Mal will ready her crossbow and then hopefully fade into whatever shadows she can find.

Stealth: 27

With the bright orange light of the flaming sword behind him, badger casts his spell. A spectral hand appears and takes one of the paper mache masks from one of the bodies. It floats back to badger placing the mask in his hand. 

Now what? thinks Badger. Er, Sickle! Put this on your face and walk into the room. Let's see what happens, he says, holding the mask out to Sickle. At a protesting look from the half-orc, Badger responds: Well I can't wear it with this helm on, now can I?

Sickle raises an eyebrow and glares at Badger, then puts the mask on. If nothing happens he will walk in the room. If nothing still happens, he will ask, “Alright, last time we had a goal. Find the cubes.  What are we doing now?”

Badger rolls his eyes and replies: Find the soul monger, obviously. And not get killed in the process.

"Our noble goal is the end of the death curse which the origin of which is said to lay within these ruins," Silas explains.

Sickle stares through the creepified death mask. “That I understand. The Designer here clearly wishes to toy with us through these puzzles.  That’s fine, too. But I thought perhaps there would be another stage which we need to get past, which these other puzzles would lead to. But never mind.” 

Mal quietly says, "I am all for killing the Soul Monger and being done with this jungle for quite some time. I need a vacation and more desperately a nice long hot bath."

Sickle glares back at the rest of the party members blithe answers and, taking a deep breath, places the mask over his face. He peers through the eye holes of the paper mache mask, his peripheral vision gone.  Unhappily he steps into the room.  Nothing happens. He takes another step, then another. Still nothing. He sees as he's gotten closer, eyes all over the large metal gong. They are carved into it, yet move regardless, darting this way and that, though they seem to not notice him, or...are just a distracting illusion. Either way, he stands in the room, right next to one of the dead bodies, and nothing untoward seems to be happening. He looks back at the rest of the group, their faces peering at him from beyond the secret door, their eyes darting about the room as he stands by himself in the quiet tomb.  

Now what?

So far Badger's theory is holding true, but the only way to be sure is to test the null hypothesis. He will step into the room without a mask and see if there is any difference...

Before Badger can go in, Silas will place Guidance on him just in case.

The eyes on the disk all turn to regard Badger as he steps into the tomb. The six undead creatures that are slumped in thrones in the niches along the wall all leap up, dust clouding from their bodies that have not moved in ages, and turn to face Badger. 

Everyone roll init. 

Bad guys:  20

Mal Initiative: 15

"Could we have not waited to test your theory till after we have killed the soul monger?" Mal yells out as she grabs her scimitars from her belt.

Silas: 13

(Or...6 masks, 5 PC’s...)

Sickle: 18

Initiative: 16 + 1 from Guidance

OOC: Just to be clear, they have turned to face Badger only? Is it possible to tell whether they can see Sickle (who at last post was standing right beside them) or the others (probably harder to tell as they are so close to Badger)? Evidently the mask allowed Sickle to avoid detection until now, but wondering if it is providing protection from the corpses or the eye-disk or both or some other third thing...  Sorry, I just enjoy these puzzles too much.   :)

Puzzles, Grenk was not great at but re killing undead he was 

Initiative 19

Badger thinks that they eyes are all looking at him, and....maybe the undead are just looking at him too?  It's a bit tough to say, they're definitely facing the door you've all come in under, which Sickle is close to, but not right next to. 

Badgers' turn.

As soon as Badger sees the corpses move (he was kinda expecting that) he hisses "Stay your weapons", steps back through the doorway into the hall and waves everyone to hide. He then peeks around the edge to see what happens next, ready to go to Sickle's aid if he becomes their next target.