Nymph interlude (Afina)

[Anastasia]

> roll 1d20+4 Canderella
<Serith> Kowork roll for Serith < 13 > [d20=9]

Ow. It's stuck pretty good, your efforts don't budge it.

[Ebiris]

Maybe she should have brought Smrgol after all. "Well, I'm not going to disintegrate it no matter how poorly maintained it is, so lets try going up instead," she decides, flying through the hole in the ceiling.

[Anastasia]

"We really should have brought a man with us, darling," Bubbles sighs, "There really is nothing so useful as a big, strong man to take care of things like that."

Canderella rolls her eyes, "That's why we have magic and summons, but if you want to go up anyway..."

The room above is free of muck. Old, rusted and crusty suits of armor stand on display, a few knocked over. They hold battle axes as weapons, all of them in similar states of neglect.

There's a door to the north here, ajar and with a bit of ooze leaking out. The smell hits you all over again, stomach doing a backflip.

There's also a door to the west, closed.

[Ebiris]

"Summons work but one path is as good as another so why waste the magic?" Afina says, taking a little look around the armoury. "Hmm, seems like I made a good decision making this as an axe instead of a sword," she notes on seeing the armaments present. Fluttering northwards (and pausing just a second in the face of the heightened smell) she goes to fully open the already ajar door.

[Anastasia]

You open the door. Fortunately, as all of you are airborne, the gush of ooze from it doesn't get any of you. Ahead is a room coated in ooze, as if once full of the muck. It's all dried and crusted now, a coating save for the bit that flowed out. It's a small chamber with a single collapsed couch and another door leading further along. A human sized ooze para elemental sits on the couch, silently staring ahead.

[Ebiris]

Fluttering in, Afina stops near the elemental and tries greeting it in Aquan. "Hello. We're not disturbing you are we?"

[Anastasia]

The elemental gives you a bland look and says one word, "Studying."

"Dearie, are you studying the wall?" Bubbles says, laughing into her hand. "Really?"

"Studying," The elemental turns his attention back to the wall.

[Ebiris]

Shifting her orientation to look at where she... thinks the elemental is looking. It's hard to tell since they don't have much in the way of faces. Anyway, Afina tries to see what's so fascinating about it, since she needs to understand the para-elemental mindset if she's to figure out where Ooze fits in her own makeup. "What do you hope to learn from it?" she asks, less judgemental than Bubbles.

[Anastasia]

Spot check.

[Ebiris]

[19:19] <@Ebiris> roll 1d20+38
[19:19] <Rei-chan> Ebiris rolled : 1d20+38 --> [ 1d20=17 ]{55}

[Anastasia]

You can see there's a subtle gradient to the crust over the wall. It's thinnest near the roof and thickest on the floor.

[Ebiris]

There's nothing revelatory about that. Assuming the ooze was slowly filled in and then drained away again then it would tend to settle most of the muck lower down. What's the elemental's reasoning behind finding it so fascinating?

[Anastasia]

That isn't immediately obvious, unfortunately.

[Ebiris]

Well if the elemental doesn't care to answer her question she doesn't care enough to push it. Maybe this muck was left by one of the archomentals passing and thus has mystical significance? Fluttering onwards she opens the next door to proceed with their explorations of this stinky fortress.

[Anastasia]

This door leads into a half collapsed room. You can see the front end of a ballroom, the roof having caved in. A single door on the left isn't buried and you could open it. Alternately, you could climb or fly up the rubble to the next floor. You can't see much, but you can hear the sound of a beating drum above.

"How quaint," Canderella murmurs, "Very ruined chic."