Satina steps close to the bodies. They are humans, male and female. They are fully clothed in long-sleeved linen tunics and broad linen head cloths. Each still wears a pouched belt about its waist. The bodies are lying at odd angles, as though they fell over or were dropped. There are no obvious injuries, however.
Zephirah takes a seat beneath a palm and begins to play (it could work, but an hour hasn't passed, only a few minutes). Looking around, Zephirah doesn't see anything unusual about the oasis. Other than the fact that it exists in this hospitable place.
Nephthys joins Satina at the pools edge, peering around. Yet, aside from the bodies, nothing is amiss. With the palms gently swaying in the hot breeze, the pool is perfectly serene.
Zahara inclined her head toward Satina, rising smoothly from where she had been crouched. "Yes," she answered, her voice quiet yet firm. "I would."
As she moved forward, she began to slip into her role as healer, a provider of care the familiar mantle slipping over her.
Lowering herself beside the first body, she exhaled, pressing her fingertips lightly to their skin. The desert stole warmth swiftly, but she sought more than mere temperature—signs of lingering life, remnants of what had befallen them. She let the land whisper to her, listening beyond the silence of death.
She glanced at Zephirah as the soft melody wove through the air, its gentle lilt a stark contrast to the uneasy stillness of the oasis. "A reflection that should not be?" she mused. "Then it is not only the bodies we should examine, but the oasis itself."
Turning to Nephthys, she nodded. "Be cautious," she warned. "Even the most placid waters can conceal danger."
The young dark-haired woman closes her eyes and grits her teeth at the wise words she is blessed with. The last few days had her looking at her mentor in a new light. "Yes, thanks, I am trying my best." Nephthys steps back from the pool again and says with a lightly strained smile to Zahara. "I'm afraid we might need to take a dive into the pool if we are to find out what caused that reflection though, not saying we need to find that out necessarily." She says with a shrug. "So, were they poisoned would you say?" She asks after a while.
Zahara crouches beside the first body. The corpse is twisted at an unnatural angle, limbs splayed as if caught mid-struggle. There are no wounds. Decomposition has begun but isn’t advanced. The desert has already dehydrated the bodies.
She moves to the next, a man with vacant, glassy eyes staring up at the sky. His lips are cracked, his face frozen in an expression of something between agony and disbelief. Nothing that explains why they’re here, lifeless, strewn across the sand like discarded marionettes.
She presses two fingers to a throat. Nothing. No pulse, no warmth. Only stillness.
Zahara’s fingers hovered over the man’s throat for a lingering moment before she withdrew them, her expression solemn. The desert had already begun its work, leeching the bodies of moisture, of softness, anything that once made them men instead of husks.
“They did not die from flesh wounds,” she murmurs, brushing sand from the hollow of the man’s throat with an almost reverent touch. “No blade nor beast took them. And yet, look—” she gestured toward the unnatural angles of their limbs, the contorted strain in their faces. “This is not the peace of one who simply lay down and faded into the sands. They struggled.”
She turns her gaze toward the pool, golden eyes narrowing. “Dehydration alone would not leave them like this. Even in thirst, a man does not die so suddenly—not unless he was already weak or ill. But two, in the same way, in the same place?”
She glances toward Nephthys at her question, considering. “Poison… perhaps. But from what source? If it was the water, we should see signs—frothing at the lips, discoloration, sickness in the flesh. Yet their skin is untouched.”
She hesitates before voicing her next thought. “Magic,” she finally say. “A possible curse, an enchantment—something unseen. If they sought shelter here and succumbed to it without knowing…” She exhales, shaking her head.
Her hands move carefully now, searching the bodies—not with greed, but with a healer’s intent, looking for tokens, belongings, anything that might speak of who these men were and why they had come. “Their possessions may tell us more,” she murmurs. “And if they have none… then that too is an answer.”
