Tempest picks up the rest of the scavenged materials, and puts them into one of her saddle bags for sorting later.
"Agreed. Let's find the director behind this sick show."
Milo nods his agreement with the others, and moves to stand behind Mavro, rapier drawn in case more psychotics wait behind the next door.
It seems fairly clear that even the insane people who seem to be everywhere in this cursed building share a justified fear of the five adventurers’ combat prowess, and while creepy laughter and songs and screams can still be heard just behind any corner, most lunatics hide in their cells closing the door behind them when your group passes.
Both the south and north corridor loop on themselves, and are merely walkways full of cell doors. All of these doors are open, not forced nor broken, to testify that the lunatics are free by design rather than by accident. The few not empty cells host those inmates whose type of madness emphasizes fear and paranoia rather than recklessness or cruelty: in a half dozen cells inmates can be seen hugging their knees rocking back and forth, or covering their eyes and ears, softly humming a comforting tone.
One of the empty cells is filled with a disgusting smell, brands of bloody cloth and clawmarks, but is otherwise empty just like most of the others.
The larger, irregularly shaped room at the eastern end of the corridor () is furnished with a crude table and a few stools. Two inmates are chained to the walls, and they cower in fear as you approach. The air feels heavy, even thicker and damper than in the derros’ room.
There are two doors, both open, one on the south wall and the other on the north wall. Both open onto fairly unremarkable corridors.
"Hmn! This northern door seems to be a secret door-- conveniently open for us, and that's a good thing, for I think it would have been hard to spot otherwise. Shall we try that passage, and see if this is Crove's bolthole?"
Varta sees nothing.
"Go ahead, Milo. We'll follow. Lets get this over with."
"Crove must be getting sloppy. Hurry on so that we can teach that cur a lesson."
"Seems rather pointless if you leave it open..."
Milo shrugs, and opens the door the rest of the way, his other hand holding his rapier as he keeps a wary eye on the cowering inmate right next to him-- he would ask the wretch for info, but he doubts he would get anything but screaming....
He peers down the corridor beyond.
Varta follows Milo, clanking silently.
You advance into the corridor north, past the secret door. On your left, a small set of stairs goes up to the ground floor (). Past that, you see a series of chambers as small as a cell (), but cleaner and furnished with a small desk rather than a bedroll: in each chamber a small window opens onto a cell, so that the inmate can be observed and studied unbeknownst to him. Further down the path there’s a larger room (), hosting a few tables with built-in straps and restrains as well as cabinets filled with surgical instruments.
Rummaging through the few papers left on a table reveals this to be the room where Crove would lobotomize his orderlies, magically healing them afterwards but leaving their brains damaged. A cabinet hosts, instead of surgical blades, two ordinate rows of vials. The first row, is a liquid of a lively red in clear glass vials; the second row is made of squatter flasks of opaque glass, holding a much thicker and darker liquid.
They are both liquid quite familiar to adventurers: eight curing potions () and eight doses of numbing venom ().
Turning back, you find yourself in front of yet another open door onto an empty room (). You see that this part of the dungeon must have been the true lair of Crove, where he studied the Pnakotic Manuscripts and planned his insane summoning of the Beast. Still, it is frustratingly empty, and seems abandoned in a hurry.
Milo frowns as he looks into the empty room. "Crove seems two steps ahead of us at every turn," he says darkly.
"No! We've come this far! I'm not about to walk back out into that damned rain empty-handed!"
Mavro enters the room and starts to fruitlessly ransack it.
This cluster of rooms obviously seems to be Crove’s personal quarters. There are a bedroom(), an office () and a small study (). These rooms are likely to have been occupied until a few moments ago: a few candles still emanate a faint wisp of smoke, as if just blown out. Papers and books, mostly partial copies of the Pnakotic Manuscripts and related notes, are in disarray, and a quill lies in a pool of ink not yet dried.
A series of footlockers in the bedroom reveals Crove’s mundane treasures: a bag heavy with coin – as you open it you are surprised to see mostly platinum coins – at least a couple hundreds of them. Another locker holds small archaeological relics: chiseled bricks, big shards of decorated pottery, and a few small statues: all with the same theme of twisted, multi-limbed creatures crudely represented. In the hands of a collector these must be worth several hundred gold coins.
There is a scroll of contact other plane, a scroll of planar binding, a scroll of restoration, and a scroll of scry-ing.
