Thaven stays back, his arrow lowered but pointed very much in the tentacled monster's direction. He keeps a close eye on it...
The otyugh tentatively begins to step forward, its tentacles snaking towards Goffred. "You give food...now? Food for me?" A silly grin is on its face, but the expression of delight reveals row upon row of jagged, dirty, sharp teeth.
"Yes," says Fredo, heaving the derro's body in front of himself and letting it fall limply to the ground where the otyugh can reach it. "But I need something for me. That pair of legs."
The tentacles pause on their snaky way to Goffred, hesitant. "One food...for one food? Why?"
The gleeful grin on the otyugh's face shrinks, curling into a frown. It begins to growl with a low tone. "You give food!"
"Take it, take it," says Fredo quickly, holding up his hands and taking a step away from the body. "I'll be right back with another, for your trouble. Burahl, come with me please?" Fredo turns on his heel and Cat and the floating disc follow him back into the room with the derro.
Making as much noise as he can heaving the body into a position where he can carry it, Fredo whispers to Burahl. "I think if you were to smuggle Gaekhen's legs out, invisible, I'd be able to keep the otyugh distracted. Are you up for it?"
Raijinn watches the man and the rat walk back down the tunnel, and then turns back to the slobbering tentacled creature, seeming unsure of what to do. Certain that the wizard has some kind of plan, as he usually does, Raijinn stands on the path, doing his best to act as a barrier between the otyugh and the others.
Looking across the room he notes that Thaven looks ready as ever, and Raijinn nods, pleased, before spotting Trinia slightly behind him. He gives her a sheepish grin and a shrug as if to apologise that her first adventure may not be as glamourous as she had imagined. He returned his eyes to the beast, with one hand wavering near his sword.
Burahl nods and follows Fredo back to the dead Derro.
"That sounds like a good plan, I'm up for it."[/smaller He looks back into the other room and whispers back to Fredo.
[smaller]"Though if anything goes wrong, be ready to intervene."
With that Fredo waves his hand(s) in a magical gesture and Burahl seems invisible, walking back slowly towards the room with the Otyugh, getting close to the legs of Thousand Bones's son, waiting for Fredo to distract the Otyugh with food.
"Aaand here's the other," says Fredo, dragging the second corpse back into the otyugh's room and dumping it on top of the first - if it's still there - and purging the smell and wetness of it from his clothes with a little magic. "Go on, eat up."
Burahl inches closer as the Otyugh is looking at the second Derro body to eat.
He looks to swipe the legs close to him and hide them under his cloak if possible.
The otyugh has already snatched up one of the bodies and has begun to noisily devour it when Goffred returns, and when he does, the creature removes the half-eaten body from its mouth and grabs the other one as Goffred dumps it into the ground and munching on it with much slobber.
Creeping past the unsuspecting otyugh, Burahl invisibly crawls onto the corpse pile and lifts the legs up. Hunching over and letting his cloak drape down over them, he shuffles back into the other room and out of sight of the otyugh.
The otyugh throws both derro bodies, both half-eaten, over its shoulders and onto the pile of rotting flesh and pipes up again. "More food for me?"
Raijinn starts moving slowly towards the door, pausing for a moment. He points down the hallway. "There is a large fleshy golem down there. It's all yours." He then urges the others to move quickly from the room.
Burahl returns from out of the shadows as the others return from the room with the otyugh.
He has the lower body close to him, and waits patiently until the others come back.
"Well it seems we should be careful with exposing this to that creature." he says as he loads the legs onto the floating disc.
"We don't want him following us around and eating it when we don't look."
The otyugh grumbles as the party leaves. It was hoping for a bit more food, and it can barely squeeze through the small tunnels.
"Ugh, I want to jump in the river," says Fredo, making a face and wiping his hands on his sleeves. "Good job with the legs, Burahl. But I'm growing concerned about how long this could take. Gaekhen's abdomen, torso, head, and other arm could be in as many as four pieces."
Raijinn looked at the wizard, a frown spreading across his face. "That," he added, "is only if they are still intact."
"Still, I do not recommend we split up. There is too much unknown down here."
Burahl moves onto the corridor to their west. "Well if my sense of direction is correct, this corridor leads to a room we haven't explored yet. Perhaps more of Draekhen's parts are down there?"
Going east from the exsanguination chamber, the group opens the door to head into the next room, and the door opens into a long hallway.
The walls and ceiling of this tall hallway are encrusted with dozens of yawning skulls, their mouths open into dark holes in the walls.
Thaven stops and looks around, feeling a bit spooked by the motif. "Yeah, this isn't creepy or anything." He pauses by the opening, scanning the room and keeping his bow ready to fire.
Thaven's scan of the room reveals nothing untoward, unless he considers the creepy decor untoward.
Raijinn stares with worry at the skulls. The signs were becoming more and more clear that they were getting closer to the necromancer's lair. The skulls were numerous, and could have been used to disguise anything. Feeling more than a little anxious, Raijinn waves his hands, muttering a short incantation.
Many of the skulls radiate a magical aura of conjuration.
Raijinn narrowed his eyes and let out a low growl. "Don't move. It's a trap." Once he's satisfied that everyone has stopped, he continues. "Not sure what will set them off, but some of the skulls are filled with acid."
"Lucky for us," says Fredo, "we ourselves are not the only things that can move into the corridor." With a gesture like unspooling a fishing line, he nudges the disc carrying Gaekhen's remains past Raijinn. It floats to the far door, then back to the middle of the corridor, where it bobs gently up and down, never more than three feet from the floor. "Maybe this will set the trap off. If not, it can at least provide cover from above, for one person, all the way to the door." He grimaces slightly. "It'll be cramped though."
