Session 45: Skeletons in the Basement
So the party just finished killing some stretchy aberrations.Session opens still in initiative order on Rutana's turn, with no enemies in sight.
Rutana steps around the corner of the ruined tower. She rolls 21 on Perception and spots a trail of slime leading through a door inside the building. She moves into the building and ends her turn.
Rutana, Clarence, and the Sprite then roll more Perception checks. Rutana gets 30 and hears a door open to the south, and meaty hands slapping on a ceiling; another Choker trying to be stealthy, and failing utterly.
Sartorii's turn. She fires arrows at the Choker from the safety of the breach in the wall. 10 damage total.
Sprite's turn. He flutters past Rutana and casts Ignition, dealing 13 damage.
Clarence! He runs up and claws at the Choker, dealing 8 damage and slicing it to ribbons.
No more slappy sticky noises. Either they're all dead or the remainder have fled. The party is now free to move about the area.
Rutana and the Sprite explore the southern room. They come upon a pile of animal carcasses, and Rutana notices all of their necks are broken. Normal animals, not the uplifted ones from Greenwater.
Sartorii listens at the slime door, and hears nothing with a 1 on Perception.
The party congregates around the slime door, Clarence taking point. Beyond is an empty room with a cellar door in the floor, under which the slime trail continues.
Next door down. It appears to be a dining room, mostly rotten wood and broken furniture. No skeletons this time. At some point during the lost however many years the chandelier fell from the ceiling, landing square in the center of the table and breaking it in two. The southern wall in this room collapsed. The room beyond contains a staircase to nowhere, the second floor being missing. General searching around the rooms, general nothing to be found at all.
The party moves back to the northeastern room and Clarence is first to enter the cellar. Stepping on the black rectangle teleports his token to the next floor!
The basement is dark. Clarence lights a torch, and the Sprite glows. Before them is an iron door with its hinges slightly bent. There is a slight pressure difference between this room and the room beyond the door. A stench also hangs in the air; not that of a corpse, and not one the party can identify.
Sartorii opens the door.
The hall beyond is lined with runes unlike any in the neighboring villages. The stench is stronger here, affecting Clarence and Sartorii. They gain Sickened 2. Sartorii's totally fine with leaving, she says jokingly.
The trail of slime heads north. The party decides to check the doors to the south first, just in case. Clarence takes point again, begrudgingly now that he's sick.
It's an old office. A dry skeleton sits at an old desk, and the shelves are covered in books and records reduced to ash. Jars of preserved creatures and eyeballs that seem to follow whoever looks at them are scattered about the desk. The skeleton is missing a chunk out of its skull and has a firearm in its hand.
Rutana inspects the shelves to see if she can find anything that's not burned. 17 Perception.
She finds a half-burned page that seems to be an experiment log. Different chemicals introduced to bloodstream, notes on the effects. Animal experimentation, monster experimentation, and human. She shares this info with the party.
The Sprite sidles up beside the skeleton to see if there's anything in the desk, causing the party to roll initiative.
The party hears a voice emanate from the skeleton's midsection, mumbling about experiments and subjects. Its head lolls toward the Sprite and a mutated intestinal tract snakes out of its mouth where a tongue should be. This is a mohrg.
It makes a licking motion toward the Sprite, but with a nat 1 just kinda sits there.
Rutana casts Ray of Frost from across the room, dealing 6 damage. She then casts Exploit Vulnerability, and shares with the party that the mohrg has no weaknesses but is highly resistant to piercing damage.
The Sprite drops a Floating Flame on the mohrg, dealing 6 damage, then flaps away from it.
Clarence retches to try and relive himself of illness. No luck, but he steps up to the mohrg and drops his torch to claw at the thing. 7 damage, not quite as effective as he'd hoped.
Sartorii also attempts retching twice, and also fails. She sheathes her bow and draws her rapier.
The mohrg steps out of the fire and approaches Rutana. It licks at her, but misses. Its second attack hits. Rutana fails her fortitude save and winds up Paralyzed.
The Sprite sustains the Floating Flame and moves it back atop the mohrg, dealing 8 damage. He follows up with Ignition, dealing another 12.
