Varta stands there, blind.
Many creatures live in the vast dungeons below Carrion Hill, too many to recall: undead, abominations, weird animals… but these little guys are just Dark Creepers, the lesser of the Dark Folks, which you have heard a lot about.
Cowards unless in large numbers and protected by darkness (which they revel in) they usually serve much more powerful creatures that lurk in the underground shadows – rarely one of them is brave enough to be his own master.
They are filthy vermins with little care for rules, and while not inherently evil they usually behave like unpleasant scavengers and thieves – or worse, they are used as minions by a truly nefarious master.
They have the nasty habit of poisoning their blades; they have control over darkness, which is the habitat where their eyes work best; and they usually speak only their own convoluted dialect, simply called Dark Folk speech.
As the eyes of Varta and Xander slowly get back to normal, the two creatures keep cowering in the corners, trying to cover their wounds with their filthy rags. Now the magical darkness has dissipated, and Milo’s rapier shines a feeble but sufficient light in the room.
The small humanoids cover their face as Mavro pokes them with the quarterstaff. To his attempts of communicating, they just reply in their unintelligible tongue “Redi diu gahadi ju gadi! Ju gadi! Ju nokomi gadi…” they whimper in a pathetically whining voice.
Milo knuckles at his eyes now that the light has partially returned, and eyes the creatures with a grimace of contempt and revulsion.
"Ah, now I can see-- dark folk. Nasty little buggers. Sometimes they poison their weapons, if I recall-- did anybody get cut?"
He keeps his rapier drawn and leveled, striding forward to stand near one of the little blighters. Alongside the contempt and revulsion is a thin streak of pity-- they're small, they're pathetic, and while ten seconds ago he would have said differently as they struck from the darkness, it's hard to take them seriously as threats when they're cowering.
Milo frowns. "They have their own tongue, and I surely don't speak it. Unless someone knows their language and can ask them what they're doing here...."
He shrugs, leaving the rest of the sentence unspoken. Then why leave vermin like this alive?
"Bah! What use are they to us if we cannot understand them?" Mavro replies with a scowl, glowering down at the feeble creatures. Their incessant babbling only served to further provoke his ire. "Perhaps we should just put them out of their misery. There is no use in wasting any more time here."
"So kill or spare?"
Milo offers an easy, roguish grin to the dwarven woman.
"You lot are the ones with all the rules about helpless foes and such. Myself... wisdom bids me run them through."
He hesitates slightly, even saying it. Wisdom, yes. That sneaky little sense of grudging sympathy for weak foes bids otherwise. But then again, he hasn't lived as long as he has by letting those who'd kill him walk free.
"Makes no difference to me if we kill them or not, but perhaps we should see what information they can share with us first. They may speak their own tongue, but at least one of them might know common; we should make sure."
Tempest approaches the cowering creatures, and gives them a withering glare. "Did you hear that you wretched beasts? If you cannot speak our tongue, then you are worse than useless to us and we might as well kill you and be done with it. However, if you could talk to us, perhaps we could be convinced to let you live, as long as you were able to tell us something useful..."
The Creepers cover their face with their arms, trying to scamper away from Tempest’s intimidating glare “Jaha gundu! Gahadi ju gadi! Pero fad reddiju dui.”
It is clear that they do not speak Common – you can see the terror in their eyes, they are most definitely not bluffing. Without a magical mean of understanding them, this conversation seems impossible to establish.
"We're clearly wasting our time," Milo says, brows drawn together. His lips also press into a thin line.
Killing cowering creatures doesn't sit well on his stomach, but-- they had tried to kill him, and the others. Gods know what deviltry they will get up to if let free to run.
He steps forward, and raises his sword for the grim work-- perhaps secretly hoping someone else in the group will suggest otherwise, but prepared to run the first of them through.
"No need to drag this out any longer," the old man says abruptly, seemingly without remorse.
Mavro steps past Milovic to another creeper. Not one to relish in terrorizing his foes or making them suffer, he whips his walking stick hard across its neck with both hands, hopefully killing it in an instant.
If none of the others interfere, he would then go about finishing the others off as well.
