Another Bloody Isekai IC: Team Strong

[Ryton]

[There doesn't seem to be anything down here except for spikes and foul water. There is some poison on the spikes, so we may need to be wary of that in future.] She flies back up from the pit, but as she rises her head tilts curiously. [Interesting. The crude bludgeons the larger creatures carried seem to be magical. That makes me think they are likely at least somewhat valuable. Do we collectively have any good means of securing or transporting them so that they aren't reclaimed by the dungeon? If it come to it, my bag is magical and might be able to hold one of the clubs.]

[Thunder999]

"I've got a handy haversack and I doubt I'm the only one, so we should definitely just shove those clubs in and speaking of shoving it's probably best if we roll those things into the pit, if the poison doesn't get them they'll soon drown, no need to take risks. If these guys are going to be replaced soon then I suppose we'd better get a move on, and remember to save a few spells for our exit too, that'd be quite the embarrassing end to the test, killed on the way out." Once the trolls are suitably dealt with Vhaak will examine then attempt to open the door.

Spoiler: OOC/rolls

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Vhaak will take 10 for a 26 on his perception to examine the door, though lacking trapfinding means he can only spot mundane traps with that.

EDIT:
Upon realising that the door is locked Vhaak decides that this information is best shared telepathically, no need to draw the watcher's attention to the fact that a simple lock is giving him trouble, [I don't see any traps, but it's locked, do any of you know how to pick locks, or failing that, smash doors?]

[RelentlessImp]

There is obvious frustration on Cecie's face as she tucks the rock away somewhere within her garb, shaking her head. One of these days she was definitely going to figure out how to unnerf herself. Maybe find wherever grandma's pistols went when she got sent here, too. For now, there was a test to finish. She looked in the direction of the delegate, then moved on to the door.

Stand back. is all she sends in response. There's a moment of concentration, and a murmured few words as she approaches the door. Her body rapidly shifts and changes. Two pairs of gossamer, ebony wings sprout from her back, and her colors drain away, becoming unsaturated and pale. "I really should have brought along something made of adamantine," she says, her voice becoming darker and richer as she strides up in front of the door. "It's so dumb if we're stopped by a door, and really, I could have picked up a little adamantine cooking knife on my last shopping trip before leaving the Faerealm back home." Her hand lifts and a shadowy, massive sword materializes in her hand. "Picked this trick up from an old shaedling girlfriend. 'Scuse me," she says as she strides in front of the door, hefting the massive fake-fullblade in both hands, and taking a massive swing at the door - which she'll continue to do until the door breaks.

Spoiler: Mechanics

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Cast alter self to assume the form of a Shaedling (MMV).
Use the Shaedling's (Ex) Shadow Gossamer ability to create a Shadow Gossamer Fullblade and gain proficiency with it, and begin battering the door down.
Attack1 - (1d20+5)[8]Damage1 - (2d8-1)[8]
Attack2 - (1d20)[9]Damage2 - (2d8-1)[9]
Round2 Attack1 - (1d20+5)[9]Damage1 - (2d8-1)[8]
Attack2 - (1d20)[6]Damage2 - (2d8-1)[11]

Should hopefully be enough to batter down the door.

[FearlessGnome]

The door soon gives way. It was sturdy for wood, but in the end it was still wood. On the other side... it suddenly looks quite different.

It looks like the inside of a mansion, if that mansion was stripped of furniture and without windows. Wooden paneled walls, softly coloured tapestry... Is this really the inside of a cave? There is soft light emanating from somewhere, too. It is as bright as it would be if there were windows, but there just... aren't.

The magical illusion covering the door is visible from this side as well, making it look like the hallway ends suddenly with a stone wall.

A number of similarly stripped bare rooms shoot off from the hallway. There are doors in these rooms as well, but they are closed. It looks like it would take quite a while to search this 'mansion', as it seems to sprawl off in every direction. Alternatively, you could simply follow the hallway and see where it ends. Or you could split up.

[Thunder999]

Vhaak looks through the door, thinks for a moment then shares his thoughts with the group, [Given that our goal is to penetrate as deeply as possible I'd say we just head down the first corridor until we can progress no further, there might be something of value in other rooms, but getting deeper will likely reflect better on us than simply looting a bit more on the way, particularly as time is against us unless we wish to face re-spawned and potentially stronger trolls.]

[Ryton]

Livia gives a small grin as the fey smashes through the door. "That is a very handy trick. I think I will have to look into learning something similar."

