Stephen eagerly leads the group up the stairs. He does not seem at all ready for combat, battered, bruised, and lightly armed and armored, but he is eager.
You emerge into a very peculiar room. It appears completely empty. Stephen speaks to all of you, "Be careful. There is some sort of spell on this room, making everything within it invisible once they enter, and re-appearing once they leave. They brought me in, beat me up, tortured me, and I never saw a thing. I saw the monster when it first came in, and met Golthar, but never could I see anything here. I never went upstairs, so I do not know what lies there, but there Golthar fled, and there we must follow."
He motions toward Dakath, "Jacobus can lead some of you around the invisible glass walls in the center. There doesn't seem to be anything else in the room, though without being able to see, I can't tell."
Dakath looks at you and shrugs, clearly confused, but walks you all toward the other door easily. He does not seem to be feeling his way about as Stephen is, which is strange
Dakath stops a moment "Hold on, Stephen there is nothing here but empty air, what are you doing ?"
Moving on to the opposite side of the room, Stephen opens the door, leading to yet another spiral staircase going up. He starts up.
Following his lead, the group disappears, to themselves and each other, the moment they enter the room. They cannot see Dakath or Stephen or each other, and only through mime can they feel the walls and walk around them. However, the open door on the opposite side of the room is a clear reference point, and it is not difficult.
Meanwhile....
Tolik looks at the meditating Pietro and the gravely injured Rhune and Asif. Shaking his head sadly, his moistens the bandages and goes back to sit by the steps. It was so there, almost as if he was all alone. He rests with his back against the wall to listen if anything is coming up. Looking around bored, he takes his dagger out and uses the fine elven blade to etch his name in the stone, a use with would doubtless get him a dirty look from any of the others in the group. The avariel script looked very out of place, but it would doubtless confuse the next inhabitant of the tower.
Rising to his feet, he begins to wish someone was there to keep him company. He again follows Pietro's instructions for caring for the unconscious spider victims, then settles back by the stair with his spell book to wait for the return of the others.
A story up, the group comes upon a door. The staircase does not continue. Stephen checks the door, only to find it locked. Dakath attempts to unlock it, but once again proves that his skills do not lie in this area.
Frustrated at his lock-picking skills he grumbles slightly before moving to stand behind Stephen.
Stephen looks at Ullar and Forte, "We must break it down. It is the only way!" Dakath can find no trace of traps on the door, but reminds you all that he cannot detect those of a magical nature.
"I could try to bash it down, or I could try to cut the lock out with my handaxe. However, that last exercise would take some time, something we don't have right now."
Ullar looks at the ground again, figuring out if there are any more dents in the ground as he spotted in front of a door two floors down. When he finds nothing he says: "Are you all ready? I'm going for the door."
"Wait, Ullar, let me help," says Forte. He puts down his bow, being careful to place the elven arrow back in the quiver. "Hopefully, two shoulders are better than one," Forte says with a determined smile on his face, putting his least injured shoulder toward the door. "On three, o.k.?" He looks at Ullar. "One, two-"
Taking a few steps back, Ullar slams his left shoulder against the door, ignoring the pain in the wound on his right shoulder the best he can. "Let's just hope this is not a magickal trapped door..." he says, right before impact.
"THREE!" Both mighty warriors crash into the door with their shoulders, while Forte can only mutter a quick, surprised, "Magic trap?"
Arkady stands ready beside the door, waiting to jump to Ullar's aid if there is trouble. He has his silmar blade and maine gauche ready and a half cruel half sad look gleams in his eyes.
The door shudders but stands. Leaning back, the two big men slam into it again. Once again, it does not open. Three time's the charm, though, as the door smashes open and both warriors stumble into the room.
Such a gallery of faded glories! Flaking portraits gaze out from dusty frames into a sullen room whose only occupants are a pair of pink, jackal-headed sculptures, frozen forever in attitudes of contempt.
Dakath sits on a step, as the two warriors use brute force to open the door, as he waits for the inevitable he unslings his short bow and prepares to enter with the others.