When Mavro’s staff breaks the first Creeper’s neck, the other one tries to get on his feet to flee, only to end up run through on Milo’s thin blade. The two small creatures fall to the ground in a pool of blackish blood, then explode in a familiar flash of bright light. This time you are ready and close your eyes in time to avoid being blinded.
The only things left of your enemies are a few dirty rags, and the small blades, one of which is still covered in a violet, smelly and thick paste.
Milo takes a deep breath, then flashes his bright smile around again.
"That does look like poison on the blade. I'm not touching it."
He wipes off his rapier on the creeper rags.
"Back to the matter at hand," Mavro says with some finality, feeling neither pride nor regret for what he had done. Nonetheless, he leans on his quarterstaff heavily, as though the deed had strained his back. He gestures toward the creatures' remains, shaking his head. "These were clearly not responsible for that nonsense up above."
"No, these seem but inconveniences. Hardly capable of that sort of destruction. They may be the catspaw of some larger foe."
Milo nudges one of the dead creepers with his toe.
"This room seems a dead end, though. If some greater horror lurks, my spine tells me it will be down that stairwell we passed."
Milo turns over the bodies and looks through the room quickly for anything of value or interest.
Varta looks around then heads for the atairs. She does not proceed down them, but looks as far down as she can.
Xander sighs and shakes his head at the brutal necessity of it. These creatures were known to prey on humans, and lived beneath a human town. They could not be communicated with. There seemed to be no other options but violence.
Xander takes up his previous position with Milo and prepares to continue into the dark.
There is nothing left in the room where you got ambushed, except for the meager reamins of the Creepers. It is clear that the campsite in the previous room didn't belong to them - it is human-sized, and there's a leftover torch that clearly these things did not need.
As you make back to the crypt, Varta looks down the long stairwell that seems now like the only way to move forward.
The stairs are covered in swaths of black slime, fortunately dried enough so that its stench is not so nauseating.
Water seems to be dripping down the walls here and there, leaving tricklets down the stairs.
Her darkvision, however, is not strong enough to see the end of the stairwell. Judging from the faint echo of your steps and of the dripping water, the descent seems very, very long.
When the rest of the party is with her, Varta begins descending, slowly and carefully.
Milo will take second after her with his glowing rapier unless someone else wishes that position.
"And here I thought little could smell fouler than those vats up on the surface," he mutters as he steps carefully down the stairs.
The descent down the stairs is long, neverending: after five hundreds even the more determined among you loses count of the steps.
In the feeble magical light the walls of the stairwell keep changing in architectural style: brick-lined walls and stone arches leave way to sturdy blocks of gray basalt engraved with geometrical motifs; after a few hundreds steps it changes again, and again, dating to increasingly more ancient times and increasingly more ancient inhabitants of Carrion Hill.
Finally, after hundreds and hundreds of steps, the stariwell comes to an end: now the room is just a cave carved in the bare stone, with a few ancient stone pillars holding the ceiling. The room is large and uneven, some of the walls polished but most are just natural rock. Thick sheets
of pale fungus and mold cake most surfaces.
To the south, the hall has collapsed in rubble, but to the north it opens into a vast cavern in which eerie glowing light flickers. A thick, dry smear of black slime and strange circular prints in the mold runs from a flight of stairs in the west wall north into this cavern.
Moving in behind Varta and scanning over her head slowly and carefully, Xander guided the rest forward with simple hand motions.
Concerned about light revealing their presence, he motioned the others to halt as soon as he saw the staircase end.
Carefully he made his way forward in the dark with Varta to look at the source of the distant light. He couldn't see in the dark like a dwarf, but his eyes were sharp and his steps were quiet.
As Xander puts foot on the last steps, he carefully peeps around the corner. The faint blue luminescence enlightens an immense cavern that sprawls a few yards away, its floor an uneven jumble of loose stone and fungus, its ceiling rising like a church cathedral to a height of nearly a hundred feet above.
The glowing fungus grows thick on the walls, bathing the cavern in ugly hues of purple and pale blue.
Toppled pillars and mounds of rubble dot the western half of the cave, while to the east a mound of fungus, bones, and rubble rises. At the mound’s apex squats a flat-topped altar stone, with towering barren trees rising on three sides, their leafless branches twisted and groping toward the ceiling above as if in search for a sun’s warmth they shall never feel; bones and trinkets hang form the lower branches.
