Adams begins searching for survivors... and his keen eye is able to pick out something else. Strange, arcane symbols, nearly invisible and clearly intended to remain unseen, are on several walls. Presumably, the outdoorsman is wise enough to avoid getting too close to these strange symbols during his search.
Eventually, you come to a locked door. Just beyond, you can hear the sound of clanking chains... it sounds like there's still someone alive in here after all! But, now that you know what to look for, you can tell that one of these strange arcane symbols is on the door.
"Roger that," Eppie says, resignedly, as she clicks the radio off. Relaying the message to the others, she says cheerfully, "At least we can leverage the thread of an air strike against our opposition here."Tossing the radio back into Vox IV's bag, she follows the others to help in searching for survivors. Squinting at the arcane symbols as Adams points them out, she shakes her head and gives every one of them a wide berth.
As they approach the locked door with yet another uncanny symbol on it, she stops and frowns, crossing her arms. "Can we just blast through it?" she wonders out loud. But she clearly has no intention of touching it.
Simon: It seems like it could possibly be some type of protective rune, though far more complex and presumably far more powerful than any which you have ever seen before. You have no way to figure out exactly what it does, though.
Eppie: You have no idea
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"Air Strike?" Toa appears puzzled. He only vaguely understands what an air strike is, but he knows that his approach to avoiding one might be to head deep underground to protect himself, which is exactly where the Hunter appears to have headed and where he described the Brute as lurking. His wide face scrunches up, trying to reason out how an air strike would accomplish anything except perhaps blowing up the party themselves.
"I am feeling," he continues in his thickly accented rumble, "that we should pick a way in and go. One of you can choose which one. Dancing around the edges and clinging to the surface does not befit warriors such as ourselves. I think. Right?"
He glances down at Pyx, as if for confirmation from the feathered lizard.
Pyx chirps in confident affirmative before starting to nibble at one of Toa's bootlaces.
"Huh, well, speak for yourself," Eppie huffs. "I'm an engineer, not a warrior. But you're right. We're not accomplishing standing here with no information about any of this. I say let's blast down this door to start with." Backpedaling several dozen feet from the door, she yanks a strap on her arm under her furs and a unnoticed nozzle at her wrist suddenly releases a bolt of flame that hurls itself through the air at the runed door. "Whoops!! Look out!"
Pyx chirps in confident affirmative before starting to nibble at one of Toa's bootlaces.
"Huh, well, speak for yourself," Eppie huffs. "I'm an engineer, not a warrior. But you're right. We're not accomplishing standing here with no information about any of this. I say let's blast down this door to start with." Backpedaling several dozen feet from the door, she yanks a strap on her arm under her furs and a unnoticed nozzle at her wrist suddenly releases a bolt of flame that hurls itself through the air at the runed door. "Whoops!! Look out!"
Well... the attack hits and severely damage the door. Unfortunately, it also sets off the rune...
But it doesn't simply explode... instead, the room fills with sickly green mist.
Everyone, make a DC 19 Con save or take 15 poison damage (half-damage on success). The spell also lingers in the air... and the poison will continue to affect you every round that you remain within the cloud.
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Toa stares as his companions appear to be trying to burn the door down or blow it up. "You know, if you want me to just break it open from my echo..."
His jaws snap shut as the rune activates (something he does not understand) and the area fills with poison gas (something he understands slightly better).
Toa's CON Save vs. Poison (at advantage, being a dwarf): 16 - fail but still takes half damage (7) due to resistance to poison (Dwarven Resilience). (Won't bother rolling Echo-Toa's save as it only has 1hp and would vanish even from half damage).
Shaking his head in annoyance as his echo winks out from the poison, the barbarian trots out of the toxic cloud (35' movement), but not before re-summoning and sending his echo towards the damaged door. Echo-Toa hefts his maul. Toa smashes the door twice from his echo's position before Toa himself moves away through the heavy obscurement of the poison cloud and stands back laconically.
Bonus Action: Manifest Echo
Attack 1: Toa attacks the door from his echo's position using his maul. Maul to hit: 13 Maul damage: 8 bludgeoning
Attack 2: Toa attacks the door from his echo's position using his maul. Maul to hit: 14 Maul damage: 10 bludgeoning
(OOC: wow, below average on four straight d20 rolls for attacks and saves, and also on 2 different 2d6 damage rolls. Impressive! Toa must be rusty.)
Movement: Toa moves out of the cloud if he can (35')
Attacks made, and having moved out of the cloud himself, Toa shifts his echo back slightly (within 30' of himself) so it does not vanish, not taking time to consider that it will disappear anyway once it takes the poison damage again.
