"Seems fairly standard then. No rumors of weird experiments going on in there, closed only 19 years ago for health and safety reasons. Still probably some crazy ghosts in there though. Everyone should watch their backs." He continues onward towards the front entrance, keeping an eye on his surroundings and the handheld device's beeps. He dosn't notice that his eyes momentarily glow as he looks around.
Seven steps lead up to the asylum's front door. It's still locked with a chain, but the door opening is easily two feet, allowing entrance to any and all who desire it.
Streaks of mold stain the walls of the lobby, and the floor below is a thick layer of desert sandy. A desk rests at the front of the room, with a single door allowing access to the rest of the building. You get the eerie feeling you're not alone...
"Keep an eye out for ghouls. A creepy place like this is exactly where they'd spawn." He takes a look around the room before moving to the door, on the off chance there might be clues as to what's happened.
Valda scanned the room with detect magic, and had a good look besides. She didn't trust this place as far as she could throw it, and wished she knew more fire spells, in case it needed burning to the ground.
Nothing comes up as magic. In general, the room looks completely mundane, albeit kind of nasty from sandy mold.
The front desk sits behind the sort of counter commonly seen in doctor's offices and hospitals, though it is not enclosed. Isagoras walks behind the counter and checks the draws. There are no documents remaining, but the old phone is still hooked into the wall. When tested, it provides no dialtone, as expected. Isagoras is ready to abandon his search and move on, when he spots a stain on the floor under the desk. The stain is large, and appears to be dried blood.
As the wizard considers this, Dave and Valda both notice an eerie green light pass under the heavy wooden door leading to the rest of the building.
Valda gestured to the others, and then at the light. Sure, it could be teens with glowsticks. Or it could be a light that melted off people's faces. There was really only one way to find out, now wasn't there? Valda listened at the door, and if it sounded clear, would try to open it.
"Alright, that better not have been a glowing one." Dave comes up behind Valda, paying close attention to the counter.
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Maria also helps look around the area.
The room beyond the door off of the lobby is small, only 10'x10'. It has a hallway extending back into the building, and a door on either side. These doors, unlike the door to the lobby, are standard metal hospital doors, with 1' square windows of reinforced glass at head level.
The light that you saw initially is absent, and this room is very dark, but after a few seconds, you see it coming again toward you down the hall. As it approaches, you realize with horror that the light spills forth from the eyes, nose, and mouth of a demented Jack-o-Lantern which is floating five feet off the ground and approaching you rapidly.
Jack initiative:
MAP:
__________|_|____________
________D_____D__________
________|__D__|__________
__________V_A____________
V is Valda, A is David, D are doors, and everyone else is in the room behind V and A.
I am more concerned about more real threats, like Will-o-Wisps. Or flying angler fish... Pavel says, giving a slight shudder at the thought.
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"Alright, what."
"Nope." With a smooth motion Valda drew her gun from the extra-dimensional space it was stored in, cocked the heavy handgun, and fired. She was having none of these shenanigans today.
Dave proceeds to calmly walk up to the floating thing, then in a flash he brings his sword across the creature's form.
Isagoras:
Joey:
Initiative Order:
Dave
Valda
Joey
Isagoras
Pavel
Jack-O-Lantern
Valda's touch attack hits home, doing significant damage but not destroying the bizarre construct. Dave's slashing attack follows, also failing to destroy the creature entirely.
Next, Joey fires his pistol, but the shot misses.
Isagoras and Pavel can both act before the Jack-o-Lantern takes out its wrath (on Dave).
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Isagors mumbles the spell of summoning...but it's different than before. Instead of the clean, flowing tones the party was used to, this spell is broken. Disjointed. Like notes made from jagged rocks, or a tree struck by lightening, it's broken husk laying at unnatural angles across a grove it had grown in for decades.
Again an eagle appears, opposite Joey to grant him advantage, but this is no creature of nature. It is a sickly purple where there should be gold, black where it should be white.
