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Fireday watches silently as the group continues, glowering as Hyrsek examines the dead body and explains his mission.
"But questions would have served to help keep you alive long enough to collect that payment, as evidently your...colleagues," he says, sounding almost grossed out to describe the members of the League that way, "who've been sent here appear to have all been killed by what's lurking here. Clearly they expect to not have to pay out those rewards since so many of their agents get themselves killed. You can do better than that, Hyrsek."
Hyrsek shrugs. "Maybe, maybe not. For now, I've got a reputation to uphold. I'll finish my job and collect my payment. Then maybe I'll consider employment opportunities elsewhere."
You retrace your steps before heading down the southeast passage. The ceiling of this tall cavern comes to a peak along its axis thirty feet above. The walls are hung with the bleached bones of an untold number of creatures. Bony limbs point in every direction, eyeless skull sockets stare back plaintively—the scope of death here is disconcerting. Corridors pierce this cathedral of death to the north and west, while a ledge leads up from the lower fungus-riddled cavern to the south.
Looking around, you notice that the bones hide two additional exits from the room--one leads to a narrow crawlway that heads north, while the other masks a hole in the floor that leads to a tunnel that heads south.
Holg nods, finding Fireday arguments most convincing "I hope you make sense of him my friend"
The Kellid walks in the air, trying to avoid the contact with the bones, although not disgusted with the sight of them. "There is some exits hidden here. What about this hole south? Maybe it is exiting the caverns... Do you think I will fit in?"
Holg checks if he fits through the southern hole.
Holg fits easily enough through the hole in the floor. The tunnel here leads to a long, low-ceilinged cave. The air here is particularly close and foul-smelling, and the fungus growing thick on every surface seems particularly decayed and corrupt. The ceiling is a mere six feet high. The western reaches of the cave pulsate eerily with a black, throbbing miasma.
When Holg reports the darkness, Fifteen drops lightly down onto the floor and looks around.
"There is a dead mi-go." She reports. "It is the source of the darkness. There is nothing else in here."
"Why would it ...? Does it have some other magic that creates darkness? The other ones didn't do that," Molly questions.
"A dead critter?" Holg uses the continual flame in his blade to pierce through the darkness and examine the mi-go.
Fifteen shrugs "I do not know the cause of the effect." and settles in to watch Holg's examination.
Kaska drops down to take a look as well.
"It could be the mi-go is a victim of whatever is causing it. Look at how it's withered. Maybe it was lured in an consumed by something behind it. Like a carnivorous plant, but far worse of course because we're here instead of some place remotely normal."
The mi-go radiates faint evocation magic. Holt's examination reveals no obvious cause of death. However, after a minute or so, he begins to feel strange...
Fireday watches Holg worriedly.
"Urgh... this feels... weird" Holg observes his hand as it seems to take the light like a black hole, he quickly shakes it fortunately removing the weirdness from his hand "These inhabitants of the outer space have polluted our Numeria in terrible ways"
"We better leave this thing here, and we better expel these invaders from the land before we all fall ill" the Kellid grimaces once more, a bit scared from the unknown disease, then looks back to the hole they came from "I guess we should explore the other tunnels, northeast first?"
"Best if we leave. This doesn't go anywhere we want to be."
Kaska scurries back up out of the place.
"Shall I disintegrate it so that the disease can't spread?" asks Viv.
"That is probably wise." Fifteen agrees, the androids being much less concerned about disease than the humans.
"Yeah, some of us lesser folk don't fare so well against magical ailments," Molly adds with an upraised eyebrow.
Viv annihilates the mi-go's corpse, eliminating the source of the strange contagion.
Once that is done, Holg leads the way down the long, winding tunnel to the north. Four natural columns support this long cavern’s twenty-five-foot high ceiling. Several ledges, each ten feet off the fungus-encrusted floor below, overlook the cavern.
Molly notes that the floor of this cavern is a thin layer over another pool of slime and fungus like in one of the previous caves.
A hulking gug looms on a ledge nearby, within reach of the tunnel's exit. Three mi-go lurk on various ledges, and on a 15-foot-high ledge to the northeast, a fourth mi-go roosts. This one wears leather vestments and wields a staff of crystal. Shimmering magical energy surrounds it as it speaks in Aklo, the same voice you heard emanating from the tree earlier.
The speaker begins to chant as it starts a lengthy spell.
"I don't know what you're saying, but I won't give you a chance to say it!" Fireday yells as the battle is joined!