Investigation check: To search the bodies for further clues: 20 (Nat)
Zahara searches the bodies. The male’s belt pouch holds a wooden pendant carved with a sigil of Abadar (god of community and commerce). The female’s belt contains an incomplete dice set (one is missing). Each pouch also contains one vial filled with a shimmering red fluid. A little taste confirms that these are two Potion of Healing.
Nephthys nods in agreement with Zahara's shared thoughts, although her curiosity over the specific cause of death finally makes her kneel by the bodies to look for herself. With any luck and the gods willing she would find something that would give her more answers.
Zahara turns the wooden pendant over in her palm, tracing the sigil of Abadar with a contemplative touch. A merchant, perhaps, or a trader traveling between distant settlements. The woman’s dice set felt equally telling—gamblers and wanderers often carried such things for fortune’s favor. But there was no fortune left to be had here.
She slips the two vials of shimmering red liquid into her pouch, setting aside the pendant and dice to return to the others. Then, rising to her feet, she exhales softly, lifting her hands toward the barren sand.
Her fingers trace slow, deliberate patterns in the air, calling upon a deep, ancient memory of the land. A whisper of power stirred around her, an unseen force bending to her will. The sands trembled in response, shifting, loosening, as if stirred from slumber.
“From dust you were formed, and to dust you return.”
Her voice was quiet, solemn, carrying the weight of tradition rather than nature's authority. She had seen many pass in the desert—some at peace, some not. And though she had not known these two in life, she would see them given to the land with the same reverence she would offer kin.
The ground beneath the bodies softened, grains of sand parting like water to receive them. Slowly, gently, they sank into the embrace of the desert, the earth swallowing them in silence.
“May the sands carry you to rest.”
Zahara lifted a hand, and the earth shifted once more, smoothing over itself, erasing the last traces of what had been. No cairn, no marker—only the whispering desert wind, carrying away the memory of their passing.
She remained still for a moment longer, listening to the hush that followed. Then, finally, she turned back to the others, her expression calm, her golden eyes unreadable.
“They are at peace,” she said simply. Then, with a glance toward the pool, she added, “Now, we decide whether to uncover what hides in the waters depths.”
Nephthys kneels by the bodies, examining them. She notes the condition of their skin, the coloring of the lips, the lack of any markings, the state of decomposition, the rate of dehydration.
She steps back as Zahara offers a touching funerary rite of passage. From this life into the next, as Osirions believe, their spirits now pass into Pharasma’s bone garden, awaiting final judgment.
As the bodies are swallowed by the sand, Nephthys is struck by realization at the cause of death.
At her realization the young dark-haired woman quickly looks over at the pool. "I know this sounds strange but I think they drowned. My guess is that there is some magical water creature lurking in that pool that emerged and drowned them and that the shiny thing lured them too close."She says, backing away slightly from the pool and not taking her eyes off it.
Nephthys’s voice was steady but grim. “They drowned.”
Zahara exhales sharply, the missing piece clicking into place. “That explains it,” she says, holding up the healing potions. “They never had the chance to drink these.”
Zephirah remains perched beneath the drooping palm, her music shifting with each new insight the others unearth—sometimes bright and curious, sometimes low and foreboding. Her silver eyes flash with interest at Nephthys’s revelation, though her fingers never quite stop plucking out a soft accompaniment.
“So something lured them in… yet left them unspoiled, gear and all.” She pauses, one chord hanging in the dusty air. “And you say they drowned—but in a desert oasis that we see no sign of tampering with.” Her tone is thoughtful rather than skeptical, as though the final piece to a riddle still hides in plain sight. “Why kill them so discreetly? No scavenging, no looting, no sense of a creature feeding.”