Toa's echo finishes bashing down the door... on the other side of which is a strange figure (not that any of you can see him through the cloud of poisonous gas... but he is fortunately not inside the cloud of death, which is moving away from the now-shattered door).
Ben_Evolent, go ahead and introduce your character!
Toa's echo finishes bashing down the door... on the other side of which is a strange figure (not that any of you can see him through the cloud of poisonous gas... but he is fortunately not inside the cloud of death, which is moving away from the now-shattered door).
A man's voice rings out confidently from the figure obscured by the green mist: "Hello? Are you OK? I could use a little help here." His voice sounds clear but a little worried, like someone trying to project more confidence than they feel. He continues to talk as you approach / as the mist clears, saying, "Since you set off the wards, you're clearly not with them. Have you defeated them, or is this a sort of smash-and-grab? In either case...", here, he gasps a little, panting, "could you unchain me?"
Once you get a clearer view of the figure, you see a man completely covered in plate armor of some sort. His face is mostly covered by his helmet, but there's a glass or crystal visor covering his blue eyes, and it seems to glow slightly. He's chained to a wall, but the chains fastened to his wrists are spaced so far apart that his arms are held straight out to each side. He doesn't have enough slack in the chains to lower his arms or bring them forward from the wall. He certainly cannot sit or lie down. Eppie may be interested to see various gears and wires showing under and around the joints. Both of his hands are covered in thick rubber "boots," like fingerless gloves.
His armor looks well made but dirty. You realize that his armor is smeared with dried blood. There's another one of the mutilated bodies on the floor, several feet away form him. He carefully avoids looking at the body.
As you approach, he says, "Lid Off!", and his helmet parts in the center and then retract into his breastplate somehow. Now you see a human in his thirties, handsome in a rugged outdoorsy way with a fair complexion and blonde hair. His face is covered in the short stubble of a few days. He says, "My name is Erik. I was with the expedition. Have you come to rescue us? Did you find any other survivors?"
As soon as anyone approaches to look at his chains, he starts to sound impatient, but not angry. You get the sense of carefully contained emotion."Sooner. Sooner would be better! I've been stuck here for one -- no -- two days now. My legs are killing me!"He groans as he bends his knees, and you're surprised to see that he doesn't sag down against the chains but instead floats up slightly scraping his back along the wall as his whole body rises slightly. A low rhythmic hum seems to emanate from his feet.
Attempting to remain out of the poison himself, whether that means hanging back or advancing up to the bound stranger (35' movement), Toa re-summons his echo, which had vanished again upon spending time in the toxic cloud. Echo-Toa begins smashing the armored man's chains with his maul.
As he wails away on the restraints from his echo's position, the barbarian himself stands back laconically. "I am Toa Rauparaha. My home island is far off. I do not think we came to rescue you, but it seems like the right thing to do! No other survivors have we seen, other than the Lion-shaped Hunter who sent arrows our way before retreating. The Hunter also spoke of a mighty-sounding warrior he called 'The Brute.'"
He steps back to gauge how the chain-breaking is going. "You bear noisy clothes that move on their own. Are they passed down from an ancestor? Or are they machines like all the ones that Eppie has, along with her feather-lizard who is not a machine?" And still looks delicious.
Eppie is just about to throw another fire bolt when the cloud of poison gas hits her full in the face. Coughing and choking, she ducks down low and scrambles in a random direction to get out of the cloud. "Vox IV, get in there!" she hollers.
Obediently, the machine leaps into the cloud of poison, completely unfazed by it.
Meanwhile, Pyx comes staggering out of the cloud, miraculously still alive, puffing little green clouds of steam out of her nostrils.
Eppie hangs back, gagging, while Toa smashes down the door. Vox IV enthusiastically leaps straight through the battered door as soon as it's down, and Eppie follows much more slowly, only as the green poison cloud clears. She shouts through the doorway before she can see the prisoner. "Hold tight, Erik, this is EPI TAXIS, we're here from Command to rescue you, haven't found anyone else yet. And we sure haven't defeated any of these haunted folk. Don't mind the robot. Are you chained? Vox IV, break the chains please."
Vox IV bounds over, and, rising up on its hind legs and balancing with its long tail, lashes out with rending steel claws at the chain attached to Erik's right arm.
