Khemia Occulta VIII Report

La Compagnia continued battling the remaining two jelliform creatures. Asbjørn swung his torch but missed. Kegho, Theophilus and Alexandru each strike true with Alex killing one. The last jelly, filled with malformed Djeti bones, reached after Kegho, but was snuffed out by Asbjørn.

With the jellies dead, the party began squabbling about the safety of even this locked room for resting and the best choices for next steps. Alex and Kegho discussed the amulet that Keg had taken from the Djeti coffin and whether it had looked similar to the one in the basilisk art outside the treasure room. Kegho’s instincts for animal handling led him to believe the amulet could be the key to surviving another encounter. Theo went to study the mural and agreed that it was possibly the same amulet, but could not say for sure. Teleptyon agreed to wear it and even suggested he might wear the Djeti robes to complete his Third Age ensemble.

Since Alex was unlikely to get any sleep with the brisk discussion about next steps occurring, he wandered to the coffer and began searching for pressure plates, springs and wires, but was reasonably satisfied that the coffer was not trapped. The spirited debate shifted to making sure that all of the coins ended up in sacks and that the weight was distributed well amongst the strongest in the party. Alex—who had a hard time carrying his own equipment, took the opportunity to check the pedestal of the inscribed diamond for traps of the mundane variety. The coins divided, and the statue—made of the same Third Age material as Skullcleaver—now improbably strapped to Kegho’s back, the party left the treasure room with Theo holding his lantern aloft in the doorway for the Legitimate Business Oameni to snatch the gem and run before anything bad could happen.

Hoping to avoid a second encounter with the basilisk, La Compagnia moved south through the doorway they had abandoned earlier in favor of the treasure room. Alex picked the lock and they entered to find a room littered with the mummified corpses of slaves chained to the floor and walls. The room reminded them of where the rest of the party had met Asbjørn and Teleptyon, and Theo was overcome by mercy to place the desiccated corpses in positions of dignified final repose. Kegho gruffly reminded everyone that “in some places in the world, a mummy dick could buy you a horse!” before the group began to filter into the room for their various purposes. As Theo moved from body to body one of the manacles on the floor, caked with, and rusted by, ancient blood rose up like a rattling serpent and locked itself around his ankle. In a burst of activity each member of the party contributed their best efforts to rescue Theo while avoiding a second serpentine manacle: Asbjørn attempted to smash it, Teleptyon waggled his snake finger while holding up the Djeti pendant, Alex tried to find a lock to pick, Kegho threw a corpse at it, but none of these had any effect. Finally, Kegho brings the bit of his axe on it, shattering the chain and freeing the priest. They move to the next door, which is also locked with a corroded lock. Keg lifts Alex, who uses a dab of lantern oil and is about to begin working loose some of the corrosion when Asbjørn grew bored and kicked it open.

They passed into a north/south hallway and Theo's lantern cast flickering light around the deep maw of a pit to their south and an innocuous looking room with a chipped tile floor. When Alex heard someone mention chipped tiles, he yelled ahead and asked if there was a pattern to the chips. “Centered around the middle” came the reply and everyone planned to skirt the edge of the room. The priest, still flustered from his encounter with the enchanted entanglement stepped straight into the middle.

The floor gave way beneath him and he tumbled into a spiked pit. He was hurt in the fall, but the spikes, while injurious, were not deadly. By some luck he dropped his lantern which exploded near him but not on him. His poise broke and he screamed a string of coarse Varimese curses In the light he saw a ring on the finger of a previous adventurer, which he snatched.

Alex tossed the end of a rope into the pit and wrapped a few feet of the other end around Kegho to give him leverage. Due to the severity of his injuries, hauling him out of the pit was slow work and the colorful curses continued through all of it. Bloodied and weary, Teleptyon was able to convince the party to head back the way they came to leave. La Compagnia headed back toward the caves of the Mycetons.

Theo was so traumatized that Teleptyon needed to guide him out. Asbjørn wandered back into the sacrificial pit room to check a door he’d abandoned earlier. He was unable to kick it down and shouted for the halfman to unlock it. As Teleptyon was busy finding Theo, Alex went to pick the door with Asbjørn holding him at a proper height. They found a chamber similar to the one with a pit and a few loose tiles throughout the room. Alex chucked a rock at one, causing the floor to crumble and reveal another pit. On the far side was a steep shaft. Asbjørn and Alex surmised that route would take them to a chamber near the Hall of the Basilisk and Asbjørn bellowed down the halls for the party to gather there. Alex threw a grappling hook up the shaft and caught purchase and he climbed up the steep shaft surmising that someone stumbling on it from the other end would slide down into the pit below.

The party pulled themselves up the shaft and into a once opulent room with marbled floors, and cloth and reed wall hangings long since gone to rot. Teleptyon warned that the basilisk room seems to be just north. Kegho went to explore an old armoire where he found three polished stone eggs. Asbjørn headed toward a stairway to the south. Alex brought the lantern.

They set foot into the hallway not noticing the unusual shape of it and blades swung down grazing Asbjørn, who dove out of the way, and sliced at the Oameni, who would have been more gravely injured had he been slightly taller. Asbjørn escaped the trap, but will the "Halfman" fare better?