[PurpleXVI]

Evon

Crickets chirped as the munchies started to set in and Evon began to ask himself deep, important questions, like: What was it all about, when you got right down to it? Why is red red? And possibly more urgently, had it really been that good an idea to smoke those weird reeds he found on the way to the ruins? Like, whoah. Dude.

Growing out his hair and only wearing sandals started to seem like a very good idea.


Ulik, Lorath

Lorath's infravision turned everything into shades of blue and black. Outside the sun at least provided some heat, but in the shade of the building, it was very chilly.

To his infravision, the staircase and the holes were merely blacknesses in the blue of the floor, which was why he tripped over the corpse.

When Ulik entered the building, he saw the elf lying flat over a very runny corpse sprawled over the stairs, as though the person's strength had given up just as they were reaching for the top step. The corpse was clad in tattered and torn platemail, covered with a stained white tabard. A two-handed sword and a tower shield laid a few steps further down, both badly rusted. Most of the skin was black and swollen, while the soft parts like the eyes had long since been chewed away by scavengers, but it was still possible to tell that the dead person had once been a woman.

The only intact pieces of equipment were an ankh on a chain around her neck and a belt pouch.

The stairs continued downwards at a rather steep angle for a few meters before reaching a room with completely dark water just a few feet below the ceiling, though it was hard to tell whether it was dark from waste or just lack of light. It was also impossible to say how deep the water was, it could be waist-deep or it could reach above their heads.

As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, they could tell that the room was a square shape and had three corridors leading away, two on their right and one on their left. A faint glow came from far up the nearest one on the right and the one on the left made a sharp turn just a few yards away from the room. Otherwise they all seemed relatively similar.


Gan, Bas, Tamora, Anne

To Tamora, it was obvious that the creature was formidable. It's chitinous plates were as thick as any armor and it's claws were the size of small daggers, the addition of two extra arms to wield them was hardly necessary to make it a tough fight. The mandibles were small, however, and besides delivering poison it looked doubtful that they were particularly dangerous.

Examining the bags, she noted that they looked to be of the same make as the one she'd recovered from the bird, but the bird didn't seem to particularly care about the dead Thri-Kreen. Either it only responded to whichever one had been it's owner, it's owner hadn't been a Thri-Kreen or it didn't have much loyalty. Within the bags were few surprises. Some herbs, a surprising amount of dried meat and three odd globes with a waxy feel and look to them. Each was somewhere between a softball and a volleyball in size, two were a light colour, and the third dark. When jolted, they sloshed slightly, suggesting they contained liquid.

"Temporary," Balth said to Anne, then spoke to Gan, "And I've never tried harvesting it, but you're free to try if you're skilled with that sort of thing."

"At any rate, if you are headed southeast, you might hit a big chasm that I saw when I crested a ridge some distance back, it looks too wide to get around without losing at least a day of travel, but possibly there's some way to cross it, I suppose we'll have to see when we get there. If the rest of you want to try playing with the Thri-Kreen's corpse, then perhaps the lady and I should scout ahead?"