As the poison cloud clears enough for Eppie to skirt under it, she does so, muttering to herself as she starts pulling tools out of the pouch at her belt. "Hold on, we'll have you out in a moment." A quick inspection shows her she's too short to reach the manacle on Erik's other arm, but she notices the wires and gears. "That's some fancy equipment they sent you with," she says. "Hang on." She reaches up, grabs hold of his armor, and scales him like a tree until she can reach his wrist, then, wrapping her short legs around him for leverage, starts working on opening the lock with a set of thieves' tools.
Eppie Con Saving Throw: 10 Pyx Con Saving Throw: 22 (17+1 con+4 proficiency bonus) (now at 5 HP)
Vox IV to hit the chain: 13 Damage: 6
Thieves' Tools to unlock the other manacle: 10 (assuming Dex)
This post has potentially manipulated dice roll results.
The poisonous cloud remains for 10 minutes, slowly creeping down the hall away from the broken door.
The cloud is 20' in radius (40' diameter). If you enter it (such as to pass through the cloud to get to the prisoner currently chained to the wall), you're going to need to repeat the Con save when you enter the toxic cloud or take 21 poison damage (half-damage on success).
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Eppie will wait until the cloud dissipates enough that she can get in without going through it. Vox IV is immune to poison so will not wait to get in there to start happily whacking away at the chains.
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Adams begins searching for survivors... and his keen eye is able to pick out something else. Strange, arcane symbols, nearly invisible and clearly intended to remain unseen, are on several walls. Presumably, the outdoorsman is wise enough to avoid getting too close to these strange symbols during his search.
Eventually, you come to a locked door. Just beyond, you can hear the sound of clanking chains... it sounds like there's still someone alive in here after all! But, now that you know what to look for, you can tell that one of these strange arcane symbols is on the door.
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Adams lets the party know, both about the symbols and the locked door and chain sounds. He asks for help as this is not his area of specialty.
D&D since 1984
Can Simon do an investigation check of the marks on the wall to see if he has seen anything like this before?
Investigation: 20 (Forum roller is acting weird)
"Roger that," Eppie says, resignedly, as she clicks the radio off. Relaying the message to the others, she says cheerfully, "At least we can leverage the thread of an air strike against our opposition here." Tossing the radio back into Vox IV's bag, she follows the others to help in searching for survivors. Squinting at the arcane symbols as Adams points them out, she shakes her head and gives every one of them a wide berth.
As they approach the locked door with yet another uncanny symbol on it, she stops and frowns, crossing her arms. "Can we just blast through it?" she wonders out loud. But she clearly has no intention of touching it.
Investigation: 9
Simon:
It seems like it could possibly be some type of protective rune, though far more complex and presumably far more powerful than any which you have ever seen before. You have no way to figure out exactly what it does, though.
Eppie:
You have no idea
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Simon will relay the messages and will jot down the rune in a notebook to study at a later time.
"Air Strike?" Toa appears puzzled. He only vaguely understands what an air strike is, but he knows that his approach to avoiding one might be to head deep underground to protect himself, which is exactly where the Hunter appears to have headed and where he described the Brute as lurking. His wide face scrunches up, trying to reason out how an air strike would accomplish anything except perhaps blowing up the party themselves.
"I am feeling," he continues in his thickly accented rumble, "that we should pick a way in and go. One of you can choose which one. Dancing around the edges and clinging to the surface does not befit warriors such as ourselves. I think. Right?"
He glances down at Pyx, as if for confirmation from the feathered lizard.
Sabetha(Monk2):DungeonMair's Rime/Inge(Barbarian2):Krayveneer's After the Fall/Seri(Cleric1/Sorcerer1):Uhtred's Windward Isles/Barn(Paladin1):Nyx's ToA
Dyson/Eleo(Cleric4):Vos' Beyond the Veil/Soren(Druid4):Bartjeebus' Ravenloft/Nivi(Rogue3):Raiketsu's CoS/Lyra(Warlock2/Bard3):BlameItOnWinter's Will of the Ancients
Joren(Fighter6):NotDrizzt's Simple Request/Quyen(Adept1):Constance's Nentir Vale/Toa(Barbarian6/Fighter4):MrWhisker's Dark Lord's Return
Pyx chirps in confident affirmative before starting to nibble at one of Toa's bootlaces.
"Huh, well, speak for yourself," Eppie huffs. "I'm an engineer, not a warrior. But you're right. We're not accomplishing standing here with no information about any of this. I say let's blast down this door to start with." Backpedaling several dozen feet from the door, she yanks a strap on her arm under her furs and a unnoticed nozzle at her wrist suddenly releases a bolt of flame that hurls itself through the air at the runed door. "Whoops!! Look out!"
