Age of Ice and Blood: A Pathfinder System Heroic Fantasy Quest

Fifteenth Day of Elnu-Hamba (Elnu Descendent), 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)

Clink... clink... clink... the stones sound cannily loud in the dark, but they turn no leaver, they press no hidden plate of the sort you had seen in Ipsit's lair. Had you been too timid? Part of you wonders. If you had been alone or just in the company of Zaia you might have ignored caution and the riddles of the fey... but you are not just in his company. As Inge sits cross-legged trying to observe from above you tear into one of the shelves with the gauntlet of black iron until you have in hand a stout blank and then you start yo turn things over.

The first warning you get is a click and a hiss, the first as though you had struck metal and the second... like the sound of something struck with the vitriol Zaia wields. You let go of the tool in an instant and on sheer instinct lift your shield just as something flies at you from out of the dark, just as Inge calls a warning.... a moment too late.

You are poisoned: You take 2 Strength Drain

Before you can do more than curse in shock as much as pain Zaia stumbles back away from the trap and triggers yet another, how you would never know, but you can hear something heavy crashing down above. As you and Yom barely have the time to turn Inge shouts a warning, her voice echoing with knowing not her own: "Down!"

The scholar manages to throw himself to the ground just in time to avoid a great hammer of wood and ivory swinging like a pendulum from above that might have taken him right in the chest otherwise.

"Damn it all to the Devil's Asshole!" you curse, though thankfully only understood by Tom. "Is everyone in one piece?" you ask, ignoring the leaden feeling in your limbs. It's not like Zaia's going to have a cure to whatever the hell that was on hand.

It seems you had broken a jar of what alchemists call aqua forte and in the bargain you had tripped a trap that must have been set there with a purpose. Thankfully while the cloth kilt you had pulled up with the stick won't be good even for rags the sane cannot be said for the clay tablets that had been scattered nearby. Though you have only of late learned the signs of it you can see the hand that wrote them trembled, likes that aught to have been straight wavering, circles, spirals twisted as though by weak sight or uncertain mind.

Gingerly Zaia picks them up and starts to read: "Who am I? I remember the fog and the fight for the tower... I want to be a soldier, to earn glory and victory... no I am a cheat and a liar, I chose this, I want this.... the world will know my name.... I dream of black wings and of blood, of thunder under the trees... fear the Old Ones... fear their blood."

"It goes on like this," Zaia explains, sounding almost apologetic. "Rambling, like the author was not in his right mind, or if the lady Esha is right as if he was not all of one mind." Trailing a finger over the script under the torchlight he says. "Wait there is something here about needing to sleep outside, to clear his head... outside of what?"

So it is, following the trail of mad scrubbing that you come to the far wall of the cave where there lies hidden a door. So finely was is carved that the eye might have missed it even if you had spent a day doing nothing but peer at the stone, but as soon as you see it the fey grow excited: "You find it... he found it, they found it."

It seems too small a work. As you press the gauntlet into the wall again the path opens and you are greeted by a sight wondrous as it it eerie:

The chamber is circular and far lower than the one behind you, a thin shaft of light spills out at its center to spill onto a tomb not of stone but silver that gleams like the moon settled under the earth. You are not a man given to greed or so you like to think, but it is hard not to think that is probably worth more than all the wealth the Fellowship had managed to obtain put together.

"I think we found the place where the dead walk," Inge's voice is small, scared. "It shines with a great fire, brighter than anything I have ever seen."

"Well, let's look look inside then," Tom manages to force out, coming to his senses before you. He pushes aside the lid with a grunt of excretion. A slab of silver is as it turns out heavy.

The moment he does so a piece of living darkness surges out of the inside of the vessel as though to swallow him out in one horrid instant. Somehow Tom manages to roll out of the way, smashing against the far wall, even as Inge calls out a warning: "Jan Yian!" Life eater, in the tongue tongue of the Anwa.

Trapped inside its black mass, like a fly in amber you can see the stolen armor.

What do you do?

[] Write in battle plan

OOC: And here we are, the armor... also a CR 6 fight, you can also try to run, the thing is not as fast as a human.