As Angelica moved backwards, the thing followed her, staying a respectful 3-4 paces away at all times. The construct moved easily over the rubble. It seemed not to even notice the cleared path, as its insectile legs easily shifted to meet any obstacle.
With the childhood she had, all of this is a fairly new experience for Angelica, "Oh gods, it's so cool. Forget what it's worth, can we keep him? I don't have to feed him, and he won't make a mess.... I think."
Shabbezz rubs the general area where a chin would be with a long finger in thought.
"Well, I don't see the harm in it. We were planning on taking it back with us anyway. Just remember to keep track of its position Angelica, as you're the only one here it will listen to."
"Heh. Good luck being stealthy with that thing following you." Harbug chuckles at the rogue.
She shrugs, "Can it be any worse than Krass was, or Whiskers there, at keeping the noise down?" Though his words did give her pause, stopping she tries the word 'stay' and 'stop' in all of her languages. After each one, she moves a little further to see if it listened. If one of them worked, she will use that language to try variations of 'come' or 'follow' to get it moving again.
Not too surprisingly, but telling the clockwork servant to "stay" in Thassilonian worked, the thing holding its position as Angelica backed away.
Good! This is a great find! Ancient Thassilonian artifacts that still function to this day! I can't wait to explore further, so let's go!
The gnome starts to head toward the next door, but remembers himself and makes a bowing gesture to Jakscar and Angelica. After you, of course.
Angelica is pleased with her new pal, her eyes alight as she tries to think of what she wants to call it. Regardless, once she gets it to continue following her, she decides, "Okay, we have the south door nearby, or we can return to the voice and tell it we got rid of the devil. Personally, if we don't ever talk to the voice again, I'm okay with it. SO my vote is that we go south."
You make your way through the hallways back to the northeast section, where you find a wooden door that appears to be both unlocked and untrapped.
"Well, let's see what trouble we manage to encounter this time," Shabbezz says, waiting for someone braver than her to open the door.
Angelica, ever the lady, once again offers Whiskers the privilege of opening the door. Meanwhile, she grips her silver dagger and places herself flat against the wall beside it. If something comes out at them, she doesn't want it to see her before she has a chance to shove a blade deep in its vitals.
"I'll get it, just this one time. Hope you're all ready." Harbug says as he approaches the door, spear ready. Without and further warning or comment, he opens the door.
Initiatives
Angelica
Harbug
Jakscar
Shabezz
Zaphomil
nupperibos
As Angelica moved to a flanking position, Harbug opened the door and stepped back. Inside the room were a handful of the weaker devils you know as nupperibos. They each carried rusted shortspears, and began to move towards you threateningly, though without much intelligence apparent.
Initiatives:
Jakscar 20
Zaphomil 20
Harbug 15
Shabezz 11
Angelica 6
nupperibos 4
Seeing Angelica's plan, Jakscar opens the door and jumps back so as to allow Angelica in behind anything that attacks him.
"I knew it!" Shabbezz shouts in bitter triumph at their misfortune. She lets fire with the last charge in the wand at the first devil coming directly at her and Harbug.
Active Spell Effects: Mage Armor
Bonded Object (Amulet): 1/1 spell left today
Dazing Touch: 7/7 left today
Mage Armor: 1 hour
Wizard Spells Prepared (CL 3):
(2/2+1/1) Glitterdust, Glitterdust, + Sleep
(3/3+1/1) Grease, Magic Missile, Magic Missile, + Hideous Laughter
0 (4/4) Acid Splash, Light, Read Magic, Detect Magic
"Oh, for pity's sake! Not more of these dumb things."
Jakscar then pounces forward coming to land in a low crouch with his silver dagger fully extended in a lunge.
HP= 26/31
AC= 21, FF=18, Touch= 13
Black cat= 0/1
Cat's grace= 1/1
Harbug moves to support Jakscar, stabbing at the creatures with his longspear where he can get it past the cat.
;
Zaphomil waits, ready to assist with his spells if necessary.
HP 24/24
AC 18 (T12/F17)
+1 Misc. bonus to all rolls
Spells Prepared:
0--create water, detect magic, light, read magic
1--magic stone, sanctuary, shield of faith, remove fear(B)
2--spiritual weapon, remove paralysis (B)
Channel Energy 3/6
Angelica peeks around the corner at the contents of the room. Seeing nothing more than a bunch of the slow and stupid ones, she decides to move in beside Whiskers and hold the front. She dashes in before the things are even ready to act, stabbing one right in the eye, only for it to just be at the limits of her reach and really become just a nasty poke in the eye.
The nupperibos were caught flatfooted as the companions poured into the room. The first wave fell to the spells and silvered weapons of the opening assault. only two of the devils survived that first wave of attacks, and they rushed in mindlessly. Angelica's poised blade took one in the eye, seemingly a light wound, but the blade went deep enough to destroy the thing's brain. The other launched a feeble attack that Jakscar parried, before being buried by the combined might of the companions.
Silver weapons = easy fight here. There is a door to the west, and one to the south.
"West or south? I'm tempted to go West, but i couldn't tell you why. "
"West sounds as good a decision as any," Shabbezz said, stowing the now-empty wand. "I predict more fiends ahead no matter where we end up."
