(I/C)
Brendon held his hand up before Kovid could start swinging, giving the area a serious once over (>Find Traps, Red 96) and after a few minutes backed away and clapped the dwarf on the shoulder. “All good.”
“Go for it, Senor Kongo,” Abraxas offered. He moved closer to the stairs, sword and shield out, while Wyn conferred with the group briefly before setting himself up south of the room near the puddles.
With everyone in place, Kovid raised his pick up high and then crashed it down on the wall. It rang loud and shrill, and then more blows followed as the dwarf worked his pick with steady swings (<+4, Yellow 5..<+4, Yellow 2). He pounded on the wall, the hardened stone flaking off and chipping away, but the integrity of the stone was uncompromised.
The group was anxious as the sounds of the mining were loud (WMC, Red/Black 3) but this far from the main part of the castle was working in their favor as Kovid continued to beat at the wall. Lannis and Lyra stood nearby, nervous and looking about wildly as more rock chips went flying. (>+4, Teal 9) A large section of the secret wall crumbled off (1d6 structural +2, Yellow 3: 5 structural damage) and Kovid grinned as he switched stance and continued to hit the wall. (>+4, Green 15) His pick rang again and again, the wall falling apart until the last few swings (1d6 structural +2, Yellow 2: 4 structural damage and down!) knocked down the final support pieces at the bottom and rocks fell, dust flowed and the space behind the wall opened up (WMC, Red/Black 4).
As the lantern pierced the gritty gloom, the party froze as the sight of a mummified and very dead elven priestess armed with a dusty warhammer smashing her weapon into the face of a mummified humanoid woman with limp snakes hanging from her head.
“I FUCKING knew it!” Lyra said. “Didn’t I say it? Didn’t I! Right there – fucking medusa!”
As the last of the dust fell the group could see the two figures had died a long time ago, apparently together. Although the priest had no obvious wounds, she was dead and as mummified as the elves in the Lower Barracks. The same thing with the medusa, the gorgon also very dead. There was a BROKEN lever in the down position on the west wall, the top of it smashed as if hit with a hammer. In the back of the room was a shelf with half a dozen books on the top shelf, a flat wooden box on the middle shelf, and the bottom shelf had an open topped crate.
“Books,” Lannis said. “Again, just please, leave them to me, please.”
Brendon and Kovid game the room a once over until they were confident that there was no traps or issues, including weak stone and the like. “Panic Room,” Brendon said. “That’s what the lever was. Probably dropped the wall here and kept whoever as in here safe.”
“Looks like the priestess followed the medusa here or lured it in here and dropped the wall and then broken the mechanism.”
“Can we come look around?” Lyra asked.
Getting the ok from the dwarf and scout, the magic user and the cleric entered. Kovid meanwhile was looking at the warhammer with a keen eye.
Starting at the bottom, the crate was pulled free to show a padded base with a silver plaque on the side that read “Eye of Ishtari”. From the size of the indent in the padding (the item in question was not here) it would be circular, at least 3” deep, and at least 9” in diameter.
The next shelf had the box, ash wood and oiled and lacquered, still in good repair after all these years. Brendon looked at it and indicated it was ok to open. Prying open the top revealed 4 potion bottles and what seemed to be an atomizer with a squeeze bulb. Lifting them one at a time, Lannis read them off, “Healing…Healing…Charm Animal…Healing…and…Oooo,”
“What, Senor?”
“Poison Mist. In Aerosol form!”
“Zat is tres bien!”
Finally was the book shelf and Lannis (<Int, Pink 1) and Lyra (<Int, White 8) looked them over, thumbing through them one at a time and flipping to the end. They were book on worship, prayer bibles, and well made older style elven scribed original copies on Morrigaan, Theystra, and Ishtari. The 4th and 5th books were a series of rituals and ceremonies that a larger temple would have to help the abbot and abbess attend to the congregants. It was the 6th book that was different.
“Um…someone defaced the hell out of this one.”
“Let me see,” Lyra said. She flipped through the pages, many of them had been hit with a bleaching agent and the cover had gouges dragged through it making the title impossible to make out. “I don’t get it, why keep it?”
Lannis pointed back to the three other books. “Look.” On the spine the prayer bibles also sported the name of the elven goddesses…but below each one was listed “1 of 4, 2 of 4, and 4 of 4”. The spine of the gouged book also had the name scraped but the group was able to read “ __ O __ __ H, 3 __ f __”.
“So, this book is part of the series…but the goddess was defaced.”
“Why not just get rid of it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they needed to be kept together?”
“I kin tell you, mon ami, zhat elves don wanna even throw zumtin out if’n it don’t ‘ave to be throw out.”
“Well.. we had a bunch of things now.” Brendon looked at the books (10 per), and the books were hand painted and inked and pretty old and in good condition. “If we find a buyer, each book could fetch 25 crowns for all 5.”
Kovid had been seriously watching the war hammer, fingering the hilt, measuring the length, and pulling it out of the dead medusa’s face to view the head before putting it back down again. “Senor Crow Ted, it seems to be that you want el hammer, non?”
Kovid shrugged and put his hand back in his pocket. “Maybe. I don’t know. I mean, it’s just sitting here, you know? What do you guys think?”
Time now is 8:25
(OOC)
There is a wooden box (10) that can hold (50) and has 4 potions in it (5 each) and an atomizer (10). The books are definitely worth something if you want. There is the hammer if you let Kovid take it. And there is a crate with something missing – the eye of ishtari.
What do you want to do?
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