Burahl looks up with a hint of glee in his eyes.
"It's sometimes a good idea to see what the enemy wants to keep hidden from us, it might benefit us in the end."
He quickly grabs the gold coins from the Derro, the aklys, the repeating crossbow and the bolts. He examines the bolts for what the sticky green substance might be.
Shortly after he shoots towards the entrance as quickly as he came out before to help his friends.
Retreating back into the narrower caves, the small group is only briefly halted by Burahl before he patters back towards them again, armed with a basket of bolts poisoned with Medium spider venom.
Trinia trots along with everyone, having finally realized the need for quiet, and softly says, "Hey, that was kinda exciting! How much more is there gonna be?"
Raijinn points Fredo to the right, saying that "There is a carving in there that you may be able to learn something from." before himself approaching the center path with the nearly-obvious door, pressing his ear against it.
Through the door, Raijinn hears a few interesting things - a sloppy slurping noise, the same slap of bare feet on stone as before, when the derro approached to attack, and an incessant, low muttering.
Burahl follows the group around, and waits for Raijinn to finish listening at the door.
"Anything interesting?" he whispers to his friend
Fredo nods and takes the right-hand path. "Maybe those carvings could be a map of the tunnels," he guesses, hoping that's the case. "If it's not," he says to Trinia, "we may be down here for a very long time, attracting a commensurate amount of attention. Please stay wary."
"I thought it more to be a game of sorts rather than a map." He says to Raijinn as he pointed Fredo along the way to that room.
"Why else would they keep dice around there? Actually, I was half expecting miniatures or figurines for a kind of game to be present as well."
Raijinn whispers back to Burahl, with a grimace. "Quiet muttering, the pitter-patter of more of those creatures' feet on the floor, and some kind of disgusting slurping."
Interestingly enough, there aren't any figurines, but at least one dead rat, mutilated and broken, lies near the board of what you've determined to be a game piece.
"Not a map, then," says Fredo, turning back to join the others. He takes one last look around the room, hoping to find Gaekhen's body so they can leave this place and finally make the kids and Trinia safe.
In the empty room that Goffred's in, he finds a door in the southern portion of the room.
Burahl looks to Raijinn, unaware of Fredo's findings in the 'game' room.
"If you open the door, I'll throw in a bomb then you close it again. If those Derro at the other side want to fight they have to open it again. We'd be ready for them by then. What do you say?"
Burahl looks with anticipation at Raijinn, eagerness in his eyes.
Thaven stands still, his bow out and nocked and ready for action.
Raijinn looks back at Burahl, considering. It makes sense, at least as a means of wiping out the Derro, but he still shakes his head. "We don't know what else is in there," He whispers back. "Thousand Bones would probably not be pleased if we destroyed his son's body."
As Fredo approaches, Raijinn relays what he heard from the other side of the door. He also mentions that there is still the left path to be taken. "Still," he adds, "We may well find what we need in here."
"We can disable at least some of the derro in the room without using explosives," says Fredo, dropping his voice. He hands his torch to Burahl, pulls another out of his pack, and lights it. "Raijinn, you will open the door. Burahl, you want to throw something; toss that inside as far as you can. At least twenty feet from the door."
Burahl shrugs as he is handed the torch.
"Fine by me, though how are we supposed to see them while they are in the cloud?"
Burahl holds back the torch and waits for Raijinn to open the door.
"I'm ready, are you guys too?"
"The effects of the smoke will linger even after it dissipates or they step out of it," says Fredo, mildly surprised that Burahl had guessed what he had in mind.
Raijinn shrugs in agreement to Fredo's plan, assuming that he has something in mind beyond burning the place down. He nods to Thaven, expecting the man to fire off a few arrows, hopefully without hitting him, and nods to the two with torches as well.
Satisfied that everyone is ready, he whips open the door and draws his sword, ducking out of the way of the shots, while prepared to slice anyone who comes out of the room up the middle.
Burahl throws in the torch at the Derro the moment he sees them.
Then he watches at the Derro's faces and their number.
The little secret door is thrown open, and the torch thrown in immediately after. Burahl only gets a cursory look before the torch is extinguished in a blossom of smoke, and he doesn't see much.
The room is simple and stone, with an iron cage sitting at the other end of the room, filled with stirges. Three wooden tables sit in the room, with a corpse sitting on one. A single derro stands on the table, over the corpse, placing a stirge into the body, adding to the three stirges already sucking blood from it.
In moments, though, the smoke obscures sight and there's a small shriek of surprise from the derro.
Initiative:
Raijinn - 20
Derro - 20
Thaven - 18
Trinia - 18
Burahl - 13
Goffred - 13
Stirges - 5
As Raijinn stands by the door, ready to strike, he's a bit disappointed to see no derro rushing out of the door to foolishly attack them, but rather, he hears some little tumbling motions, a smack on the stone ground, and then some scrabbling of nails on metal.
Initiative:
Thaven - 18
Trinia - 18
Burahl - 13
Goffred - 13
Stirges - 5
Raijinn - 20
Derro - 20
Thaven shoots the first threat he sees. Twice.
for damage! for damage!
Trinia impatiently hops from foot to foot as Thaven takes up a preparatory firing stance, nocking and drawing an arrow. "What's going on?", she whispers.
Initiative:
Burahl - 13
Goffred - 13
Stirges - 5
Raijinn - 20
Derro - 20
Thaven - 18
Trinia - 18
"We're hoping to catch the Derro by surprise, that part worked. Now we want to kill them."
Burahl says to trinia as he readies his crossbow for a shot.
