"Some kind of arboretum, maybe?" opines Viv.
As they begin to look around the room, Kaska adds a couple of qualifiers to Viv and Fireday's conversation about the vegepygmies.
"Those are things I've heard, but I know nothing more myself. Maybe other things besides people can be hosts, like animals. I don't know. Those may have sprouted from something other than one of the earlier groups, so I don't think it has to mean we're near to any of the others."
"Some kind of arboretum, maybe?" opines Viv.
"I believe you are correct, Viv."
He looks to Gylwinth's awed expression, and nods.
"They do have similar things in the south. Some of them are used to allow plants to grow through the entire year, even in the midst of winter."
He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. It felt comforting here, life springing peacefully from a place of such death.
Kaska doesn't care much about the weird plants, and there certainly doesn't seem to be one of those black things in the room. Very soon she migrates over to the far door and gives it a careful looking-over. Once the other have assembled to move on, she opens it.
The stench of mold and decay fills this open, dark chamber, no doubt created by the thick blanket of fungal matter coating the floor. Several chairs sit before work tables containing unusual tools and equipment, while a row of doors line the curved southern wall.
The lighting in this room is nonfunctional, in part due to the rampant overgrowth of brownish and black molds and fungi in the area. While these growths smell somewhat foul and are unpleasant to look at or touch, they're harmless.
Each of the doors to the south open onto a small room that contains a human corpse, one in each room. The bodies have been arranged in sitting positions against the wall. The bodies themselves are riddled through with fungus and split open from neck to belly.
"Ugh! Time to spray this place down with cold."
Coen overlooks the corpses with some sadness and at Viv's remark offers a bitter smile.
"With my current ability that will take some time, perhaps an hour for the whole room. We might want to avoid it, or just freeze the parts we try to retrieve, like the bodies if we think we might want to try identifying them."
"That is time we may want to spend if we want to cleanse this place, both so no others who come after us are infected, and so we can claim the things these poor souls left behind. A sword does no good if it is lying in a grave, rusting away. Neither would the gear these adventurers carried down here to their doom."
He bows his head a bit.
"I apologize if that sounded morbid or callous. While the Inheritor does exhort her faithful to respect the sanctity of the dead, the practice of grave goods is not practical when your faith also exhorts you to constantly fight against evil, and to use all of the tools you have at your disposal to do so."
Kaska removes the gear from the bodies, holding her breath and with a look of disgust on her face.
"We can do nothing for them right now. We can't haul them with us, I'm not sure they would even hold together if moved. Best to ask direction from the temple in Torch first."
"There are four host bodies here, but we have seen five of the vegepygmies. There are more somewhere else, and that could also mean we haven't seen all the vegepygmies yet either."
She gives the chainmail a good look and "Humpf"s approvingly. "This is good quality. Anyone object if I take it?"
"I am going to take it to that washing basin room and give it a cleaning."
Fireday nods.
"You have a greater need of armor than I do at this stage. And while I was only forced to select this mail shirt due to my finances, I am trained in and prefer heavier armor. Would you like assistance cleaning and donning it?"
"Sure." Kaska gives Fireday a lopsided smile. "It will be a nasty job."
"We'll be quick about it, unless you all want to come and watch" she says to the others.
"If I can help, great. If not, I'll wait out here and give Gylwinth a shoulder rub."
Kaska almost laughs.
"Those white basins aren't very large, and they are walled off into tiny rooms. I don't think more than two people can fit inside. I'd say Gylwinth needs the rub more than we need the help."
Kaska and Fireday head to the washroom, using the water from the basin to wash off the suit of chainmail. The android then spends a few minutes helping the Kellid into the new armor. It only takes a few minutes, then they rejoin the rest of you.
Only one door remains unexplored in this region.
Internally agreeing with Fireday's statement about it being their responsibility to help prevent this fungus from harming anyone else, doesn't keep him from wishing it would be someone else's job. Coen sighs thinking about how much work it will be to attempt to clear out an entire room with a cantrip.
While the others wash and give each other backrubs, Coen stands near the fungus infested room unceasingly repeating a short list of arcane gestures and words before striking another surface with a small amount of cold energy. After a few minutes, he coughs and drinks some water before going right back into it. Despite his desire to avoid the boring labor, he does the best he can with the time they have.
"Sure." Kaska gives Fireday a lopsided smile. "It will be a nasty job."
"We'll be quick about it, unless you all want to come and watch" she says to the others.
Fireday smiles back, though it's obscured by his facewrap.
"If I were afraid of nasty jobs, I would not be down here."
After they're done and return to the others, he looks at the rooms and nods.
"Great work, Cohen. Thank you."
Then he turns to the others.
"One door left. Kaska, would you do us the honors?"
This room reeks of stagnant water and decaying vegetation. A long trough of water runs along the walls of this room; a layer of brown scum and algae grows on the water’s surface and on the walls. A single workstation sits in the middle of the room connected to a large machine made of tubes and bubbling tanks of water.