Fire Bolt to hit: 8 (nat 1)
Damage: 6
Somehow, you miss with the firebolt at point-blank range.
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Seeing the attempt to blast the door, Adams pulls out his revolver and fires. 27 to hit and 12 damage
D&D since 1984
Well... the attack hits and severely damage the door. Unfortunately, it also sets off the rune...
But it doesn't simply explode... instead, the room fills with sickly green mist.
Everyone, make a DC 19 Con save or take 15 poison damage (half-damage on success). The spell also lingers in the air... and the poison will continue to affect you every round that you remain within the cloud.
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Simmon coughs and tries to move out of the cloud space, "Did you not see the rune of protection?" He shouts.
Con Save: 5
(Side note: the area inside the cloud is also heavily obscured)
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Toa stares as his companions appear to be trying to burn the door down or blow it up. "You know, if you want me to just break it open from my echo..."
His jaws snap shut as the rune activates (something he does not understand) and the area fills with poison gas (something he understands slightly better).
Toa's CON Save vs. Poison (at advantage, being a dwarf): 16 - fail but still takes half damage (7) due to resistance to poison (Dwarven Resilience).
(Won't bother rolling Echo-Toa's save as it only has 1hp and would vanish even from half damage).
Shaking his head in annoyance as his echo winks out from the poison, the barbarian trots out of the toxic cloud (35' movement), but not before re-summoning and sending his echo towards the damaged door. Echo-Toa hefts his maul. Toa smashes the door twice from his echo's position before Toa himself moves away through the heavy obscurement of the poison cloud and stands back laconically.
Bonus Action: Manifest Echo
Attack 1: Toa attacks the door from his echo's position using his maul.
Maul to hit: 13
Maul damage: 8 bludgeoning
Attack 2: Toa attacks the door from his echo's position using his maul.
Maul to hit: 14
Maul damage: 10 bludgeoning
(OOC: wow, below average on four straight d20 rolls for attacks and saves, and also on 2 different 2d6 damage rolls. Impressive! Toa must be rusty.)
Movement: Toa moves out of the cloud if he can (35')
Attacks made, and having moved out of the cloud himself, Toa shifts his echo back slightly (within 30' of himself) so it does not vanish, not taking time to consider that it will disappear anyway once it takes the poison damage again.
Sabetha(Monk2):DungeonMair's Rime/Inge(Barbarian2):Krayveneer's After the Fall/Seri(Cleric1/Sorcerer1):Uhtred's Windward Isles/Barn(Paladin1):Nyx's ToA
Dyson/Eleo(Cleric4):Vos' Beyond the Veil/Soren(Druid4):Bartjeebus' Ravenloft/Nivi(Rogue3):Raiketsu's CoS/Lyra(Warlock2/Bard3):BlameItOnWinter's Will of the Ancients
Joren(Fighter6):NotDrizzt's Simple Request/Quyen(Adept1):Constance's Nentir Vale/Toa(Barbarian6/Fighter4):MrWhisker's Dark Lord's Return
Toa's echo finishes bashing down the door... on the other side of which is a strange figure (not that any of you can see him through the cloud of poisonous gas... but he is fortunately not inside the cloud of death, which is moving away from the now-shattered door).
Ben_Evolent, go ahead and introduce your character!
Unhappy that the market got rid of individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
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A man's voice rings out confidently from the figure obscured by the green mist: "Hello? Are you OK? I could use a little help here." His voice sounds clear but a little worried, like someone trying to project more confidence than they feel. He continues to talk as you approach / as the mist clears, saying, "Since you set off the wards, you're clearly not with them. Have you defeated them, or is this a sort of smash-and-grab? In either case...", here, he gasps a little, panting, "could you unchain me?"
Once you get a clearer view of the figure, you see a man completely covered in plate armor of some sort. His face is mostly covered by his helmet, but there's a glass or crystal visor covering his blue eyes, and it seems to glow slightly. He's chained to a wall, but the chains fastened to his wrists are spaced so far apart that his arms are held straight out to each side. He doesn't have enough slack in the chains to lower his arms or bring them forward from the wall. He certainly cannot sit or lie down. Eppie may be interested to see various gears and wires showing under and around the joints. Both of his hands are covered in thick rubber "boots," like fingerless gloves.
His armor looks well made but dirty. You realize that his armor is smeared with dried blood. There's another one of the mutilated bodies on the floor, several feet away form him. He carefully avoids looking at the body.