Xander was getting tired of this maddening place. He looked around to his ghostly family and said "Spread out. Let me know if you see anything that might lead us to Crove"
"Gone?"
Varta takes a moment and Detects Magic
Varta continues to follow Milo.
Tempest dismounts and leads Stormcloud to the desk and chair. She commands the large wolf to inspect the chair in order to get the scent.
"Stormcloud, this is your prey. Seek."
Mavro lifts up a handful of platinum coins, letting them slip through his fingers and back into the bag. The miser in him said that this was just another spoil of war, but the realist said that other people probably needed this money more than he did. That and the bag was probably pretty damned heavy.
"Foolish man. I could live for the rest of my life in luxury with this kind of coin. Yet he would toss it away for some gods-forsaken plot? What knowledge could be worth that?"
Milo whistles low at the sight of the coins and the statuary-- but also gestures at the still-wet ink, demonstrating its dampness with a finger.
"The man cannot have gone far," he says in aggravation. "The damned candle is yet smoking. Either he has some secret passage out of these chambers, or he passed us... unseen."
He frowns, then wrenches open a few desk drawers. Milo is looking for anything that might be powder-like in consistency-- some people use sand to blot ink dry, for instance. If he finds no such thing, he'll pick up the ink-well instead.
The young Ustalavan turns on his heel and heads back towards the odd-shaped room (D23), rapier drawn and sand-or-ink in the other, head flicking side to side warily.
Varta sees nothing magical in Crove’s rooms – any riches in here are mundane in nature, and the tomes are about eldritch subjects but not magical themselves.
Both Xander and Stormcloud quickly get a sense of Crove’s trail. The wolf, growling softly nose on the ground, and the nobleman following the whispers of his ancestors both sense the trail going towards the southern corridor ( ). Milo grabs the ink and is quick to move after them.
The trio has barely gotten closer to the door when among the creeping lullabies and screams of the inmates a crotchety, old, shrill voice starts an incantation. “Damn you nosy, blasted intruders. You are ruining everything! Grah!” yells the voice.
As the incantation ends, yet another foul smell permeates the walkway where the trackers are. A stench of rotten vegetation and bad teeth, of dried-up lake bottom and troll’s breath rises from the floor, commanded by Crove’s magic. “You will never leave this place. I alone will learn from He Who Comes from Beyond! You should not have meddled.” Though the voice has a calm, collected quality, it gets more high-pitched and shrill when he names the Beast.
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"Faugh!" Milo cries out as the stench envelops him. "He's--"
Further words are cut off by the sound of him gagging miserably. His eyes running from the thick fumes surrounding him, Milo puts a hand on the wall and moves forward blindly, following the edge, hoping to stagger out into clean air.
"This glorified smokescreen won't save you, Crove!" Mavro howls ruefully, peering into the fog.
Xander was taking a breath to call out at exactly the wrong moment. The wretched miasma that unexpectedly filled his lungs left him choking back his lunch. He backed away blindly, trying to get clear of the disgusting fumes.
Tempest cries out a sharp command to Stormcloud, "Stormcloud; Attack!"
The wolf leaps forward, moving through the fog until it emerges from the other side. Homing in on the scent of his prey, he attacks the fleeing mage.
Holding her breath, though she knows it will likely do little good, Tempest moves through the cloud in order to follow up behind her faithful companion.
Clutching his staff in both hands, Mavro steps into the fog in search of Crove.
"Where are you, you devil? You rat! You--"
"Ugkkkk!"
Milo staggers through the cloud, ending up on the other side. So does Varta, significantly less distraught by the awful smell. Her wolf companion, alas, is not so lucky. Xander retreats further away from the cloud.
Mavro is about to enter the foul air, when Varta invokes the protection of Shelyn upon both herself and the old Pathfinder, caressing him on a shoulder. Mavro feels his lungs fill with the pestiferous stench, and yet the blessing of his teammate make him endure. The old magus and the dwarven maiden make it to the other side, reaching Tempest and Milo. The four of them are just in time to catch a glimpse of Crove fleeing to the southern corridor: a tall, gaunt man, closer to sixty than fifty, with a bald top and a thinning silver mane cascading down the back of his head.
______________________
Unable to do much else to assist his friends as he's still staggering and retching, Milo steps to one side and waves the others down the hall that Crove has fled down. At least that way, he's not in their path.
Mavro emerges from the cloud, still coughing slightly, yet otherwise miraculously unaffected by the foul stench. The old pathfinder takes a quick glance at his comrades, not quite fortunate as himself, before spotting the fleeing old man.
