Varta drinks the soup, makes a show of enjoying it and follows the others.
Tempest mounts up upon Stormcloud, the shaggy beast sensing the tension in the air, and seemingly anxious to move as well.
Yet another time you head out, under the dark sky and the heavy rain. Your clothes barely got any dry from the brief stop at the jail, and another march under the rain changes little for you. Large pools are forming in the corners where the cobblestones aren’t well-placed.
It is sort of hard to see where you are going in the barely lit streets: the very few open windows you en-counter in your path get hastily closed as you pass by.
Finally, on the eastern slopes of the Hill, you arrive at a brooding, large, squat one-story structure, looming over the edge of the Hill. A bare plaza is in front of the building, which is made entirely of grey, unadorned stone – quite an oddity in this part of town, where middenstone bricks are common. Streams of water gush down the heavily sloped roof splashing on the ground in front of the entrance.
You see very few windows of dark, tinted glass, all shut close, covered by iron bars and hardly large enough for someone bigger than Tempest to squeeze through even if the bars where to be removed.
By contrast, the main doors, smack in the middle of the front of the building, are apparently unlocked and not even closed: in the dim light provided by a lantern covered in glass, you can see the doors are just ajar, and a ray of light from inside shines on the three granite steps the front entrance rests upon.
"The doors are open?" Xander says, concerned.
Listening to something unheard, he nods. "I agree. Not a good sign at all. Mavro, you want to lead us in?"
The Pharasman spiral on his pendant burst to light as the approached the darkened doors.
"Feh. Sending the old man in first?" Mavro complains halfheartedly, with a hushed tone. It is rather clear that he has no real objections.
The magus takes the lead, his quarterstaff held before him in both hands in a defensive gesture.
Varta follows her aged companion.
Tempus follows in the middle of the pack, mounted upon Stormcloud.
Once Mavro opens the barely accosted doors, a pitiful sight appears to his eyes.
The atrium is a room of irregular shape – aside from the entrance, there is another double door in front of Mavro, and three smaller ones on the sides of the room. The inside of the building is very gloomy, bare walls painted of a pale green dimly lit by opaque and dusty candelabra here and there.
Lying on the stone floor are two men and a woman, tightly bound in straitjackets and chained to the wall. The two men start shrieking and twitching and jerking their chain as they see Mavro get in, while the woman, staring blankly in front of her and with a bit of drool coming out of her mouth, hollers a nonsensical rhyme.
“'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe! ”
Xander moves in with Mavro, concerned for the crazed people in the room.
"They should't be out here, should they?"
Milo trails after the others, squinting up at the atrium's ceiling, the rotting walls.
"Not where I'd want to be stashed if my mind cracked," he admits. "This poor wretch of a lass makes sense than our last fellow."
He edges closer to the strait-jacketd woman, staying out of the range of the length of her chain.
"Hello, princess! What language are you speaking, hmm?"
There's a door to the south, it seems-- so while keeping an eye on the three mad souls, he backs to that door, and listens at it.
Stepping into the asylum, Mavro curls his lip when he sees the evidently insane.
"Perhaps Crove wants to feed them to the beast," he remarks carelessly as he approaches the east doors, paying the three patients no heed. Stopping at the doors, he listens carefully for anything past the doors.
"Those chains are not original to the room. This room was just an atrium. So why are they here?"
"Gah! Smells like Mavro's feet in here."
Tempest looks around the chamber with disdain, a mixture of pity and disgust on her feature while she regards the inmates.
"An offering, no doubt. He hopes that if the beast gorges itself on these here, it will be too full to eat him as well... I do not think I care for this man already."
No noise seems to come from beyond the main doors, but in all honesty the unnerving shrieks of the three poor souls chained in the atrium are pretty loud: if there’s anyone else around, he is bound to notice pretty soon.
"Gah! Smells like Mavro's feet in here."
"And yet it still smells better than the last place we were. Or those caves." Xander says with a wry shrug. A moment later his face twists up in disgust. "That is truly disgusting, Uncle. No! They don't want to hear it either. Just- ugh, stop, ok?"
Mavro glowers at Tempest, unamused.
"You are lucky that you are a lady. A tiny one, at that," he growls, before turning back to the door. He takes another moment to look at the shrieking patients with disgust. "It seems more likely that Crove left them here as alarms than as bait. He is bound to know we have arrived, at this rate!"
Without further ado, he reaches out and pushes (or pulls) open the door directly south of himself.
