Ciprian heard the sounds of all sorts of animals, birds, reptiles and the like which suddenly fell silent. At that he moved apace back toward the Monument of Destruction calling for his fellow explorers to leave the area.
Then Paullus witnessed Gavril and Erevel suddenly fall to the ground after which their bodies seemed to be crushed. He could barely make out the shallow breaths of the two.
Erevel, with much effort, pushed herself to her knees and elbow and crawled slowly toward the room the party had just left.
Ciprian tried to identify any spell effect from the seeming haunt and all he got was suffocation. He then moved into the chamber once again trying to make it to the rusty greave barely sticking out beneath a colossal boulder.
Armania moved toward Erevel and seeing Gavril wished she could have stepped to him but she planned to do that a soon as possible. Paullus moved toward Erevel, readying an arrow to shoot at anything that entered the new chamber. Ursina moved toward Paullus but didn't know exactly what to do. The difficult terrain was making movement difficult. Gavril did not move from his position.
Time seems to crawl to a stop as the collapsed buildings fade from view, replaced by intact towers with a desert plain beyond. A Casmar woman in a stylized breastplate steps into view on the stone street, plants her great axe in the ground, and calls out to the god Rovagug. She receives no response, but as she turns away, the sky blazes with fire, and something crashes into the ground. As one, the towers begin to collapse as a searing wave of fire and debris obliterates the woman. You are being buried beneath thousands of tons of rock and rubble.
The remaining party members now saw the vista Gavril and Erevel had already viewed. Each member was staggered as they fell to the ground, gasping for air feeling tons of rubble and rock pressing them down
Erevel stood up and moved toward Gavril, intending to pull him out of the force of the haunt. Ciprian pushed himself up but could not move any further to the greave. Armania then stepped to Erevel and Gavril, then cast Dimension Door to move all three out of the area. Ursina crawled to the previous room n as Paullus pushed himself out of the prone position. Gavril was barely breathing but looked as though he was close to death.
Erevel had nothing to do but Ciprian could finally moved to the greave and cast Cure Serious Wounds on it. The crushing weight lifted from the party and Ursina hurried to Gavril to cast Cure Light Wounds and then use his wand of Cure Moderate Wounds to restore Gavril to health.
Aeptolinu moved back into the haunt chamber wondering where the party was and if they still wanted to talk with Eshimal.
"We have run into a little issue. Perhaps we will have to come back later." Ciprian responded.
"He is mighty anxious to meet our newest explorers," Aeptolinu answered.
After some discussion the group determined to go forward to meet with Eshimal. They were concerned not to start a new battle as all the spell casters were low on spell, especially healing.
The rest of the party saw Ciprian appear as he moved into the chamber. He was disappointed with this occurrence and identified that there seemed to be a Invisibility Purge active in the area.
"Ah a new group is here in Neruzavin. What was your motivation in coming here?" Eshimal spoke with a guttural voice that was partly clouded with phlegm or other viscous fluid.
"We are here searching for a human, Count Lowls," Ciprian stated also describing their prey.
"I have seen no such creature. Why is he important?"
"We have a bone to pick with this man,"
Meanwhile Ciprian was searching for magic items, a few tomes should magic along with several smaller books. He could see that there was a smaller such item on one of the stone desks, a spell book. Ursina was detecting the verity of Eshimal's statements but found nothing ulterior in its responses.
"Do you have any books or tomes that you could sell or trade?" Eshimal queried.
Ciprian pulled out one of the Counts books on the Dreamlands and placed it on a desk. "How about something like this?"
Eshimal floated over and studied the book but shook his head with disdain, "This is of no interest to me."
"We have some blank spell books," Ursina offered.
"I would find a copper for such a thing," was the response. "Surely you are here for more than this Count. I would suspect you are looking for treasure."
"We only want to find and kill this maniac," Gavril spurted out.
"As such you are of no interest to me. Come back when you have something of interest."
"Is there any thing we could do for you?" Ciprian inquired.
"If you could find and kill Hoshbagh and deliver her body to me you might have found some items of interest to me."
"What or who is this Hoshbagh? Where would we find her?"
"She is a otyugh occultist who inhabits the streets of Neruzavin."
"So we can find her somewhere outside of the Snarl?"
"Yes, no be off with you worthless beings."
Aeptolinu led the party out of the chamber and the group exited through the southern exit traveling hundreds of feet before coming back to the light of the streets of Neruzavin. The strange architecture still jarring to the senses of the party they headed southward.
Wandering the streets the party again saw the oddly moving cloud of birds but now it is much closer. The cloud moved toward the party as they tried to move out of the way but several were caught in the swarming mass.
DM's Notes: The party earned 3200 XP for the night.
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