Shadowthorn's Princes of the Apocalypse

Marros, again dumbfounded at the efficacy of the group, stumbled forward at Xans suggestion. He kneels and checks over the closest body. "What exactly am I looking for? What's the symbol you're looking for?" 

Investigation 20

Quote from Brian_Avery >>

(ooc: who is Jhazaal?)

((It might be Rubin's realname© shh))

Quote from Mehmen >>

Once things quiet down Xanranzan lets out a decently long, low whistle. "Hoooo Doggie! Ya'll really messed'em up good, ya did! I-I don't think they even.... just wow!" He exclaims, smiling crookedly. "Not... sure if any of'em are alive after that. Which, uh... eh... mn..." The earth genasi trailed off awkwardly there, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Yeah, you too," Kethra smiles at Xanranzan. Propping up the body of the 'Windharrow', she points to him. 

"Told you this one was trouble. You might want find something nice from this guy about music magic. When you're done, help me drag them off to the side"

Kethra offers a low five to Marros (for dealing the finishing blow) as he moves in to search one of the bodies near her. 

She says to the rest of the party, "Don't know if they're cults or not, but they're weird enough that I'd be surprised if they weren't. Good job everyone, let's see what we can and we'll follow your lead...Miner." 

Kethra makes a general search of the bodies (but mostly money). Perception: 16

 Xanranzan gives Marros a funny look at first, before having his attention drawn back to Kethra. "Me? Uhh... hmm... aight. Though, not sure why ya wanna drag'em off to the side tho'. Planning to make this area into like some kind of forward camp or somethin'?" The earth genasi asked on his way over. Although rather than check the body first, he'd look more around the immediate area for the flute/instrument the man he and his fellows been playing for a closer inspection of the items.

Even if they end up appearing to be just normal instruments, he'd still toss them into his backpack to check out more later, before awkwardly helping as directed by Kethra in the looting process.

The leader's clothes look like they could have fetched a decent price before they were bloodied, but he doesn't seem to have anything else special on him other than his flute.  The rest of them also all carried instruments, and each were wearing the same plain white robes.

(Tyde, you don't notice anything odd about the room.  However, you do notice something odd about the flutes all of them carried—please roll a Medicine check.)

(Sorry, been bad about notifications recently.)

Tyde, you realize that the flutes are made out of humanoid bones.

As soon as 'human bone' and 'instrument' are put in the same sentence, Xanranzan immediately but nonchalantly set down the flute he'd been holding, and did the same for every other instrument that found its way into his back pack after the initial search. "Well, uh... Alls well that ends well. Technically doesn't explain whether the whole tower folk might yet be involved. But, either they're blind, these guys are really good at being undercover, or... I-I dunno. Maybe I'm just, uh, how it go again? Tugging at straw? Messing with tweeds? Winding the web? Any of that sound 'bout right?" He asks.

(Is this plaza a dead end or is there anywhere to go from here? And are there any immediate places in this plaza to hide the bodies in?)

As soon as Kethra hears "human bones" from Tyde she takes off the white robe she was wearing, throws it to the ground, and gives it a few good stomps.

"Ugh, gross? Even if I was just pretending to be one of them. You're totally right about these people!"

Quote from Mehmen >>

"Well, uh... Alls well that ends well. Technically doesn't explain whether the whole tower folk might yet be involved. But, either they're blind, these guys are really good at being undercover, or... I-I dunno. Maybe I'm just, uh, how it go again? Tugging at straw? Messing with tweeds? Winding the web? Any of that sound 'bout right?" He asks.

"Even though the cults claim to hate each other, I really wouldn't be surprised if this was the same sneaky plan as the one in Rivergard, back where we found you," she gives Xanranzan a nod. 

"Mind cleaning up the stains on the leader's robe though? If we can sell it for good money, then we should at least take that one. Then let's drag these sorry corpses out of here. Making a base to rest in isn't a bad idea, but as long as there's no dead bodies nearby. If they rise up into zombies or something I will be very upset."

"Let's keep moving." Rubin says, shrugging off the reasons for the direct asault. "Someone is likely to have heard the sound of that thunder wave..."

Xanranzan smiled in relief, genuinely glad that his point had landed well with at least Kethra. Although beaten to the punch to clean off the robes, he strolls over to the other bodies intending to just throw at least one onto a shoulder for removal. Now at the mention of a map making...

History: 11.

Using his free hand, Xan would rub at his chin and squint a bit before chuckling, snapping his fingers, and pointing to Tyde. "Good idea! Probably best ya do that tho'. My fingers are good, but my artistic, uh, talents leave much to be desired in that department. " He admits. "Probably be a good idea to mark where we've gone too at some point, and what places we've cleared. Something subtle though that only we'd really recognize." He suggest, having completely and utterly forgotten his original job assignment.

