The Wayfarer's Inn

Only seconds after Elmo's unusual leaving, you see a light appear downstairs. It is of a weak orange color and reveals the bottom of the stairs 20 feet further down, and a groaning Elmo, lying on a checkerboard floor of black and white and trying to get back on his feet. Not much more can be discerned from up here.

Sol will follow Elmo down to the bottom, trying to be careful not to trigger any traps as he goes.

Gaderon will use his boots of levitation to go down the the room below, waiting for a moment to be sure that nothing attacks Elmo and to allow others to get down there first, just in case it is dangerous. He will prepare a magic missile spell before proceeding.

Eilkhan activates her seal and heads down as well.

Kherim and Ahi descend but try to stay out of the chessboard if possible.

The stairway brings you into the corner of an antechamber, you suppose, since the place is open to the left, an area that seems wider. The checkerboard floor is everywhere, so it's impossible not to step on it unless you remain on the stairs.

A few strange spheres of nauseating green and orange float in the air. Each sheds an ugly light in a 5-foot diameter, leaving great patches of darkness between it and its many fellows, more of which can be seen much farther away within the larger area to the left. Most are about eye height, but some hover 15 or 20 feet above the floor.

The walls slope gradually inward as they rise, perhaps as if to form a dome somewhere in the darkness overhead. They are made of gneiss, green and flecked with brown and black. Pictures thereon depict ancient Khemitian troops, but with skeletal features. These pictures are inlaid with some burnt-orange material, in ugly contrast to the green stone. Yet the columns, seemingly placed every 10 feet throughout the area are much worse. Never did you dream such stuff could exist: clashing green and orange striations, shot with veins of wormy maroon and splotches of filthy brown and black.

Suddenly a twittering giggle slices through the air. The cry reminds you of a hyena, and it echoes long and alarmingly to the left. And then the ugly floating globular lights go out.

OOC: The darkness is absolute. Neither infravision nor even Eilkhan in her current state as a creature of shadowstuff is able to penetrate it....


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"Goddamn, goddamn, goddamn..." Ivid runs after the group.

One minute earlier he had retreated into a dark corner of the dungeon to, well, lighten his bladder, and missed Elmo's fall.

Holding his weapons with one hand, and his belt with another, he staggers after the group, cursing anew his fate, and that of his journey into Rahotep's Tomb.

Sol's initial reaction is to freeze and listen.

Gaderon will attempt to cast a flaming sphere in the middle of the room to generate some light.

"Anybody there?" - Ivid, from the stairway.

You hear Ivid calling you from behind on the stairs. Gaderon casts a flaming sphere, but it's unclear if the spell is successful at all as no light is brought forth with it. Even Eilkhan's magical gem seems unable to penetrate this utter darkness around you, but the palpable gloom lifts as unexpectedly as it came as the green-orange glow reappears. Being much closer now, you see that these are no light globes but translucent bubbles which emanate the sickly glowing.

You note with a feeling of revulsion and distaste that a dozen of the skeletons that once seemed as if they were mere wall decorations have become fully real and are advancing at you in ranks, spears leveled. They march in precision steps, six coming from the left and six from ahead. Each is clad in studded leather armor, the black plates of polished horn gleaming with bronze studs. Each unnatural attacker carries a tower shield - also of leather studded with bronze and animal horn - before it, so as to form a veritable wall.

These things are of malign nature, no doubt. They move with a swiftness that belies their bony forms. The empty eye sockets in their shiny orange skulls glitter with a green and evil lambent fire. Their coppery colored bones crackle and spark with hellish power, as little surges of searing blue electricity dance over their forms as they move.


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OOC: Combat seems unavoidable. Please make your statements for round 1.


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