Exploring beyond the Long Corridor.
Consequences of spell effects can have a major impact upon scenes as the group find out to their cost.
Gnimish and
Gerdal, both searching through the neighbouring shelves of Crypt C, trigger the conjured alarm which sounds a grave warning and radiates an aura of deathly fear. The pair hightail it out and back through the secret door in Crypt B, running hell for leather through the narrow passage with cocooned bodies, squirming on their bellies to stay under the Checkerboard flagstone room's reset crossbow traps and out into the Long Corridor, finally shining up the dangling rope and resting fearful in the Barrow Tomb above. Panting and exhausted from fleeing danger, it takes a further round or two before you come to your senses and realise that nothing has chased you away.
(the Fear caused lasts one turn, so half of that is escaping and half is waiting with bated breath in the chamber above).
Of more serious consequence is the reaction of the quartet in the corridor. As the giant face appears and screams blue murder,
Isvand,
Amos and
Orgoth take flight, running eastwards down the corridor, bypassing the emerging Fungicide creatures and around the corner. The panic is not 'blind', as you can see but the
Fear of impending doom is very real. The halfling is the first around the corner turning into another short passage that again turns right then right again. As described, much of the floor and walls are covered with various fungal growths and in approaching the second corner,
Isvand steps upon a carpet of mossy lichen that gives way under his feet. The greenery is thinly spread over the top of a deep pit but the halfling, running at the topmost speed his little legs can stretch can make a dextrous leap over the yawning chasm. Catching his feet on the lip of stone the other side he runs more, terrified of what follows behind, wary of what lurks in front. Within a few yards another mossy carpet is seen, just before an actual open pit and with a leap and hop, the halfling makes a triple jump success. The corridor turns again but a door is just in front which he arrives before and he tries to hammer it down. Then you suddenly look to your left and down the continuing corridor to see a ghastly sight to behold ....
I will come back to this.
Amos runs fearful behind the halfling but cannot make the leap across the first of the pit traps, falling victim and falling inside.
Orgoth, the last of the trio since you were by the rubble wall has a harder time. The two monstrous fungal stalks that inhabit the skeleton bodies each try to grab or punch him as he runs by. He carries his shield left handed and in running can try to steamroll the two creatures but is unsuccessful as they emerge from his right hand side and in running by, one lands a blow upon the back of his head,
-3hp. It staggers him momentarily but is enough to halt his flight around the corner and save him perhaps from diving feet first in the footsteps of
Amos and worse for the cleric, be cushioned by him as you also fall into the pit on top of him.
you can continue to run away or fight these creatures but at a -2 to hit penalty due to the Fear effect.
Smokie blinks invisible,
Sven makes himself more visible, a trio of mages in fact. He takes refuge in Crypt B.
Yardie,
to be fair I had pictured him in Crypt A, keeping away the numerous centipedes with a flaming firebrand, so just out of the AoE of the triggered alarm. The mercenerary looks up to see folk dashing away, up the corridor or back through the secret door. The alarm call is slightly deafening and the warnings are repeated several times over but the initial Fear effect (at least my understanding of the trigger) is that it only afflicts those who hear it on the 'surprise manifestation', not on the subsequent rounds that it is sounding.
Obviously he hears the noise, sees the two creatures emerge and sees the screaming face in Crypt C. It almost fills the chamber, a ghostly summoned image. The mercenary decides of the threats that the image is the greater and strikes it or rather through it with his broadsword.
"STFU!" he might say in his patois goblinese. The image neither quietens or dissipates, instead it just repeats the dire warnings of,
"Grave robbers, thieves, sticky fingers, covetous infidels. Tomb Raiders!"
.
back to Isvand: you triggered but leapt over the first pit trap, jumped over the second which is still concealed by the mossy covering and hopped over the open pit. As you passed the open pit, you saw three figures at the bottom, one a skeleton and the others like small painted, caricature wood carvings.
The door you rush to hammer upon is solidly closed. A little further away a second door set in another arched stone frame. Floating in the air by that door is a large leathery looking ball. As huge as a beach ball but with several appendages on top, almost like stalks or antenna, each with a bulbous lump at the end. As you hammer the door, the leathery ball slowly turns around and you gaze eyeball to eyeball into one really big, giant eyeball. It looks as surprised to see you as you it, but the floating eye has a mean, feral glint that also adds to your fears.
actions everyone please.
oh oh