Two vegepygmies flank a single mold-encrusted chair on which a third vegepygmy sits. This one seems burlier than the others, and cradles a glowing hammer on its lap inscribed with the symbol of Brigh. When it sees you, it stands up and emits a series of rhtyhmic clicks and taps of its hammer. It seems like a rudimentary language. The other two raise their spears warily.
Fireday gives a small sigh.
"I suspect we now know what happened to at least one of the search parties sent down here. The mold claimed them, whether by accident or design and made them into...well...given the behavior we're seeing 'monster' sounds disrespectful."
He looks at the vegepygmy with the hammer.
"Do you understand the Common tongue?"
The creature doesn't seem to understand Fireday. It clicks and beats its foot on the ground in agitation. The other vegepygmies take a few steps closer to you.
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Kaska waits for Fireday's outreach efforts to the vegepygmies to fail before she starts killing them.
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"I will try to see if I can understand, but they might take this the wrong way and start attacking."
Coen makes large slow movements to start casting comprehend languages rubbing salt and ashes in between his fingers before touching them to his eyelids and tongue. His body posture is an attempt to seem non confrontational, though he personally has doubts about living fungus men's ability to read body language.
The vegepygmy leader seems to realize Coen's spellcasting isn't a threat. It clicks and taps again, and this time the sorcerer can understand the rudimentary language.
"You make machines work. Make more mold-mothers for us. We must spawn."
Coen nods his head and smiles at the fungus men talking about filling corpses with their young as if he finds what they say to be very agreeable, then turns to the others and maintaining a positive tone of voice tells them while scratching his cheek.
"Oh, they want us to fix the machines and make mold mothers so that they can spawn. I don't think they're asking that nicely."
Kaska continues to wait but she's done with this.
"There're demanding we find them sacrifices. Let's end them and get on with our business."
"Or they want us to be those mold-mothers. To battle, then."
Abandoning negotiations, you raise your weapons and prepare to attack. The vegepygmies do likewise!
Fireday lowers into a fighting stance, unable to close the gap before the enemy was upon them, but ready for when that happened.
Viv takes a quick and probably pointless shot at the rightmost vegepygmy.
Kaska moves in front of Coen to block the vegepygmy's line of advance on him, but stumbles as she does. Her attack comes nowhere close to the creature.
Kaska and Viv both launch their attacks, but neither one hits!
The eastmost vegepygmy grazes Kaska with its longspear while the other steps over and slashes with its claws, but fails to hit. The leader moves in and bashes Kaska's kneecap with the glowing hammer! It tries to rake her with a claw, too, but she dodges away in time.
Fireday says a brief prayer to Iomedae and grants her tactical insight to Kaska.
Coen directs magical force unerringly into the thing with the hammer.
Viv launches another pell-mell blast into the confined spaces!
So many attacks against her all at once rattle Kaska a bit, the vegepygies will certainly kill her if given much more time to try.
She strikes back against the leader, figuring he's the most dangerous of them, and hoping that if he is defeated, the moral of the others might crack.
Gylwinth jabs at the big vegepygmy, but it bats away his spear with its hammer. Fireday grants Kaska a defensive blessing, and Coen blasts the vegepygmy leader with a magic missile.
Kaska swings her falx at the leader as well, but it manages to dodge away from the sharp blade. Viv's blast sails past its head.
The vegepygmies continue to focus their attacks on Kaska, but the barbarian dodges and parries their attacks, Iomedae's blessings aiding in her defense.
Viv launches another bead with incredible force and miraculously manages a fairly accurate shot in the fray!
Agh! My knee REALLY hurts, not moving so well either. Too many of them
It takes all Kaska has to avoid the hostile blows coming at her. When the vegepygmy to the leader's right presents an opening for her, Kaska decides to take it and strike at him. She needs to reduce the barrage of attacks coming at her.
Coen backs up to provide as much useful room as possible before blasting the leader again.
Gylwinth and Kaska both attack the leader again, but the agile vegepygmy still manages to parry both of their attacks! Coen blasts it with another magic missile, adding another light injury to its tally.
Fireday backs up to give Viv a clear shot and grants his fellow android a war mind blessing. This allows Viv to blast a hole in the rightmost vegepygmy's head, dropping it!
The remaining plant creatures continue to attack Kaska, but with Gylwinth playing bodyguard, neither one manages to hit again.
Kaska turns her attention back to the leader, swinging her falx with both hands and trying to get to his torso.
Viv scoots sideways past Fireday to a position from which she can launch another telekinetic blast.
Again Coen chants and directs magical energy into the lead vegepygmy.
Kaska manages a solid blow this time, her blade tearing through the vegepygmy's torso. Viv and Gylwinth's attacks miss, but Coen's magic missile flies unerringly towards his foe, rocking the plant creature back.
Badly wounded, the vegepygmy raises its hands in a gesture of surrender. "Please! Do not kill! Colony must survive," it says in its odd language of clicks and taps. "Take glowing hammer and shiny disks as tribute. You too strong."