[I agree, Vhaak. I think we should attempt to progress as far as possible. Also given the aesthetic, I imagine we're likely to find inhabitants of a more humanoid nature, and that the dungeon may attempt to subvert us from our objective by trying to appeal to our, um, "better natures."

...And it will be interesting seeing what happens to the dungeon on our return trip out.]

[FearlessGnome]

A frankly worryingly number of doors later, you see the end of the hallway. It opens up into what looks like a veranda. You are clearly still inside the dungeon, but the ceiling seems to have retreated, and it truly looks like bright blue sky out here. Steps lead down from the wooden(?) veranda to soft grass. It's warm here, like the height of summer. There is even what looks like the sun in the distance. A variety of fruit bearing trees litter the garden, and there is a small stream of water.

Three things stand out. An earth cellar close to the veranda seems to lead down and back into the stripped mansion. There is the entrance to a hedge maze in the distance. And in the middle of the idyllic garden is a large stone. On the stone lies a large sack of what appears to be gold coins. Written on the stone with what appears to be blood, it says "TRy aS thEy WilL, aND try As THey miGHt, wHo STeaLs mE GoLD wON't LIvE tHRoUGh tHe NigHt"

[RelentlessImp]

Cecie discards the fake-Fullblade to the floor, but keeps her Murky&Lurkyed form for the time being. A hand reaches back to rub briefly between her shoulderblades; no matter how often she had wings, they always felt weird, between altering herself into various forms of fae and growing the rainbow set her powers allowed her. She missed her holographic wings from back home; she never felt them in the least, and they were still functional. Maybe she could find wherever they and her mom's pistols went after she blew up whoever nerfed her. She follows forth into the deeps, shaking her head.

This is getting weirder and weirder. Who puts a mansion in a cave? Or ... wait, is that sunlight? Okay, I am creeped out. Wait, no, that bloody writing is creeping me out. You know what? I'm about to nope out of all this. I signed up for a dungeon crawl, not an Escher print. And.. is that actually a hedge maze? Oh, that's cute. Hold on.

Cecie very much does not like topiaries, it seems, as her next action is to point a finger at the hedge maze and speaks a few sibilant words. A five foot sphere of flame flashes into being next to the hedge maze, which she promptly directs up against the hedge, to see if it can catch on fire. I am not trudging through a maze, if it's all the same to... oh, wait. We could have just flown over it, couldn't we? She huffs. I contend that burning the hedges down is still a good idea, if only to try burning up the things no doubt waiting inside. Oh, and do either of you not need to breathe? Cause I got a hell of a way to get us that gold if grabbing it lures something out to attack us.

Spoiler

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Cast flaming sphere as a standard and use a move to roll it against the hedge. Flaming sphere specifically does catch flammable things it touches on fire.

[Thunder999]

[Well burning it down saves me a spell slot for fly, so that's nice. And what exactly is that idea that requires the ability to not breathe? I might have a way to make it work]

[FearlessGnome]

The hedge maze catches on fire almost immediately. Looks like it burns quite well.

Even so, it's quite a large thing. It's going to take a while for it to burn.

The gold glimmers seductively.

[Ryton]

[Well, I'll put both of these clubs in my bag, we can evenly divide the profits on whatever else we find here when we get out.] Livia reaches down and picks up both of the trolls clubs, storing them in her Haversack.

—

Livia chuckles softly. [Well, obvious trap is obvious, but if you think you can somehow... liberate the gold, I can try to keep you all alive. Also, while there is a beauty to the simplicity of your solution to the maze, though I certainly do not mean to berate your methods, a little reconnaissance first might have been useful to find if it held anything useful at it's heart. Or if it was arranged in a way to spell the answer to the riddle. Or something like that. Seems like the sort of thing that's likely to happen here. I'll go take a look, be right back.]

Livia vanishes and reappears high above the garden.

Spoiler: OoC

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Teleport and hover ~150ft above the hedge maze for a bird's-eye view. Mostly looking at the general layout, but gonna give a perception check (I'll assume it's been less than an hour and Synesthete is still up) for anything of notable interest: sword in a stone, wandering Minotaur, what have you.
Perception - (1d20+22)[31]

[RelentlessImp]

Ooh. Cecie's eyes light up at the sight of the hedge maze catching on fire, a far more seductive sight than any mere gold. Emerald turning to black, crisping, burning, the change in coloration rapidly spre ading. She stares at it for a few long moments before shaking herself out of her arsonist stupor.