Cautiously, Stephen and Arkady follow Ullar and Forte, who is dizzied by the effort slamming into the door, into the room. Immediately suspicious of the statues, sure enough they begin to move, turning towards you and moving slowly, their pinkish hands gesturing.
And with some results! Stephen and Ullar immediately freeze in place as the statues come toward them to strike them down!
Forte rubs his temples to stop the vertigo in his head. Seeing the two statues moving toward the group, he leaps in front of Ullar, attempting to defend his friend with his mace. "Don't fail me now," he whispers to the mace as the creature advances. "Damn statues!" he screams as he attacks the pink monstrosity.
Arkady howls a battle cry and charges into the fray. He slashes the statues with the silmar blade while attempting to block any attack with his maine gauche. The voices chortle and laugh expecting death.
With his feet frozen in place, as well as the rest of his body, Ullar can do nothing but stare horrified to the jackal statues coming closer. Trying desperately to free himself, his fear increases, but there is no way to expose it but his gaze.
Dakath goes to follow behind Stephen, but when he sees him frozen in place his first reaction is to stay out of the room. He stands to the side of the door "Think man, think" he berates himself.
Stepping slightly forward and to the side, Ami decides to use his final spell. Waving his hands, he pronounces some arcane syllables, waiting for the right-hand statue to turn tail and run. He then takes out his sling, and attacks the other jackal-headed monster.
Amibar finishes his spell before the things get close enough to strike, but they ignore it completely, advancing on Forte and Arkady ruthlessly.
Forte, barely in condition to walk about, misses badly with his mace, then the statue smashes it's fist into the side of his face, felling him like an ox. Arkady has better luck, smashing the silmar blade into the hard surface of the thing, sending it reeling.
Seeing his blow effective, Arkady turns and smashes his blade into the thing's other leg, smashing it. It falls, disintegrating into a fine pinkish powder.
The other, however, is now chasing after Amibar, who ducks wildly out of the way then fires a bullet at it from his sling, which careens off the things head, sending chips flying into the air.
As Arkady turns to help, Dakath hears some spoken words coming from somewhere in the room, and both Amibar and Arkady fall senseless to the ground. Having to fight the statue and almost certainly the mage, somewhere, Dakath chooses the better part of valor and ducks back down the steps for the moment. The statue does not pursue him.
Downstairs, Tolik pauses in his studies to remove his cloak. If the need comes to make a hasty retreat, he does not need it weighing him down. He spreads it out on the hard floor beneath him, checks again on his injured companions, then returns to his spellbook.
Dakath wanders down the stairs to where Tolik, Ratlin, and Pietro are still tending Rhune and Asif, he moves over to them and talks quietly with them "It's just us four now, the wizard was in the room above, invisible I think, and put the others to sleep. There's also a statue guardian left. We can't leave them up there to die. We need to pin-point the mage in the room. Perhaps by throwing something into the room that will allow us to locate his position, any colored liquid? Watch the door."
After saying that he goes to Rhune's and Asif's backpack looking for anything that can help him, then moving onto any other packs in the room.
He sees nothing of the nature of colored liquid within either's pack.
Ratlin pulls a block of chalk from his pouch and crumbles it up into a powder. "Will this work?" He asks with a grin.
Dakath then stops a moment, hitting upon an idea. He removes the glass vial he got from Arkady, he then takes his flask of water and slowly fills up the glass vial, hoping that the green poison will be dilute with the water and create a green fluid. He then goes directly to Arkady's backpack to obtain a new vial, then he collects as much Minotaur blood as possible in the vial before diluting it with water.
"Here take this" he hands the red colored vial to Tolik, "and throw it at one of the walls at the middle of the room, hopefully the splash will let us locate his position. I'd rather use your vial, because my vial is much more deadly, contact poison. If we find him I'll take him out, you two go for the statue." he turns to them both "Don't worry Arkady dropped one of them in one blow."
With that he places a hand on each of their shoulders and gently pushes them towards the stairs. "Be very careful." he says, barely more than a whisper as he draws his longsword, holding the green vial in the other.
Dakath leads the three tenuous adventurers back up the stairs. Then, opening the door after climbing two floors, he rushes in. Tolik obediently hurls his flask of reddish liquid against the wall, revealing no trace of any invisible figure.