The small room behind the door opened by Mavro resembles nothing more than a temporary holding cell: it is completely bare but for a sturdy bench bolted to the ground and a few metal rings extruding from the wall, where restrains can likely be attached.
As you search the different small rooms around the entrance, the three lunatics keep on singing and screaming in a cacophonic mayhem of a performance: some are jerking their chains so hard as to bump into Mavro as the old Pathfinder gets closer.
___________________________________________
I knew I should have packed cotton balls...
"Does anyone have any wax?"
Earplugs would be very nice right about now.
"No wax, but by the gods, that's grating, isn't it?" Milo says, drawing his dagger and disappearing into the room with the dusty straitjackets.
He returns a few minutes later with three crude strips of cloth slashed from the thick canvas .
"Hold their heads still, I don't want them biting at my fingers," he says to anyone who wishes to assist him, as he goes to move behind each chained wretch and slide the strip of canvas into their mouths as a makeshift gag. He doesn't wish to hurt the poor bastards-- not their fault their minds are cracked-- but he can't hear himself think, let alone hear possible approaching threats, over their racket.
With something-like-silence hopefully restored, Milo moves to the double doors to have a listen.
Rapier drawn, he moves to open them unless he hears distinct noises or notices some sort of trap.
It takes but a minute for Milo and the others to gag the unfortunate, tormented souls inhabiting the restrained bodies. A suffocated humming and the harsh sound of desperate, drooling chewing of cloth replaces the chaos of before.
But as Milo approaches the main door, it takes but a second for him to realize his gesture was a tad too slow, as he hears voices from the other side.
“Them crazies stopped screaming.”
“Thieves musta bashed in the head those basterds.”
“Maybe them thieves runned off.”
“Shut that hole, Grig. Thieves get in here, Master won’t like it. Let’s bash those thieving heads.”
Milo barely has time to step back as the doors are slammed open – four large, thuggish men appear at the door wielding clubs. They wear in padded leather suits with the Asylum’s name sewn upon and odd, cage-like helmets.
One of them screams “What did I say? Thieves! Bash those heads, Master won’t like thieves!” the orderlies raise their clubs and move menacingly.
____________________________________
"Clear the way!" Mavro says to Milo, his staff already in hand. He quickly takes a step back, not intent on being clubbed to death.
"Remind me not to seek employment from Crove! I've heard of brainless obedience, but I'd prefer it not to happen forcibly!" Milo says.
Rather than withdraw, he presses the advantage and his enemy's surprise-- he's already displayed a certain lack of prudence, when charging into a room full of zombies.
Demoralize
You can use this skill to cause an opponent to become shaken for a number of rounds. This shaken condition doesn’t stack with other shaken conditions to make an affected creature frightened. The DC of this check is equal to 10 + the target’s Hit Dice + the target’s Wisdom modifier.
Success: If you are successful, the target is shaken for one round. This duration increases by 1 round for every 5 by which you beat the DC. You can only threaten an opponent this way if it is within 30 feet and can clearly see and hear you.
"I'll come back to you after I've said a proper hello to our slow new friends, old man!" Milo calls cheerfully over his shoulder to Mavro.
"Is that what the scars on their heads are about? This guy cut up parts of their brains? Guess there will be no talking down this lot.
Tempest raises a hand, crackling with energy as she does so.
With a flick of her wrist she sends the summons ball of lightning flying back into one of the thugs.
Varta attacks an orderly.
for damage
Xander stumbles back, unable to get his bearings as quickly as the others.
While Varta and Mavro maneuver around the room, Milo is the quickest of all, sneaking into attack position and skewering one of the orderlies with his rapier. The slender blade pierces effortlessly the padded armor, and with a twist of the wrist the Ustalavian rake inflicts a dire wound upon the man, not to mention the intimidating factor.
The orderlies rise their clubs to retaliate, but Milo seems to gracefully dance between the heavy weapons. He gets hit only once, and even then it is barely a bruise.
As the orderlies raise their clubs again to strike, a bolt of electricity zaps through the room. Varta, Mavro and Milo feel the hair on the back of their neck spring straight up as Tempest’s attack sizzles past them. One of the orderlies is unlucky enough to be smack in the middle of the bolt’s path: he shakes and jerks as the electricity jolts through him, and an unpleasant smell of burned flesh starts coming from his smoking clothes.
As the fight starts to become serious, the chained madmen start shaking and moaning through the gagging strips at the sight of the orderlies.
_____________________
"Infuriating boy," Mavro mutters, unable to join the action. Readying his staff, the magus bides his time for an opportune moment to present itself.