Oh. Right. I've got a couple doses of aboleth mucus loaded into a sprayer. The stuff straight up stops those it's hit with from being able to breathe air. It hits a pretty long line done that way, so I'd probably not be able to avoid hitting the bait if they spring out to attack the person who takes the gold, but the assailant would definitely be in deep crap if they also have to breathe. They'd suffocate, 'cause the stuff lasts hours. I could probably pick you up and fly us out of their reach and we can watch 'em asphyxiate. As she speaks across the telepathic link, she directs the flaming sphere thirty feet down the line of the hedge to set up more flames and speed its spread, which she'll continue to do if nothing threatens them until the sphere winks out of existence (4 more rounds).

[Eldan]

Sundrop pouts, bobbing up and down in the sunlight.
"You shouldn't just burn down everything. It was pretty."
She zips up to Livia above the maze, too take in the bird's eye view as well, then back down, hovering dangerously close over the gold.
"You know, would it technically be stealing the gold if we have permission from the legitimate authorities to liberate this gold? We are licensed adventurers after all! And curses are all about technicalities."

Spoiler

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Perception
Bird's eye view:
(1d20+13)[21]
Scanning the gold:
(1d20+13)[17]

[Thunder999]

[Shouldn't be any harm in burning the maze down, if it spells something they're be the scorched remains to look at and not much of real value is harmed by such a minor spell, magic items tend to be quite durable. As for the trap I think I could just summon something, safer than risking any of us. For future reference though I can probably survive Aboleth mucus, but it's a new special power thing, so entirely untested. Oh and I don't think we're official until we pass this little test, not that this place is likely to recognise any external authority] Having said all that, Vhaak doesn't actually approach the gold or cast anything just yet, though he does take a moment to watch the nicely burning hedges.

[FearlessGnome]

Livia flickers out of existence - and promptly reappears.

The hedge maze is catching on fire very rapidly, but even so there seems to be a lot more smoke on ground level and just above you than you would expect. Breathing is starting to feel uncomfortable.

Spoiler: OOC

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Since Livia couldn't teleport up above the maze I didn't want to assume Sundrop flies up alone.

[Ryton]

[Unexpected.] Livia coughs a little in the growing smoke. [I attempted to teleport above the hedge, but wasn't able to. Normally that only happens if I try to go somewhere that... isn't. Based on that, and the odd behavior of the smoke, I'm going to guess that the sky is actually some sort of illusion or projection, and that the ceiling isn't much higher than the hedge, if it even extends above the hedge at all. Which means we may actually want – or possibly even need – to enter the hedge maze in order to move onward. Do we collectively have any means of traversing a burning hedge? I certainly don't. Not today anyway.]

[Thunder999]

[No fire resistance here, but if you'll all back away from the blatant trap I'm going to do a little summoning and spring it]

Vhaak then walks until he's a good 50 feet from the gold trap (or just backed up against the 'house' if this place is too small), and after waiting a round or two for the others to similarly relocate he'll summon a human skeleton and tell it to grab the gold.

"For the curious that is a conjuration spell called summon undead 1, personally I consider it much more useful that summon monster 1, if only because skeletons have opposable thumbs. I like to think of it as the sorcerer's trapfinding."

Spoiler: OOC

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That's a summon undead 1 spell, summoning a human warrior skeleton from the bestiary, it lasts 6 rounds.

[FearlessGnome]

When Sundrop flies up she does indeed hit a ceiling. It doesn't look like one. There does appear to be some space between the top of the hedge maze and the ceiling, but there is so much smoke up top it's hard to see here. Presumably one could fly through the smoke without issue, as long as you avoided the flames. There's maybe two feet between the top of the hedge and the ceiling, assuming it's at the same height everywhere.

---

The skeleton retrieves the gold without any difficulty.

Nothing sinister happens. No ominous laughter. No children singing lullabies.

The bag of gold appears to be larger on the inside than the outside. It's pretty light, as well. You might have to take the gold out if you wanted to estimate how much there is in total. On closer examination though there isn't just gold, but platinum as well.

[Thunder999]

Vhaak has his disposable minion attempt to empty the bag.

[FearlessGnome]

The bag is emptied quite effortlessly. Makes for quite a large pile of wealth. Appraise checks in the Discord channel to estimate how much gold there is, unless someone who doesn't need to breathe feels like staying here and counting the coins manually.

[RelentlessImp]

[I am now seeing the perils in setting fire to things that burn. This displeases me. Fire should solve most things.] comes Cecie's voice, as she has drawn her tunic up to cover her face to avoid inhaling smoke, her solid-colored eyes watering as the smoke wafts her way. [Perhaps we should take the loot and retreat back into the not-but-also-manor house and avoid inhaling too much smoke.]