As you approach, he says, "Lid Off!", and his helmet parts in the center and then retract into his breastplate somehow. Now you see a human in his thirties, handsome in a rugged outdoorsy way with a fair complexion and blonde hair. His face is covered in the short stubble of a few days. He says, "My name is Erik. I was with the expedition. Have you come to rescue us? Did you find any other survivors?"
As soon as anyone approaches to look at his chains, he starts to sound impatient, but not angry. You get the sense of carefully contained emotion. "Sooner. Sooner would be better! I've been stuck here for one -- no -- two days now. My legs are killing me!" He groans as he bends his knees, and you're surprised to see that he doesn't sag down against the chains but instead floats up slightly scraping his back along the wall as his whole body rises slightly. A low rhythmic hum seems to emanate from his feet.
Attempting to remain out of the poison himself, whether that means hanging back or advancing up to the bound stranger (35' movement), Toa re-summons his echo, which had vanished again upon spending time in the toxic cloud. Echo-Toa begins smashing the armored man's chains with his maul.
As he wails away on the restraints from his echo's position, the barbarian himself stands back laconically. "I am Toa Rauparaha. My home island is far off. I do not think we came to rescue you, but it seems like the right thing to do! No other survivors have we seen, other than the Lion-shaped Hunter who sent arrows our way before retreating. The Hunter also spoke of a mighty-sounding warrior he called 'The Brute.'"
He steps back to gauge how the chain-breaking is going. "You bear noisy clothes that move on their own. Are they passed down from an ancestor? Or are they machines like all the ones that Eppie has, along with her feather-lizard who is not a machine?" And still looks delicious.
Sabetha(Monk2):DungeonMair's Rime/Inge(Barbarian2):Krayveneer's After the Fall/Seri(Cleric1/Sorcerer1):Uhtred's Windward Isles/Barn(Paladin1):Nyx's ToA
Dyson/Eleo(Cleric4):Vos' Beyond the Veil/Soren(Druid4):Bartjeebus' Ravenloft/Nivi(Rogue3):Raiketsu's CoS/Lyra(Warlock2/Bard3):BlameItOnWinter's Will of the Ancients
Joren(Fighter6):NotDrizzt's Simple Request/Quyen(Adept1):Constance's Nentir Vale/Toa(Barbarian6/Fighter4):MrWhisker's Dark Lord's Return
Eppie is just about to throw another fire bolt when the cloud of poison gas hits her full in the face. Coughing and choking, she ducks down low and scrambles in a random direction to get out of the cloud. "Vox IV, get in there!" she hollers.
Obediently, the machine leaps into the cloud of poison, completely unfazed by it.
Meanwhile, Pyx comes staggering out of the cloud, miraculously still alive, puffing little green clouds of steam out of her nostrils.
Eppie hangs back, gagging, while Toa smashes down the door. Vox IV enthusiastically leaps straight through the battered door as soon as it's down, and Eppie follows much more slowly, only as the green poison cloud clears. She shouts through the doorway before she can see the prisoner. "Hold tight, Erik, this is EPI TAXIS, we're here from Command to rescue you, haven't found anyone else yet. And we sure haven't defeated any of these haunted folk. Don't mind the robot. Are you chained? Vox IV, break the chains please."
Vox IV bounds over, and, rising up on its hind legs and balancing with its long tail, lashes out with rending steel claws at the chain attached to Erik's right arm.
As the poison cloud clears enough for Eppie to skirt under it, she does so, muttering to herself as she starts pulling tools out of the pouch at her belt. "Hold on, we'll have you out in a moment." A quick inspection shows her she's too short to reach the manacle on Erik's other arm, but she notices the wires and gears. "That's some fancy equipment they sent you with," she says. "Hang on." She reaches up, grabs hold of his armor, and scales him like a tree until she can reach his wrist, then, wrapping her short legs around him for leverage, starts working on opening the lock with a set of thieves' tools.
Eppie Con Saving Throw: 10
Pyx Con Saving Throw: 22 (17+1 con+4 proficiency bonus) (now at 5 HP)
Vox IV to hit the chain: 13
Damage: 6
Thieves' Tools to unlock the other manacle: 10 (assuming Dex)
The poisonous cloud remains for 10 minutes, slowly creeping down the hall away from the broken door.
The cloud is 20' in radius (40' diameter). If you enter it (such as to pass through the cloud to get to the prisoner currently chained to the wall), you're going to need to repeat the Con save when you enter the toxic cloud or take 21 poison damage (half-damage on success).
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Eppie will wait until the cloud dissipates enough that she can get in without going through it. Vox IV is immune to poison so will not wait to get in there to start happily whacking away at the chains.