Victor easily passes through the empty door frame, and finds himself in a wide room.
White tile, spiderwebbed with cracks, lines the walls of this cathedral-like hall. A prominent, oval desk faces staunch double doors, while hard benches and portraits of somber
doctors line the walls. Regal stairs ascend toward a second
floor, but rubble has crushed the upper flights, blocking
passage. Lofty windows, gridded by bars, reveal yellow fog
seething just beyond.
There are eight doors in this hall. The wide double doors to the south are clearly the entrance/exit to the asylum, while another pair of double doors sit across from them to the north. Two doors to the northeast appear to go to the same room. A further door to the south east sits just wide wall of rubble that blocks off the east hallways, with another door barely visible past the obstacle. Two more doors sit across from each other just north of the rubble wall.
A crackle of a thunder, this time a terrified woman's scream, breaks the silence of the asylum halls, but no monsters can be seen in this hall.
Shirrin advances into the room and looks around
"Well, at least we have more places to explore.I don't like leaving anything behind us so I'd suggest we explore the room to the south first"
Toad shrivels at the sound of the woman shrieking in the sky.
He nods to Shirrin. "Yes, let's see if we can't just get outside from here. I don't know about that fog, though... I mean, have you seen the shapes within it?"
"I'm not going into that fog. Not unless I have NO other options. When we've explored this whole place and are running out of food, THEN I might become desparate enough to go into the fog. Maybe"
Victor will go over to the doors the group believes heads outside and look out any glass parts or failing that through the keyhole but definitely doesn't try to open it. "I wouldn't want to try running through there unless we had a distraction for those shapes."
Toad creeps nearby, yellow eyes peering out through the windows. Toothy squeaks in fear and hides within his shirt.
Amy hurries over to the doors that lead outside. As the woman's scream echoes around, Amy begins to bang on the door, attempting to open it in a panic.
"We have to get out!"
Shirrin goes up to Amy
"Its ok, we WILL get out. We've taken every thing this damn place has thrown at us and we're still standing. We WILL find a way out. You've got to stay strong. For the children if not for yourself"
A peek through the keyhole gives Victor, and Toad looking out the windows, a glimpse of how intrusive the yellow fog is. He can barely see past the stairs leading up to the asylum's front door, but as he stares, he notices faint, bulbous shapes slowly shuffling through the fog, and hears the sound of a stomach gurgling.
Amy kicks the door once more then whimpers. She lets George guide her away from the door, and follows after the others in silence, looking frail and afraid.
"Amy there are things out there and they are hungry. We can't just charge out there and hope to escape. Going outside would surely attract their attention. I'm not saying we are safe here... but it's certainly better than out there."
"There are things inside that are hungry!" Amy retorts. But, she casts a nervous glance at the door, clearly worried that the monsters outside might be worse than those inside...
"Then how will we get out?" she asks pointedly. "We can't stay here forever. We won't survive!"
She crosses her arms, but follows after the others without further complaint.
"We still have some food, we can wait a little while longer. Perhaps we can find some way to sneak past them. Or a way to distract them. If we must face them at least trying to get better weapons and supplies will improve our odds."
"Let's try those other double doors, they might go somewhere of importance and help us improve our lot." Victor put's a hand on Amy's shoulder in an attempt to encourage and comfort her.
"Yea, I am not going out into that fog," Toad says as he follows the others back into the grand foyer. "Someone must be sending help. They must." He says this firmly and definitively, as though convincing himself. "Someone will come. In the meantime, we can make ourselves useful trying to get to the bottom of this. There might be an explanation somewhere in the building, or more survivors. We could save lives. And the creatures here are just flesh and blood, and we know we can fight them. That's more than I can say for those, those things wandering through the fog outside!"
"Victor's right. Let's just take it one room at a time and see what we find. It's better than curling up in a ball and giving up."
Toad then approaches the other double doors, studying them for signs of danger.
"I'm hoping that we can find out what is going on and STOP IT. Some planar doorway that can be closed. Some magic item that can be destroyed. SOMETHING like that.
If nothing else, exploring has already let me remember a little of my past. If we remember more, maybe we'll learn something. Maybe we'll learn that we're all really powerful wizards who can just blast the fog apart. Or something like that."
"Wouldn't that be nice George." Victor will open the door once Toad is happy that it is clear of traps.
Comforted a bit by Victor's presence, and Toad's assurances that help is coming, Amy takes a deep breath.
"Alright. Once room at a time..."
George does not notice any traps and Victor opens the doors to a library. Sagging shelves, held together by dust and an extensive
system of rolling ladders, ring this library of husky, dull-looking tomes. At the room’s center broods a heavily worn table surrounded by uncomfortable chairs. A chandelier of iron vines dangles above. The scents of leather and old paper pervade the high-ceilinged space, but so does a distinct bestial musk.
Victor's nose wrinkles and he keeps his guard up as he slowly moves into the room. His eyes dart to under the table in case some kind of beast springs forth.
On the off chance that George can recognize the smell
"Animals!" Toad sounds excited. "I like animals. "
But then, he'd thought that he liked plants, too, and just look at how that had turned out...
Amy casts one last longing glance at the front exit, before following the others into the library.
She sniffs the air, then lingers at the entrance, wary of going further into the room.