[Ryton]

Livia coughs again in the growing smoke. [Based on my admittedly limited knowledge of horror-related things, between the blood-note, the ominous hedge maze, and that nothing has yet jumped out and immediately tried to murder us, I would guess that whoever intends to try to follow through with their threat would have a means of stalking us further through the dungeon, possibly through a curse on the bag or some of the coins, if this follows my understanding of how these things traditionally go. I suggest we quickly return the coins to the bag, or perhaps our own bags, and then examine things in the striped halls where we stand less a chance of asphyxiation.]

Spoiler: OoC

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Livia will use Detect Psionics to check the bag and the coins as they are either returned to the bag or placed in party member's bags.

[Eldan]

"Ow! Ow ow ow ow ow!"
Sundrop rubs her head, after just flatly smashing into the invisible ceiling at a high speed.
"Okay, that one's just mean."
Then she begins coughing, a high-pitched barking sound.
"And what is it with you people and smoke. I should start travelling in a glass ball or something."

[Thunder999]

Vhaak will help his skeleton start shoveling the gold back into the bag.
"Bags of holding filled with money just sitting in the open, these places are even more profitable than I thought. I'll identify the bag properly when we've got a spare hour, but it surely can't be anything else, and without the material component too." [Anyone got a wind spell to blow that smoke away, then we'll just fly over the top.]

[RelentlessImp]

[I got something I can try, but after seeing those invisible walls pop you guys back from warping and flying, I'm not sure where the smoke will actually go. But here goes.]

Cecie takes a step back towards the house behind them and flicks her fingers towards the smoke, speaking a few sibilant words. Then she takes a deep breath, and exhales as the spell completes with those gestures, for dramatic purposes, making it seem like the giant line of fifty mile an hour winds comes from her mouth, blasting savagely through the smoke - aiming it just above the fires to help fan the flames, as well, of course. Because fire pretty.

[FearlessGnome]

The sudden wind is very effective at blowing the smoke away from you - unfortunately it only lasts a few seconds, and more smoke is constantly billowing up from the roaring flames, which are slowly spreading across the maze.

It seems your choice is between rushing forward or retreating into the mansion - or the cellar, and waiting for the fire to run its course.

[RelentlessImp]

[About what I expected. Let's retreat into the mansion and let the fire gut the maze. We can collect the loot that survives once it's all ash.] Cecie is already putting her plan - codenamed 'I NEED TO BREATHE' - into action, retreating back towards the mansion.

[Ryton]

With the smoke temporarily dealt with, Livia helps the skeleton and Vhaak shovel the many, many, many coin back into the bag. [Well, I don't see any evidence of magical tampering with either the bag or the coins, so that's something. Now we'll have to keep our eyes open for whatever the intended trap may be though.]

Once all the coins are returned to the bag, Livia retreats from the returning smoke back into the "mansion." She gives a wry smile to Cecie as she mentally intones, [If our plan is to proceed through the burned out hedge, it may be in our best interest to lean into arson a bit more. It's been pretty strongly stated that standing around, waiting for our clever plan to unfurl is a great way to invite disaster in dungeons. Especially when we're carrying a sack of gold that was accompanied by murdery threats.]

[RelentlessImp]

[I'm not so sure that those murdery threats are a big deal. It's possible that whatever it was was using the hedge maze to hide, and it might burn to death from the arson. There's also the fact that we have a clear separation between 'out there' and 'in here', along with clear lines of sight, aside from the smoke, if anything comes screaming out of the maze and tries to kill us for taking the gold. Really, all we really have to do is stand watch 'til the hedge maze is nothing more than a tangled bramble of burnt branches, then we can go through it at our leisure, hacking aside the remnants of the maze with ease once stripped of foliage and burnt to near nothing.

But you've got a point about waiting around. I think it's probably our best option, at this point - unless you can make it so we can see through smoke and not have to breathe?]

[FearlessGnome]

The party retreats into the hallway of the stripped mansion to wait for the hedge maze to hopefully burn down and the smoke to clear.

Some ten minutes pass uneventfully, then-

An enormous gash appears along Cecie's arm in a flash, and she takes 18 points of damage.

Spoiler: OOC

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We can go into combat now if you want, which would include a battle map, however depending on your actions the enemy may not do anything that you would notice in the next few rounds. Please roll any checks you want to make.

You hear a quiet, malicious chuckle that seems to come from every direction.