She plucks a few more notes, her brows knitting together in concentration. “Could this water be conjured? A temporary summoning gone wrong?” She tilts her head in a half-shrug, eyes narrowed in memory. “I’ve heard of spells to create or bind water elementals, illusions turned real, even pockets of extraplanar water. If they tried that—botched a ritual, or else the entity turned on them—well, that might explain something.” (Arcana 17 to recall information about any rituals that might have been performed here)
She lets the final chord reverberate for a moment before shifting her hands in a gesture of mild resignation. “I can’t say for sure without seeing any runes or altars, though. Might just be a tragic accident.” She sighs, glancing between her companions. “You want to explore that shining lure? Let me tune up a more suspenseful tune.” A faint half-grin forms on her lips, the only sign of the thrill she gets from brushing so close to danger.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Sorry, I'm beginning to enter a vacation period and while I will try to check-in at least daily, I cannot promise that I will always be able to do so. From September 1, I should be back to normal.
Then, a glimmer of color: an oasis, a welcome break in the monotony of endless dunes. A pool of water, blue-green like a forgotten gem, rests untouched beneath a canopy of swaying palm trees. The pool is perfectly still, a perfect mirror reflecting the ancient ruins that rise partially submerged from its depths. A weathered stone dais, its pillars long collapsed, is swallowed halfway by time and water.
Two humanoid bodies lie motionless in the sand near the pool’s edge.
Zephirah eyes the weathered stone dais. Time and the desert’s relentless embrace have worn its once-precise carvings into mere whispers of their former glory, the symbols barely discernible. The crumbled remains of its surrounding pillars, once proud sentinels, lie scattered like the bones of a forgotten age, half-submerged in the still, glassy water of the oasis. Though faded, the arrangement is unmistakable: concentric circles, interlocking patterns, and angular symbols that speak of ritual and invocation.
Perhaps it was an altar, where offerings were made to gods whose names have long since slipped from mortal tongues. Or perhaps it was something more dangerous--a summoning circle, where those who sought dominion over the unknown dared to beckon forth entities from beyond the veil.
Zephirah realizes at last.
This was no ordinary gathering place. It was a place of power.
Zephirah’s fingers dance more violently across her lyre, weaving a tense, urgent melody that underscores the moment of realization. The formerly gentle tune escalates into something explosive and discordant—a sudden crescendo of sound that jolts the air, leaving her audience poised on the brink of alarm. Then, with a final, dramatic chord, she silences the strings, the echo of it ringing out across the oasis.
She rises from her seat beneath the palm, silver eyes darting over the concentric designs and half-submerged stones. “This wasn’t just any old altar,” she announces quietly, her voice taut with tension. “Somebody performed rites here—powerful rites, the power still resides here today. You can see it in the pattern, even if it’s been half-devoured by sand and time.” Her fingers still rest against her lyre, almost trembling, as though the music hasn’t quite left her. “Whatever took the lives of those poor souls… it might have been summoned. Or bound. Or something worse. Tread carefully.”
She shifts just enough to cast her gaze fully upon the weathered dais, tilting her head to scrutinize it for faded symbols without moving closer. Her posture is tense—more curiosity than caution—and one hand settles loosely on the curve of her lyre, ready in case she needs to pull back or call up a protective tune.
Sorry, I'm beginning to enter a vacation period and while I will try to check-in at least daily, I cannot promise that I will always be able to do so. From September 1, I should be back to normal.
While at first Satina had stayed back near the bodies at first, she realized she was of little help there. Once Zephirah crept closer to the pool to try to make out the partly submerged dias, she walks over beside her. "You suppose whatever drowned those people could still be in the water?"she suggests, trying to urge caution in the Tiefling. "Is it perhaps possible to get Thoth to try and read any symbols? Perhaps hovering above the level of the water rather than requiring someone to get so close."
Zephirah’s silver eyes narrow, lingering on the faint symbols etched into the worn stone. She edges no closer, keeping the dais at a respectful distance. “Those markings… if we could decipher them, we might learn who—or what—got summoned here,” she says softly, glancing over her shoulder at Satina. “Then again, whatever secrets lie beneath these carvings have been buried for ages. They can stay that way for all I care, unless one of you is keen on taking a closer look.” She flips a small flourish on her lyre, tension visible in the set of her shoulders. “Thoth might be our best bet—if he can read the ancient symbols from a safe vantage. Otherwise, maybe we just keep our distance. This place was here long before we came, and it’ll remain long after the desert’s swallowed us whole.”
