Kaska dodges teeth and tentacles desperately, striking back when she can.
Gylwinth and Kaska try to hit the fungus again, but they are unable to land solid blows. Fireday brings his sword down in a vicious chop, though, bisecting the creature from its crown to its base. It lets loose one final strangled shriek before going silent, its tendrils drooping to the floor.
Coen and Viv recover from their nausea.
"Ewwwww!" says Viv. She chokes down one final retch and wipes the drool from her chin. "What a horrible way to enter and leave the world. But thank you - I have no desire to give 'tasty red stuff' to a tentacle monster."
Trying to catch his breath after gagging Coen manages to get out a short bit of speech before spitting and clearing his mouth with some water from his flask. "Be very careful in here... that thing was either playing on Fireday's goodwill or it was damaged somehow."
After catching his breath he continues. "Did it seem like it might have lost its' memory to anyone else? It didn't seem to have any context for its' knowledge."
Before you leave, you can investigate the workstations here. Though damaged and scrambled a bit, a few minutes of study by anybody who can read Androffan can determine that this room was a geology lab. The bulk of the most recent samples came from a world referred to as both "CX-355" and "Kasath." The planet itself is described as an arid world with little water, violent weather patterns, and savage inhabitants of a primarily hexapodous nature. Perhaps most interesting, notes indicate the strange dome you passed through was specifically built to mimic life on the surface of Kasath.
A small metal box under a table also contains three worn-looking weapons: wide-barreled pistols each loaded with a single cylindrical charge.
Beyond the far doors, the blood trail picks up again through a T-shaped intersection with several doors. The trail leads to a large door to the east.
As she calms down, Kaska gives Fireday a nod. "Nice cleave."
She doesn't spend and extra time considering the plant. It was a bloodsucking monster that is now eliminated. That's all there is to say.
When a look around the room turns of the box of devices, she looks them over.
Kaska identifies the items as flare guns.
"Kasath..." mumbles Viv. "Kasath." She sounds like she's turning the word over in her mouth.
"The notion of visiting a different world seems both strange and soothing. How odd."
Down on her knees looking through the box, Kaska sits back on her feet.
"Hm! These are a good find!"
She holds one up for the others to see.
"These pistols shoot a great bright light once the missile stops. The light lasts for a while, and brightens a large area. They are meant for a long range though, and it would be best not to use them inside. The only problem is they can only be used once each."
She tucks one of them away in her pouch, and places the other two on a table for the others.
Fireday cleans his sword and sheathes it.
"I had hoped we could have negotiated with it for more information, but battle was joined, so I committed to it fully. Iomedae did not let her foes live unless they fled or laid down their arms in surrender, so I can do no less. I would have rather not fought it at all, but you are most likely correct that its description of "tasty red things" combined with its lack of understanding basic etiquette probably would have resulted in it trying to take a bite out of one of us, if only out of curiosity. I appreciate your assessment of my skill, though. Thank you."
He follows after the group and watches as the others who are more knowledgeable than him investigate the room. He nods at Viv's words about Kasath.
"It is beautifully staggering, I think. I have only lived seven years, and have not even seen much of Numeria itself. But the idea that there is so much out there in the cosmos...so much out there in the multiverse, and that it can be surprisingly familiar to us...that is magnificent." Perhaps we may find a portal that will take us to this Kasath...It would be interesting to meet...I suppose we could call them "kasathans"...who are not raving undead monsters."
He gives a small "hmm" at Kaska's description of the flare guns.
"Interesting. They sound more like signals than actual weapons. Not that that diminishes their utility, of course. They ARE a good find."
"I doubt it, Gylwinth. The four-armed undead's written ravings mentioned a red sun, which it seems is the sun that lights Kasath if the dome back there is an indication."
Once you have finished in the previous room, you follow the blood trail to the eastern doors, opening them with an access card. Metal desks sit to the north and south of this long room, yet the most distinctive features are a pair of odd, bedlike tables flanked by curving panels of blinking, pulsing lights. Moving armatures of metal extend out over the beds, each outfitted with glowing panes of glass and strangely glowing tools. The chamber reeks of blood, with great crimson stains splashed across the device, beds, and floor.
A single robot stands by the beds, its gleaming white metal body quite the contrast to the blood stains. "እባክዎ ይረጋጉ; የሕክምና ሂደት ሊፈጽሙ ይገባል," it says in a metallic voice as it stalks forward on its four legs, waving its syringe-tipped fingers.
Kaska doesn't understand anything the robot is saying, but the blood everywhere and its horrible claws don't need translation.
She closes the gap between herself and the robot and slices at it with her falx, aiming to sever cables or cords.
"Another one! This really is the worst place possible."
Viv concentrates and uses her usual telekinetic strike against the rogue medical 'bot.
Fireday mutters a prayer to Iomedae and blesses Kaska.
"The Inheritor smiles on those who are first to strike and last to retreat."
Then he draws his own sword and joins the battle.
