Holg clears the rubble away from the door enough to allow you to open it. This cavernous chamber is split into mazelike passages by tall stacks of dark, dusty machinery. The western side of this room is a jumble of stone, as from a catastrophic collapse. Three crushed tubes protrude from under the tumbled stone, each as wide as a wagon and capped with a circular metal plate. On the north side of this room, a shattered glass terrarium surrounded by technical equipment stands empty. To the south, more silent machinery looms amid workbenches scattered with technological parts and several large machines that bear restraints and metal skullcaps.
The room is dark and quiet.
Holg moves his sword to the front. The continual flame spell in the sword sheds light enough to see the immediate surroundings but not the far ends of the room "Be careful. Something might be lurking in the shadows"
The Kellid approaches to the glass terrarium to examine it "What kind of experiments where they performing in such a place?"
Kaska creeps into the room with Holg. She points at the restraints with her falx.
"Nothing anyone would volunteer for."
Fireday follows after Holg and Kaska. At the sight of the tables and restraints, he makes a disgusted noise.
Viv drifts gently to the ground and then resumes walking. She takes in the scenery without comment, instead casting her piercing eyes hither and yon for signs of motion.
As you make your way through the mazelike room, you are caught off-guard when four deformed creatures charge forth from cover! They appear to be androids, but hunched and twisted as if formed improperly. They swing makeshift morningstars at Holg and Kaska, terribly wounding both Kellids!
Holg is surprised by the morningstars breaking his bones in his back "Ouch! Ah!"
The Kellid turns to see what is going on, and being so badly injured he casts defensively a shield of faith to protect himself.
The man attempts to maintain himself in a position to avoid being flanked, he coughs blood when he attempts to talk "Pack on! Don't give them spaces to flank us!"
Viv is startled by the sudden ambush of bugbear-like androids, then does her best to launch a blast over Kaska's shoulder while the Kellid woman brings her falx to bear!
The androids continue their furious assault! One catches Kaska upside the head, cracking her skull and sending her sprawling to the ground. Another one bashes Holg's stomach!
Fireday gapes as he sees what appear to be androids like him emerge from the dark, but as the battle is joined his attention quickly turns to Kaska and Holg's wounds.
"KASKA!" he cries as he sees as she falls. He calls down a bright light to his hand and touches it to her.
"Iomedae, keep this valorous woman alive!"
Shocked into action by the sudden attack, Coen steps back and with the lever of his magic twists space around the android in the middle of the formation, severing action from result and sending the android's next attacks into a chaotic direction.
Viv launches another blast at the android just across from her to the south - the good side of this is that with Kaska down, she doesn't have to worry about aiming her shot around the barbarian woman.
Huh? Ow! ........
Holg is astonished by the precision of the androids and takes the new hit with more blood bleeding.
The man looks worried at Kaska as she drops to the ground, but then turns to the androids and starts laughing at them "Hahahahaha, that's all? This is getting interesting" he rises his holly symbol and asks for a prayer that channels positive energy to heal both Kaska and himself.
The android's circuit-tattoos glow a fiery red as it resists Coen's powers. Viv scores a solid hit as Fireday and Holg focus on healing.
All four androids swing on Holg, but only one hits!
"Inheritor, give Kaska the resilience of your sheltering shield!" Fireday prays as he casts ironskin on Kaska.
Viv tries to give Kaska some cover fire, but really just goes back to her usual uncontrolled nonsense.
Coen follows up with conjuring a storm of gold dust in an attempt to blind as many as he can.
Satisfied he has called the attention of all the androids for him with his laughing Holg barely notices when one of them open a new wound on his left arm.
The Kellid places himself between the rest of the group and the androids and starts to swing his sword defensively while the others wear them down "YES! COME TO ME!" feinting on one of his defensive swings to try damage the one previously hit by Viv.
Kaska comes to to discover she's lying on the ground, and in considerable pain. There's also brutal close quarters fighting all around and right over her. She can see no sane means for standing up into it so she stays where she is. The floor feels nice and cool anyway.
Fighting defensively, Holg just manages to hit the wounded android. His mighty swing slices its head clean off, and thin blood pours from its cloven neck as its body falls to the floor!
Coen's spell proves effective, blinding two of the remaining androids! Unfortunately, Viv is unable to capitalize on this as her blast goes wide of her mark.
The androids swing again, but blindness causes them to miss!
Fireday's fervor is unrelenting as he grants Kaska more healing!
Holg gets surprised by his lucky strike and keeps fighting defensively, trying to hold in place with his last gasp of energy.
"Ah! You will not take me! HAHAHAHA!" he swings again while trying to deflect with his sword any attack coming for himself or his companions, and focusing his attacks on the non-blind android.
When one of the mutants falls to the floor, it creates an opening for Kaska. She grabs her falx and leaps up, ready to take her revenge. She brings her falx around in a sweep aimed at the nearest mutant's torso.
"One of you, please step back and let me take your place! Let me help you regain your strength!" Fireday says in a panicked tone.
Coen slams magical force into the one currently standing in front of Kaska.
Viv tries to help out but still fails to do so.
Kaska tears into the android in front of her, and Coen takes it down with a magic missile barrage. Holg slices into the android that isn't blinded, and Viv narrowly misses with her attempt to finish it off.
The two remanining enemies attack Holg. The blind one slams him hard with its morningstar, then its circuitry glows bright red as it throws off the glitterdust's effects.