And from it's back grow three thrashing, whipping tentacles.
The cry of battle it emits no longer sounds so much like a hunting bird of prey, but like a drowning frog.
... Or pumpkins, pumpkins are now going on the list, Pavel says as he draws his revolver and fires at the thing, whatever it is.
[dice=INitiative]1d20+1
Isagoras' mutated eagle hits but fails to confirm the critical, doing normal damage. Pavel's shot just misses the Jack-o-Lantern's touch AC.
The Jack slams into Dave and attempts to bite him, but both attacks fail.
Bite
Slam
Maria's action.
Maria pulls out her trusty tarot deck and throws a card at the Jack-O-Lantern.
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Dave's sword move's effortlessly as he strikes it at unexpectedly vulnerable places in the odd creature's form, practicly dancing as he moves.
Dave cleaves the horrifying apparition in twain. A normal Jack-o-Lantern drops to the floor, but quickly festers and rots until almost nothing remains. The hall ahead is now silent, and a door lies on either side of you in the small room.
Valda starred at the strange thing as it vanished. "So...that was a thing that happened. I guess we're sure that this is a job for us." Moving to the door the left of the room, Valda checked it before entering.
"Well, there was a small chance it was just a normal jack o lantern attached to a fishing pole. Then it started trying to bite me. Okay, I thought, maybe it could be a robot. But nope. It's empty. And it also just went way pat it's expiration date in like, three seconds. Not stopping for us to make a pie out of it or anything, but then again, who would actually eat a guard that had a ghost inside it once anyway."
At some point between talking and people blinking, his sword manages to vanish behind his back as if it were never wielded in the first place. There's a high chance he's mostly showing off. With the immediate threat taken care of however, he start looking around for danger like Valda, though he's not much help.
Valda, paying close attention to the door on the left, is the first to notice something strange when Isagoras opens it. It starts slow, but soon she sees the shrieking face of a lunatic pushing out from the wood of the door as if struggling to be released.
Suddenly, the ghostly form flies out of the door! As it does, the door flies open, giving Isagoras a nasty 1 HP bump on the noggin, before immediately slamming shut. The ghostly asylum patient fades into the door across the room.
You see!?! Pavel shouts, pointing to where the ghostly figure went and obviously feeling vindicated that something proved his point. Whether his point was ever said and if anyone knows it appears to be irrelevant, he simply keeps pointing at the door and looking triumphant. See?!?
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Isagoras rises from the floor, brushing himself off and rubbing the bump on his head. "Hmm, yes, given that my eyes still work and the supernatural ephemeral embodiment slammed in to me, it can be reasonably said that I did, indeed, see."
The ur-eagle hisses at the retreating form...and -it- pushes open the door, manipulating the knob with it's tentacles, a baleful light in it's eyes taking offense that something harmed it's master and did not stay around long enough to be properly killed.
"So, did Google lie to us? Is this really a horror movie asylum? Because ghost patient did not look happy to see us." Valda looked at the other door, then stood back as the Eagle opened the door. Which was pretty damned weird too, really.
"Okay, what the hell was that." He says rather blankly, staring at where the spectre vanished. "Are you absolutely positive that the article didn't mention anything about people dying here? Cause if that wasn't a dead person then I just gotta say, the magic world is full of some messed up s!&$. Eagle included."
The door does not slam a second time, and you are free to travel down the left corridor. It seems to go about 100 feet, with doors every 15' on either side, before curving back into the building. No light is coming from outside, as there are no external windows.
Casting Light, since it was cheaper than batteries, Valda moved along the corridor. She checked out the first door, but assumed it was a basic patients room, given the doors were repeated.
"I'll take government cover-ups for $1000, Alex." Maria says, deadpan.
Inside the room Valda opens is a metal frame bed, some old flashlight batteries, and the remains of an obvious drug and booze session, probably a decade old. No evidence of the paranormal here.
