Hot and Cold

Lily, Eval, Tamebrass, and Skrel all went out after some time to explore more as I kept working. Tel was making sure to keep the lights running to my bemusement. Every ten minutes they would go dark and he'd huff while writing. Kniana just ended up taking a nap in my tent. After a little bit I heard Skrel yell for some reason. Soon after Tamebrass came stumbling into my tent and passed out...near...on? Kniana. He reeked of alcohol. Otherwise all was finally quiet for me to finish the scroll.
 
Kniana awoke soon after I finished it and while I was sipping some tea from my Tengu Drinking Jug. I really need to procure more sugar it just doesn't have the same kick otherwise. Well, Kniana apparently was unfamiliar with scrolls so I gave her a few pointers as to casting. It must've done the trick as the shield spirit showed up. It looked like some sort of armor talking to her. Kniana requested it's assistance for the coming times as it were and told it of the impending abyssal incursion. The spirit was surprised with saying "again?" and asked if it was humans again... Again?? I've never heard of a demonic incursion at any other point... How old is this place exactly especially if it has brews from the 1300's BD... Either way the shield spirit asked if any of us follow Serenrae, no one in are party did, and I'm the wrong color myself for usual worship. The closest we got was Eval saying that he occasionally prayed to her but turned down the shield as it wasn't a primary or really regular thing for him. At my prodding we asked if we could move the shield to find someone for it. I really just wanted to take it with us to study more myself, but... The spirit said that it was bound to this location and something about having a tireless body that has worn beyond function. At that we saw the shield raise up a little with a wooden and metal hand underneath! It continued with the body was only half the problem since his soul had been split since creation. Then he said something of sharing one with "one in the light". My guess is some sorta soul-and-a-half thing with a Serenrae holy person. Kniana made the offer to point followers of the Golden Dragon here and the spirit responded by touching her with a flash of light, bowed, and faded away.
Well now I just HAD to get a better look at this wooden metal hand thing and managed to hold up the shield some to look underneath. What I found was astonishing! It hadn't been a hand holding the shield at all, but rather the shield was fused into the wrist of an arm coming through a hole in the lid of the sarcophagus. I lifted it a bit higher to find the arm up to the elbow out now. Peeking in I saw that it was some sort of construct, a not-golem of sorts, but this one looked wrong. Well not wrong but well, a lost crafting method I guess... It was made of coldsteel and darkwood with even more crystal bits sticking out of the wooden bits. It is now a mini-mission of mine to find someone that the spirit will accept JUST so I can get a better understanding of this thing. Hell, I should be able to fix the whole "worn beyond function" bit if given some time...
 
With that excitement over with, I asked Kniana if she wanted to do her thing with the sword but she just said that there would be "other chances" Not like it's a really pressing thing since I don't even have time to study it. I don't have time for anything this week... I just started to pack up Maki's tent in the meantime. Not so much pack up as find the command word and almost just stuck in it myself... After that we all stared across the crypt to were the ghoul ran by us. Skrel musta figured out the buttons as the door was open when we got there. I ended up glancing through a few other rooms that was skipped when I was with Kniana and Tamebrass. Some of the doorways seemed to be recently smashed open thanks to Skrel I found later. One of the rooms was an old armory with shamefully deteriorated tools, a back room with an opened chest and a library on the other side of the main hall. I looked for anything interesting along the worn and some missing titles. One read Dimensional Travel that I picked off the shelf. When I opened it though it just sort of crumbled in my hands. Slightly pancaked I used my mending marker on it to get the book reassembled. The pages were there, but I guess the ink had already gone with time. Eval asked Skrel if he took a book noting the dust outline of one on the sarcophagus in the room. His logic was that the other ones had powerful objects on them so the book might be one too. Skrel said the book was a journal or something dealing with people from the nightmare dimension. They would trade knowledge with jewelry or something. I wonder how fine either would be... The others kept going so I suggested that they walk and talk as we headed into another area.
The group came into a more natural shaped cave with a few collapsed looking areas off to the side. They were able to find tracks along the ground that we followed to a split off of a room. Kniana said that she heard talking in the next room and Skrel confirmed that it was more ghouls. They were talking about some king of king and heard them start to get into a fight. We started planning out method of attack should they come after us. Lily puts on some kind of mask and slipped into the room without getting noticed somehow. She stared relaying what was happening through the telepathy stones with the ghouls beheading the slain other ghouls. I guess Tamebrass had enough after a bit and kicked down the door. I used the Daylight staff on one of Eval's arrows as it seemed to work well before. He shot it into one of the ghouls that promptly returned with a scroll of Fireball... The next thing I know, I wake up to Kniana was standing over me and I'm crispier than usual. She said that the ghouls were starting to coordinate. In a haze I used Dimension Door to pop us both pretty close. She says something in some language that I didn't know and the last two surrendered...
I was unsatisfied so I went to go beat a dead ghoul as it were. Skrel healed me too. After feeling a bit better with dealing with the one who Fireballed me I took his gear for pain and suffering compensation. Got an additional masterwork composite longbow, masterwork leather armor, five arrows, a potion of inflict moderate wounds, and a wand of some sort. Kniana asked for an alchemy set to borrow and I set up Maki's portable one for her. To my dismay one of the smart ghouls spit into it and started to make an anti-venom for a paralyzed Lily. One also made mention of "The Traveler" being in the crypt. I've heard Skrel made mention of him before but I know next to nothing otherwise. After the whole anti-venom thing was finished they offered some sort of alcohol with underroot in it as a sort of numbing agent for the hits Lily took. They did say that drinking it would cause "forever sleep". After some more discussion Eval was able to get that their entrance portal is near the surface entrance and that more ghoul colony were here with a nine legged hunter. Also that Inflict Wound potions can be converted to cure if mixed with holy water but it is dangerous. I told the group that I CAN make holy water, but it's not ideal for me too...
Eval started around the room after that. He ended up finding a cold wall. Lilly ended up confirming it was like the other hidden wall and they started searching for the opening trigger. Instead they found a plaque saying only those that it lets can enter, and it was named "chamber of the cold heart". Eval called over Skrel and the wall opened when he touched it letting out freezing air. I walked away from that as Skrel stepped inside and the wall closed behind him.