As your entire group is straining for the next pulse and ready to see what will happen, you could hear a pin drop, as everything apart from the low humming of the arcane energies surrounding the crystal orb are quiet. Buddie and Morrow, what would you like to do?


Initiative: Buddie Morrow I  Crystal I Haliday, Aftari, Ekaterina, Hadar

     Dr. Buddie shrugs his pack off his back and begins pulling out his bedroll.  “I propose an experiment.  What if we weigh down the corners of a blanket, do we think one of the more athletic types would be able to throw it in such a way as to cover the globe?  Perhaps if it cannot ‘see’ us then it cannot attack us?”

     Barring any objections or further developments that take precedence, Dr. Buddie will indeed use some of his surgical supplied sew a torch (for lack of a better weight?) such that it is held in each corner and wait to see who thinks they have the dexterity to properly propel it over the orb…

Morrow would take the weighted blanket from the dear Doctor, and with a small flap of his wings, lunge forward to throw the blanket over the orb.

(should I roll for that? and if so, what? xD)

Dex: 8

Morrow quickly darts into the room and launches the weighted sheet towards and over the crystal. As soon as he steps into the room, the blue light starts to concentrate, but the sheet falls over and around the plinth, before any beam is fired. Likely already being to late, but nevertheless wanting to err on the side of caution, Morrow ducked and rolled into the alcove opposite Aftari. Both looked at each other and the remainder of the group outside for a tense ten to twenty seconds. Slowly, you all exhale as it seems that the alarm has been successfully tricked and entry into the chamber is now safe.

Stepping away from Aftari with a few quick back steps, Morrow turns away from his fellow fiend-kin and calls out to the others, "I think you're good to cross...let's not dally." He then retrieves his bow and arrow, once again taking up an alert guard.

Haliday runs to the alcove with Aftari and taps them on the shoulder

     Dr. Buddie waits until a couple others step harmless into and through the room before doing so himself, though he does so nonchalantly and with a smile on his face when he does.  "Well, I guess that wasn't quite as difficult as we supposed, now was it?  Now here, give me a hand, if you would,' Dr. Buddie says as he pulls some rope from it's coil and cuts it off.  Handing one end of it off to whoever is handy to assist, Dr. Buddie looks to tie up the bottom of the blanket securely so that it cannot slip off the orb accidentally...

     Dr. Buddie will them take a long look at the room even as he is following the others...

Hadar will enter the room as well and help Dr. Buddie with the rope.

 Aftari looks gives Morrow a nod and says "good throw, that." Then turns to Haliday as they tap her on the shoulder. "Yes?"

"Jus lettin you know im behind you"

Entering the room, it's only once the people with the torches enter that you see the full glory of the murals at the door at the far end of the hall.

Carved upon these doors sprawls a mighty scene of conquest. An army of the living dead—ghouls led by vampire generals—charge up a mountainside toward a somber citadel carved out of the rock. Before the gates of the citadel stands a smaller army—this one made of walking skeletons, some armored, some not—led by a skeleton in a flowing robe. The leader of the vampires and the robed skeleton both hold their hands into the air as if conjuring a spell, and two circular cavities about the size of a human’s fist rest in between their outstretched hands.

Turning around, the central room with the plinth is otherwise unremarkable, with large square-set pieces of granite making up the floor. As noticed before, an alcove stands in each corner of the room, though whatever their purpose was, they are mepty now. 

The last detail you notice are the two smaller stone doors, to the north and the south of the plinth. These bear only light decoration, some runic script that winds its path down along the side of the doors. A more thorough study shows that the inscriptions on the two doors are different.

Aftari walks carefully to the door near her and looks it over. "Can anyone read these runes? Two places in the big door for an object, two other doors in the room, who else thinks we are about to go on a detour or two?"

     Dr. Buddie will examine the runes and go so far as to take out a blank book and a quill and copy them down as best as he can, but he's not really studies languages much more than he has had to.  ((If there's a roll for it I'll do one but I assume he just doesn't know it.)). He'll further make some notes about the layout of the room and the mural depictions but he's afraid it's all a bit beyond his expertise. 

     "And why would one ever expect grave robbing to be a straight forward job?" He dryly responds.

Actually, Buddie, you recognise after a short while that the runes are an archaic form of dwarvish. While not understanding every word, you're able to make out some of the runes. After a few minutes, you decipher the inscription of the northern door to read "Presentation Chamber of the Heroically Departed" or the "Honoured dead". The words are similar and you're not sure which is the right translation. Heading over to the southern door, you decipher the incription as reading: "Statue to the wealthy or Noble Bow-Man"

Aftari, standing before the large doors to the East, you immediately recognise the vampiric general leading an army of ghouls as one of the vampires that currently keep the Ostoyan Empire under despotic rule.

Morrow, not the most specialized in history, does offer some keen interest in the mural, studying it for a moment as he chuckles, "Wonder how people topside would feel if they saw stuff like this in a holy temple?~" He'd continue to study the mural until such a time that others pulled him away.

11

Morrow, you get the sense that the forces opposing the vampires are tied to the symbolism of the sun and the sigils made from polished bone. They certainly don't seem to have an issue with necromancy, but don't seem to want to be subject to vampires.

     While jotting down notes about the mural and dredging his memory for Ancient Dwarven Runic Knowledge (I think it was en elective in middle school?  Middle Ages school maybe?) Dr. Buddie also thinks back on his recollection of history in general and the depiction of what seems to be two undead armies battling in specific.

     "I cannot think of what is meant by a Noble Bow-Man, some kind of aristocratic archer you think?" Dr. Buddie would speculate.  "But I would speculate that the Presentation Chamber for the Heroically Departed, given the grave nature of the scene depicted, may have to do with what was done with those who died in battle... Perhaps they were raised again?"

History: 3

"Neithah way sounds all that pleasant.    But we have to pick at least one im thinking"

Hadar will also make a history check, pulling out his journal to take notes and make rubbings of the reliefs.  

History: 18

Hadar, you notice that the necromancers on the relief are all adorned with symbols of the sun, and you figure that they used this connection as a means to defend against the vampires somehow. Since Ostoya before the Darkfall was free of vampires and still one of the realms under the sun, these necromantic forces must have at least managed to keep the vampires at bay, or bind them somehow. Since the vampires rule the land now though, they must have lost the power of the sun.

Furthermore, you are fairly certain that this society had a very different understanding of death and necromancy than much of civilised society of the day. The bone decorations were likel seen as art, an act of veneration of the fallen ones.  Why then would they also need a presentation chamber for their honoured dead?

You're all familiar with the Darkfall- the day the sky turned dark and plundged much of the Ostoyan Empire into eternal dusk, when the rifts opened up to the city below, and when the vampires emerged to sweep over the land. Very little is known about the causes of that cataclysmic event. This mural was far from proof, but it hinted at a connection between the necromantic empire that ruled the lands before, the power of the sun and the vampiric overlords of today.