Sigmund stands at Sybille's other side. His hand grasps his sword, ready to slice into any threat that presents itself.
The door appears to be free of traps but is, oddly, locked. There is a hole for a key just below the handle.
Sighing slightly, Dominic waves Sybille aside with the barrel of his gun and, once she's clear, shoots the lock.
The old lock seems like it'll hold but the door itself is not so reliable. A fissure appears along the old wood and the door reluctantly swings ajar.
Entering the room the Hunters seem to have stumbled upon some kind of medical suite. They note a distant similarity to what one could find in a blood clinic. Dusty tools lay om trays and hang from the walls. There are a series of vials and tubes on one counter. There are also three tables in the room, on the farthest one there is the mummified remains of a humanoid.
Morgam finds himself pointing his gun at the tools, then at the humanoid remains. After the last room, he's simply on edge.
"This..." He begins quietly, "Like a blood clinic. And the last, like a workshop. What's next, a church?"
He waits for the others to enter so he can follow without the obnoxious glare of the torchlight.
Dominic enters the room slowly, both guns trained on the mummified remains - if a bunch of clockwork could come to life, this corpse was practically walking and talking already. Family knows, they'd seen stranger things. In fact, there was no point being rude...
"Hello? You wouldn't happen to be alive, would you?"
After noticing the corpse, Grim will quickly flick a switch on his blade dividing it into two separate blades, pointing the both of them at the corpse.
"Oh it better not be or it's not going to be for long."
"Grim, Sybille, investigate those remains. Dominic, shoot anything moving that ain't us. Sigmund, you're with me." Morgam orders before stepping forward towards the vials. He replaces his gun and swaps it for the morningstar as he gets closer.
Glad that Morgam chose him for a task he was suited to, Sigmund walks over to the vials and begins to examine them. He picks them up and turns them over, trying to divine what exactly they are meant to do.
"Thank you for that clarification." Dominic drawls, leveling both pistols.
Grim will approach the corpse, observing it and the area around it.
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The corpse is suspiciously silent in the face of questioning, almost evasive. It refuses to state whether or not it is clearly dead or alive, how rude.
Grim and anyone immediately around the corpse does note the large fist-sized hole in its chest cavity.
Meanwhile Sigmund starts to examine the various chemical components found in the room. They are old and murky, difficult to identify from looks alone, but Sigmund makes some discoveries nonetheless. There are quite a few bottles of clotted blood and other common medical chemicals - embalming fluid, alcohol, mercury, medical tonics. There's also a collection of dusty mechanical bits. Gears, springs, screws of various sizes and function, though all are noticeably much finer then those that were in the main workshop floor.
"Well, nothing to do here. Now to the stairs I guess. I wonder what's down there?"
Sybille leaves the room and takes a look before stepping down.
Morgam swipes a few bottles to take back for later investigation. He casts one last suspicious glance around, then nods to Sybille.
"Yep."
Grim walks away from the corpse, eyeing it as he leaves.
"Alright then but this better be the last time we see that thing."
"We should be so lucky."
The stairs downward curve sharply and in the gloom that makes it difficult to get a real sense of what may lie in wait. Even so, the hunters press onward.
The stairs open up into a small rectangular room. The first thing that strikes them, even walking down the stairs, is the echoing tick of a clock. It is loud, not painfully so, but each sound churns their stomachs and makes them feel uneasy.
There are two doors in the room. One is large and looming and, telling by the pad over it, locked. There is another, normal door at the other end of the hall
Morgam produces the watch, absentmindedly checking to see where it points now. It feels like the start of a new habit.
"You don't put a lock on things unless you got somethin' to protect." He says with a nod to the locked door. "But sometimes that somethin' is themselves."
The watch spins wildly as you come downstairs before the hands settle and point aggressively towards the unbarred door
Morgam puts the watch away and adds, "I've got a feeling that door's got plenty trouble behind it though." as he nods to the unlocked door.
Sigmund shakes his head in disbelief at the watch that Morgam is playing with.
