Against the cult: the Forest Ruin (1.5)

Reacting faster than she can speak, Xana flings a bunch of faerie dust over the combatants, making the snake and everyone adjacent easier to strike. The snake, Kragga, Ogbar, Albertus, and Aanbo all are covered in glittering violet sparkles. Shiny Kragga backpedals away from the snake before it can whip its coils about him, and sparkly Ogbar hacks into the thick, undulating body, as Joseph's arrow (Joseph stood outside the range of the spell) skewers its body just behind the head. With a valiant yell, glittery Albertus slices into the reptile, and glistering Aanbo and flashing Theran's blows miss the body as it falls into two pieces. Aanbo's free hand snatches the head of the snake from the air like catching an arrow back at the monastery.

The headless serpent thrashes in death throes for a few moments longer, splashing water on everyone adjacent. The party looks around wildly, but no other threat is apparent. Gradually the movements of the dying snake slow and come to a stop. The splashing made big gaps in the plants growing in the fountain, and those adjacent to the fountain can see the bundles of bones of the snake's previous meals - rats, squirrels, birds - fouling the water. Clearly this is the source of the stench. The snake had found a good place to lay in wait for prey coming to drink. The stillness and silence of the Dim Forest resumes, and each PC gains 10 XP.

Now that the threat has ended, anyone who wishes can now attempt an INT (Religion) check to see if they recognize anything about the inscription above the door that Albertus read. As for obvious paths to proceed, there are the steps leading up to the door, and there is the statue that can just be glimpsed through the thick vegetation of thorny blackberries and aggressive ivy separating you from a raised platform on the east side of the ruin.

The brambles: With that caution from Theran, Kragga can pause to consider. The party realizes that it will be uncomfortable moving through the brambles: decades, if not centuries, of growth have left thick, woody trunks of ivy and blackberry deeply intertwined with each other. Anyone pushing through will be pricked by thorns and will need to succeed on a CON save or take 1 HP damage and an itchy rash each round they are in the brambles. The first person through (DC 12) will flatten the path a bit for the people following (subsequent CON saves for people passing through in that spot will be at DC 10). Flattened or not, the brambles count as difficult terrain.Kragga's view: Getting this close to the screen of blackberries and ivy, Kragga can see more of the raised platform between the canes: it's a porch, patio, or veranda...probably from the same stone as the building and the wall. Thin stone pillars, absolutely covered by generations' growth of ivy, support a sloped roof that is similarly festooned with plants. But just visible through the curtain of dangling vines is another statue, distinct from its lighter stone, further back (north) on the platform. As best he can see, this one is also a humanoid with its arms upraised, but it has a different strange thing with its head: from here, it seems like it has...a third arm...instead of a neck? It's pretty obscured by the vegetation. Beyond those two, there are other shapes, which may be more statues or more pillars: only by getting closer could one tell.

The door: It looks heavy, but well-crafted, carved from stone, with the large, pitted iron ring mounted in the center leaving long trails of rust streaking the stone below it. Someone would have to finish approaching it to see more (Albertus and Ogbar were interrupted by the snake attack).

The inscription: Kragga recognizes it as archaic Imperial, and the symbol matches what he recognizes as one of the many ancient forms of Pae. The oral histories of his tribe described the sun-and-snake, but the accounts were more evocative than descriptive. He's confident that he could find more in a good library, but as his efforts have been focused on recovering the Shard, he hadn't paid much attention to the religious iconography of an ancient aspect of a deity. Others can still attempt INT (Religion) checks of their own.

Cautiously at first, then with greater confidence, Aanbo pries open the snake's jaws. There are no fangs, just the bones ridges typical of a constrictor snake.
Tiny creatures like mice and rats can flit through, but Small and Medium creatures have to succeed on a CON save to resist taking 1 HP damage from being pricked by so many thorns.



Here's a picture to give you an inkling of a blackberry thicket, and why it's hard to see things on the other side. You can clear it with an axe, sword, or machete - anything with a long cutting edge - but it will be minutes of labor to do so. There isn't one plant that can be chopped out to make a gap: there's dozens, with each cane and vine tangled, twisted, and wrapped around several others. Trying to chop a path through the thicket will be like chopping a path through wool, if wool was woody, had thorns, and was 7' deep. It can be done, and no saving throw needed. It'll just be hard work that takes time.