"Yeah, let's open these doors once and for all." Randee walks decided to the double doors, wandering what else can they find that's weirder than what they've found already.
Through the Double Doors
Randee opens the doors to an L shaped hallway that runs from a collapsed space in the west to a small waiting area outside a door at the northen end of the area.
There are several doors off of this hallway.
"Collapsed, uh? Let's start there..." Randee moves on to the beginning of the alley and checks out the first door.
Thral notices a smear on the tiled floor, with trails leading off to several doors.
"Something slimy passed through here and into several chambers, be careful."
Next to the door north of the double doors, there seems to be an engraved plate, but there's no hints regarding the other rooms contents.
From the library area you just left through the double-doors, the sound of a great number of leather-bound books falling to the floor can be heared - of course, that did not mean that investigating the cause was a good idea.
Belrim readies his heavy pick for another fight.
With his keen eye and a moment of thought, Thral figures out which doors this slimy trail leads to.
"Everyone, the slime leads to both doors on the corridor to the left past the doors, and the second door on the right, straight ahead."
Thral just as Belrim does, readies himself for another potential fight.
As several members of the party get ready for another fight, nothing hostile seems to make it's way to them...indeed, the library has fallen silent again.
With the group holding position and trying to listen for any audible signs of approach, the silence becomes almost oppressive. But after a seemingly endless minute, it becomes increasingly clear that nothing was coming...
He blew out a quick huff of air. Then his foot started tapping impatiently. Then he began to fidget. "Ahh, screw it," he muttered, his patience quickly wearing out. Waiting was boring. He picked a random direction and started walking.
Randee relaxes his stance for a while. "So, should we get in, then?"
Thral nods, he sneak down the hallway to one of the doors where the smear of slime follows.
Once he's adjacent to the door, he signels the others to approach.
Heading to the first door to the left, the closest one to be among those with slime smears, Thral signals for the others to approach.
Careful listening and checking the door seem unnecessary, as it hangs loosely in it's hinges, the part with the handle and lock missing and allowing to see inside.
Two desks are crammed into a crowded office, with more space dedicated to filing cabinets, bookshelves, and stacks of loose research than room for occupants.
There's two young - probably dead - doctors motionlessly slumped over their desks.
Hmm...is it normal for fog to do this? ...am I actually on a boat? It doesn't feel like I'm moving...
Belrim cautiously approaches the desk with the two dead doctors.
Thral follows beside Belrim, with his falchion held firmly in his grasp ready to chop at the corpse should it be a ghoul "playing dead".
Randee happily goes to the desk and examines everything, seeing that his companions are all ready for a nasty surprise.
Both Belrim and Thral hold in mid-attack when one of the corpses suddenly twitches...but find it was just a rat nibbling at the arm, startled by the the lot of you and running off towards some crack in the wall behind one of the desks.
Randee starts looking throught the desks, but the contents and papers are in a mess. A quick once-over presents nothing worthwhile, but if there was no hurry, it was always an option to take a more thorough look.
Thral exhales a sigh of relief through his nostrils, he puts his weapon arm at ease. With seemingly no threat, he begins to search the bodies and the desk that randee was rummaging through.
As he walks, Granite begins to wonder how far he's traveled. Or how far he had yet to travel to reach the source of the drumming. He found the sense of nothingness was starting to mess with his sense of time and distance. Where on earth could he be to have such vast nothing-ness?
Thral searches through the desks - most of the contents are mundane, and relate to the daily business of running an asylum - unremarkable psychological evaluations, bookkeeping, obscure medical notes. However, in one of the drawers, there's a thick yew wand etched with some runes. A piece of Twine connects it to a note reading Mr. Lantz, this is a place of science, not faith. Keep your religion at home, or the next time, I will dispose of these implements.
The thorough search doesn't unearth anything else remotely as interesting.
He places a hand on the door but pauses. Or...maybe it'll be locked. That would be a bit of a bummer... Shrugging, he pushes onward, attempting to open the door.
Belrim sighs audibly as the there was no supposed attack. "By the Gods, I hate this place!" With heavy pick in hand, the dwarf helps riffle through paperwork, looking for anything of use.
"Found a wand", Belrim says in passing.
With little else to find in the small office, Thral, Belrim, and Randee make their way over to the next door in the corridor, which also had slime trails leading towards it.
With all necessary precautions, they open it, to find a conference chamber with a large oval desk that seems to have been carved from a single piece of wood and probably had been valuable once. The partially toppled southwest walls caused some structural damage to it, and the whole room seems somewhat unsafe, statically.
The slime trail leads to a closet door in the northwestern corner, while a strange sarcophagus is propped up against the northern wall near the northeastern corner.
Belrim eyes the sarcophagus suspiciously.
Thral nods at Belrim and begins to slowly approach the Sarcophagus. Once within arms reach he eyes the vessel looking for potential religious symbols or any openings, latches or potential traps.