The statue moves forward at the group who awkwardly draw their weapons to engage it. Suddenly a bolt of energy erupts from one of the tapestries, followed immediately by two more. All three slam into Ratlin, felling him before he even raises up his staff.
Realizing that his target is not within the room at all, but behind the tapestry, Dakath charges into it. As he does so, an electric crackle erupts into the room, throwing him backward even as he rips open the tapestry. He falls stunned to the ground as Tolik and Pietro briefly see a yellow-robed figure dash along some alcove behind the tapestry, headed in the direction of the door on the opposite side of the chamber. From the looks of things, there is some kind of secret area running around the room, through which access seems to be gained from the electrified tapestries.
But the two have their hands full with the pinkish statue rushing at them. Pietro swings his quarterstaff, hitting it in the head and moving it back, but Tolik misses with his dagger. In response, the thing slaps alongside Tolik's face, a stunning blow, but the hardy winged elf holds in there.
The thing advances relentlessly, swinging it's stone hands at both the non-combatants, but misses. Their responses are quite feeble, missing badly. It attacks again, but this time stumbles over the body of Ratlin, leaving it wide open for another club from Pietro's staff, which again sends it reeling.
Dakath, rousing himself from his electrification, debates rushing after the yellow-robed mage, but sees he could help here. Rushing up with his vial of diluted poison in one hand, his new sword in the other, he moves up behind it.
With a smashing blow to the chest, the statue fells Pietro, leaving Tolik alone to face it. He misses badly and prepares for the worst. Dakath, trying to save him from behind, misses so badly he nearly hits the elf instead.
However, it is unable to respond in time, as Tolik sinks his dagger into the softish stone and Dakath smashes it from behind at the same time. It crumbles into a fine pink powder. Leaving Tolik to attempt to save the rest, Dakath dashes up the stairs.
Tolik is able to rouse up Forte and Pietro, both weak as newborn kittens, with the help of some herbs and water. Ratlin is not so lucky. He lives, but only just, and does not regain consciousness. Just as he finishes with them, Ullar springs back into action, joined by Stephen. Stopping briefly to find out what happened from Tolik, they rush after Dakath.
Tolik only looks up for a moment, and tells most of his story with his concentration on bandaging wounds. "Try not to get yourselves killed, I don't want to have to try to patch you up afterwards," he calls as they head up the stairs.
Forte turns to Tolik after the elf admonishes Ullar and Dakath not to get killed. "Thank you." He starts to stand up, and then thinks better of it when a wave of nausea washes over him. "Think I better rest a little before I get up," the battered warrior mutters.
"Save your strength. If, errr, when then others get back, they can help get you to someplace where you can recover." Tolik tries to remain optimistic, but from his point of view the situation is very grim.
For a moment, Pietro tries to get up, but doesn't make it at all. He manages a weak sarcastic comment though. "Any monsters I can kill? Send them over to me." It is obvious that it is a half-hearted attempt to make fun of himself. "Can we sleep now?" is the final comment before his head falls back to the ground. You can see that he is trying hard to stay conscious.
"Relax, Pietro, sleep if need be." Tolik does his best to make the three here under his care more comfortable while he waits for Dakath, Ullar, and Stephan to return. "You'll have your chance later to kill the monsters."
Pietro looks up, managing a weak smile. "It is ok Tolik, I will live for the moment. And to put things right, I never killed a person or monster in my life so far, and I can't say that I am really looking forward to it."
Forte looks over at Pietro. "Consider yourself lucky then. It'll happen. And probably soon," the warrior says with a rueful look on his face. It then changes to a slight smile, "If you're lucky, you may just have to kill skeletons and the like. Doesn't seem so much like killing when they're already dead."
Ullar shakes his head, as if he is waking up and glances around, particularly behind him. He sees that all of the party members are, by some kind of miracle, still alive and dashes after Dakath.
As they open the door and hit the steps, they hear a loud explosion, which rocks the entire tower. They run up the stairs, fearing for Dakath. But at the top of the stairs, they see him standing in the middle of this, the top floor, judging by the ruined ceiling. Though the dust of the explosion, you see a gaping hole in the wall of the room. Through it, you can see four, yellow-robed figures flying through the air into the distance.
