Carrion Crown (in character)

[Kiranvonstrom]

Mirela drops into a shooting stance, reaching behind her back for Natscha, almost welcome for the distraction.

Spoiler: Initiative

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(1d20+4)[21]

[Celticbear]

Initiative order:
Mirela
Kahla
Lubella
Roaches

Mirela what do you do?

[Kiranvonstrom]

Natscha is in Mirela's hands in a flash. The strange contraption looks like a long, badly mangled crossbow covered in hand-carved runes with a metal tube where the bolt should be. She sights down the barrel, aiming for the nearest cockroach. Seemingly satified with her aim, Mirela spins a series of wheels and interconnected levers on one side of it with her thumb, then pulls the trigger.

With a thunderous crack, the weapon fires some sort of projectile at such a speed that it seems to be impossible to track, and lets loose a cloud of sulfurous black smoke. The pale noblewoman spares a glance at her target before flipping the gun around to point up at the ceiling. She withdraws a long rod from somewhere on the device and jams it down the barrel, seemingly preparing to reload the contraption.

Seeing the bullet impact, Mirela smiles a bit, satisfied with her work.

Spoiler: Rolls:

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To Hit: (1d20+4)[20] Vs. Touch AC
Damage: (1d12+5)[16]

Drawing Musket and Firing.

[Celticbear]

Out of character, if you've played fallout four, you know what just happened to that roach, but if you need a visual...

The roach shoots back towards the wall from whence it came in a spatter of blood as what's left of its head flies in a different direction.

Kahla, you are up.

[Krogarn]

Kahla steps forward, two hands reaching for and pulling out his scythe, and another arm going back to equip his shield. He gets within reach of the remaining roach, and pulls back his scythe to swing at the dangerously large bug.

Spoiler: Scythe Attack

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(1d20+2)[14]
(2d4+3)[10]

[Celticbear]

(Why did they use cockroaches? They die like... bugs. Oh right.)

Kahla drives his scythe into the roach, killing it instantly. This has to be the quickest fight in pathfinder history.

[PCScipio]

Lubella readied herself to attack, just as the last one fell to Khala's scythe. Well, at least I don't have to clean my scimitar, she thought to herself. "OK, I've seen big cockroaches, but that was ridiculous!". she remarked.

She looked around to confirm that there were no more of the repulsive creatures, then started looking for the cache.

Spoiler: Perception

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(1d20+7)[22]

[Krogarn]

Kahla pulls out a rag and wipes off his scythe, and puts it away. "Well, that was fun. So, where is this cache supposed to be?" He also would look around.

Spoiler: Perception

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(1d20+8)[25]

[Kiranvonstrom]

Mirela is silent as she swabs out Natscha's barrel thoroughly, taking time to clean the gun more completely then she could in a combat situation. Mirela seems more focused on gun maintenance than her surroundings for a little while, lost in therapeutic cleaning. Stress that you hadn't noticed on her face seems to melt away, before returning as she finishes.

She slings Natscha back onto her back, seemingly satisfied with herself.

[Celticbear]

In the far end of the tomb, you find a coffin that does not carry a corpse, but semipowerful magic items!

12 silver arrows
4 Sun rods
6 flasks of holy water
10 +1 arrows
5 ghost touch arrows
2 +1 undead bane arrows
5 potions of cure light wounds
2 potions of lesser restoration
Scroll of detect undead
2 scrolls of hide from undead
Scroll of protection from evil
A silver scarab with a ruby eye that looks exactly like one of the books Lorrimor posthumously gave you that is engraved on a box. The box is unlocked and contains
A brass spirit planchette (details here)
Six haunt siphon (details here)

[PCScipio]

Lubella looked over all the items that the group discovered in the coffin. "Hmm, looks like I need to buy a bow," she remarked."We better take all of this stuff with us. If the professor thought we would need this in Harrowstone, I'm not going to second guess him."

Lubella looked around the tomb at the remains of the giant vermin and sighed. "I guess we should clean up a bit. I must say though, the Church of Pharasma should do a better job of keeping pests out of their mausoleums." She took off her cloak and rolled up her sleeves. "I really need to learn Prestidigitation," she muttered as she went to work.