A trickle of what appears to be sludge runs thickly and slowly from a hollow under the altar stone to gather to the northwest of the hill in a swampy pool – where something resembling a body floats ominously.
Four cave passages branch off from the cavern, but only the one to the southeast has not been blocked by a series of relatively new-looking iron bars. A swath of black slime and round footprints winds from the wide passageway to the southwest up to the southern bank of the pool of sludge.
Xander tries to be as silent as possible, but clearly something notices him: before he can locate the source, he hears a sound of rapid feet scampering away near the altar.
"Bloody cheerful place, isn't it," Milo whispers. He strains his ears for sounds.
He tenses when he just picks up the skittering feet. "Something in here, I think."
Varta detects evil.
"There are footprints from the southwest to the pool. There may be a body in there!!" she whispers urgently.
"Go. We're right behind you." Xander says letting Varta lead.
Varta moves cautiously towards the pool, looking around constantly.
The only true detections of evil, however, come from somewhere in the zone with the Altar and the necromantic trees – where you perceive two moderately evil auras. They are hidden from your sight though, so you cannot pinpoint them exactly.
As you move cautiously towards the center of the room, the faint light emanating from the fungi reveals more details.
In the pool of sludge you now see clearly a humanoid body, floating face down. What is visible of the skin is pale and white, almost bloodless; the limbs have been broken and twisted in a grotesque manner, and they carry marks of bites or cuts.
The tunnels around the cave look closed, by solid iron bars that look new: there’s no rust on them, and the soil where they have been planted looks recently moved. One of the bars has been pried open, however.
A very perseverant or well-equipped adventurer could in theory find that many tunnels lead to various exits in the Hill or in the swamps nearby, but is much more likely to end up lost or devoured.
As you get closer, you see another body, crushed against the altar, his body in the same condition of the one in the pool if not worse: large chunks of his twisted and bloodless body are missing as if chewed off.
Mavro pushes past his allies and into the open chamber, looking about with an expression of dismay and disgust as he takes in the grotesque scenery. And yet, he could not help but to feel a little elated. Certainly this was something that could make it into the Chronicle! As he observes his surroundings, Mavro's eyes come to rest upon something on the ground. The old warrior kneels down to get a better look at them.
"Footprints," he grunts to the others, pointing to them with an end of his staff, "Some human, some not so much; there is something damned big in here. We must be getting close."
"Damned easy to get lost down in the warren of these tunnels," Milo mutters as they pick their way through the room. "We should mark the walls if we take one of the passages out of here..."
He nods soberly at Mavro's words, the humor temporarily faded. "Aye.
He edges to the far wall and uses it to move forward, keeping his back to it and the hand that is not holding the rapier in contact with it, since he has no darkvision.
Peering around the corner shows the gruesome sight of the mangled body. He grimaces to himself.
"Unless that poor bastard there is about to rise from the dead, he's no threat to us."
Given it's Ustalav... never rule out that option.
Varta nods, then moves to check out the corpse.
"We may want to check for traps. And something or someone is strong enough to bend that metal, she points to the bent bar. That's interesting in itself."
Tempest moves forward, out into the large open space, looking about for any signs that attackers might be waiting for them, hidden, in some attempt to ambush perhaps.
Stormcloud walked out just a step in front of her, casting his eyes about as well, and sniffing at the air.
She did, I have and she's right next to the rubble by the pool.
Xander moves up and takes a look around, shushing the spirits around him. This wasn't a place for distractions.
Varta Perc = 15
Tempest Perc = 10 (15 wolf)
(Stormcloud will act with you)
The air in the cave is still and damp, giving an eerie sensation of decay that well suits the macabre scene.
It is but a second: when Varta moves to the pool of sludge, Xander and Mavro perceive a movement among the dimly lit branches of the lifeless trees. They see with impotent eyes a darker shadow lurk over Varta, and try to help her, but unfrotunately they are too slow. An inhuman scream pierces the air.
"Leeeeave! Aaaahh!" a rasping, throaty voice from above, and a dark figure, gaunt and hunched, nimbly lands on the floor near Varta. The figure pounces at her savagely: it grabs her forearm, where it is unarmored, and bites off a huge chunk of flesh and muscle.
Gore dripping from his mouth, the figure squats and hisses again "Thisss is MINE! Leeeave!"
