also the reason why it's been constructed of giant spider silk cocoons suspended from the ceiling. There's only two ways up; a ladder dangling beneath one of the larger cocoons and a lift made from fungus-planks and spider silk near the ladder. Several holes in the sides and tops of the cocoons allow access for those capable of flight or walking up the walls and across the ceiling, too. The area it has been built is poorly lit, light coming only from the giant beetles that crawl across the Temple and the surrounding area- they don't give off much light, and most are very far away.

[5a Violista]

Underside Temple

Shanaya keeps up the best she can, despite being a 14-year old girl with shorter legs than the psion. She looks more like the sword-person type, what with a too-large sword across her back.

The girl, in response to Ordo, opens her mouth, then stops walking. Then she closes her mouth again. This is the first time this whole trip that she has been at a loss of words. Shanaya thinks once more before responding and resuming her pace. "Because, like, what if you're stuck in a sewer or something? What else are you going to eat? Not a rat, because those are filthy and they don't taste very good, either.

After coming up with that reply, Shanaya, knight of the Dragon Queen, looks up in awe at the magnificent temple. "It's really beautiful, right?" she asks before scrambling over to the ladder. "I call the ladder!"

Shanaya'll try to scale the ladder as fast as she can.

[Murkus]

Underside Temple

"I ate rat once," Ordo says placidly, never stopping till they reach the ladder. "Guess I can't argue with you there."

Ordo laughs when Shanaya runs toward the ladder. "Careful, kiddo. Careful." He'll hop in one of the lifts and try to get it's wheels turning. Whatever system it works on, that shouldn't take too long.

[Asha'man]

[Reformed Temple]

Serph sighed, even though he learned how to use saidin in various ways, someone had left notes in the case where he found his outfit, doing it altogether was another thing entirely. Two years had made strong in the power and he suspected he would grow even more with the fighting and all but right now making all those weaves all at the same time tired him, nevermind that he tied them off.

Serph can't afford to dawdle though so he let the tied off weaves dissipate. With Scythe bucked and magic jewelry stored he made his outside the freezer and back to the foyer. All that was left now was to either leave the place or check into the last two doors opposite the entrance of the temple. He though he'd push his luck. He enters the left of the two unexplored rooms. He is not invisible at this time though.

[Earl of Purple]

Reformed Temple

It's not a scythe, it's a sickle. A scythe is a two-handed agricultural tool with a concave curved blade, though it's still relatively straight. A sickle is a one-handed agricultural tool with a circular blade sharpened on the inside. The Edge Chronicles call sickles scythes, so you aren't alone.

Beyond this penultimate door is a set of stairs heading upwards. If he follows them up, he'll find himself at a locked door. In addition to the lock, there are guarding glyphs on the door frame that are triggered independently of the lock.

Underside Temple

Shanaya will find, at the top of quite a long ladder, the main altar room. There's two columns of fungus-wood pews (the ones at the front shaped for non-humanoid rears) along the side walls, and at the far end is a large black marble statue of a large, centipede-like creature with three scorpion tails, the claws of a praying mantis, and the head of a beetle with large, flesh-tearing jaws. It has gold projections resembling the veins of a dragonfly's wings, with thin silk wrapped around them to make the main wing. Many small, polished black opals with an oily sheen have been set into its head as eyes. Near the entrance hatch is a small table of imported wood with a guest book on it and a pen.

Ordo will discover that there's no way to get the lift up from where he is, but there is a silk rope dangling down- at the top is a bell, and if it's rung it will alert the Temple Slaves that they have to work the mechanism that brings the lift up.

[Asha'man]

[Reformed Temple Adventuring 101]

Serph sees the long stairs up and thinks that this should be left for after he explored the whole first floor. He doubles back and enter the right of the two doors opposite to the entrance doorway in the foyer.

[Earl of Purple]

Reformed Temple

This last door leads to some stairs down, to a separate basement to the hidden one he explored earlier. At the bottom there's three doors, one of which is hidden behind an illusion of a brick wall.

[Asha'man]

[Reformed Temple]

Serph checks out the nearest visible door to see what's inside.

[Earl of Purple]

Reformed Temple

The first door is locked. There's three different locks holding it shut; a lock at the top and another at the bottom, and a hidden lock in the middle with a keyhole disguised as a knothole in the wood. This is in addition to an enchantment to keep the door closed unless the password is spoken and some glyphs that are set to be triggered by opening the door without speaking another password.

[Asha'man]

[Reformed Temple]

Serph tries the other visible doorway.

[Earl of Purple]

Reformed Temple

This room has three large tanks in it; they're sensory deprivation pods, if Serph is familiar with such. There's also three glass tanks; one is partially filled with water and home to a fifteen-centimetre long dragonfly nymph that's currently not moving under a rock; the remains of its last meal, a lone fish swimming around, is likely more obvious. The next is filled with earth and home to a worm farm, whilst the third is chirping with crickets.

Some meditation mats lie on the floor and there's a smaller altar here with a similar idol to the one in the main altar room.

[Asha'man]

[Reformed Temple]

Well that was simple, nothing to do here. He returns to the main basement room where the two visible doors are. He had no idea how he was going to open the door other than by force, hopefully he doesn't wake anyone, not-likely but what the hey the job had risks. He opens himself to saidin and channeled earth to heave under the locked door. Maybe it will get displaced enough for him to pass through.