[Celticbear]

The roach corpses disappear and are replaced with children's corpses. They are bleeding profusely, but they still seem barely alive. Both are moaning.

[Kiranvonstrom]

Mirela barely reacts to the appearance of the children, except with a small 'hmm'. The noble walks over to the closest child, kneels, and investigates its wounds. With one gloved hand, she clinically investigates the child's wounds, while with the other produces a wickedly sharp bayonet from her boot.

What caused these, I wonder. A child and a cockroach are very different targets indeed, and I don't know of any illusion magic that would cause us to see one thing and aim at a different point on it completely. Mirela traced the child's wounds, mentally reconstructing the battle. Of course, it is very possible what I am now handling is the corpse of a roach, which I have been made to believe is a child. Perhaps neither of these things were ever there. It would certainly make more sense than not for the crypt to have been empty completely. The Pharasminites are usually quite meticulous in keeping their crypts. Lucimar, or our Lucimar impersonator, seems to be dogging us. She seems unbothered by the moaning child in her arms, completely unfazed by the blood soaking into her clothing. Her stomach grumbles a bit, despite herself.

Mirela raises her head to stare at the ceiling, considering her options.

Of course, few illusion spells have any great range. Someone capable of casting such magic would either be so phenomenally powerful as to be comparable to the runelords of old Thassilon, or be present themselves. While there could have been a great deal of people hidden or concealed in some way in the library, when we encountered the first illusion. But here, the only people who might be present are myself, Kahla and Lubella. And, perhaps, Kahla's spirit. Or the children, but I think I can safely dismiss the notion of them as our mastermind. Kahla wasn't present for the first incident, leading me to three options:
1) Kahla's spirit is deceiving us. This, I think, is fairly unlikely, but not impossible. I'm unfamiliar with such haunts, but it's unlikely that a...whatever the hell it is Kahla is would know of the venerated Arch-Curate well enough to create a passable illusion of him.
2) Lubella is far more than she appears. I have no proof that she is who she says she is, and it would be well within the abilities of a talented mage to have deceived us such thus far. What an excellent cover.
3) The mage is here with us, invisible, and has likely already snuck away, I suspect to warn someone of the injuries to these children. If this is true, I believe we will know soon enough of this eventuality.

Mirela's gaze falls to Lubella, evaluating the halfling. Even over her smoked glass spectacles, her stare is a little unnerving.

Spoiler: OOC:

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Low charisma and high Int make for some interesting problems with people, really.

Perception on the children's wounds, to see what caused them, and how it lines up with our earlier fight with the cockroaches: (1d20+4)[20] (Pretty sure that's my modifier)

Can I roll to disbelieve in the kids? I think Mirela has sufficient evidence to believe they may be an illusion.

[Celticbear]

Spoiler: Kiranvonstrom

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You can try to disbelieve on the kids, but your perception also detects a faint chilling in the air that seemed to pass you

[Kiranvonstrom]

Mirela suddenly stiffens, like a cat having caught wind of a mouse. Her movements are suddenly sharp, almost feral, and have an entirely unhuman grace about them. She drops the child suddenly, letting it fall to the floor with a dull thud. She flares her nostrils, inhaling deeply, tapping into things buried deeply in her blood.

"You're not hiding near as well as you think." She says, seemingly to the tomb as a whole.

Spoiler: OOC:

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Continuing to focus on detect undead, trying to triangulate the presence. If it's not undead, well, can I roll peception specifically to try to notice invisible creatures?

[PCScipio]

Lubella rushed over to the first child and spoke a few arcane words to stop the bleeding.

Spoiler: Cure Light Wounds

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[roll]1d8+1[/roll]

During her incantation, she considered the possibility that this might be an illusion, like Lucimar at the library. I just can't take the chance, she thought to herself.

[Krogarn]

Spoiler: OoC

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If a haunt is involved, my perception would have been +5 higher as a heads up. Would that change me noticing anything strange about what just happened in the room?

[Celticbear]

Spoiler: krogarn

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I did consider that, and your perception was unchanged by the kids.

[Celticbear]

Spoiler: kiranvonstrom

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You see a presence looking over the coffin of lute, then when you say the "hiding" sentence it looks at you, and starts to run for the entrance of the tomb on all fours.

