The Heart Of Ruhir

[ThetaOrionis01]

'Remember!' Kyrika tells herself. 'Remember what this horrid creature is telling you. Even if she has her own purpose in this, the information she has provided cannot be ignored.'

 

 

She shivers involuntarily when the apparation fades, and is glad to see the others.

 

"Is everyone all right?" she asks, anxiously, more shaken by the ghostly encounter than she cares to admit. "Did you see... her? Did you hear what she told me?"

 

 

She tries to suppress a shudder - talking to the creature has made her feel unclean, somehow.

 

"This... apparition... she told me things... about the statues, about this Ruhir, about his plan, and other things besides. I must tell you about them... but... could we go outside first? I do not want to stay in here a moment longer than necessary."

[WereWolf531]

Rushing into the room, Khyros hears the last of the strange statue's conversation. As the statue resumes its previous position, he turns to Kyrika, hearing her ask whether or not they were all ok. "Yeah, we're fine, Kane might be feeling somewhat short-handed for a while, but no permanent damage." In response to her next question, he adds, "Yeah, what happened to that statue? How did you get it to move and talk?"

 

After hearing her desire to go outside, "Yeah, we should get outside before more surprises come up, probably not much left for us here anyway. But you must tell me all that that...statue or whatever told you," reaching down and picking up his journal where he had dropped it, he adds, "I'll write it all down so we can keep a record of it. I have a feeling we're gonna have a lot to remember before all this is through."

 

Gathering the last of his belongings (in case I've missed anything), he begins to move towards the door back into the ambulatory. He wanted to take one more look at those skeletons in the other room.

[Morgoth]

Chucahau, feeling quite awkward himself after these mysterious events and the skeletons' attack, nods heavily on Kyrika's suggestion to go outside and adds as soon as Khyros has finished his speech "Yes, let us get out of here quickly. Evil forces are at work here. We should not tarry too long."

 

On the way out he will force himself to step once more into the darkness of the ambulatory to the right of the door to search for his pigments before he goes outside.

[Malchik]

The ambulatory is very dark but with your torches you can find the pigments. There is no trace of any skeleton ever having been there and the trapdoor down to the middle level of the temple is in place. Kane's arm is as good as new. It is almost as if the whole thing was an hallucination.

[ixnos]

Kane grunts at Khyros' way with words while walking towards the statues, just staring at them but staring more at the statue of the warrior, all the while trying to move his arm, pretty soon he finds his arm smacking the wall to the left making him growl.

 

"BAH! told you it was fine...heh poor soul, glad I ain't a sucker for the whole immortality crud"

 

He continues looking at the warrior statue, being reminded of himself, he felt like he was looking into a mirror. His reflection looking back at him from within the stone, he sighs to himself before heading to the exit, he then looks around for the others.

 

"Dammit, where is that lord what's his face? does anyone have a copy of the damn map so we know where to go next because I ain't tracking down that massive ego trip of his"

 

Kane snorts in frustration since the last time he saw the lord was when they were entering the temple and he seemed to be the last person to enter and now no sign of him, Kane ponders whether he ran or is hiding somewhere, either way he was hoped someone knew where to go next.

[WereWolf531]

'Interesting,' Khyros thinks to himself, 'no sign that they were even here...no bones, no scorches from Aldhelm's fire...nothing...but they must have been here, there's no way that kind of physical exertion could be imagined...I think. Bah, wish I'd stayed in Shallara, things stayed where they were back there, and no statues got up and talked to people...oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound, I suppose (or whatever currency is applicable).'

 

"Well, it seems our skeletal adversaries have vanished," he reports to the rest of the group. "Anyway, let's get back to the city, we've obviously got a lot of information to digest and I'm already getting a headache..." He trails off and continues to walk towards the exit, but can't help from feeling that the skeletons were part of a diversion. 'Perhaps they were meant to get us out of the room or to get Kyrika alone, after all that statue didn't start to move until after we had gone...' His mind turned towards other matters as he approached the door, however, and he decided to think more about the skeletons later.

[ThetaOrionis01]

Kyrika nods, glad to see the others back safely. She proceeds towards the exit, cautious, her glance darting everywhere, afraid of further unpleasant surprises. The encounter with Constanta has left her shaken, and she feels ill-prepared for the rest of their quest.

 

'What use am I going to be, if we encounter more of theses undead creatures?' she doubts herself.

 

Provided that she succeeds in leaving the building she will look for a place to sit and wait for the others to join her.

[Malchik]

Nothing untoward is left in the building. You can leave or explore the lower levels as you wish.

[DragonDudeAW]

Aldhelm watches as Kyrika finishes her conversation with the thing, whatever it was, and turn toward the others. Aldhelm can tell that the "conversation" had made her uncomfortable and agrees with Khyros that they should hear the story but let Kyrika become more comfortable. The woman was obviously unused to such exertion and needed a moment to collect herself.

 

After hearing Khyros's report of their surrondings, Aldhelm is rather shaken. The only thing that could erase the traces of his magical castings that quickly was more powerful magicss erasing them. Maybe he should see what a detect magic potion might do.

 

Turning to the group, " Even though the physical traces of this "battle" if that is truly what it was are gone, if you wait a short while perhaps we can see if a detect magic potion to see if any magical trace of this battle exist."

 

Quickly pulling out his alchemic appartuses and the package of ingredients, Aldhelm quickly finds some ingredients that will make an adequately powerful detect magic potion for his purposes. (I'm assuming since what you told me about the Detect Life potions) After carefully creating the potion, he repackages his equipment and drains the vial in one draught and then waits for a result.

[Malchik]

Aldhelm cannot sense the use of magic in the way he understands it but there is a lingering sense of evil, as if natural laws and forces have been twisted.

 

As he is right to say that evidence cannot disappear 'naturally' then magic has to have been used. But it is not the magic of Zorlon.

 

Somehow an alien magic has disrupted the balance of these statues, whatever they are in reality. Aldhelm has never experienced anything as unnerving as the sense of powerlessness this brings.

 

At the moment this temple appears to be the only place affected. But what is happening? The stories are of old women being turned to stone in the swamps of Ooo. Is it their life forces that are being used to power what is happening here? Is this something totally unconnected? Is it an intended effect or a side effect? Whatever, it surely has to be be stopped.

 

The only question is how!