''Its like my great uncle Theo once said, never buy a broken plow or take advice from a watch.''
Still muttering to himself about omens and death wishes he nonetheless moves forwards to cover Morgam's back, ready to blast anything that might jump from the shadows.
Grim will move to the side of Sigmund, facing towards the door.
"Sigmund if we get out of here alive, i would like to hear about the origin of that saying."
Sybile grins and follows everyone to the door. "As would I. Must be quite a story."
Morgam investigates the door for a moment.
Then he attempts to open it.
Morgam goes to open the door but notices a mysteriously out of place pin in the handle. He recognize it immediately as a type of rigging set to activate some type of device set on the other side of the door, though what exactly it may be hard to say. Disarming it simply a matter of removing the trigger without tripping the whole thing, the actual doing so is another matter entirely.
"This one's just waitin' for a clumsy hand. Can one of you fix it?" Morgam asks, indicating the trap.
"Well I'll see what I can do, but I recommend everyone take a step back just in case."
Dominic's taken two before Grim has finished speaking.
There's a loud *clunk* as Grim goes about his work and the hunters hold there breath, fearing that he has mistakenly triggered the device. When nothing happens it becomes apparent that the opposite has occurred.
The door swings open and the click-clocking grows even louder. The room is like a library with shelves and shelves stuffing it to the gills. On the shelves are countless devices - glass jars with ornate decorations and filled with a dark, murky liquid. A soft glow emanates from the rear right corner of the row beyond the shelves.
Morgam sniffs the air for any scents, familiar or unfamiliar.
"Interesting place we've got here. What got all this sealed away?" He wonders aloud.
"I wonder that as well. But I'm mostly intrigued by the where the source of that glow is coming from." He says as he slowly approach towards the corner.
Sybille follows Grim, with her pistol ready. "After what we saw in the workshop, it's probably nothing good."
Rather then focus on the glow, Dominic keeps his head on a swivel looking anywhere but - if he were the type to lay an ambush, he'd use something like that light as a lure.
Morgam sneers slightly at the light--such a crutch for the day-sighted. But he quickly turns his attention elsewhere. Though he stays with the group, he sticks to one side and examines the shelves for what might be valuable. An old trader's habit perhaps.
Approaching the light the hunters see a desk pushed against the far corner of the room. The lantern sitting on top is the source of the light. Next to it is another of the jars that fill the room, but the contents of this one are visible. A heart, perhaps a human heart, is suspended in the liquid inside. Horrifingly there seem to be mechanical components embedded within it and attached to the lid and the base, and even worse the heart is somehow beating!
Morgam and Dominic split up searching the shelves. They stumble up another mumified human corpse, this one splayed out against one of the shelves. It appears to have something in its hand.
Sigmund's eyes roam over the room, taking in every detail. His eyes lock onto the beating heart however as a morbid sense of curiosity fills him.
Approaching the heart, he stops before it and begins to examine it.
''By the Gods, what manner of experiment is this? He calls out in both horror and wonder.
Dominic hefts both pistols. "You check it out, I cover?"
Morgam eyes the corpse suspiciously, then reaches out to examine the object it's holding. But he pauses first, summoning up the hot blood to change his body for war just in case.
Bite, DR 3/silver, & fortify 25%
Concentrate as Move
Whatever this is, it is not natural. That is Sigmunds conclusion. This abomination seems to beat rhythmically in time with the ticking and churning of its gears.
Morgam slowly approaches the corpse and prys open its hand with the utmost care. It clutches a key desperately in its whithered hand.
With his attention on the task, only Sybille and Dominic notice the shelves start to teeter dangerously.
"Everyone, careful! The shelves!" Sybille cries out and steps away from the shelves.
Morgam grabs for the key as he pushes his body against the shelf. "Get clear!" He orders the others.
Ordinarily Dominic would have problems taking orders from a lowborn, but, In this case Morgram hasn't finished the first syllable before Dominic is diving towards safety.