The western door, while not locked, does not open when Jakscar tries the latch. Pushing, he finds that it moves a centimeter or so, then stops. From the other side of the door came a raspy, gurgling voice.
"Go away! Leave Stink alone!"
"Oh, good; another eccentric," the grippli whispers. "Perhaps the more sociable of our number should handle this."
She gives a knowing glance to Angelica and Zaphomil.
Angelica just scrunches up her nose and gets a look of disgust, "I don't know that I want to use my kind of charms on something that sounds like that and refers to itself as 'Stink'." Instead she raises a questioning eyebrow at Zaph, as if asking if he wants to take this one.
Zaphomil smiles back. I'm sure it's just an affectation. Possibly even ironic.
Clearing his throat and speaking loudly enough to carry through the door, the gnome introduces himself. Hello, good sir. Stink, is it? We'd like to make your acquaintance. We're exploring these levels, and could you perhaps help guide us around, if you're familiar with the area?
The voice responds in that same raspy gurgle, hesitatingly as if the owner is searching for the right words. "Go away. Stink stay here. Not time to come out. Not for Stink."
"Maybe ask it when it will be time? Or if anything is in there with it?" Harbug sniffs a couple of times near the door. "Or maybe it's hungry, if there's any more of those fishsticks. Jakscar?"
Either the creature's hearing was exceptional, or it was simply continuing the prior thought, as it said "Stink stay in here. Bullies stay out there."
Zaphomil exchanges a look with the others. Then he turns back to the door. No, no bullies out here. Just us. Explorers. Travelers. Interesting, nice folks. How about you open the door so we can show you?
"No, no, nononono! No come in. Stink no hurt you, you leave Stink alone!"
"Good idea"
Jakscar whispers to Harbug
"Hello Mr Stink, I assume it is Mr? We have some food out here, would you like some? You see we have just had lunch and we brought far too much. "
The shout is thunderous through the door.
Zaphomil takes several steps back, surprised at the vehement shout. He then looks at his companions and shrugs.
"Okay; it seems obvious that we're not getting anywhere by talking." the wizard whispers. "That leaves us with two options as I see it. Either we can try to force our way inside and deal with the consequences, or we can cut our losses and move on down to the south door."
Angelica bobs her neck side to side, with a single eyebrow raised, "Nuh-uh sweetie, we need to find this shard. We can 't just leave it."
She decides to call out, "Look, Stink... sugar. We're not trying to come in and cause any problems. We just need to look around the place. We didn't come here to hurt anyone, and we're not bullies. We are just a couple of good folk, just trying to do our job. If you let us in, so we can look around, we won't cause you any trouble. Deal?"
The voice comes back to a semblance of normal as it says, "No trouble? Maybe kill bullies for Stink and no more trouble?"
She rolls her eyes, clearly annoyed at once again having to deliberate with more of the denizens of this whole crazy column. She steels herself, calming before she speaks, "Oh Hon, you have bullies picking on you? I'm so sorry to hear that. We have already taken care of quite a few nasties since we've been down here. We may have already solved your problem. Like... crap, what was his name? Bez, Bees, Baz? Baz, right?, like a fat ugly devil named Baz. We got rid of him. Some of those waxy skeleton looking ones too. We've been removing a lot of the bullies down here."
"Baz dead? Imps too? Make Stink happy if bullies all dead. You promise?" There was a shuffling sound and the sound of furniture scraping on the floor. The door swung open to reveal a large lemure, the largest you have ever seen, standing just inside the door. The walls of the room are covered in slime and dried ichor, some of which appears to have been smeared on in geometric shapes.
There's a strange choking sound that is cut off nearly as soon as it begins. Shabbezz willfully prevents herself from gagging at the spectacle of Stink and the state of his room, and does her level best to maintain her composure as the others continue to speak with the lemure.
Harbug takes a peek into the room. "Meh, I've seen worse. The orcs themselves, and their captives..." The orc's eyes narrow as he trails off, and he looks carefully at the geometric shapes.
"Ah Mr Stink, what are these shapes? Is this your work? They are very good. We are down here looking for something, would you be able to help us find it?"
"Here, you take this. Go kill bullies. Leave Stink alone!" The lemure tossed a small box, crudely tied with string, at Angelica's feet. "Leave alone now"
Angelica quickly covers her mouth and nose with her hand to hide her revulsion as the creature opens the door, but much like Shabbezz, she wasn't able to hide the reflexive gagging sound. She tries to take in as much of the room as possible without letting the disgust to overtake her.
When it asks about the other devils she adds, "Yeah, we got rid of Baz, and let see, imps, are those the little winged ones? Yeah we killed a couple of those too. You don't have to stay locked up in here, you can even go see for yourself." She tries to coax him out of his room so they can have a good look without it in there.
As he tosses the container at her feet, she's anxious to see if they're lucky enough for there to actually be the other shard inside. Even when there isn't, she likes the look of three gems and a couple decent coins.
Zaphomil shrugs his shoulders once again. He feels strange doing a good deed for a devil, even one so pathetic as this. I guess we'll be going then? he says, uncertainly.