"I doubt we'll like this animal..." she replies to Toad.
Amy stares hard at her hands for a while, eventually causing a cold, green goo to appear. The slimy ooze slithers up her arms, engulfs her body, and then vanishes.
Don't scream! Don't scream!
She could still feel it, cold and clammy against her skin. The feeling sent a shiver down her spine.
Oh, disgusting! Get it off, get it off!
Then, from her spot at the back of the room, she looks around nervously.
As the party moves into the room, a sequel from atop a book shelf draws their attention. Three tiny creatures were shrieking at the party, racing back and forth on top of the bookshelves. They had four legs and black fur with a rat-like body but a human head with red eyes and sharp teeth. In a fury, they gathered books nessled around them, ready to throw them at the party.
Initives
Amy shrieks when she sees the ugly little rat-men, thinking they're something out of a nightmare. She thrusts her arms forward, causing a sticky glob of goop to fly at the nearest rat-thing.
"Great, more monstrosities"
for
If one was entangled I'd shoot at that one
Victor doubted the little rat men would come within range of his scimitar so put's it away and draws his pilum "We're ready to defend ourselves, if you don't want a fight you better make it known swiftly."
"Maybe they're--" Toad winces as the others fire. "--friends?"
But something takes hold of him, a sort of nervous excitement that makes his stomach tingle and his pupils dilate, his mouth go dry and his heart flutter. A primal passion awakens, or is simply remembered.
The thrill of the hunt.
His eyes locked on the rodents, he nods almost imperceptibly to Toothy, who flies out over the table before him, shattering into hundreds of doppelganger rats.
George realizes that the rats are actually ratlings, intelligent rat-like creatures with a thirst for knoweldge. With minor defensive magical abilities and immunity to poison and disease, they can prove a challenge to pin down.
The ratlings small size makes them difficult to hit , causing both Amy and George to miss. The ratlings chitter to each other in some bizzare language, before moving around the bookshelves summoning their own rat swarms to impede the party.
As the rats swarm over Amy a wall of green slimy goo appears around her, preventing some of the damage.
She screams wildly, and rushes out of the rat swarm, swatting the rats off of her.
Even once she's free of the rats she continues to scream at the top of her lungs.
"Eeeeek! They're in my hair! Get them off, get them off!!"
"Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!"
Toad gasps as a wave of rats flood out into the chamber. Knowing exactly the type of damage their little teeth and claws can cause, he tries to leap up onto a nearby table.
He pulls out his sling, loading it with a piece of rubble and aiming at one of the enemy swarms.
Victor eyes up the ratmen and hurls his pilum at one of them before drawing his scimitar. "Pull back!" He starts looking towards the door they just entered through
[ooc]From the map, none of us are hit by 3 swarms. Not sure but for the moment I'm going to assume that I take 5
So, diseased and distracted. Shirrin takes his one move action to move away
Still chittering amongst themselves, the ratlings throw heavy tomes at the remaining party members while the swarms move to attack those remaining.
Victor chops a few rats in half before moving out of the room again. "Get out and close the doors, there's too many rats. We're being eaten alive!"
"Ruuuuun!" Toad screams in terror, experiencing first-hand the horror of a swarm of carnivorous rats. Leaving a trail of blood in his wake, he and his own rats flee out of the library door.
When the swarm overcomes her, another wall of green, slimy goo surges outward from her body, dulling the bites of the rats.
---
Amy shrieks frantically and stumbles out of the room.
The ratlings laugh, hoot and shirek as the party flees from the library, before returning to what they were doing before. The summoned rat swarms, however, slowly try to follow the party out of the library, becoming an horrid wall of fur and teeth rolling out the library doors.
Toad slams the door, leaving a bloody hand print on the wood.
The slamming door blocks off the chittering of the ratlings, and the advance of the summoned rat swarms. As the party breaths a sigh of relief, the door shakes. There's a pause and the door shakes again. The maddening sound of countless bodies throwing themselves vainly against the door echos throughout the administration hall.
Amy shrieks and hops back from the door. She hurries over to the oval desk and stands behind it, looking nervous and scared...
"Well, that was pretty much a disaster, Shall we try a different door? Or maybe we can try to negotiate through the door?. Although, after we attacked them, I doubt they'd be willing to talk"
Victor puts a hand on Amy's shoulder trying to calm her, positive energy flows into her healing some of her wounds.
"I think we should try... I don't want them waiting til we are dealing with some of the other creatures running around and then attacking us."
At Victor's touch, Amy calms a bit. She looks at him with worried eyes.
"What was that?" she asks. "They came out of nowhere..."
"A summoning spell. Not unlike Toothy, but...different. A different kind of magic. Though their teeth are just as sharp."
Toad pants, his blood flowing freely and dripping down onto the stones around him. As if just noticing, he gasps and lays his own hands upon himself.
"We need to be better prepared. Let's return to Winter and see if she can help us find more suitable weapons."
"Perhaps explore in a different direction before returning? We have a limited time before our food supply runs out."
As the party discusses what to do, the pounding on the library door suddenly stops. The asylum returns to its uneasy silence.
Seeing the healing energy's effect on Amy Victor tries repeating the effect on Toad.
"Agreed with me someone who has better luck than me should choose the next door."