T'Orca climbs past several lines of shattered walls to reach the stick and begins poking about the area. You notice that Valais tries to follow, but stops short of the first row of debris. "Um. How? Oh. That, um... feels wrong... somehow. Um." Carefully, she wends her way to the stick but traces out a path along the rubble-free passageways to do so.
Returning to her investigation, T'Orca rummages about in the rubble and uncovers a lightly-buried cache of... dismembered body parts.
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"Why yes of course! I am happy to accompany MY MINIONS. Venture-Captains should be more active, after all. Do you accept the mission then, O Pathfinders?"Valais is unstable, to say the least. Munk recognizes her multiple personalities could make her dangerous to the party. In particular, he doesn't like the part of Valais that sees the party as "fresh minions."
Trifle is so on the same page.
Seeing the body parts, Trifle stifles the urge to ask the mismatched venture captain if any of the limbs look ... familiar.
"Well that's...unsettling," Trifle says. "Is this ... area ... familiar to you?" she asks the venture captain, studying her facial expression carefully as Valais takes in her surroundings.
Trifle also examines the body parts more carefully - how did they die (and how were they cut up), and what species do they appear to come from? She's assuming that they're human (since it wasn't otherwise specified), but you never know. Trifle's friend Paul just recently encountered some embodied gillman skeletons that were quite alarming.
[dice = Knowledge ... Nature]
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"Well that's...unsettling."
"Yeesh... let's hope this isn't our fate, too."
Monk turns to Valais.
"Valais, what do you know about these sticks and limbs? Are they part of Thurl's demonic experiments? Is this how he keeps his subjects from escaping? If you know anything, please help us."
As Munk grew up on a ship, and has always been particularly agile, he skillfully weaves his body in, around, and through the illuminated rubble. He examines one of the sticks more closely, making sure not to touch it. He looks for inscriptions, faded markings on the ground around the stick, and anything else that may help explain its function.
"I don't like this Thurl guy one bit," Munk says. Bones crack under his bare feet, and he grimaces. It looks like he's stepped on an elbow.
Sense Motive: 1d200 ⇒ 13
"Valais, what do you know about these sticks and limbs? Are they part of Thurl's demonic experiments? Is this how he keeps his subjects from escaping? If you know anything, please help us."
Valais appears not to have heard the question, nor Trifle's. She stands facing the wall, eyes wide and mouth firmly shut. After a momentary shudder, she asks, "Do... do you feel like we're being watched?"
The body parts are likely NOT human. Among the debris you find several barbed horns, bones, hooves, giant insect shells, and what appears to be a supply of demon carapace. The other cache is the same.
In fact, as you study her carefully, you notice... something... on the wall behind her, like a ghostly face peering at you. When you look more carefully, you see only a blank wall. You're not sure if you imagined it.
T'Orca stumbles backward, eyes closed. Regaining composure, T"Orca says a short prayer and then turns to Valais. By the light of the Dawnflower Valais, if you know or suspect what's going on here, tell us!
Valais looks at T'Orca, startled. "Huh? I... oh. Um." She stares wide-eyed for a moment at her claws. "I think... LISTEN. I think these are supplies for..." She doesn't finish, just looks down at her own patchwork body. Eventually she looks up and points deeper into the room. "There's a small shrine with a hidden door up ahead where the wretch built his lair." She waits for you to lead the way.
Neither of the detect spells reveal anything. Just stone.
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Looking at the body parts, are they recognizably outsider (or specifically demonic)?
(Barring anyone stopping him) Druthane takes out the elixir of Vision. "If you speak true, then we need to even the odds. I want to know who is watching me." He then downs the elixir and inhales through his teeth to sharpen the bitter aftertaste.
Once the effects settle in, he advances with a cautious eye (half speed)
Looking at the body parts, are they recognizably outsider (or specifically demonic)?
Yes. All demon-parts, but of various sorts.
The party wends its way deeper into the room. As you travel for several minutes, you pass by several chalk markings on the few walls still-standing. They seem to provide directions, of a sort, but with the maze in its current state they seem nonsensical at best. One reads "left at fork" and several others read "DEAD END".
Also:
Slowed by Valais' continued difficulty with a direct path, you eventually arrive at the small shrine.
Near the center of the maze stands a raised altar made of ivory-inlaid wood, its virtually pristine condition a sharp contrast to the shattered walls around it. At the center of the altar rests a statue of two figures locked in combat: a brass bull and an iron dwarf that gripes the animal by a horn from over its shoulder while holding a warhammer aloft. Delicately incised words encircle the statue’s base, reading, “In my name is the strength of my history, my tradition, and my people. Speak your name into my ear, and I shall judge your worth.”
Ober quickly identifies the iron dwarf as Torag, the Father of Dwarvenkind, who appears to be winning the battle with the bull.
The bull, Druthane and Trifle soon work out, is a gorgon. A faint shimmer of an inverted pentagram on the gorgon's brow might indicate the symbol of Asmodeus, but Ober (being a more serious student of religions) suggests that the bull is more likely a representation of Baphomet, the demon lord of beasts, labyrinths, and minotaurs.
Nothing happens for several long moments. Then, slowly, the entire altar begins to rotate, revealing a wrought-iron staircase underneath the altar which descends into the deep, deep, pitch-black dark.
