Confronted with the prospect of six possible directions to proceed in, the party reacted rather typically by splitting up. Gorfang the orc selected the stairs to the north-east of the hall, whereas Cheiron and Lynien chose the north-west. Bog shrugged and followed Gorfang, to his mind both the most likely to survive and the most likely to need medical attention.
Cheiron and Lynien climbed their flight of stairs carefully, finding themselves in a 30' square antechamber [7a], with a flight of stairs going northwards and down again.
A wall pierced by an arch divided the hall into two sections. The far section was different in appearance from any of the rooms they'd visited so far; the original decoration and arrangement of objects appeared untouched and undefiled. A small golden blazon decorated the back wall, and a stone sarcophagus stood in the centre of the floor. Around the edges were eight niches, which appeared to contain withered lizardman corpses dressed in priestly robes. Just inside the entrance, a recently-dead male fae mhor warrior lay in a crumpled heap.
Lynien's trained instincts were screaming at her as she looked at this. Carefully, she knelt down and began examining the edges of the archway seperating the two parts of the room. It looked as if it was trapped, but as she leaned a little closer to see more detail, she was suddenly shoved violently forwards through the gap. Turning the movement into a roll, she regained her feet to see Cheiron the centaur turn and trot away, heading for the northern exit from the antechamber with a smug grin on his face.
Muttering to herself, the tiefling turned back to the job in hand. Now she was in here, she thought, she might as well have a look around. Eyeing the dessicated corpses in their niches nervously, she worked her way cautiously across the tomb, checking for more traps as she did so. As she moved, she felt an increasing heaviness in the atmosphere, a sensation of unwelcomeness. She shrugged. This was normalcy for a part-demon girl with light fingers.... She glanced at the golden roundel on the wall at the back, but dismissed it from consideration; it was far too heavy to carry. The sarcophagus, though. might well contain some small valuable items; and the deceased fae mhor might well be worth searching too.
After a careful examination, she concluded that the tomb probably wasn't trapped. Putting her shoulder to the slab closing it, she heaved it off and started as it suddenly slid across and dropped to the floor with a nerve-battering crash. Nothing came to investigate - including Cheiron the centaur! - and she leaned over the coffin and peered in.
Gorfang reached the top of the stairs and peered around, finding (although he didn't know it) a similar arrangement in reverse [7b]. Unlike Lynien and Gorfang, he could easily read the writings around the walls, which declared that this was the last resting place of the High Priestess Osoketa, extolling her virtues, her holiness, and the number of sacrifices she had offered to Shushkrah in her life. A silver blazon with Shushkrah's emblem decorated the back wall.
Untroubled by the idea of traps, he strode decisively into the chamber, drawing his weapons as he did so. As he reached the first row of niches, there was a dry rustling, and all eight of the lizard corpses lumbered forward out of their graves and turned towards him. A moment later, about half of them succumbed to the relentless effects of time and disintegrated as they lurched, crumbling to a scatter of bone fragments, dust and cloth. The remaining four advanced on the orc as he hefted his maul and scimitar.
The creatures were slow, and only two reached him to begin with. He hefted the Maul of Brutality and the scimtar and attacked. Rather to his surprise, the creatures were weak and easily destroyed; but as he smashed the second one to powder, he heard the ominous grating of moving stone.
More moved up to attack him, and looming behind them was a fifth figure; similar but not quite the same. This one's robes were finer, though still rotted, and after all the centuries, there was still a trace of the female about the mummifed corpse. Presumably, this was (or had been) the High Priestess Osoketa, and she was not happy at being disturbed!
Gorfang stepped into the battle, and dealt with the last two zombie priestesses easily - then faced the High Priestess herself! In a moment, he knew she was a far more dangerous opponent; not only did she deal him a stunning blow that made his helmet ring, but his own attacks, especially from his scimitar, were barely harming her. For a moment, blind terror threatened to wash over him - but orc warriors do not heed fear. Or logic, common sense, second thoughts or self-preservation often enough, either, but that's another story. Grtting his teeth, he stood his ground, trading crushing blows of his maul for the heavy-fisted strikes of the mummified priestess.