"Crove!" he shouts out, gripping his magical staff. For a moment it flares out with arcane power, enhanced by its master's magic. As Milo steps out of the way, Mavro then charges down the hallway after their quarry, staff held in both hands.
Xander sagged into a wall and retched violently.
Milo moves aside, opening a charging lane for the angered Mavro. The tall, old man runs towards his enemy, robes, beard and hair flowing behind him as he builds up speed and strikes Crove in the sternum with the butt of his weapon. It is a sight to behold, two old and greying men fighting for their lives.
Varta moves right behind Mavro, and prays once again for the blessing of Shelyn: a benign light shines upon her allies, infused with divine guidance.
The small head of Tempest pops out behind the corner of the door, and she points her finger and calls forth arcane power: a sizzling ball of sparkling, burning electricity appears just behind Crove, cutting off his retreat.
Crove miraculously manages to get avoid Mavro’s staff when he drops his guard to cast a spell: a shimmering ray of luminous energy hits Mavro dead center, painfully burning clothes and skin and beard of the Pathfinder.
________________
Mavro bites back a shout of pain, instead baring his teeth in a fierce scowl. Lowering the end of his quarterstaff, the magus sweeps it beneath the wizard's feet, attempting to knock him off balance.
Xander continued being sick, coughing weakly and trying to get his stomach under control.
It is a pathetic attempt, on Crove’s side, to resist Mavro’s sweep. The old Keeper falls flat on his back, the wind knocked out of his lungs. “Bastard! I am going to skin you for th… cough! COUGH!” Crove’s threat loses effectiveness when he stops to spit some blood.
Tempest moves forward, taking cover in an empty cell, and unleashes a miniature lightning, but it fails to hit Crove, bouncing harmlessly between the dungeons’ stones. Varta follows the halfling and prepares a spell to strike true at the next occasion.
Crove, lying on the ground with Mavro looming over him, extrudes spite and anger “Stop! Don’t you dare touch me again, you idiot, or I will melt your brain in a pot!” the shriek voice is coated in arcane power, and sticky filaments sprout from Crove’s fingers, entangling the hallway in thick webbing.
Even in his bedazzled state, Mavro can hear Crove mutter to himself “I will get the knowledge. I will take the power. I am willing to do what it takes!” before getting up.
________________________________
Milo makes a miserable noise at seeing his allies covered in goop. He curses the disquiet in his belly that keeps him from doing much of anything. If he got closer, he would only be in their way, so he stays put, pukin'.
"You think you can hold ME?" the old man bellows, pulling his arms in an attempt to tear himself away from the sticky webbing. "You fool, don't you realize? You will learn nothing! You will share Marshan and Baskerwhel's fate, in the bowels of the beast!"
Tempest brings up a powerful crackling ball of lightning in one hand, taking aim, and hurling it at Crove.
Xander took a deep breath of clean air, held his breath and charged through the cloud, coming out and nearly colliding with the table and chairs on the other side. Instead, he simply shoved it out of the way as he passed, pushing it back into the wall.
Both Mavro and Varta break free of the web. Milo, still recovering, is joined by Xander, who finally made it through the cloud with no ill effects. Tempest fires a sparkling ball of lightning at Crove, but unfortunately the web conjured by the old cultist is in the way, making it difficult to aim. The ball of electricity just barely misses its target.
Crove grins in seeing the whole group incapacitated or stuck because of his actions “Idiots! You are not prepared. You have no clue, you are dumb sheep like Marshan, and that coward Baskerwhel, that much is certain! I am the only one willing to do what it takes! And for this, I will triumph!” that said, he clenches his fists, bites his tongue and runs off through the flames.
__________________________
Milo finally straightens back up, wiping a bit of puke from the corner of his mouth. Faugh. He looks down the hall, which Crove has disappeared from.... a hall choked with webbing and with fire. Fantastic.
He takes a deep breath. "Tempest! Clear your flame!"
When the path is clear, he starts bolting down the hallway.
"Crove! Get back here you bastard!"
If Tempest moves or dismisses her spell, Mavro will continue his pursuit of Crove.
Tempest casts her gaze at the burning fireball, bringing back under her mental control. She brings it moving down the hall towards her, burning its way through the web as it moves. As it races the last few paces towards her and her companions, she wills it away, dispelling the flaming sphere.
Xander races after Mavro.