Temple Tyranny
An interesting few days, following the celebration of our success in hunting down the boar back at the tavern, culminating in our journey to Versi’s shrine. As expected, they blundered their way through the woods, making all manner of racket between them, but at least managing to follow the path I guided them along.
As we approached the shrine, therefore, I was in the lead scouting our way up into the valley as the temperature rose alongside the steam coming off the vents when some strange steam-based beings emerged to attack us, dealing a hefty blow to the party with some heated attack that scalded across the group. I led the charge into the fray and we quickly polished off a few of them, enduring explosions from each as they discorporated and happily intimidating one enough that it fled the scene.
In attempting to get an angle for some ranged attacks, Hippofilius and Braz approached closer to the temple and judging by the shouts from within, there were soldiers there who took exception to their approach. As Alke and I finished off the last of the steam beings, a quartet of soldiers burst past us back down the valley and, albeit with some trepidation, I left them to head past and raced up to join the others in the entrance to the temple, just in time as they came under attack from the remaining troops. I hoped the siren was at least competent enough to keep alert and warn us if the soldiers were returning, though I suspected it would be the goddess that was more likely to keep her eyes out and raise any alarm on that front.
Hippofilius had taken direwolf form and with Braz’s assistance took the soldiers apart fairly handily, with the odd assistance of a strange child in soldier’s uniform, which turned out to be the gnome attempting to execute some inept plan involving disguise, but nonetheless allowed him the opportunity to strike an almighty blow against our opposition with a disguised projectile.
A caster seemed to be the leader, attempting to hold a temple attendant hostage and casting using a symbol of Sydon, but a quick dash around the altar and a swift greatsword swing put an end to that and thus an end to the fighting for now. The lead temple attendant hurried to help with healing, while also quickly informing us that a witch of some kind was down below the temple with the oracle and other attendants and that a key was in the back rooms. This seemed odd, when there were these soldiers guarding the temple for the witch, so I instead searched the caster, assuming it was more likely the key was held by the guards than left unattended.
The true reason for the ‘unattended’ key became clear as shouts and clashes of further battle came from the other room. The blundering gnome and the hooded liability had managed to stumble into some sort of trap which quickly put the gnome down and left Braz attempting to defend both against flying swords. Hippofilius’ wolf form and I dashed to help, followed and overtaken by Calliope, though who knows what assistance she thought to present, given her battle prowess to date seems to have consisted entirely of flying up out of attack range and vaguely yelling at people, inasmuch as she seems to notice the combat at all...
True to form, all she achieved was taking a slash from one of the swords and obstructing the attack lanes for the rest of us, though she did at least manage to revive the gnome before he expired from pure feeble incompetence. The hooded one however revealed herself as a medusa, casting and attacking with her snakes in the cause of assisting in destroying the ensorcelled weapons. Interesting to see a medusa joining us in this quest and certainly one worth keeping an eye on in the interim until the cause of the curse is established, whether oathbreaking, ill-made bargain or otherwise. That throws yet more doubt on the Oracle’s own efficacy, in combination with the, shall we say, erratic qualities of some of the other dolts selected.
When the animated blades were destroyed, it emerged that the trio had in fact managed to find the key, so we hurried to the relevant door, being quickly confronted by some form of ensorcellment that quizzed us with a riddle that was quickly answered and the door swung open to reveal more stairs down below the temple.