Clarence finally spews and feels loads better. He follows the mohrg and claws at it again, dealing 5 damage.
Sartorii also vomits, then enters the room. She chucks a healing potion at the mohrg, dealing 7 more damage. It's starting to look pretty poorly.
The mohrg steps out of the fire once more then tears into Rutana, dealing 38 damage.
Rutana succeeds her fortitude saving throw and is no longer paralyzed.
The Sprite moves the Floating Flame after the mohrg again. It screams about how it has so many experiments left to do before shriveling up. The skeleton collapses.
Party gains 40xp, for a total of 250!
Rutana downs a couple healing potions. Clarence uses Lay on Hands on Rutana afterward, bringing her almost up to full and leaving her with just a couple bruises.
The Sprite goes back to rifling through the desk. He finds a tarnished silver key with a large skull for a head.
On to the next door, southwestern corner!
It's a cramped room with all the lockboxes already raided. A ledger lies closed on a podium, covered in cobwebs. A closed sack sits in a puddle of slime in a corner, and there's a closed safe in the room.
The Sprite steps into the room and casts Detect Magic. There are two pings; the sack, and the key in his pocket. He casts Read Aura on the sack. Within is a fine silver powder silky to the touch; it's a Cloud Pouch. Scattering the dust in the air will create a cloud, an infinitely-refreshing bag of smoke bombs.
He lifts it out of the goop and hands it to Sartorii, explaining what it does.
While this is going on, Sartorii notices a tarnished mirror inlaid into the wall at the far end of the wall, with a relief carving above the mirror.
Rutana steps into the room to look at the ledger. It details the inflow and outflow of funds in a network of facilities or settlements. There are four total icons appearing in the ledger, one of them matching the relief above the mirror.
The last page with any writing says there were shipments made from this location to the other three facilities.
Rutana tucks the book into the bag of holding.
While she's reading the ledger, the Sprite casts Read Aura on the key. He identifies it as a Skeleton Key.
The key also gets stuffed in the bag of holding.
Next door up! Beyond is a hallway with five iron doors lining the next wall, with a slat in each to reveal 10x10 rooms.
Sartorii hears something moving further down the hall, but can't pinpoint where it is. The party advances down the hall, encountering nothing. The last door has rags stuffed in the slat. After pushing the door in, there are two humanoid figures laying on the floor. The one nearest the door has a nasty gash on her leg. Her breathing is ragged, and she's grunting in pain. The figures appear to be unconscious.
Clarence enters the cell. He can tell the gash on her leg is badly infected. He casts Lay on Hands on her; her pain is eased, but she does not wake.
The other figure stirs. He notices the party and scrabbles back against the wall when he spots the party, leaving a trail of feathers as he bunches his robes up around his face, and shouts at the party to get back.
Sartorii and Clarence assure him that they healed the lady and it's fine. He drops the robe covering his face, revealing himself to be a rooster. The lady is a wolf.
Sartorii asks if he's Red. While they were told that Red is the jockest jock to ever jock, this guy's scrawny.
"How do you know my name??"
Griff sent them to find him!
Sartorii gives him her water skin, and the Sprite casts Create Water. Griff drinks voraciously and makes sure the wolf lady gets some too.
He's convinced the party is from Greenwater, being mostly non-human, but is confused to hear otherwise.
"I didn't know you could juice a fairy!! Well I won't look a gift horse in the mouth. Last time I did that Charles kicked me!"
Rutana asks what happened to him.
He asks for food first. The Sprite trail mixes him.
"It was a few days ago now. I was outside of town, all of a sudden this dead-eyed psycho tried to chase me down. I gave him the spurring of a lifetime, but a few others showed up and I thought I was chicken dinner. A hunter showed up, saved me and brought me back to her home to patch me up. I've been staying with her for the past few days. We've been down here for a while. The wolven village was attacked, they brought us here. She didn't tell me she was injured, but she passed out."
He's worried about the wolf, Autumn. She's stable, but they need to get her to a real doctor. Griff says there are more people inside. He doesn't know what the things did with those people, but he doesn't think they're dead.
He asks to take one of the party's mounts back to Greenwater.
Party gains another 40 experience!