The Necromancer's Pact IX: City of Weeping Ghosts

[kuja.girl]

Tiriel

"Gee thanks Callos. Once you take away all the sarcastic comments and unneeded information, we have another vote for up. Anyone else have any pearls of wisdom they want to share? Or can we go now?" Tiriel asks.

[King_of_GRiffins]

Elthan

As if not even having heard what Callos had said, Elthan gives a sharp look to Tiriel. "Don't joke around; This isn't the time for voting."

Without another word, he grasps both ends of his cloak again and changes into bat, eagerly flapping his way up to the next level.

[Erikkin]

Fizahn:

Fizahn watches as people argue over what to do. "Yeah. There's not enough time to vote. But Tyrntha could make someone invisible to undead. They scout down the quiet passage and then catch up with people later. I just really have a suspicion that she's not at the top, but somewhere nearby."

[blackfox]

Anika

Anika dashes up the stairs again and glares down at Callos, Tiriel, and Elthan. "Stop arguing. Get up here. Then we can figure out what to do. With any luck those zombies haven't seen us yet."

[namo]

Adalmar

"I'm pretty sure they're coming for us" grunts the ranger in reply to Anika. He looses a pair of arrows before rushing up the stair, head swinging this way and that to survey the stairwell on all sides. Right now, he's expecting attacks to come from anywhere... or everywhere.

Spoiler

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Manyshot
(1d20+10)[20]
Damage 1 : (1d8+3)[9] + (1d6)[2]
Damage 2 : (1d8+3)[5] + (1d6)[1]
then move (up to) 60'.

[kuja.girl]

Tiriel
"Dammit I wasn't arguing! Some people wouldn't recognize sarcasm if it jumped up and bite them in the..." Tiriel turns to those still on the landing below, "Okay everyone up to the next level (3?)!"

Tiriel waits for those below to start moving before running up to the third floor.

[Diarmuid]

Tryntha

Looking up at the necromancer, her eyes are full of trepidation,

"He has been poisoned, and I do not have any magic prepared to deal with it. Thankfully, it does not appear to be harming him in any way. Khazreal, Callos, Adalmar, Gala, Grynde, gather close to me."

Giving a few moments to see if they will listen or not, Tryntha begins casting her spell and will lay her hand on whoever among those she called for is close enough as well as Damian and herself.

"Someone will need to carry Damian, I cannot rouse him."

She stands and makes ready to follow the group up the stairs.

[Dr._Bob]

The party scoots up the spiral staircase to the next level.

Adalmar drops the lead ghoul, buying time for the others to carry Damian up from below.

The staircase opens up into large circular room. There are four doors at the cardinal directions. Each is closed, but a quick inspection reveals that none are locked. The stairs seem to end here.

The ghouls gather down below, murmuring. They do not climb the stairs after you.

Other than the low moans from down below, all is quiet.

...

Damian is placed on the floor while Anika quickly checks the doors.

She reports more murmuring behind two of the doors. A third is silent. Behind the fourth is a strange ticking or clicking noise she can not identify ...

[Aveda]

Gala

Gala hurries back down to Tryntha and wordlessly picks Damian up from the floor. She nods her thanks for the cloaking spell and heads up the stairs to join the rest of the group on the next floor. Putting Damian back down on the floor and looking at their surroundings, she quickly informs the rest of the party, "He got stuck in the gas down there. Tryntha says he's poisoned, but for now he's ok." Gala takes a deep breath and looks at their surroundings. "Now where to? Looks like we're not left with too many choices."

[Matticus]

Grynde

Pointing with a drawn weapon, he indicates the door with no noise behind it.
That's probably the safer place to go.

[Naleh]

Retay

"Since when have you wanted to take the safe route?" half-jokes the barbarian, vastly happier than his usual. He looks around the upper landing for a moment, and then says, "I'd rather kill the vampire than any of her damned slaves. But is she more likely to be down the silent corridor, or the clicking one, or the silent one downstairs, or - as if it's an option - somewhere else entirely?"

