DCC DotSK: Act 1-3

Moving quietly back down the main hall, the four explorers take their first left and traverse down the narrow passage that appeared to end in a partially collapsed catacomb. And as they reach the room’s threshold, Dufgal and Ty get a good view of the place.

As revealed by Ty’s queer sight and then the torchlight, the chamber has indeed partially collapsed: tall stone slabs that once supported the ceiling are now canted inward by the weight of the earth above and fallen debris is piled in the center of the room. The floor has fallen away in the far corner, and there is the sense that the entire chamber could perhaps collapse with the slightest disturbance…

Anora pokes her head none-too-far into the chamber!

She tires to spot sunlight peeking through any of the debris!

"Are we to assume that this is where the beast crawled free from?!" she asks, hoping someone would offer to check!

Agreeing with Anora but still feeling like drawing zero attention to himself, Dufgal simply holds the torch a bit higher to illuminate the Lady’s target.

Anora, needing more answers than she had the time or the daylight to provide, steps into the space. Tentatively, she pokes and prods, to try and see just how secure or insecure the place is.

Was this the weak spot that had set something loose into the Hirotian countryside?…

The room that Anora moves into is a wreck. So much collapse and crumbled stone -- but it looks like perhaps the motifs in here were different. Not of serpents, but of cave lions -- large, predator cats. Much seems buried here, by tons of earth and rock, but the beehived sorceress spies two things of note as she moves into the center of the room, stepping carefully as a bit of dirt and dust showers down from the ceiling.

First, she sees a large and heavy stone chest, damaged but intact. Much stone debris lies atop it, but were that to be moved, perhaps the contents of the chest would be found to be undisturbed?

Next the woman finds what she was looking for: the sound of water and a few sparing rays of waning sunlight in the northeast corner of the building, where the wall has collapsed fully. It looks like it might be a difficult to navigate way out.

Back near the door, Ty picks out impressions in the few parts of the rubble-strewn floor that will hold them. Boot prints. Men came from this room and went deeper into the tomb. Perhaps right to that front chamber, with the depression?

Seeing that Ty was busy with his own investigations, Anora pats the stone chest to draw Aldric and Dufgal’s attentions. She makes eyes at the two men to suggest they go about digging the thing out carefully!

"We don’t have much sunlight left!" she reminds them, as she peeks through the passage!

"The humans must have come in through here," Ty murmurs, as if even speaking too loudly might bring the walls tumbling down around them. "Then they met their fate in that pit we passed earlier." For Dufgal's benefit, he adds, "Perhaps they didn't bring enough torches."

The elf creeps into the catacomb, careful not to touch the walls or to disturb any piles of debris that might tumble and send a shock through the floor. He's spied the boot prints of men he assumes were once Dolsten's tomb robbers; now he peers amongst the rubble for any sign of the animal tracks he noticed near the tomb's entrance.

Dufgal gets the hint quite clearly and moves to the stone chest. He carefully lifts one piece of rubble at a time and sets it in a pile to the side. He pauses to scan the collapsed wall every few seconds as well in case their disturbance happens to draw unwanted attention.

In response to Anora's tapping, Aldric regards the chest with rapt attention, investigating it with his Pelagian danger sight for ill omens. But he is quickly distracted as a scheme takes hold in his mind.

"Tread carefully here, everyone. However! Should hound or snake assail us in this tomb, perhaps we can use this near-collapsing room to our advantage. We can lure the unholy beast to this room, and crush its body beneath collapsing debris."

He will inspect the trickling water, as befits a Witness of Pelagia, and try to find the way these men entered, in case they needed to exit the same way!

"Steady! Steady!" Anora says, putting a lip-service hand to a piece of debris that Dufgal was moving!

Already, Anora was wondering upon what could be inside…

Over the next ten minutes or so, the partially collapsed room seems surprisingly stable. Yes, small amounts of dirt fall from the ceiling from time to time, but everyone present thinks the room is safer than it first appeared.

In the northeast corner, the wall breach is now visible. There is indeed a way to scramble down on all four across that rubble, and to make one's way outside, into the stream rushing past the mound to the east. A careful climb will not be dangerous; a rapid one might be. Ty finds only a few animal tracks that look large enough to possibly be from a creature like the Hound... but they are headed for the opening in the wall.

After clearing off the chest, Dufgal manhandles the heavy stone lid free... and marvels alongside Anora at what they find inside: a dozen human skulls resting atop a hammered bronze shield. The shield is embossed with the stylized image of a lion’s head...

"A lion? First a hound, then a snake, now a lion? Are we to tame an entire menagerie?" Aldric is frustrated because they are running out of options of places to go that don't trigger his Pelagian danger senses.

"We have yet to explore the circular chamber back down the hall, but Pelagia warns me of a significant danger down there. I don't see much way around it, though."

"If yer Sea Bitch warned you, then maybe we’se should listun. But if’n you’se tell me to go check it out, I will do it."
Dufgal respects Aldric more than trusts him, so he feels like he caught in a winch between the two feelings.

Respectfully, Anora removes the heads atop the shield, and sets them down gently at either side of the shield. There was a chance the thing was cursed, but she could only hope against such a thing! They didn’t have time to commit to the proper checks. In any case, the cleric’s sea bitch hadn’t alerted the man to anything amiss with the shield.

So she lifts it up and tests its weight.

"Lion, Snake, Hound… what next? Surely some beast of sea or sky!"

Setting the skulls aside gingerly, Anora finds the bones dusty and brittle, protected from the tomb's humidity inside the chest. The shield she lifts next -- with some effort! Solid bronze, the thing is heavy. Too heavy for the mage to wield in battle, but she does find that a sensation overtakes her when she hefts it with a grunt. It is fleeting and impossible to place, but feels something like... confidence? Conviction?

Anora knows enough at first touch to know that the thing will clatter to the floor before long, if she continues holding it. She sets it down at her feet with both hands.

"It’s not arcane exactly. I doubt it’s Pelagian either." she says, before Aldric can interject. "But there is something at work here…" she adds, inviting the others to lift the thing and see for themselves.

Tyravasiel-Llir is a wiry creature. Sure-footed-- when not confronted by bogs and mires-- and surprisingly sturdy for his lean frame, but not given to feats of strength. Therefore he declines Anora's offer to raise the bronze shield, and goes instead to inspect the rift in the chamber's outer wall. Crouching there, steadied by his mithril javelin, he splays long fingers over the impression of a paw in the dust and debris-- apparently tracking outward.

"If our besotted Dolsten is correct that his tomb robbers somehow awakened the hound in this barrow, then here is where it escaped into the world," Ty muses. "The question remains whether the thing returns here to lair."

At Aldric's suggestion of further delving, Tyravasiel looks back at the priest over one shoulder. "If we must flee, at least we can run here rather than having to navigate that slippery pit," he supplies. It's not much of an endorsement, but it's something.