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Sorry, I'm beginning to enter a vacation period and while I will try to check-in at least daily, I cannot promise that I will always be able to do so. From September 1, I should be back to normal.
Nephthys nods as the others speak, then calling down her mentor who descends from the blue sky above the weathered stone dais, just low eough to be able to read, translating aloud in his scholarly voice to the others the hieroglyphs that are etched into the stone. As he does he also makes it partly a teaching lesson to Nephthys, asking her to explain someof the simpler hieroglyphs she tells them about, seeming at least somewhat pleased with her progress in learning.
Satina steps close to the bodies. They are humans, male and female. They are fully clothed in long-sleeved linen tunics and broad linen head cloths. Each still wears a pouched belt about its waist. The bodies are lying at odd angles, as though they fell over or were dropped. There are no obvious injuries, however.
Zephirah takes a seat beneath a palm and begins to play (it could work, but an hour hasn't passed, only a few minutes). Looking around, Zephirah doesn't see anything unusual about the oasis. Other than the fact that it exists in this hospitable place.
Nephthys joins Satina at the pools edge, peering around. Yet, aside from the bodies, nothing is amiss. With the palms gently swaying in the hot breeze, the pool is perfectly serene.
Actions?
Zahara inclined her head toward Satina, rising smoothly from where she had been crouched. "Yes," she answered, her voice quiet yet firm. "I would."
As she moved forward, she began to slip into her role as healer, a provider of care the familiar mantle slipping over her.
Lowering herself beside the first body, she exhaled, pressing her fingertips lightly to their skin. The desert stole warmth swiftly, but she sought more than mere temperature—signs of lingering life, remnants of what had befallen them. She let the land whisper to her, listening beyond the silence of death.
She glanced at Zephirah as the soft melody wove through the air, its gentle lilt a stark contrast to the uneasy stillness of the oasis. "A reflection that should not be?" she mused. "Then it is not only the bodies we should examine, but the oasis itself."
Turning to Nephthys, she nodded. "Be cautious," she warned. "Even the most placid waters can conceal danger."
Medicine Check: 8
The young dark-haired woman closes her eyes and grits her teeth at the wise words she is blessed with. The last few days had her looking at her mentor in a new light. "Yes, thanks, I am trying my best." Nephthys steps back from the pool again and says with a lightly strained smile to Zahara. "I'm afraid we might need to take a dive into the pool if we are to find out what caused that reflection though, not saying we need to find that out necessarily." She says with a shrug. "So, were they poisoned would you say?" She asks after a while.
Zahara crouches beside the first body. The corpse is twisted at an unnatural angle, limbs splayed as if caught mid-struggle. There are no wounds. Decomposition has begun but isn’t advanced. The desert has already dehydrated the bodies.
She moves to the next, a man with vacant, glassy eyes staring up at the sky. His lips are cracked, his face frozen in an expression of something between agony and disbelief. Nothing that explains why they’re here, lifeless, strewn across the sand like discarded marionettes.
She presses two fingers to a throat. Nothing. No pulse, no warmth. Only stillness.
Zahara’s fingers hovered over the man’s throat for a lingering moment before she withdrew them, her expression solemn. The desert had already begun its work, leeching the bodies of moisture, of softness, anything that once made them men instead of husks.
“They did not die from flesh wounds,” she murmurs, brushing sand from the hollow of the man’s throat with an almost reverent touch. “No blade nor beast took them. And yet, look—” she gestured toward the unnatural angles of their limbs, the contorted strain in their faces. “This is not the peace of one who simply lay down and faded into the sands. They struggled.”
She turns her gaze toward the pool, golden eyes narrowing. “Dehydration alone would not leave them like this. Even in thirst, a man does not die so suddenly—not unless he was already weak or ill. But two, in the same way, in the same place?”