[blackfox]

Anika

"I'm for going into the silent one, the ones with whispering are probably more ghouls, and the ticking one just doesn't seem right."

[Erikkin]

Fizahn:

"Yes. The silent one, because there's absolutely no chance she surrounded herself with minions that moan. No, that would be downright unfair of her." Fizahn's voice is complete with his natural sarcasm, as he eyes the passages. He shrugs and pulls out a coin to look at it. "It needs four sides... I don't really think there's any way to tell. She could just as easily be down any passage... Or somewhere else entirely. I guess we'll go down the silent one and leave it up to luck."

[kuja.girl]

Tiriel

"Considering who we're dealing with, I don't think we're going to like any of the options behind the doors." Tiriel looks at the doors for a moment before turning around and seeing, for the first time, that Damian is passed out. Tiriel goes and considers Damian's prone form for a moment before kneeling down next to him. "Don't ask me why, but I think I can help with this." She says as she places her hand Damian's arm. Her eyes screw shut for a moment and then she lets go of his arm and stands up. "We'll see soon enough I guess."

Tiriel uses her spell-like ability neutralize poison on Damian.

[Koji]

Khazrael

Khazrael shakes his head furiously and shies away from Tryntha, clearly not fond of the idea of joining in a holy ritual.

He follows Tiriel up the stairs and looks down at Zeodoras. "Whaddya think, which door?" He asks.

[Dr._Bob]

Damian smacks his lips and blinks his eyes as though waking from a restful nap. Suddenly, he sits bolt upright and his eyes snap open. "What happened? Where are we?"

He rises to his feet slowly and shakes his head to clear it. He seems to be none the worse for the wear.

Grynde eases a door (the one Anika heard no noises behind) open with the toe of his boot. It swings inward on squeaky hinges. The murmuring from below and behind the other doors falls silent.

The unexpected silence is even more unnerving than the undead muttering had been.

The passage is long and straight. Although your torchlight does not penetrate to its end, it does reflect off of two pairs of eyes that glow redly in the distance - one set to the left, the other to the right.

The two pairs of eyes blink slowly, but make no move toward you.

[Koji]

Khazrael

A few rapid gestures and a bit of chanting call forth a barely-visible barrier in front of Khazrael. He waits for someone else to move forward first.

((Casting an extended shield--+4 to AC, immune to magic missile for 14 minutes))

[blackfox]

Anika

Anika hisses and draws her sword. "We need to get light down there."

(OOC: I'm assuming Anika's darkvision doesn't have long enough range to see the creatures, whatever they are?)

[Dr._Bob]

Tryntha peers through the eyeholes of her hathran mask into the darkness and whispers, "Two more," she struggles to find the right words, "... abominations."

Her augmented darkvision can apparently penetrate even farther than Anika's keen eyes. Tryntha tries to describe what she sees through her mask ...

"They wear no clothing or armor. One is male ... one is female ... It looks like someone has ... collected ... body parts ... and sewn them together?"

She suppresses a gag and continues ...

"The parts do not all match. Some pieces appear to be demonic. Others were human, I think.

"They see us.

"The hallway seems to end behind them ..."

[kuja.girl]

Tiriel

They're not moving toward us, which is good, I think. But the hallway dead ends, so is this the wrong door?
"Should we try closing the door? It doesn't seem like that one will lead us anywhere."

[blackfox]

Anika

Anika frowns. "They don't seem to be attacking us. Let's close the door and walk away quietly and go into the ticking room before the ghouls in those hallways get us."

[Erikkin]

Fizahn:

"Gods. More of those? I thought I left them behind ages ago." Fizahn smiles at Anika as she suggests leaving. "The ghouls aren't moving anymore, darling." Fizahn looks down the corridor and grimaces. "Magical stones animate them. The stones will draw their corpses back together to stand against us once more. Once we drop it, we need to find the stones and destroy them immediately." He peers around the group. "That's if we want to fight them. I don't."