Dakath coughs and splutters as the dust settles, he's covered in dust and his studded leather is smoking still from the electricity bolt. He then rips of the remains of his armor and lets it fall into a pile on the floor. "I couldn't get here in time, they blew through the wall and got away."
Stephen rushes toward the hole in the wall, grabbing his bow and putting an arrow to the string. He then fires it at the yellow robes, followed quickly by another. Both miss, badly.
"FOUR! We were fighting 4 of them! Well, you were fighting four of them." Ullar looks around, wondering where he is, but most of all checking if there is no potential danger present. Seeing that the coast is clear, he walks over to the bed, examining it more closely. Then he moves over to the wall and removes the map, sticking it with him after anyone interested in it had the opportunity to look it over.
"Stephen, what does these locations tell you? I bet you know all of them. And what do you know about the yellow-robed ones? I thought you mentioned only one 'Golthar'? Well.. it seems there are four of them!" Ullar says, somewhat sarcastically.
Stephen looks exasperatedly at Ullar, "No son, that's just three images of him, to divert fire, as it were. A very old magic trick, I'm afraid." He shakes his head, "He got away! Now what do we do?" He seems rather put out, then notices Ullar's first question, "Oh, yes, those are the villages in and around the Dymrak, that one on the left is Sukiskayn, as I hope you already know. I would guess by the big Xs that each was attacked or destroyed."
Then that begins to sink in, "Wait...Sukiskayn wasn't destroyed, was it?" He seems thoughtful. "No, it couldn't be. He needs to go there. He'll probably be on his way even now!"
The room looks to be something of a bedroom, with a huge bed that looks like it was made from the jaws of some huge lizard or dragon. The bed was badly damaged from the explosion. Next to it is a triangle-shaped table of green oak, and two orange wooden chairs carved to resemble crouching humanoids. One the opposite wall there is a large map looking a bit like the one that Ullar still has, only more detailed. It has the locations of all the villages you all visited marked with x's, along with several other locations of interest marked out. Most interestingly of all, there is a massive iron-bound chest at the foot of the bed.
Dakath proceeds to search the room for any items of interest before moving over to the chest. He examines it intently before turning to the others grimly "The chest is trapped with some kind of explosive charge." He rubs his hands together, he sighs once before stretching "I can disarm it, but I wouldn't recommend standing in the room.....just in case." With that he waits for the others to move to the door, "You may want to put the door up for some protection, if there is a blast." Dakath rubs a hand down his face before turning his attention to the chest.
As the group gathers below, Stephen tells you his tale. "I was taken at the raid on Illyakana, knocked out by a stone from a goblin sling. They took us all on Kalanos' boat. Then they dropped us off. Vlack, the Chief Hobgoblin, was leading the whole affair. He had some of his minions with him, along with wolves and a whole bunch of goblins wearing wolfskins.
They took me to the lair of the wolfskin goblins, where I stayed for a few days, along with some others. Then they took the others away, leaving me with an old woman, who talked incessantly. When I was about to go mad, Vlack took me up on his white wolf and rode away with me.
After a day or so, we arrived here at this tower. I met Golthar, the yellow-robed fellow you all just saw flying away. He questioned me for hours, all about the 'golden tapestries'." He seems thoughtful again.
"Immediately it occurred to me that he might mean the strange artwork on my brother's main hall. It was golden, and we never understood it. Sadly, Golthar had ways of knowing what I was thinking. He picked up on the thought and I believe that he was about to launch another attack on the settlement. He said he had the key to unlocking the tapestry and all it's secrets. We must stop him!" He says urgently.
Far below all this and totally unaware of what has happened, Rhune continues to fight her own battle...though now with one arm free she tries to help Asif who lies just out of finger tip reach in her nightmare.
After a few moments Dakath shouts to the others outside the room "Quick come in !! Somebody's been living very well in here." When the others return they see Dakath with his hand on the lid of the chest, now open, grinning widely. "Well I disarmed the trap and even managed to open the lock, a rather difficult one, even if I do say so myself.