Goffred crouches down, pulling out his wand. "Be careful, my friends. We don't know what might come out of there." he says softly. Almost on cue, a shrill shrieking sound echoes out of the hall, and from the smoke fly two hideous, bloated (but quite small) insectile creatures. Long probisci protrude from their snouts and four wings keep their cat-sized bulk aloft. Round bellies sit above six pointed legs.
Prepared for this, Raijinn and Thaven lash out against the attackers. Raijinn unleashes an undercut on one, catching its belly and shearing the hapless creature in two even pieces. Thaven shoots two arrows at the other one, impaling it handily twice and reversing its flight vector. Both creatures thud into the ground heavily.
From inside the room, a slow shuffling sound can be heard.
Initiative:
Raijinn - 20
Derro - 20
Thaven - 18
Trinia - 18
Burahl - 13
Goffred - 13
Stirges - 5
Raijinn steps into the doorframe, gazing into the room to see if he can discern the source of the sound before anyone else enters and risks endangering themselves.
Goffred waves a hand to dispel his pyrotechnics after it turns out to be far less useful than he anticipated. The smoke takes a moment to clear, but when it does, it reveals the room a little different than it was a few moments ago.
The stirges attached to the body are still there, but the iron cage containing the other stirges is open and empty, and the derro that was in the room is loping to a corner of the room. When he reaches the wall, he feels around for a hidden catch before heaving open a section of the wall. It's here that he notices the smoke's dissipated. He turns to Raijinn, the one standing in the doorway itself, and shrieks.
Thaven steps forward and sends an arrow toward the derro, looking to kill it and stifle the shriek!
for damage!
Burahl lifts his crossbow and aims for the creature trying to get away.
After he misses he grumbles. "I'm better with throwing stuff."
Thaven's arrow flies true, but the derro steps aside and it clatters on the stone down the path that it's looking to escape down.
Trinia steps forward, a smile blossoming across her face. "Hey, ugly! What do lilypads do?" She waits a beat for dramatic effect before flourishing with her hands and yelling, "Floatosynthesis!" The little derro's mouth twitches upward and it manages to resist for a moment before its mouth flies open and an inhuman cackle escapes from its lips, completely devoid of humour.
Following Thaven's example, Burahl raises his crossbow and launches a bolt, but similarly misses.
Initiative:
Goffred - 13
Stirges - 5 (dead or occupied)
Raijinn - 20
Derro - 20
Thaven - 18
Trinia - 18
Burahl - 13
Trusting Raijinn to keep the derro from getting through its bolt-hole, Fredo holds his torch higher so Thaven can see into the room and calls upon the energy of the void. "Trinia's spell has distracted it, but it will not last long," he counsels, hoping to augment the effect of the spell a little for the little time it will last.
Raijinn's eyes catch the Derro attempting to escape, before being slowed down by Trinia and Fredo. He nods without looking back, already moving towards it and taking a swing at the blue beast.
Goffred taps into the ether, revealing the weaknesses that his friends can exploit in the Derro, while Raijinn charges forward to try and exploit that weakness. Unfortunately, he's just a tad off on his swing.
At the same time, the derro's laughing spree is winding down. The mad, humourless echo ceases.
Burahl is bored with his crossbow and drops it in front of him, moves up to the Derro and throws a bomb at the creature, yelling: "Hey you! Catch!"
While the Derro is clutching its belly and feebly trying to crawl into hte secret tunnel in the wake of its own riotous laughter, Thaven tags it with a pair of arrows. The derro recoils from the pain of the first and isn't even finished reacting before the second strikes home. Just a moment later, as it grins and contemplates safety, it notices a tiny vial sailing through the air towards it. Its eyes track the vial back to Burahl, its originator.
It gulps comically loudly just before the vial strikes, and very little of it remains following the resultant boom.
Burahl looks around, nodding appreciatively at his own handywork when the smoke clears.
Looking around he sees the stirges still being busy with feeding and looks to his allies.
"We can't let those things alive can we? Anyone for target practice?" He asks as he picks up his crossbow again.
"We should check to see if the cadaver they're draining is Gaekhen's," says Fredo, pointing his wand at the stirges and loosing a bolt of energy that strikes one on the side of the abdomen.
With a combination of melee and magic, the four stirges desanguinating the body on the table are disposed of. The body lacks the distinctive tattoos of a Shoanti brave, so its unlikely that the body is Gaekhen's.
The room is relatively spacious, being almost five hundred square feet, and the tables are high, stone altars. Three kegs of salt rest in one corner, but other than that (and the desanguinated corpse) the room is largely empty and uninteresting.
Aside from the door that our heroes entered from, there are three other pathways exiting from this room. Just to the right of the door they entered from is another door, small and wooden. Directly ahead, at the end of a short hallway that extends just outside of the room is another wooden door, but this one is boarded over and nailed shut with copious boards and nails. To the left, about halfway up the wall, the wall has a simple hole in it that begins the continuation of the natural cave system.
Burahl listens closely to the boarded door as the others search the room.
He listens and sniffs through the door to pinpoint what could be behind it.
The space behind the boarded-up door is completely silent, but Burahl can smell, even through the wood, the faint scent of dead flesh.
Thaven moves up behind the ratman and readies his arrows for attack.
Burahl backs up quickly at the hint of dead flesh behind the door.
"The smell behind this door reeks of death, there are at least bodies behind it. Be careful about any undead in there."
He speaks as his whiskers twist and shake to get the scent out of his nose for the moment.
"A body is what we are after," says Fredo flatly, holding his torch a little higher so it will shine into the room once the door is opened. "If there is a chance we can find Gaekhen behind this door, we should take it." He motions to Raijinn to take point.