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Orgoth

Holds his breath as long as he can then comes up for air, realising after a moment he is not longer immersed in the sarcophagus murky water but kneeling in a wide pool that is in a dark, chill and fetid chamber.

There is no illumination and no noise apart from your spluttering. You have your trusty spear and shield and whatever you carry, you will have to decide if you left your backpack it in the store room as the area was being explored. I would think it more probable items listed as 'backpack' were set aside but you have what you carry or have pouched.

You have the enchanted longsword which when drawn would illuminate a 20'ft radius.

The pool is a 10'ft square of waist deep murky water. The chamber is has marble tiles rather than stone flagstones, the room has a religious or meditative feel as stone benches are around the pool and the plasterwork walls are decorated in faded frescoes depicting worship of Chaotic or Evil aligned beings. The two doors are typical crypt ones, reinforced Oak panelling, swollen into the doorframes from the damp atmosphere. You hear the occasional plink-plonk of dripping water, a receding ghostly echo comes from the south passage.

The open passage continues to the east but that is as far as you can see on first glances.



Actions please

Orgoth

I dropped his crossbow. Not sure on the pack but will assume he left it behind. He would still have his bandolier of bolts (including the silver ones). The only magic items left behind would be the oinkment, minitour skull, and goblin head. He still has his potions, magic weapons/armor, silver holy symbol, holy water, etc.

He will use the long sword for light and search the walls and look down the passage east. Anything of note he missed when using just infravision? Anything in the alcove?

Orgoth

You move out the pool. Avoiding the benches, just as well for some of them crawl with large slug like leeches, the critters slither in caterpillar style to move over the benches towards the water which has become disturbed with your arrival. You give yourself a check over since leeches typically bite with an anaesthetic drool in order to latch on to a victim and feed in them unnoticed. A critter indeed wriggles upon your shoulder and Aspis. You can cut it off, tossing it away. No time then to hang about.

You can take a moment to listen at each of the doors, no obvious sounds of talking or activity are heard. There are some earthenware jars in the top right hand corner, decorative vessels that look like old funerary jars. They are stacked on the floor or a bench, each has a gilded plate inscribed with religious runes or symbols most likely relating to the specific form of the jars lid which is designed in Canopic style.

The south passage extends twenty feet then turns to the west. A more typically stone constructed labyrinth passage, ten feet high and wide. There are no obvious signs of recent passage, no detritus cast aside from past adventurers (empty flasks, rations, cigar butts), no signs of battle (bones, old rusted weapons), no graffiti or markings on the wall. Listening again you do hear a moaning sound echoing from beyond that sounds more 'undeadish' than explorers.

it is important to note that you do not actually know which way is north or south. Moo-Moo would have been a great help. I randomised which wall you faced when you exited the sarcophagus so your directions are all presumptuous, it just helps my descriptions and map making.

The east passage is just as lacking in promise. It extends thirty feet, becoming a junction with passages to the (assumed) north and south and continuing east. The east passage actually has a flight of stone steps. The junction point looks as an 'unstable portion' of passage, common throughout the Barrowmaze, as you have noted on several other occasions.

There are signs of life that way, scuttling rats (normal size) that root among the rubble nibbling on lichens and bone remnants.

The jars:

Orgoth

Once in the more typical construction of the south passage Orgoth will strip down and go through all his gear. Checking himself and gear for any leeches he may have missed and checking/inventorying what he has with him. Once he is done he dresses, rearms himself and prepares to sneak forward best he can.

The passage is 60'ft long and then turns to the left. Checking your gear, you have potions, holy waters, embalming fluid, pearls in your boot heel. First Aid Kits. Coins in your purse, not chocolate though and no wineskin. At a push, the brackish leech infested pool will sustain you a few days. You check off a short list.

Around the passage the corridor extends to an apparent dead end with four doors, three one side, one on the other which is partially ajar. Ghostly howls echo from that area.

Orgoth

He will head back to the room and head east(?). He will try not to disturb the cave in area but will start with North (?) then the stairs. Do the stairs go up or down?

I have changed the title and will move this to the open public thread as more folk seem intent on joining you.

You had to know someone was going to try it.

I did think someone would, but the bloody water might have put them off if indeed it was a pool of annihilation rather than teleporting you somewhere.

Obviously it wasn't enough. Sven gets the friendship award.

Also, don't forget that someone should probably notice Orgoth's large overfilled backpack sitting in the hallway at some point.

Orgoth as you ho about using your Cromm masonry skills to assess the junction, you hear a splash and spluttering from the pool.

On the edge of your light, you see a familiar face. Sven has taken the plunge, proving friendship and blood thicker than water.

You warn him of the infestation of leeches and he joins you in the passage. Like yourself, he was wet through and lacking equipment.

He strips off, wringing out the wet. You converse regarding what you have discovered in the area so far.

After taking a few minutes to gather what has happened, another splash. Not a person but a long wriggling centipede. It crawls out the pool, shakes its body vigorously and polymorphs back into lupine form.

"Hooman, you is alive!" Smokie wags his tail and crunches upon a chocolate coin.

"Where are we?" it empathetically communicates.

Actions for Sven & Orgoth.

so this thread is just set up for OM, Rex and I in order to keep your continued exploration secret and extend the ruse that you could actually be dead.

Orgoth

"I am glad to see you my friend, but worried that we are in deeper than ever before and without any support excepting Smokie of course. I have found 6 doors, a passage, set of stairs and a cave in so far."

Sven wrings the water out of his clothes and gear, checking himself and Smokie over for leaches. “It seems we are still alive. But where’d you get that chocolate from, Smokie?”

“Good to see you are still kicking, big fella. I doubt anyone else will follow, unless they’re insane, or baked out of their minds.”

“Have you looked beyond any of these doors yet? We should start with the closest ones, I think, and work our way out from there.”

Sven will try the door south of the pool on the map.

“Hey Smokie, can you sniff around those jars to see if you pick anything up?”

Orgoth

"I haven't opened any doors yet, figured I would wait for anyone else who might come through first. You open the door and I will cover the opening in case there is anything there. I guess the chocolate was meant for us to know they are still there?"

Beyond the Sarcophagus Baptistry.

The chamber lit only by the radiance of the longsword's enchanted illumination, flickering your shadows on the wall of the pool chamber. The door on the southern side has no lock to secure it and it is not bolted from the other side. A shoulder barge to unwedge the stuck door from the frame and inside you can go. The room, about twenty feet square has four skeletons standing inanimate in ragged robes, each clutch a rusty Khopesh type cutlass or a short glaive. They have open faced helmets and embedded into the foreheads of each are sapphire gems that throb with dull sparks. The southeast corner has burial alcoves, skulls and bones placed upon old ritual linens.

Actions please

Orgoth

"Skeletons with gems in their skull, are these the ones that explode?"

he holds his position in the doorway for now.

Sven backs up and slowly closes the door again.

“No, I think these regenerate.”

“Do you think we can lure them out one at a time?”

“Or maybe we better avoid unnecessary combat until we find our way?”

If the skeletons don’t immediately animate, the mage will try the next door west of the pool.

Orgoth

"I think it best to avoid combat as much as we can, I have no healing available other than 2 first aid kits."

He moves to the door with Sven.