When the android crushes Holg's ribs with his morningstar it seems Holg will go down quickly. Despite the terrible wounds bleeding all around his body, the Kellid proudly stands raising his greatsword once more "There is no pain! Gorum give me strength!!!" and he slashes at the damaged android once more, this time with a reckless abandon, giving up his defensive stance.
As Fireday asks for space, Holg finally founds an excuse to rear back "Oh yes! It is also your turn to demonstrate Fireday, sorry bro" and he steps back letting Fireday to fight.
Viv keeps flinging about her bolts of etheric energy to no good effect.
Fireday says a quick prayer and throws around some forge soot to don his
own ironskin.
Then he takes Holg's place in the battle line and lets forth a flurry of swings!
Kaska slips past Holg and around to the farther mutant. She wants to split the attention of the two remaining enemies so they can't double up on a single person.
"Plenty of room Fireday, wade on in!"
Coen again lashes out with bolts of force that streak past his allies and into the glowing android.
Kaska cuts down the wounded android with another powerful slash of her sword. Holg and Fireday slice and stab the remaining one, and as it reels, Coen finishes it off with a quartet of magic missiles!
"Iomedae in Heaven ABOVE that was a close one!" Fireday exclaims. He immediately turns to asses Holg and Kaska's wounds.
Holg leans to the wall, although he does so simulating a relaxed position instead of the real weakness he is suffering "Ah! Dishonorable ones those androids. They ambushed us from the shadows... if this would had been a honorable fight they would have had nothing to do against our swords and magic!"
Without more ado, Holg picks the chain of his holy symbol and raises it channeling energy to heal those alive.
Seeing how damaged he and Kaska are, he follows in with more healing energy.
To complete the job, Holg burns the energy of his pearl of power to finish healing Kaska.
Then he swaps surmount affliction for a more powerful healing spell on himself.
And completes patching himself with the wand of cure light wounds.
"Ah! That's better!" the Kellid swings his greatsword and laughs once more "If there are androids protecting this place, then we are in the good track!" and pointing to the north eastern door chamber "What next? Perhaps we should see what did we leave in that room in the entrance?"
Fireday looks at the fallen androids and a grimace forms on his face.
"We should burn these bodies. Much as it pains me to say it, at some point new android souls will enter these twisted bodies and renew them to lives as mad and painful as the ones we just ended."
He looks up back into the dark.
"This...this place could have one of those forges I'd heard of, where new androids are made. Except...this one is probably broken somehow. Why else would it make androids who are like...this?"
"Perhaps they were designed for a specific task. To be tough and strong and resilient, not so much for socializing," hypothesizes Viv.
Coen takes the time to calm down after the fight ends and listens to the other's thoughts on the androids here.
" Who knows? But even if they were designed for something I'd say it had a lot to do with the place. After all, being locked alone in the dark with clouds of disintegrating dust isn't the best place to grow up. "
"We should be more careful going forward. I'm sorry about this mess. I should have caught this ambush before it happened, would have if I was doing this right."
"I'M sorry!" Fireday replies. "I should have cast those protective spells sooner."
He sighs.
"I only have a few spells left and a few more blessings from Iomedae. How many more do you have, Coen?"
"I can honestly do this all day, so I shouldn't be the limiter. If we run out of healing and someone gets killed, my spells won't matter from that point. You and Holg would know best for when we should stop for the day and re-seal the hole."
Kaska goes from being quite a mess to completely knitted and whole within a few seconds due to Holg's magical powers to heal. She is of course quite happy to be free of all injury, but the process is always a bit of a head spinner for her. She's still left needing to take a short breather in any case.
"There's no need for competing apologies. We all need to be more careful. We've all been a little too cocky lately."
Holg smiles wide "Well, that was a real test for ourselves"
Once the room and side door are explored, the Kellid casts bull's strength and his muscles grow clearly "I have only started casting my daily spells. Let's get us moving here!" and he advances around the corner to check what else the ruins are hiding.
The side room seems to be a storage room of some sort, with several old metal cabinets lined against the north wall. Most of the contents of this room have decayed over the passage of time, but a search of the cabinets reveals a few items that are still of limited use: a timeworn arc pistol with 4 charges, a timeworn white hologram generator that currently stores an image of a gearsman, a timeworn white nanite hypogun (3 charges), and 40 silverdisks.
As Holg comes around the corner, he sees another four deformed androids that had been attempting to sneak up on you! They snarl and brandish their weapons!
"More of those pesky scums here people!" not willing to have them ambush the party again, Holg raises his holy symbol and a burst of radiance descends upon the group of androids.
The Kellid then steps forward trying to secure some safety area for the group to maneuver.
Holg's spell burns the androids but doesn't blind them. They surround him and attack, one scoring a hit!
Kaska, slightly behind Holg chops at the mutant she can reach from where she stands.
"More of them! At least they were decent enough not to come at us all at once!"
Having just seen everyone recover from one pitched battle in a tight space only to immediately walk into another one in an even tighter one Coen is a bit vexed.
"Oh come on!"
He immediately conjures forth a storm of gold dust to blind the attacking androids.
Holg attempts to slice at the android as he goes by his side.
The Kellid follows up with a more clumsy strike trying to focus on finishing the android attacked by Kaska.
If green drops at any moment, Holg side steps to take that spot and leave room for Fireday or Kaska.
Seeing a new battle has begun, Fireday prays to Iomedae again and his body surges with new strength!
And then he finishes with a brief request for the Inheritor to smile on them.