Sigrun and Munk are able to just barely hear a sort of whispered echo, uttering "Ober Alain L'Outre..." just once to the cavern walls.
Meanwhile, Valais can't seem to take her mismatched eyes off the statues. "Something is wrong here," she says quietly.
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Although this seems obvious, Trifle casts a quick Detect Magic on the statue.
"Remember when our friend Kirael lost a finger following the instructions on a statue?" she murmurs to T'Orca and Munk. "Let's hope the same doesn't happen to Druthane....this cesspool doesn't need any more scattered bits of bodies!"
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Sigrun and Munk are able to just barely hear a sort of whispered echo, uttering "Ober Alain L'Outre..." just once to the cavern walls.
"Did you hear that voice? Someone--or something--is here with us! Everyone, be careful!"
Munk clenches his fists and gets into a defensive posture. He slowly backs away from the status, but his gaze remains fixed at the iron staircase. He half expects something to emerge from within and half expects the statues to spring to life. In any case, the ominous voice doesn't leave a good feeling in Munk's gut.
"We're not alone."
"Explain. Exactly what is wrong here?"
"I... I'm not sure. It just... looks wrong--PATHETIC IDOLATRY."
While at casual glance Torag seems ready to clobber the gorgon, a closer inspection of their respective stances reveals that the dwarf-god is off-balance and Baphomet's mighty horns are poised to strike. This is a shrine to Baphomet, not Torag.
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Trifle takes a moment to consider her knowledge of Baphomet. "Baphomet's the demon lord of minotaurs, beasts, and labyrinths. One could hope that labyrinths were the only connection, but let's all keep a careful ear out for roaring as well..."
"Does anyone else want to speak their name and social security number to the statue, or should we move on?"
The spiral stairs descend for a short while until you reach the next level below. The first room is odd, to say the least.
The cage-like spiral staircase of rusting wrought iron from whence you came stands along one wall of this room. Dim but vibrant green light pulses from two large glass vats that stand from floor to ceiling in the far corners. Powdery rust coats much of the floor, though several lines of footprints crisscross the room. Metal doors lead to the east and west.
The detect spell doesn't raise any alarms. T'Orca's fleeting inspection of the vats is hindered by their foggy opacity, but (with a little help from Ober) the paladin's vision suddenly focuses on a distended eye staring back at her. There is a larger form deeper within each vat, but the exact nature is difficult to make out through the glass.
Valais stands in front of one vat, mouth silently agape in catatonic horror. T'Orca's question snaps her back to the present, and she slowly manages "I think... I think I was born here... THIS IS WHERE that murderer Thurl would finish his experiments. I--WE--remember him visiting me many times to take measurements and write on the wall and do nasty things, for which he shall pay..."
Valais does respond to Druthane's query. "Um. Maybe, I don't kn--yes, we should smash them to tiny bits, to make them pay!"
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"I don't know that it is a good idea to destroy the vats. They may be alive in there, and destroying their containers might kill them..."
Trifle takes a moment to look further around the room, including at the footprints. She wants to know what they seem to be from, and where they head - perhaps to a hidden door?
Trifle tries to look around the room but fails to open her eyes.
Trifle looks down at her feet just in time to see a millipede clamber over them. Indeed, the very floor seems alive, positively teeming with beetles, mites, arthropods, and other insects that scatter from you wherever you walk. The floor itself has an odd sponginess to it, which you notice (not without a turn of the stomach) is the result of what appears to be years' worth of uncleaned blood stains and much-trodden viscera that feed the vermin all around you.
The tracks running through this caked blood meal go all over the room, but most heavily run between the vats and the western door, the vats and the staircase, and the staircase and the eastern door.
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Druthane ponders silently for a moment as he applies some Vermin Repellent
"Let me examine this in far more detail." I'll take 20, and assuming it's been less than an hour since the Baphomet statue, that's a 32.
The insects give Druthane a wide berth as he spends a goodly while peering into the vats, which periodically bubble as part of some chemical or arcane incubation process. Inside each vat, he is just able to make out snippets of a single creature. Those body parts he can see are quiltworks of multicolored, stapled flesh much like Valais.
On the wall between the vats is a large set of numerical data written in chalk, but even after some study you lack the context to comprehend its meaning.
"Valais, what do you think we should do with the bodies?" She seems most qualified, after all.
Valais turns to Trifle with a dumbfounded expression. Her fanged mouth twitches slightly as though she's considering what to say, but no words come out. Eventually the booming baritone manages a short suggestion in Abyssal--"COMMAND THEM"--before Valais gives a shudder and returns to glancing fretfully about the room, apparently forgetting the question.
Guided by a spell of Dancing Lights Druthane will explore a little deeper, blade drawn and the verbal component to a spell dancing on his lips.
Which direction? East door or west door?
Listening at the door, Druthane makes out the faint sounds of running water...
The door leads to a narrow hallway, which again forks east and west. To the east is a room half-submerged in water and emitting a terrifically foul stench; to the west is what appears to be the Lodge's third library.
Stairs descend from the west into this flooded chamber. Stagnant water opaque with grime and scum fills the chamber, which is featureless but for a rusting metal door to the north and several eroded runes near the waterline.
Valais offers some comment here, a little more composed than usual. "Thurl left this way, I think. I thought about following to flay him alive but something doesn't smell right about the water..."
The murky water is almost too opaque to even see the dancing lights below the surface, making its depth uncertain.