Watching helplessly as the creature tears at Varta's flesh, Mavro curses under his breath. Tightening his grip on his quarterstaff, he abruptly abandons his blatantly false limp, quickly moving to the dwarf's side.
"Foul creature! Back to the shadows with you!"
"Saved by the grace of Shelyn!"
Past all the rubble and behind all the commotion, Xander couldn't tell what kind of creature was attacking Varta, but the magic of his round red-tinted spectacles showed him clearly that the creature was undead.
Eldritch aberrations and cults were not really his specialty.
This was.
He moved forward and a vial slid from his sleeve into his hand. He hurled it into the battle. Then a ghostly polearm appeared in his hand forming from nowhere.
"I noticed." He muttered to his family. "Thanks."
Varta realized there was really only one thing to do. Smiling grimly she raised 'Parting of the Ways' and struck at the foul creature. She declares her judgment of sacred justice.
for damage
The glass vial leaves Xabder’s hand, arches up, and lands smack in the middle of the monster’s face. Tiny fragments of glass cut its livid skin, but is the contact with the water that hurts it the most. “Yaaaaahh!” the monster screams in pain, covering its face with clawed hands, while Mavro and Varta just gets a refreshing splash of cold water.
Where the monster's skin gets wet, it immediately starts burning and fizzling with an awful stench: large white pustules appear where the water touched it. “Sssserf of the Lady! You will pay!” he hisses at Xander.
Varta’s attack is far less pungent than her puns: the blade of her glaive is easily dodged by the monster. It hisses again, then seeing as he’s facing two formidable opponents, changes tactics.
It fakes an assault on Varta, trying to unbalance her, then quickly steps back, dodging again Varta’s blade as the dwarf tries to stop it.
But just when it already has a claw on the lifeless branch and it is about to disappear in the penumbra, Mavro’s staff falls on its head, stopping the monster from his withdrawal.
“Aaaaahhh! Old flessssh! Tasssty!” it says, and springs towards the old fighter trying to bite a chunk on his face off. Mavro puts his arm forward, and the yellow, filed teeth of the undead scrap off his sleeve and cut deeply into the forearm.
Milo thinks Xander had the right idea. He dashes forward, rapier held up like a torch, other hand fumbling at his belt for the vials and potions he keeps there. One of them has a raised spiral on the cork-- the symbol of the goddess whose temple he'd bought it at.
Standing right next to the hideous creature, shoulder to shoulder with Varta, he attempts to toss the vial of holy water into the thing's face.
Tempest rides in closer, atop Stormcloud, and lifting a hand towards the undead creature, sends a dazzling bolt of lightning racing from her hand in its direction.
"Gah!" Mavro shouts out, reeling from the monster's attack. Cursing angrily under his breath, he attempts to sweep his staff at its legs, knocking it to the ground.
for
Xander rolled his eyes at the ghoul's threats. "If I had a silver for every time I heard that..." he muttered to himself, moving purposefully up behind Varta, unfurling a hooked net out of a large pouch on his belt and whipping it over Varta's head to entangle the creature.
The onslaught against the monster keeps going: Milo’s flask of holy water just grazes its undead skin, causing little damage but a lot of pain. Hissing and screaming, the ghoul manages to avoid both Varta’s blade and Mavro’s attempt to trip. But when Tempest’s sizzling ray of electricity passes just a few inches to its left, it gets distracted. This is how Xander manages to entrap it in a thick net: the monster, now with visible wounds, struggles to get out of the ropes and hooks that constrict its movements.
You the ghoul try in vain to free itself, then, frustrated and enraged beyond belief, throws itself on Milo “Lightbringer! Another ssssslave of the Lady! Die! Die!” as it squats, its teeth serrate on the rogue’s leg, wounding the flesh; then the ghoul’s hands claw at Milo through holes in the net, but manage to just scratch the metal rings of his armor.
With the ghoul more or less immobilized by Xander's net despite Mavro's own failed attempt, the old man raises his magical staff over his head with both hands and brings it down over the struggling fiend.
"Damnation--"
Words get cut off as the blight of undeath spreads from the ghoul's bite.
He can freely move! That's all he cares about.
He should be worried about more than that, but he doesn't know it.