She glances toward Nephthys at her question, considering. “Poison… perhaps. But from what source? If it was the water, we should see signs—frothing at the lips, discoloration, sickness in the flesh. Yet their skin is untouched.”
She hesitates before voicing her next thought. “Magic,” she finally say. “A possible curse, an enchantment—something unseen. If they sought shelter here and succumbed to it without knowing…” She exhales, shaking her head.
Her hands move carefully now, searching the bodies—not with greed, but with a healer’s intent, looking for tokens, belongings, anything that might speak of who these men were and why they had come. “Their possessions may tell us more,” she murmurs. “And if they have none… then that too is an answer.”
Investigation check: To search the bodies for further clues: 20 (Nat)
Zahara searches the bodies. The male’s belt pouch holds a wooden pendant carved with a sigil of Abadar (god of community and commerce). The female’s belt contains an incomplete dice set (one is missing). Each pouch also contains one vial filled with a shimmering red fluid. A little taste confirms that these are two Potion of Healing.
Nephthys nods in agreement with Zahara's shared thoughts, although her curiosity over the specific cause of death finally makes her kneel by the bodies to look for herself. With any luck and the gods willing she would find something that would give her more answers.
Lucky Medicine: 18
Zahara turns the wooden pendant over in her palm, tracing the sigil of Abadar with a contemplative touch. A merchant, perhaps, or a trader traveling between distant settlements. The woman’s dice set felt equally telling—gamblers and wanderers often carried such things for fortune’s favor. But there was no fortune left to be had here.
She slips the two vials of shimmering red liquid into her pouch, setting aside the pendant and dice to return to the others. Then, rising to her feet, she exhales softly, lifting her hands toward the barren sand.
Her fingers trace slow, deliberate patterns in the air, calling upon a deep, ancient memory of the land. A whisper of power stirred around her, an unseen force bending to her will. The sands trembled in response, shifting, loosening, as if stirred from slumber.
“From dust you were formed, and to dust you return.”
Her voice was quiet, solemn, carrying the weight of tradition rather than nature's authority. She had seen many pass in the desert—some at peace, some not. And though she had not known these two in life, she would see them given to the land with the same reverence she would offer kin.
The ground beneath the bodies softened, grains of sand parting like water to receive them. Slowly, gently, they sank into the embrace of the desert, the earth swallowing them in silence.
“May the sands carry you to rest.”
Zahara lifted a hand, and the earth shifted once more, smoothing over itself, erasing the last traces of what had been. No cairn, no marker—only the whispering desert wind, carrying away the memory of their passing.
She remained still for a moment longer, listening to the hush that followed. Then, finally, she turned back to the others, her expression calm, her golden eyes unreadable.
“They are at peace,” she said simply. Then, with a glance toward the pool, she added, “Now, we decide whether to uncover what hides in the waters depths.”
Nephthys kneels by the bodies, examining them. She notes the condition of their skin, the coloring of the lips, the lack of any markings, the state of decomposition, the rate of dehydration.
She steps back as Zahara offers a touching funerary rite of passage. From this life into the next, as Osirions believe, their spirits now pass into Pharasma’s bone garden, awaiting final judgment.
As the bodies are swallowed by the sand, Nephthys is struck by realization at the cause of death.
The pair drowned.
At her realization the young dark-haired woman quickly looks over at the pool. "I know this sounds strange but I think they drowned. My guess is that there is some magical water creature lurking in that pool that emerged and drowned them and that the shiny thing lured them too close." She says, backing away slightly from the pool and not taking her eyes off it.
Nephthys’s voice was steady but grim. “They drowned.”
Zahara exhales sharply, the missing piece clicking into place. “That explains it,” she says, holding up the healing potions. “They never had the chance to drink these.”
Ophelia’s brow furrows and she appears slightly more lucid than she often is, nodding slowly at Nephthys’ words.