The sarcophagus does stand out somewhat from the rest of the furniture - it is made of a black metal. Closer inspection reveals a panel that easily slides open, revealing a blinking green light and a few buttons. Some runes are engraved on both the sarcophagus and below the buttons, but they seem unreadable.
Belrim takes a few steps back as the sarcophagus changes in nature. Then the dwarf notices Granite yelling something.
Thral scurries away from the sarcophagus, he looks for approval from Belrim. While he may of been the strongest kobold from his tribe he was still a kobold after all.
Belrim steps back from the Sarcophagus when it's content is revealed - but not faster than Thral, who manages to somehow place the Dwarf between himself and the technical apparatus in the blink of an eye.
Randy also followed, looking back and forth between the cabinet the noise came from and the sarcophagus in the corner.
Suddenly, the green blinking light is replaced with a continually glowing yellow light, and a red blinking light, as the body contained within this technological marvel suddenly twitches as if in pain.
.
"Damn. Another unfortunate bastard." The dwarf laments, shaking his head. Belgrim attempts to slap the human out of assuredly nightmare scape.
Thral stands beside Belrim, having nothing to stay he merely watches the strange man. Lingering in the back of his mind,'could this man be trusted? Randee even has history here, can I even trust myself?'
Instead he lowers his swordarm and watches the strange man carefully.
Hissing at the doorway with 2 or 3 mouths, he ignores you and rushes towards the opening despite the displeasure the light causes it...when some of the ribbons it attacked with earlier fly forward, pushing against the opening, not letting go despite suddenly catching fire, it becomes clear that the creature very much intends to pass through the opening.
You can't help but feel that that would be very bad for you for some reason...
Some vents on the side of the sarcophagus open, releasing steam with a hissing sound. Some sort of liquid seemed to have been inside, but is rapidly removed when the whole front side of the sarcophagus unlocks and slowly slides open. The person inside seems unconscious, but alive, still kept in place - or restrained - at neck, arms and legs with metal bindings.
With a loud gasp, the person who was in the sarcophagus breathes in, for the first time in quite a while. The sudden intake of air seems to cause pain to lungs suddenly needing to perform their function again.
With effort, he lifts his head, looking at his surroundings and you.
Granite flails unsuccessfully as he desperately cranes his head around. "Where's the door? Shut the door! We have to shut it before he comes through!"
Granite continues to struggle as the strange trio stares blankly at him. "We must shut the door! I don't think the light will deter it. Blast it all, why am I chained to this thing?"
As the seconds stretch on, they begin to feel like days turning into weeks. Confused and desperate, Granite looks at the gaping bunch before him. "Are ye deaf? " He enunciates his words clearly and raises his voice. Ye gads, this is worse than when I was alone, stuck in that misty world with the creature. At this rate the beast will surely kill these fools and then take his time eating me bit by bit, helpless as I am.
Belgrim, confused on how to remove the bonds of this human, takes out his greatpick and tries to pry the bindings off.
The bonds are designed to withstand fits and seizures, not outside tools or weaponry brought to bear against them. The arm and leg restraints fall quickly before the greatpick...the one securing the neck is a bit more tricky, but with some help from Thral, is also taken care of quickly.
Granite, once freed, quickly looks for a gate, door, portal, but fails to find any such, except the room door and the cabinet one, both of which have seen better times. Momentarily, he also finds that he is nude...clearly clothing was not a relevant part of the process that he was subjected to. Also his joints feel stiff when he moves, as if they have to remember their job after a long period of inactivity.
Thral is reasonably certain that he did not imagine the noise that startled him during his check of the sarcophagus, and points towards the cabinet doors when the sound repeats a minute or so after he initially heared it.
When he's released Granite jumps up and quickly spins out, desperately looking for the door. As he finds none, his panic fades to confusion. His confusion only increases as he realizes his current state, though he seems more perplexed by how much shorter Belrim is than him rather than his lack of clothes. Was I always this tall? He tried to recall but came up with nought. He didn't think like he had been made to feel like a giant before. Had he grown? But if he had come through the door and wound up in a body strapped to a table, did that mean it wasn't his original body? If the creature had gotten through first, would it now been in this body?
He rubbed his temples as the throb of a headache began to build behind his eyes. "What is going onnn." The question rhetorical, he shakes his body ("his" body?) in an attempt to clear the cobwebs, to no avail. He's about to introduce himself to these strange, possibly touched, fellows when the small dragon man points towards a cabinet. He briefly considers remaining silent in case stealth was important, only to recall he had been yelling just before.
"What about the cabinet?"
As he waits to see what these strange people want to do, he idly adds, "Thank you for releasing me earlier. I must apologize for my current state. Do you know what's going on? I...think I go by Granite. I feel like Granite anyway."