Burahl looks up and down the hallway with an inquisitive look.
"A trap huh? Trap or no, the decor could have been a little better."
"Wish I could see the damned triggers."
"Would the floating disc hold us, Fredo?"
"It can hold twenty-one stone," says Fredo, only slowly realizing what Burahl is getting at. "Which might not support Togomor, but would certainly be enough for one of us. But I do not think we need to worry about the floor. The trap is an arcane one. It should have no need of mechanical triggers."
Goffred's floating disc floats to the other door, and then floats back. As the party chats for a moment, it bobs gently. Then, a moment later, many of the skulls suddenly open their mouths, spraying out rays of acid at the disc and its contents. They spray for just a few moments before the skulls close their mouths and the conjuration aura fades.
"Like so," says Fredo, casting his own divination to check the status of the trap. Seeing no lingering aura, he sends the disc to hover by the far door and follows it, putting his hand on the latch but waiting until the others have joined him to open it.
Raijinn cautiously follows Fredo across the room, prepared to act if danger should rear its head. While waiting for the others, he tries to listen through the door.
Burahl waits for a few moments to see what happens with Fredo and Raijinn, then moves up quickly behind them and wipes away the acid on the disc with a piece of cloth. Trying to not get Gaekhen's body more damaged in the process.
"Well let's get the last of Gaekhen's body and get out of here, the hairs on my neck are standing straight up in this place."
He tries to listen at the door as well, hoping his innate senses help him hear more.
No sounds emanate from the other side of the door, and quickly the party opens it to exit the trapped room, pulling the Gaekhen-part-disc along with them.
They enter a simple, spartan stone room. A door adorns the opposite wall of the room and two tall wooden bookshelves, stuffed with books, sit in the room.
Burahl goes over the room with a quick glance before turning towards the bookcases.
He searches the books for interesting titles and picks out a few books he deems worthy of note.
"It never hurts to see what your enemies might be interested in. You could tell a lot of a person just by knowing what books if any he keeps. Or so they say." He says as he browses the pages of the few books he had taken out.
"This reminds me of my first alchemy book, it's in so many ways similar, but in as many ways different. The book about necromancy is obvious, but why does a necromancer keep a book about plagues? Perhaps he means to create an army or something?"
He seems a bit distraught by his own thoughts, but then quickly pockets both the alchemy book and the book about healing.
"Read it and find out," says Fredo, taking the scrolls to look at more closely.
The scrolls are of identify and command undead.
Raijinn waits passively while the others leaf through the books and scrolls, looking slightly apprehensive that something more may contain a trap. He heads to the opposing door and starts to listen for anything telling on the other site.
Thaven keeps watch while the others search through the books. He feels twitchy; there's been far too little danger thus far, and it's making him nervous.
The opposite door is silent.
Burahl rearranges the stuff in his backpack and shoulders it again before finally walking over to join Raijinn at the next door.
"Do you hear anything?" he waits for the answer and then continues.
"Well if it is silent we should go on, yes?"
Raijinn shakes his head and then shrugs, throwing the door open and looking into the next room with his hand on his sword hilt.
The nauseating mixture of decay and strange chemicals fills the air of this large room. Glinting saws, pliers, long stitching needles, and other surgical equipment are organized on shelves and benches along the walls. A sturdy wooden table in the center of the room supports a large humanoid shape—a thing stitched together from a patchwork of dozens of different bodies. The thing would stand nearly seven feet tall if it rose.
Its head is uncharacteristically small. With close-cut brown hair, dark skin, and a characteristic facial scar, this head clearly once belonged to Thousand Bones' son.
A hallway leads northwest from this room.
Thaven's eyebrows rise as he steps into the room and he immediately shoots two arrows into the fleshy monster's chest! and
Thaven's arrows slam into the fleshy monster's chest, but it does not rise. It seems the body is, as of yet, inanimate.
Thaven waits a moment, then when the thing doesn't rise, he boldly proclaims: "I killed it!"
Raijinn gives Thaven a pat on the shoulder as he walks by. He stares hard at the creature for a moment before unsheathing his sword. He places the blade gently at the top of the chest, making sure he is measured correctly. "Don't look." He says softly to Trinia, before raising the blade, and slamming it down through the abomination's neck.
Burahl looks at the poor thing in disgust, then shakes his head.
"Poor guy, no one deserves this fate in life or death."
"Best we move on quickly if there's nothing else of interest here. We still have a few pieces of Gaekhen left to find."
Contrary to Raijinn's request, Trinia watches with fascination as he lops the head off of the strange amalgam in front of him. The head would plop to the ground were it not for Goffred's quick reflexes and the floating sphere. The head joins the legs and arm in the concavity.
"Actually no," croaks a small voice from the shadows. "The only thing you're going to find here..." it continues, emerging as a small, blue-skinned humanoid wearing black, skull-patterned robes and carrying a wand. Another derro. "...Is death!"
The creature makes a gesture at Burahl and a mist of black energy seeps from it to him.
Burahl glares at the creature, clearly unfazed by its magics.
Initiative:
Thaven - 23
Raijinn - 22
Trinia - 22
Burahl - 21
Derro - 8
Goffred - 8
Thaven looks at the small blue guy with the penchant for drama and shrugs. "Death it is."
and
If both hit: and
Raijinn glares at the small spellcaster, wondering if he's the one responsible for this. Deciding that the small creature needs to be dealt with either way, he crosses the room quickly, swinging his large sword at it.