“Felled of aquaan slaughter,
Lie the two, their clues to give,
What lives in the water
Or if the water lives.”
Tanis(Ranger1): Shiverquill's Tempest City | Xarian(Fighter2): NioNSwiper's Tyranny of Dragons
Dyson/Eleo(TwilightCleric4): Vos' Beyond the Veil | Soren(ShepherdDruid5): Bartjeebus' Ravenloft | Ophelia(WildMagicSorcerer4): Ashen_Age's Risen from the Sands
Joren(EchoKnightFighter6): NotDrizzt's Simple Request | Sabetha(MercyMonk3): Bedlymn's Murder Court | Seri(NatureCleric3/DivineSoulSorcerer1): Bartjeebus' Greyhawk
Zephirah remains perched beneath the drooping palm, her music shifting with each new insight the others unearth—sometimes bright and curious, sometimes low and foreboding. Her silver eyes flash with interest at Nephthys’s revelation, though her fingers never quite stop plucking out a soft accompaniment.
“So something lured them in… yet left them unspoiled, gear and all.” She pauses, one chord hanging in the dusty air. “And you say they drowned—but in a desert oasis that we see no sign of tampering with.” Her tone is thoughtful rather than skeptical, as though the final piece to a riddle still hides in plain sight. “Why kill them so discreetly? No scavenging, no looting, no sense of a creature feeding.”
She plucks a few more notes, her brows knitting together in concentration. “Could this water be conjured? A temporary summoning gone wrong?” She tilts her head in a half-shrug, eyes narrowed in memory. “I’ve heard of spells to create or bind water elementals, illusions turned real, even pockets of extraplanar water. If they tried that—botched a ritual, or else the entity turned on them—well, that might explain something.” (Arcana 17 to recall information about any rituals that might have been performed here)
She lets the final chord reverberate for a moment before shifting her hands in a gesture of mild resignation. “I can’t say for sure without seeing any runes or altars, though. Might just be a tragic accident.” She sighs, glancing between her companions. “You want to explore that shining lure? Let me tune up a more suspenseful tune.” A faint half-grin forms on her lips, the only sign of the thrill she gets from brushing so close to danger.
Sorry, I'm beginning to enter a vacation period and while I will try to check-in at least daily, I cannot promise that I will always be able to do so. From September 1, I should be back to normal.
|| Oriace - Halfling Bard - Dragon Heist || Valerian - Elf Rogue - Wildnis || Rowan - Halfling Giant - Runewarren || Khazela - Spiritfarer Dervish - Tribute || Arista - Frost Sorcerer - Old Keep || Marasatra - Blood Mage - Avernus ||
Zephirah eyes the weathered stone dais. Time and the desert’s relentless embrace have worn its once-precise carvings into mere whispers of their former glory, the symbols barely discernible. The crumbled remains of its surrounding pillars, once proud sentinels, lie scattered like the bones of a forgotten age, half-submerged in the still, glassy water of the oasis. Though faded, the arrangement is unmistakable: concentric circles, interlocking patterns, and angular symbols that speak of ritual and invocation.
Perhaps it was an altar, where offerings were made to gods whose names have long since slipped from mortal tongues. Or perhaps it was something more dangerous--a summoning circle, where those who sought dominion over the unknown dared to beckon forth entities from beyond the veil.
Zephirah realizes at last.
This was no ordinary gathering place. It was a place of power.
Zephirah’s fingers dance more violently across her lyre, weaving a tense, urgent melody that underscores the moment of realization. The formerly gentle tune escalates into something explosive and discordant—a sudden crescendo of sound that jolts the air, leaving her audience poised on the brink of alarm. Then, with a final, dramatic chord, she silences the strings, the echo of it ringing out across the oasis.
