Off the Beaten Track

- Albert -

You feel the power of Raynor burst outwards from you, focused though your 'staff'. The piles of bones between you and the door are scattered into dust. Along with the scattered dust, you see the tendrils of shadow fall back into the cracks between the floor-stones.

"Oh, my." Asha exclaims, her voice seems to have lost the note of panic from earlier.

The captain holds the covering vines aside so you are not hindered getting out, past the --still smoldering-- corpse of the crazy old man in the pit just inside the door. "Let's get out of here?" The she says.

---

What do you do?

Asha slips past the captain, but turns to stand beside her just outside the door, axe in hand.

"Don't be a fool, bartender." The captain shouts. "There are too many of them. Get out!"

But she did not see what happened, Asha did and her face shines with confidence in you... and possibly something more.

- Rook -

The stark contrast between the inside and the outside of the temple strikes you as you climb the vines on the outside walls. The outside is teaming with life, but nothing living appears to have gone past the doorway into the interior of the building.

As you reach the eaves, you might be startled by the grotesque humanoid figure crouching there... or you may remember them as the stone statuary from last night. But... surely last night they were looking downwards at the ground (and the party), now though, the nearest one is facing you, its hideous face glaring at you in fixed accusation.

What do you plan to do now?

The captain looks on in surprise as Albert begins his ascent. But she knows she is not in command here --since leaving the caravan-- and this is all well outside her realm of authority or expertise. Deferring to Albert and Rook she starts to climb right behind Asha.

"I... don't think anything is following us." Asha observes once she has reached the top and turned to give the captain her hand. And indeed, there is no sign of activity down below.

What is the plan now?

- Albert -

"It will be easy!" Asha declares, still on a high from your display of power, her eyes gravitating to your glowing broomstick.

The captain looks less convinced. "Do you believe your dream was real?" She asks, though it sounds like there may be more to her question. "This place messes with the mind."

When you ask her to 'lead' she hesitates. "I don't know how to fight such things." She admits. "I am sure I saw those bones move on their own, but that is not the worst of it. I am scared... and I don't know why, but I am scared to my core of this place."

"I dreamt as well. The captain admits, dismissing it with a shrug. "But I had to go down, even deeper below, to get what I ..." She clams up, not eager to talk about the specifics of what she saw.

"But, they are just dreams? Right?" She asks plaintively.

"Aha! That's what I like to hear!" Albert says, probably a bit too loudly, when Rook offers his help.

He continues in a lower voice, remembering the part about 'sneaking' that Rook mentioned. "So, we all had a strange dream last night about venturing deeper into the temple? I guess you're right, captain. This temple is messing with our heads. We'll have to be extra weary." He thinks for a minute about what Rook said "So, if we take a cautious approach as Rook suggests, are you up for it too?"

Whether the captain agrees or not, Albert joins Rook along the temple roof, letting him lead and trying his best to literally follow in his footsteps. I best step on the stones he's already used. This old temple might crumble under the weight.

"I'm not scared." Asha declares. "If .... um, Raynor, was it? ... is with us," at this she nearly reaches out towards the glowing broomstickstaff but restrains herself, "we are bound to succeed."

The captain glowers at Asha's sudden chipperness, but only shrugs. "If there was any truth to the dreams..." She speculates, then sighs angrily. "We have a duty to stop this from happening again." With the special emphasis on 'duty' this sounds a lot more like the captain from before the influence.

- Rook and Albert -

• How far do you explore, and what is is like up here? Describe what you see.
For instance:
• Does the temple have a flat roof, or does the building go up even higher than you are now?
• What is the footing like? How precarious is your position up here?
• Are the covering vines a help or a hindrance?

• What do you see happening inside the temple? What do you not see?

You already noticed many (ground-level) doors into the temple.
• Do you find another way in?

Given the amount of moss growing amongst the vines, some of you might be speculating that the sun never falls directly upon this mist-shrouded temple, which is at odds with the forest surrounding it.

---

With Rook's expert guidance --which garners a speculative look from the captain-- the group can make it to the minaret with nothing more than bumps and bruises. Doing so quietly would take most of the morning, but is there anything below that would care?

A considerate architect would have put a door at roof height --for easy access to the roof, though, rather than for access from the roof-- but there is none. To get in you would need to enter from below --inside the infested temple-- or climb to a window halfway up. Rook, you are fairly confident you can make that climb, and then you should be able to direct the others to which are the more sturdy and well anchored of the vines that cover the tower.

What do you do?
Do you all enter the tower? Presumably going up?