Marros takes time to rinse his hands of blood in the fountains pool. "So deeper into the belly of the beast huh? With that Tydel-wave of sound, perhaps we should take a more direct approach and not this sneaking around. I mean, they know we're here, why not take the fight to them." It's clear he has very little dungeoneering experience about him, his suggestion clearly from an open battlefield tactic. He stands, proud of his idea and looks to the others for their agreeance.

"Sneaking around is how I fight." Rubin comments, but nods onward. "Ready to move out when you are."

Xanranzan grimaces at the suggestion. He then looks to the ground. Seeing his earlier trick probably is on the verge of fading at this point though, he kind of sighs through his nose, then look to Kethra for direction. He still had the one body on his shoulder for now, and had been in the process of moving it off to the side as per her instruction. But with so many pushing to press on, well.... he wait to gauge her reaction.

Quote from Mehmen >>

Xanranzan smiled in relief, genuinely glad that his point had landed well with at least Kethra. Although beaten to the punch to clean off the robes, he strolls over to the other bodies intending to just throw at least one onto a shoulder for removal.

"Weeell, since we're in such a rush let's give them a quick burial by these statues then." Kethra takes as many of the dead bodies she can, drags them by their filthy cloaks and sets them at the feet of one of the many dwarven statues.

Quote from DragonDenn >>

"Sneaking around is how I fight." Rubin comments, but nods onward. "Ready to move out when you are."

"Sure," Kethra waves and responds, "And you won't mind if we toppled one of these dwarven statues to give this sorry lot a quick burial, then? Or do you have a least favorite statue? We know some of the other cults can raise the dead so I really don't want to take our chances here...and no one should die dishonored as the food of cave rats," she adds more quietly with a shudder.

Quote from See_Ess >>

"So deeper into the belly of the beast huh? With that Tydel-wave of sound, perhaps we should take a more direct approach and not this sneaking around. I mean, they know we're here, why not take the fight to them."

Kethra only shakes her head and rolls her eyes. If those boys wanted to lead the charge they could be her guest, she didn't like ALWAYS being in front and getting shot and stabbed at anyways, taking turns would be a welcome change.

Rubin keeps watch as the others work. He nods at the frustration though, this seems a senseless waste of time to him.

Xanranzan had followed along behind Kethra almost chucking the ones he'd got a hold of at the base of the statue. He catches himself though cursing a bit under breath, as it dawned on him last second differing cultures world views on corpse management.

Of course seconds later, he's looking wide-eyed for a bit at Kethra before turning away and murmuring more than loud enough to be overheard, "Feed'em to Cave Rats is dishonorable? Man... Guess that's the material plane for ya." He then happily gets to work chipperly taking point on toppling whatever statue he's guided to and with assistance, assuming its even possible with a group.

Athletics: 18.

After all that and Tyde has vented, to which Xan did seem sheepish a bit after the fact, he smiles and says, "We don't, uh.... Prayer is a bit of a complicated thing where I'm from, and I haven't rightly learned enough to do a good one from these lands. So, in place of pissing off the Powers, I'm good to go now! Uh... and then uh... maybe next we can just.. only move the bodies and come back for the rest later. Eh... just an idea."

(Was hoping for a response from the dm before posting this, but some lighthearted rp would be fine I suppose.)

Quote from Brian_Avery >>

"If we have to do this every time we kill some cultists we'll be here a year or more!" Tyde shouts in frustration while hefting a rock into place on the cairn.

"Hey?!" a voice practically squeaks in response, which does not at all match its source: a cloaked figure carrying the base of the statue by herself, who then throws it on top of the pile.

"Hey! I'm talking to you, detective! If you deduced that there's still that many cultists in this cave, then why are you encouraging--," she stops, looks at Marros still with his gung-ho expression, looks to Detective Tyde who looks so sure of himself, then back and forth one more time.

"You wanted...to teach him..." Kethra holds up one finger to ask for a moment as she fumbles with her words.

"...experience..." and tries her best not to laugh. Of course, this only makes her snort. This breaks the dam (metaphorically) and the pale-eyed girl lurches forward into laughter, her white hair spilling from her hood.

It takes a while before she could say something normal again, and all that she could manage was, "You and my master would've been very good friends, rest her soul."

"...but you were planning to help him out when that does happen, right?" she quietly adds, her tone a bit more serious as she wipes away a tear from her reddening face.

(Where are you planning on heading next again?)

 "Ready when you are." Rubin says with a nod. He glances around, trying to see what there are for options on where to go from here... (DM what are our options for moving forward from here?)

So—the only new door in this room leads back to where the gatehouse was, so someplace you've already been.  Back out in the hallway there's the pillared corridor to the north, and a smaller corridor to the east.  You can see a door where the corridor shrinks to the east, as well as a door down that way on the north side (but past the north corridor).

For reference (A4 is the room you were just in, the zigzag corridor is the gatehouse corridor and the squares are the pillars in the pillar corridor):

(OK then someone pick where we go from here then. Doesn't really matter to me.)