[barawn]

Damian

"They're constructs, then? I don't know if we can just avoid them, but we might as well try. It could just be some sort of lab or storage area."

He glances over to Tiriel and the others. "How far up have we come? And what did I miss?" Damian's mood seems curiously unfazed by the fact that he could have been left there, helpless.

[namo]

Adalmar

Dimly wondering why Fizahn has suddenly started to spout out nonsense, Adalmar reaches out and closes the door. He whispers to Damian : "We're on the 2nd floor - lots of ghouls on the 1st one... but they didn't give chase. You weren't out long. Khazrael, Tryntha and Tiriel saved you." He tries to be to the point - it helps that he has no clue what exactly the rescue involved : he had heard everything but had been otherwise preoccupied at the time.

"Which one next ?"
Stairs, we're looking for some stairs... I wonder how we'll get out, those ghouls are seemingly everywhere. Perhaps once the kris is destroyed... no, we're supposed to bring it back...

[blackfox]

Anika

Anika looks down at Fizahn. "That's just wonderful... and I wasn't even thinking about trying to destroy them, it wouldn't get us anything except more wounds."

[Dr._Bob]

Elthan and Fizahn had faced reassembled and reanimated lizardmen in the Wetwoods. It sounds like the two golems here are similar in theme, though their raw materials are different.

You make a cautious withdrawal, closing the oak door behind you. Upon exiting, Anika notes a curious grating placed above the door, hidden in the shadows above the lintel - it appears to be an iron plate, about one foot in diameter with multiple small holes drilled into it.

Zeodoras, back in quasit form, chitters in abyssal to Khazrael, currently in his feather-headed human form. Khazrael frowns, then turns to the others. "This part of the tower was off limits to all tanar'ri. Lady Valentine may be near ..."

Standing back in the round chamber you see the dark stair leading downward only and the three unopened doors. The air is still and silent.

The moaning that had been audible before is gone. The unusual clicking or ticking noise is audible to anyone passing within a couple of feet of the third door.

[kuja.girl]

Tiriel

"I'm not sure that opening the 'ticking' door is a good idea - I mean, at least we know what to expect with the other two, but that one... It could be bad. They'd also be bottlenecked in the doorway, only a few of them could get to us at a time, and that we can handle."

[Koji]

Khazrael

Khazrael's transformation back into his human form seems to take him by surprise. He barely has time to get off of Zeodoras's back before he shifts to his original shape. He shakes his head and says to the quasit, "I don't know how you stand it! It was like my brain was full of terrified, angry mice."

After Zeodoras shares a bit of information with him, he relays it to the party, and then continues--

"Seems to me," Khazrael offers, "That the best place to be is gonna be where they don't want us to be. If they're not driving us in a specific direction, or better--if they don't know where we are, then we have the best chance of mucking up their plans."

He levels a finger at the ticking door, and says, "There's something intimidating back there. Nobody'd expect us to head that way, so let's bust down that door, give whatever's on the other side a taste of the abyss, and really get somewhere we're not supposed to be."

[Matticus]

Grynde

On the other hand, Khazrael, Valentine could be expecting us to rebel against her directions, and then have covered every possible angle.

[Erikkin]

Fizahn:

"When you get right down to it, nothing is a good course of action at this point. They're all dangerous. It's simply a matter of choosing the one that's most harmful for our enemies, of which we have absolutely no idea. So I say we leave it up to chance." Fizahn pulls out three coins and turns to the ticking door. "Three heads." He then turns in a clockwise direction to each other door counting down the number of heads until he reaches "No heads. Seems logical enough." The gnome flips all three coins into the air and then deftly catches them all. He then opens his hand to reveal 'no heads.' He then turns to the door he had labeled as such and walks up to it. He rests one diminutive hand on the door and turns back to the group. "I say we go this way."