Finally, his determination won out and the undead creature collapsed in a heap. Gasping, he stood for a moment, feeling the blood from his several wounds trickle, and in the very distance he heard a distant, stony crash. Knowing his companions, he wasn't in the least surprised.
Lynien grinned quietly to herself. Inside the catafalque was a neatly laid out and very dead lizardman corpse, still with shreds of a white robe clinging to his bones. Laid to one side of him was a tall wooden staff, iron-shod and twisted like a tree-root, with scorchmarks along its' length. On the other side was a slender longsword, black as night and with a glassteel hilt and quillons. Next to that were some fragments of leather, probably a pouch once, with four dusty bottles in the remains.
She returned to the dead fae mhor and, after looting his arrows, bolts and money, took his sabre and used it to prod the contents of the coffin around. Nothing exploded, so she finally reached in and lifted the treasure out.
As she picked it up, the staff began to glow gently, a pleasant, verdant green. Quickly she put it down, and it stopped. She picked it up again, and it glowed again, but nothing else happened. She slid it in behind her pack straps.
The sword had a scabbard and baldric with it, peculiar things made of metal mesh to resemble spider webbing. The blade itself had runes carved on it, and she was rather disquieted to note that they were in the same language as the runes daubed on the trapped arch that had nearly killed Gorfang. None the less, she shoved it into her pack, and headed for the exit.
Cheiron trotted down the stairs, calling out "Hello?" quite loudly on a whim. As he descended to the point where he could see into the next room [8], a horrendous sight met his eyes.
The great hall, a hundred feet wide, contained over 20 stone sarcophagi and was probably once the main burial room. The holy symbols had all been desecrated and defiled. In the centre of the room stood an abomination; a fountain of once-white marble, now stained crimson and filled with blood and bones. A glowing red rune, radiating pure evil, had been rudely carved into the once-elegant plinth of the fountain. Gouts of blood bubbled and spurted grotesquely from the top of the fountain, spattering the floor around with red ichor. Four dark-skinned elves, one wearing robes with disquieting sigils on them, stood around the fountain with two of the spider exoskeletons lurking nearby. As the centaur came into view, one of them - a female in richly-decorated mail armour - lifted a hand to point at him and barked a command in a language he didn't speak.
The pure horror of this unholy font, and the desecration of nature, was too much for the woodland creature. Spinning in place, he leaped away up the stairs and bolted for the open air and the clean sky. He heard the sounds of pursuit, but there was no way they could keep up with a fleeing centaur.
As she reached the archway she heard rapidly approaching hooves, and suddenly Cheiron thundered up out of the stairs and flashed past her face, before galloping down the southern stairs and disappearing from sight. Lynien had seen the look on his face, and reached her decision easily; anything that could terrify a huge armoured horse-man weighing nearly two tons was far too much for a slender tiefling girl to tackle on her own. Hefting her pack, she turned and loped off after the retreating centaur. Behind her, she could hear the uncanny skitter of pursuing spidershells, and softer footfalls further back.
Gorfang returned to the room with the bear bones [6], and looked around. He could have sworn he'd heard hoofbeats... just as he thought this, Lynien came bulleting out of the north-western staircase, looking worried. "We have company coming," she muttered urgently. Gorfang hefted the Maul, but instead of drawing his scimitar, he looked down at the dead fae mhor from the previous battle, and bent to pick up a dropped mace in his left hand. Then he braced himself to meet the challenge. Lynien returned to her previous ambush position to the left of the archway, and Bog retreated to the far end of the room.
A moment later two spidershells scuttled down the stairs and charged straight at the mighty Gorfang. Hefting his weapons, he attacked, sending a shower of splinters of chitin in all directions. With two bludgeoning weapons in his hands, the exoskeletons were easy meat, and he smashed both in less than twenty seconds.
There was no time to relax, though, for both he and Lynien could now hear more foes approaching rapidly...
[Aimo has decided to retire Cheiron, as he doesn't feel the centaur fits in well enough with the rest of the party; he will be generating a new character in time for next time's game!]
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