As you stand in the room, it's much as before. Now quiet, full of ankle-deep murky water, chains hanging from the ceiling over the altar, and the space dominating altar itself. How do you go about your inspection?

Creak looks to Balmaris and makes a “running” hand gesture. He seems to think that if they enter the room simultaneously, it would be harder to spring a trap.

 "Where was the chanting coming from? it appears as if no one is home..." and Balmaris will approach the dias.

Rynna follows Balmaris and begins examining the altar.  An empty room with chanting?  A spell?  Sentient ritual space?  Ghosts?

Investigation 16

Gralwynn cautiously moves into the room, and pulls on the chain, whe wants to see if they're loose/can be dislodged.

(OoC: not sure what to use for this, so I'll use strength and investigation, you choose what to use.)

Strength:3

Investigation: 18

(OOC: Sorry all, stupid gout flare has kept me more or less away from my computer at home for a dang week. Hopefully back into this more regularly now.)

As you all creep into the room, the silence persists, until Balmaris ascends the dais. As you reach the top, the chanting rises once more as thirteen dark apparitions appear on the ledges overlooking the room. Each one resembles a black-robed figure holding a torch, but the torch’s fire is black and seems to draw light into it. Where you’d expect to see faces are voids.

One must die! they chant, over and over. One must die! One must die!

Gralwynn, as you climb up to grab a chain, you can barely reach it, barely enough to see caked on rusty brown matter on the hooks on the ends of the chains. 

Rynna, you have the idea that this altar was meant for sacrifices. Likely, a creature must die on the altar itself to count as a sacrifice.

Creak looks around, “Or?”

"Fascinating....." and Balmaris will pull out his journal and quick sketch the figures.

"Do you suppose they are aware?" and he'll reach out and try to touch one of them despite the earlier warning of not touching things.

Gralwynn tries to stop Balmaris from making what could be a quite literally fatal mistake. 

Strength 4

(OoC: shit man, didn't know people still got that"

Adric looks at the apparitions and defiantly says "No. No one dies." 

And then he's going to make an Athletics check to grapple his companion that has a seemingly suicidal obsession with touching things that shouldn't be touched.

Athletics: 8

(OOC - hahaha guess I should make some athletics/grapple checks then)

[Athletics: 20]

[Athletics: 6]

Balmaris manages to easily shrug off his compatriots attempts to restrict his movement and his hand hits the ghostly figure, instead passing through the apparition harmlessly. Thankfully, it would seem that these figures are not deathmachines.

Adric is beginning to get frustrated with his companion who is too curious for his own good. "Stop doing that!"

And then he'll use his first Divine Sense to see if there are any undead or fiends within 60 feet of us. (I'm sure there are, but we'll at least know how many there are)

"See..they are harmless......"

Adric opens his senses and discovers, strangely, nothing. It doesn't seem to raise any evil-sensing hackles, for some reason.

"For once there's nothing here. But that doesn't mean that we should go around touching things that we don't know about."

Have the apparitions stopped chanting, or were they going on during all of this?

The chanting has continued, no change in volume or pace.

"Also, this house wants someone to die. Not like that wasn't apparent before, but now it's literally saying so. I am not willing to sacrifice myself to whatever dark power controls this house, as I am sure the rest of you are as well."

While they’re talking, Creak puts the dead frog on the altar.

Adric just looks at Creak putting the frog on the altar and shrugs.

"I suppose it can't hurt." He thinks to himself.