She rises from her seat beneath the palm, silver eyes darting over the concentric designs and half-submerged stones. “This wasn’t just any old altar,” she announces quietly, her voice taut with tension. “Somebody performed rites here—powerful rites, the power still resides here today. You can see it in the pattern, even if it’s been half-devoured by sand and time.” Her fingers still rest against her lyre, almost trembling, as though the music hasn’t quite left her. “Whatever took the lives of those poor souls… it might have been summoned. Or bound. Or something worse. Tread carefully.”
She shifts just enough to cast her gaze fully upon the weathered dais, tilting her head to scrutinize it for faded symbols without moving closer. Her posture is tense—more curiosity than caution—and one hand settles loosely on the curve of her lyre, ready in case she needs to pull back or call up a protective tune.
Sorry, I'm beginning to enter a vacation period and while I will try to check-in at least daily, I cannot promise that I will always be able to do so. From September 1, I should be back to normal.
|| Oriace - Halfling Bard - Dragon Heist || Valerian - Elf Rogue - Wildnis || Rowan - Halfling Giant - Runewarren || Khazela - Spiritfarer Dervish - Tribute || Arista - Frost Sorcerer - Old Keep || Marasatra - Blood Mage - Avernus ||
The hieroglyphs etched in the stone are in Ancient Osiriani. They are worn and impossible to read from the distance.
Do you dare tread upon the stone?
While at first Satina had stayed back near the bodies at first, she realized she was of little help there. Once Zephirah crept closer to the pool to try to make out the partly submerged dias, she walks over beside her. "You suppose whatever drowned those people could still be in the water?" she suggests, trying to urge caution in the Tiefling. "Is it perhaps possible to get Thoth to try and read any symbols? Perhaps hovering above the level of the water rather than requiring someone to get so close."
Rabbit Sebrica, Sorcerer || Skarai, Monk || Lokilia Vaelphin, Druid || Liivi Orav, Barbarian || Vanizi, Warlock || Britari / Halila Talgeta / Jesa Gumovi || Neital Rhessil, Wizard
Iromae Quinaea, Cleric || Roxana Raincrest, Rogue || Meira Dheran, Rogue || Qirynna Thadri, Wizard || Crisaryn Melkial, Sorcerer
Zephirah’s silver eyes narrow, lingering on the faint symbols etched into the worn stone. She edges no closer, keeping the dais at a respectful distance. “Those markings… if we could decipher them, we might learn who—or what—got summoned here,” she says softly, glancing over her shoulder at Satina. “Then again, whatever secrets lie beneath these carvings have been buried for ages. They can stay that way for all I care, unless one of you is keen on taking a closer look.” She flips a small flourish on her lyre, tension visible in the set of her shoulders. “Thoth might be our best bet—if he can read the ancient symbols from a safe vantage. Otherwise, maybe we just keep our distance. This place was here long before we came, and it’ll remain long after the desert’s swallowed us whole.”
Sorry, I'm beginning to enter a vacation period and while I will try to check-in at least daily, I cannot promise that I will always be able to do so. From September 1, I should be back to normal.
|| Oriace - Halfling Bard - Dragon Heist || Valerian - Elf Rogue - Wildnis || Rowan - Halfling Giant - Runewarren || Khazela - Spiritfarer Dervish - Tribute || Arista - Frost Sorcerer - Old Keep || Marasatra - Blood Mage - Avernus ||
Nephthys nods as the others speak, then calling down her mentor who descends from the blue sky above the weathered stone dais, just low eough to be able to read, translating aloud in his scholarly voice to the others the hieroglyphs that are etched into the stone. As he does he also makes it partly a teaching lesson to Nephthys, asking her to explain someof the simpler hieroglyphs she tells them about, seeming at least somewhat pleased with her progress in learning.
The hieroglyphs are extremely worn, and even Thoth’s mastery can only make sense of a few words:
Behold the sacred . . . set beneath . . . stars.
This . . . of Nethys . . . speaks . . . and unbind the . . .
. . . the breath . . . silence, and . . . the hidden . . .
O . . . seek . . . the tongue . . . gods, . . .fire within . . .
(Anyone can now make a DC 20 History check to unravel the full text.)