"Patient rooms," Valda said outloud, her suspicions confirmed. She moved down the corridor, glancing into each room to make sure it was the same until reaching the end.
Dave follows along, one hand in his pocket as he's once again fully embraces the facade of being unprepared. "You know that really could be it. Might not've actually been 'radiation' that shut this place down, but weird magic s$%@. I'm till watching that counter though."
Yes, please do, Pavel says, a grim "I Told You So" smile still on his face as he draws his sword and checks the rooms on the opposite side of the hall from Valda for anything out of the ordinary for an old abandoned asylum.
The geiger continues to read low level radiation, about double the normal exposure you'd read back in the city on an average day. Nothing too dangerous in the short term.
As Valda checks each door, it becomes obvious that most of them have been used for nefarious purposes of one sort of another since the place was shut down. At the last room, however, she receives a shock: opening the door reveals a body on the floor in a straight jacket; it appears the dry air has significantly slowed the rotting process, or else it is not long dead.
Looking into the various scenes of humanities less savory side was never fun. Finding a body was even less so. Valda drew her gun as she advanced on the corpse, trying to see if it was likely one of the missing kids - or the ghost from earlier.
Valda is unable to determine for sure how long the body has been here, but Maria (with her Heal skill) is pretty certain it's fairly recent. A quick check against google reveals it is, in fact, one of the missing young men. Suddenly, Valda's eye is drawn from her phone, back to the corpse. Did it just twitch?
Watching for several seconds, no one sees anything, but then, quite suddenly, the entire body jumps up in a most unnatural way, almost like a marionette. However, the body quickly slides free to reveal a straight jacket hovering above the floor.
Doors in the hallway open, and from the rooms across the hall, two more floating straight jackets advance on the party of their own volition.
Dave:
Valda:
Isagoras:
Maria:
Pavel:
Joey:
Straight Jackets (3):
Isagoras, Valda and Dave all go before the creepy straight jackets. Everyone else goes after.
Dave once again nonchalantly walks up toward one of the jackets in the hall, as if not deterred by their presence in the least. He leans close, cupping his chin as if he were some high class fashinista observing the latest dresses to come off the runway.
But then suddenly his sword is out and going for one of the jacket's seams. He then twists slightly to the left, and goes for the other as well.
+2 Dispatchment
+2 Dispatchment
Not entire shocked by this turn of events, Valda decided it was time to put a reasonably large hole in one of the animated straight jackets.
You can, but since they are all flat footed, you could attack two different ones; you'll get sneak damage either way.
Also, are you doubling your sneak attack dice based on having a critical, is that where you're getting 6d6?
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Isagoras begins chanting, and his comrades quickly recognize it as a summoning incantation, but, again, the tone is...off. As it someone was trying to describe a building with non-euclidean angles. Or if you heard a song in no language a man has ever said, in words no human could pronounce. The air seems to reverbrate as the laws of physcis are first bent, then broken, and a gaping hole is RIPPED in the very air and out walks creature made by Mother Nature's rebellious goth daughter.
Next to a jacket forms an giant ant. But it walks on two legs like a man, the other four limbs wave wave in the air, ending with grasping, gnashing wickedly jagged pincers. It stalks forward with the obvious intent of murder, swaying only slightly as the scant light glints on it's craggy and uneven carapace.
The ant lunges toward the jacket and seems to attack it with it's whole body, resembling more the clutching, hugging death grip of a spider than any ant seen on Earth.
You are aware that sneak attack damage does not double under normal rules, correct? Is there a special ability I'm missing somewhere?
Ninja unchained:
"The ninja's attack deals extra damage anytime her target would be denied a Dexterity bonus to AC (whether the target actually has a Dexterity bonus or not), or when the ninja flanks her target. This extra damage is 1d6 at 1st level, and increases by 1d6 every 2 ninja levels thereafter. Ranged attacks can count as sneak attacks only if the target is within 30 feet. This additional damage is precision damage and is not multiplied on a critical hit."