[Kiranvonstrom]

Mirela pulls Natscha off her back, and whirls to aim at the thing her senses loosely conceptualize as a smell. She shoulders the musket, and spins the wheel locking mechanism, seemingly ignoring the fact that she hasn't yet reloaded the gun. The runes and magical diagrams along the length of the gun glow faintly turquoise for a second, and the flint hits the striker without her ever having pulled the trigger, letting off a cascade of green-blue sparks and a cloud of noxious white smoke. Something large and white streaks out of the barrel, apparently aimed at thin air.

Spoiler: OOC:

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I'm going to shoot at the invisible target, hoping that I can get around some of its concealment with the detect undead effect. I'm channeling snowball at CL3 (+1 for magical lineage, +1 for the campaign trait whose name escapes me) through the arcane gun.
Touch vs. AC: (1d20+4)[14]
Damage: (3d6)[14]
If it hits, the target has to make a fort save of be staggered.

[Celticbear]

Whatever the target was doing, it stopped and is running for the entrance. The shot missed, and the creature is at an unknown location at this time. Give up the chase?

[Krogarn]

Kahla would spin towards where the shot was aimed, looking around for whatever was shot at. "Did we miss one? Did you get it?"

[PCScipio]

Lubella looked around at the sound of gunfire: "What's happening? Is there an enemy around?"

Spoiler: OOC

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What happened with the children? Did they still here or have they vanished? It would really help if I could have a description of what my character sees.

[Kiranvonstrom]

"Not anymore. Something was hiding around, invisible. I'd wager that's our illusionist." Mirela sniffed, "I missed. It's hard to shoot by smell," she said, by way of explanation.

[Krogarn]

"Well, if something's invisible it's hiding, and it didn't attack us so probably best just to leave it alone, whatever it is. We got what we came for, so we should probably head on out and let the priests know we're done with what we came to do. We need start making our way to the asylum anyways."

[Kiranvonstrom]

"Well, Kahla, I'm going to just choose to chalk this up to a species thing, but here in Ustlav people don't take kindly to strangers shooting their children. And if we could produce the corpse of an attacker, they'd probably be more willing to listen to us when we say we didn't attempt to kill their children. The alternative, of course, is to just wait around for the mob to kindly lead us to the gallows." Mirela sounds slightly annoyed as she speaks, swinging Nascha back over her shoulder.

"Were we in, I don't know, Barstoi or Varno, it would be much easier to get out of this predicament. But here, in the Palatines, the only law is whatever a secret society and a bunch of jumped-up peasants have to say about the matter. They won't respect nobility in the slightest."

Spoiler: OOC:

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I'm assuming, due to her background and ranks (I think?) in knowledge(nobility), Mirela has a pretty good idea of the political layout of Ustlav, and the existence of the Esoteric Order of the Palatine Eye isn't really that much of a secret. Although I doubt she'd recognize their symbol.

[Celticbear]

When you look back at the children's corpses, they've turned back into giant roaches. It looks as if everything in the coffin is still there, but when you look back to the entrance the door opens and closes as quick as a flash.

Could Lubella and Mirela make me just flat out wisdom checks?

Spoiler: Kiranvonstrom

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Your character does know about the EOotPE, and the fact that you as a person actually knows what it is saves me a lot of trouble of explaining it.

[PCScipio]

More illusions. "Someone or something is messing with us," Lubella said to the others. "Let's get this cleaned up and get out of here." She grabbed one of the cockroach corpses and started to drag it out of the tomb, struggling a bit with the weight.

Spoiler: Wisdom Check

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(1d20+1)[18]

[Kiranvonstrom]

"Well, that certainly simplifies things." Mirela says."Unless, of course, it's just another illusion. Our caster's probably run off though, so I doubt it."

Spoiler: OOC:

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I have no memory of my wisdom score before mythweavers crashed. Hang on, it may be a day. But here's a raw d20 roll:

(1d20)[12]

[Celticbear]

Spoiler: Lubella

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You think that the speed of the illusion and the ability for casting greater invisibility is enough to identify whoever was in here a high level caster. Perhaps even Lucimar himself...