"Milo!" Xander said in alarm as the orderlies swarmed in.
"Uncle, go!" he barked, pointing. A moment later, one of the unwounded orderlies jerked and spammed like it wasn't quite in control of it's own body.
Milo laughs off the glancing blow with far more confidence than he really has the right to claim.
"Is that the best you can manage?" he taunts the one who struck him, and then his rapier darts towards one of the wounded, brutish orderlies.
Then, he attempts to nimbly vault backwards, and clear a space for Varta and Mavro if they wish it.
Tempest frowns, disappointed that her spell did not down the orderly all at once. Targeting him again, she reaches out an arm, and lets fly a bolt of electrical power.
Varta attacks the nearest orderly
for
The opening Mavro was waiting for presents itself when Varta's target drops dead. Poised to strike, the old man swiftly slips past the dwarf and through the doorway, to where Milo stood just before. Unaware of Xander's devices, Mavro smacks the uninjured orderly upside the head with his quarterstaff.
A fast swarm of deadly attacks rain on the orderlies, whose numbers diminishes quickly. Tempest adds spark to spark, and her small electric blast finishes the job she begun with her much more powerful lightning bolt: the orderly gets hit in the chest and falls on the ground, hair and body charred and smelling of burned flesh.
Varta moves forward and reaches out with her blade, almost apathetical in her disdain of the pitiful threats. Her glaive once again parts the enemy from a sizeable chunk of his shoulder, and the poor man drops in a pool of his own gushing blood.
In the cramped quarters near the door, Milo manages to land a quick-and-dirty stab at one of the unharmed orderly, then to rapidly retreat dodging any possible retaliatory attack. It is then Mavro who comes in and smashes his walking staff against the caged helmet of the orderly. The poorly-welded metal gives in and the staff bashes heavily on the thug’s forehead.
Once the orderlies catch their breath, they are down two men. The first goes to club Mavro, but before he can move he gets attacked by his own companion, who sports eyes red with murder after Xander’s uncle possessed him. The compelled orderly smashes his club into the other one’s groin, getting a cry of pain in return. “Ooouch! You piece of an idiot, watch’you doing?!”
Wounded by enemies and allies alike, the brute disengages the fight and runs backward “Alarms! Alarms! Get up, you sonsovb!%ç#es, there’s thieves in tha building! ” his screaming echoes in the bare walls of the Asylum, and you hear a not-so-distant sound of quick steps coming your way. His colleague, just free of the compulsion, bats his eyes with a perplexed face.
_____________________
"Wait for it..." Xander says quietly.
Milo spins around on one heel gracefully, realizes the battle's leaving him behind again, and spins back to dart back into the room.
He flashes Varta a grin-- "Pardon, here I go again!" as he slips past her and throws himself into chase after the fleeing orderly.
"Come back, my thick-skulled friend, we are just getting started!"
Varta attacks the nearest orderly (It's deja vu, all over again :) ).
for damage
"There he goes again," Mavro says, shaking his head as Milo chases down the orderly. There was no hope for youth these days.
If the orderly beside him still lives after Varta's assault, he will attack with his staff again.
Helping her companions to finish off the crazed orderlies, Temptest throws another of her small lightning blasts at the closer enemy.
The halfling's electric bolt and the dwarven maiden’s blade make short work of the last orderly, leaving standing only the one who had the good sense of withdrawing and calling for help - although he is chased by the quite quick and elusive Milo.
Standing on the door, Mavro can hear heavy footsteps coming from the hallway to his right, the same sound of metal-laced boots these orderlies are wearing. Still, as loud as the steps are, they cannot cover the muffled sound of the luntacis at his back – desperately trying to chew their way through the gag Milo put on them.
"On your guard, more are coming!" Mavro calls out, peering down the southern hallway, waiting for the enemy to come around the bend. If any of the new arrivals come within range, he will swing at them with his staff.
As Mavro gets ready for the incoming second assault, some of the footsteps seem to take a different direction. Two orderlies actually come towards the old man, lumbering in their heavy boots and padded clothes, clubs raised and empty stares “Them crazies! Bash them!” they scream. Mavro’s hit is almost completely absorbed by the caged helmet, but at least it is enough to silence the lobotomized thug.
Milo, from his advanced viewpoint, sees two more orderlies appear side by side of the one he’s chasing. Feeling stronger now that he no longer is alone, the brute swings his club at the young rogue, who dodges almost effortlessly.
________