;
"You don't really want to know what it said."
Coen blasts the robot with a magic missile, punching a hole in its armor. Fireday drives his sword into that hole, sparks flying as he slices through vital circuits. The robot twitches, staggered by the critical hit.
Kaska slices an arm off with her falx, leaving the robot badly damaged. Viv tries to blast it but her shot goes wide.
The robot retaliates against Fireday, stabbing the android with its claw hand and injecting him with a numbing sedative. "ለማሸነፍ ምንም ምክንያት የለም. በደህና እጆች ውስጥ ይደረደራሉ."
Frustrated, Viv launches another telekinetic blast.
Kaska shifts toward the side of the robot now missing an arm, seasoning it will be less able to defend itself there. Without the arm in the way, she aims a chop at the robot's midsection where it articulates.
Coen continues to concentrate and cast from the back of the room.
He then speaks back to the thing in the same language.
Gylwinth stabs past Fireday to pierce the robot's flank. Coen blasts it with another magic missile. Kaska shifts to the side and slices at the robot's midsection, her blade tearing clean through its torso. The drone falls in two pieces, both inert and unmoving.
"We reject all treatment or services."
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Viv thinks for a moment after Coen makes his statement, then says, "I would've tried..."
Fireday grunts in pain as he's grabbed and injected without his consent, but breathes a sigh of relief as the battle ends almost as quickly as it begins.
He wobbles a bit from the numbness but he closes his eyes and takes a few deep breaths until the numbness subsides, which happily coincides with Gylwinth's healing.
"Thank you, Gylwinth. It's as if it hadn't wounded me at all."
There doesn't seem to be anything of value here, save for the dangerous looking bedlike devices. They are not portable.
The blood trail has reached a dead end. You'll have to choose where to go next. Just outside the door to this chamber, the hall leads south to a large door. To the west are smaller doors leading north and south and a large door at the far west end of that hall.
Coen scratches the back of his head and, with a sheepish smile, laughs.
"I admit my spoken Androffan is a bit rusty, I got a little distracted by the threats of forceful medical treatment."
"It was speaking the spoken form of the language written in most of the ruins here. As far as what it was saying... it was basically asking us not to struggle while it did medical procedures to us. I tried to tell it we were uninterested, but I may have used the wrong phrase..."
Coen shrugs and continues looking around the room.
"Given its single-mindedness in administering its "treatment" to me, I doubt it would have listened to your instructions, even in its own language," Fireday quips.
"The years that it has been here have clearly not been kind to it. Anyway, let's see if there's one of those cards in here that we can use," says Viv with a shrug.
You search the medical room thoroughly, but there are no access cards or any other items of value here. You'll have to choose another room to continue your search.
Kaska is surprised when Coen mentions what the machine had said. It is shocking to her that this could be a place of healing. She can barely imagine how it could look more perfectly like a torture chamber.
"The robot must have been lying to trick us" she concludes.
"I guess we should just see what doors out there will open with the cards and go from there. No point in mulling things over and picking a door we can't go through anyway."
She leaves the room and turns left toward the double doors to give them a try.
The doors are unlocked, opening at a touch of the access panel. A row of beds sits along the southern wall of this well-lit room. Glowing screens and metal desks sit on the opposite walls, and splatters of blood adorn the floor and several of the beds. To the east, a large metal device that is the size of a large bed hums softly.
Two robots are in this room--another medical drone, and a flying mechanical creature. Its arms and hands end in spindly, multi-jointed fingers, and four circular rotors hold the creature aloft.
The robots hum to life when they notice you. The flying one lets out a loud, angry-sounding tone--at the same time, you can hear the muffled sounds of agonized screams and feeble thumping from within the metal device.
Kaska gives a war cry and rushes at the torture robot.
Kaska steps forward and slashes the medical robot, cutting deep into its chassis. Gylwinth follows in her wake and pokes a hole in it with his spear.
The robot responds by trying to inject Kaska with its syringes, but Gylwinth helps deflect the blow away from her.
The flying robot hovers over the beds, rotors whirring. The gun hanging from its belly tracks Gylwinth and fires a powerful low-frequency sonic blast at the shaman, pummeling him!
Coen focuses his magical on the medical robot.
Viv moves into the room, to a position from which she can launch projectiles at the hovering robot unobstructed.
Coen blasts the medical drone with a magic missile, punching a hole in its chassis.
Viv moves to shoot at the hovering robot, but it nimbly dodges her blast.
Fireday steps up to slice at the medical robot, tearing a deep rent in its metallic body.
Gylwinth finishes the robot off with a thrust of his spear. He moves to keep Kaska covered as the ranger approaches the remaining robot. She slices with her falx, but its reactive gyros allow it to avoid the attack.
The robot retaliates, reaching out with its limbs to try to grab Kaska. It hits her with one slam, but fails to get a good grip on her.
Viv blasts again with another metal ball.
"Can't let it get its pincers on you!" she says worriedly.