Mahb rattles the door, but it remains firmly attached.
"Vampire moss?!? Umm, what did I walk into?"
"A nasty bit of work, saps the blood out of you if it gets in a wound. Just don't go pricking yourself near it and you'll be fine. Best to stay away from it though."
Mahb glares at the stuck door, as if it chose to resist her attempts to open it. "Problem with this door is it sets close to those pods. Not sure if they'll smell our blood if anyone gets close to the door."
or maybe not
"...I bet they have a blade trap in here too..." Eva search the area carefully for traps before she would even think of stepping foot in the room, no matter how tempting it was.
Eva doesn't find any traps in the door, and they'd be rather obvious given how damaged the door frame is.
Kjel seems to be having some trouble getting a good grip on the door thanks to the saps.
Mahb's hair yanks on the door yet again, with Kjel's help.
The door finally opens, after the hinges pop and snap free. Nearby on the wall, a couple of scythe pods snap as well, sending seeds spinning out. But they don't encounter any flesh, and hit the vines on the floor and spin through a couple making a mess before they stop moving.
Inside the room is what looks like an obvious bedroom, a bed, dresser, table. Skeletal remains lay on the bed, vines grown up and through the bones, as well as covering the bed and dresser and walls. There's a large white flower blooming where the window was, it's about the size of a person's head.
Mahb glances in the room and sniffs the air, curious to search a bedroom more than she is in recalling any facts about the strange plant.
"Eva, Lineera... ever seen a plant like this?"
"Hm?" Eva leaves the lab room to head over and take a look. She makes sure to keep as much distance as she can from the Death Scythes.
"No... can't say I have"
"Well in a place with vampire moss and deadly vines, I'm sure as hell not gonna go sniff it. "
"Not just a pretty face, are ya?" The hag smiles. "I'm gonna see about the other door before I try to play with that flower."
The old woman winds her way carefully along the wall, eyes wary for danger.
Let me know if you guys see any traps.
Kjel will keep an eye on the flower, but not approach it. If it makes any threatening moves, he'll toss an axe at it.
From a hopefully safe distance, Mahb tries to yank open the remaining door with her snaking hair. Stuck like the other doors , it takes another yank before the door comes open.
Mahb's surly nature and titanic self-assurance resists the unknown.
When the door opens, a bundle of vines bursts out. Tangled up in them is a skeleton. The skeleton's skull bounces a few inches in front of Mahb's face as the vines escape the confines of the closet. The old which just blinks at the unexpected eruption.
Other than the vines and skeleton, there are some broken buckets and a snapped broom in the closet.
Mahb looks over the plant carefully and then the skeleton trapped within it.
Mahb finds nothing odd about the skeleton. It's oddly intact, primarily because the vines grew in and round all the bones.
Eva, having failed to figure out the flower, and with Mahb moving on to another door, had gone back to the lab. Stepping in the room, she watched her step and her surroundings. Watching for traps with each step forward.
Eva doesn't see anything of value, at least not without having to brush all the vampire moss off of everything. It's just too heavily overgrown.
"OK, I appear to be a bit out of my depth here. Could someone tell me when and where to move so the plants don't eat me? I've fought a lot of things in my fairly short life, but usually it is not the greenery. "
"Well, there's those scythy pods on the wall over there (forget the name, basically stay away from them, 'cause they explode. Then there's the vampire moss. Other than that, we've honestly just taken the route of assume plants are dangerous in here, because we're not really liking the whole 'plants kill you' thing either." Then leaning over and calling over, Lineera asks, "Find anything, Mahb?"
The hag glances sourly around the room, "Jes' a closet and another corpse..." She shrugs in response to the warrior's question, "Problem is, beneath the boring vines might be something nasty. I'm just walking where I need to go and hoping nothin' goes wrong... If the cult that set up shop here is anythin' like the one we found in Perdition's Point, then the missing children are possibly stored in those coffins yonder - in a dark sleep. So we need to make our way over there and check it out. Of course, since all the worst plants grow on foul necromancies... those boxes are like to be hazardous." She laughs grimly. "I'm old so I guess I'll play the sacrificial lamb."
The old woman takes a circuitous route, looking for trouble.
Mahb moves closer to the coffins, and peers at them closely. Both are covered in purple vines. Not the big ones, very tiny ones, each no bigger than a human hair. But there are thousands and thousands of them, and they run down and off and under the other larger green and black vines.
Mahb almost laughs. Yet another damned plant... She looks it over and is fairly certain she's never heard of it before. "Eva, ever read 'bout a tiny, tiny purple vine... smaller'n hairs?"
Eva left hear searching the lab to head over towards Mahb, looking closely at the hair thin purple vines. "Hm..."
The hag grunts. "A'right. You best step away." Mahb waits for Eva to move off. Then her hair creeps forward to the full extent it can and brushes the tendril vines off the coffin. The witch watches for any reaction from the strange vines.
The tendril vines snap and break, writhing as if in pain. Then they all turn black and fall to dust.
Somewhere, something heavy makes a booming sound, and all around the group vines shudder and vibrate.
"Fee Fie Foe Fum, something wicked this way come." The voice echoes through the tower, it takes a second for everyone to realize it's the leaves of all the vines vibrating in harmony that's making the sound. "Arise, spirits damned, a price for trespass do demand."
The air begins to fill with a moaning, as many tortured souls were being drawn forth. The air begins to thrum. "Awake awake... so long asleep.. something mortal this way comes... drink of it's life deep..."
"Ok, that doesn't sound good. "
The witch curses and prepares for a fight...
Lineera holds her aspergelium at the ready, and goes about the corner to where Mahb suggested an undead stood in a pile of vines, and strikes at it, regardless of its animation.
Lineera slams her aspergelium into the skeleton, even as the vines are detaching from the wall and wrapping over it's bones and interweaving. The vines are tough and spongy, and the aspergelium slides over the hard husks of the vines.
In the lab, as Kjel watches, the skeleton covered in red moss straightens and turns, bits of red moss falling from it's body as it straightens and turns, it's jaw hanging loose on one side, giving it a maniacal look.
A third skeleton rises up and comes stomping out of the room with the flower.
The flower covered skeleton moves out of the bedroom, and it's vines writh and coil. It moves up to Riley and slashes with one flower covered hand, but misses the dexterous thief.
However, as it closes, there is a sickly sweet smell of death that floods Riley's nostrils.
Init : Flower, Kjel, Regal, Lineera/Mahb, Eva/Riley, Moss
Kjel will step forward and strike at the red skeleton with his axe.
power attack with mithral axe.
"There's only one in this room here, if we can beat it down, we can fort up in there and use the door as a choke point. Head over here. "
Kjel wades into the moss coated room, and slams his axe into the moss coated skeleton. A cloud of red moss explodes from the hit, and Kjel takes half the skeleton's ribs out in one swipe. The air in the room is filled with bits of floating red moss.
Mahb moves to assist Riley, having her hair try to bind the creature striking at the rogue.
The creature Lineera attacked spends it's action completing it's body before the vines sever from the floor with a snap that leaves sap on the floor. The creature appears to have grown bark over it's bones.
Lineera steps back from the bark covered skeleton with a confused look. "Well you're new..." Lineera pulls her dark energy around her, letting the tower fuel and power her.