When Kaska sees the creature's spell casting start to run suspiciously long, she knows something bad is on the way. She casts her own, quicker spell, "niin nopeasti kuin voit!" and touches Molly.
Then she yells to everyone. "Shoot it as much as you can! It mustn't finish casting that spell!"
She continues to urge her companions on against their new foes.
Viv launches a shard at the chanting mi-go, hoping that a hit might disrupt its concentration.
The mi-go's magic deflects Viv's blast! The lesser mi-go swarm around Holg, clawing at the cleric to distract him. Meanwhile, the gug unfolds its abnormally long limbs and lashes out at Fifteen!
Fifteen actually grins as the gug gets within range. "That was a tactical error." She informs the creature, stepping forward in a blur of blades.
Then she yells to everyone. "Shoot it as much as you can! It mustn't finish casting that spell!"
Feeling the magic suffusing her small form, Molly smiles. "That I can do." Forgoing her alchemical ammo, the halfling falls back on plain slugs and powder to reduce the chance for misfires as she loads and fires.
Holg endures the mi-go claws as they swarm around "Yeah! Keep that coming! The more the pain the more the glory!"
The Kellid smiles as Kaska starts her inspiring music, accepting the rage and the haste that comes with it.
Holg enters accurate stance then delivers a vital strike on yellow with a destructive smite "Blood for Gorum!!!!"
He then steps back in the air, gaining height thanks to his air walk and leaving space for Fireday and Hysek to engage.
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"FOR VICTORY! FOR THE HEART! FOR THE RED TALONS!" Fireday cries as he lays into one of the mi-go to take the pressure off Holg!
Viv keeps trying to strike the mi-go, since disrupting its ritual is priority.
Fireday scores two hits on the mi-go attacking Holg. Molly unloads her rifle on the mi-go cleric, hitting with three of her bullets and disrupting its spellcasting! Fifteen and Holg attack another mi-go, wounding it, but Hyrsek fails to finish it off.
Angered that its ritual failed, the mi-go cleric brandishes its staff. The dark purple crystal flares as it floods the cave with harmful radiation!
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Viv's telekinetic shield blunts the particle wave from the radiation blast. She flips a shard into her hand, then shouts, "Fifteen! Ready to go?" and reaches out with her free hand.
Kaska feels the horrid effects of the radiation and waits to see if anyone else is affected along with her.
The mi-go attack Fireday and Holg. The android takes a few claw wounds but Holg's defenses hold. The gug assaults Fifteen again, scoring a critical hit and latching onto her synthetic flesh with two claws, rending her open! The warrior falls!
"Affirmati..." Fifteen's words are cut off by a huge claw laying open her spine.
When Kaska sees Fifteens troubles she halts her performance and pushes everything left of it to the android.
Holg gives a fervent thanks to Gorum for the iron layer protecting him "Gorum, you iron protects me!"
"This one is yours!" the gorumite points the last mi-go to Fireday and Hyrsek and turns to engage the gug. The Kellid warrior steps in the air flying over the molded chasm and embraces the Red Talon's Fury swinging his sword at the monstrosity with all his strength "Gorum destroy my enemy!!!"
If the gug still lives he makes a swift movement with the hand and delivers a shredding flurry of ice slivers that takes the monster.
Kaska renews her shouts of encouragement and works her way forward to Fifteen.
Fifteen's nanites spring into life, her body glowing as the huge wound on her spine rapidly closes with skeins of new skin and then full flesh as her entire body glows with the expended energy.
The familiar glow of Fifteen's healing nanites catches Molly's attention, but she continues her assault on the staff-wielding mi-go.
Fireday grits his teeth and braces for the blast, his newly-improved gear bolstering his body enough to shrug off the radiation!
Then he lashes out at the mi-go Holg pointed out.
Fireday and Hyrsek take down the wounded mi-go. Molly shoots the cleric several more times, severely wounding it. Holg slices into the gug, cutting it down with two swipes of his sword before turning and decapitating the mi-go behind him with a critical hit!
The cleric buzzes in agitation as it brandishes its staff again, assaulting you with the mind-warping horrors of the darkness between the stars!
Viv is completely bewildered.
She has just enough presence of mind to try to kill the mi-go one last time.
Fifteen's prone body begins to shake as her auditory processors start to feed contradictory information to her brain. From the floor she swipes at Kaska's approaching foot.
Holg shakes off the confusion effects, and looks around to the decapitated mi-go, in ecstasy from Kaska's music and fully being covered in blood "There is someone behind the columns"
Air walking over the chasm, the Kellid wades around until he reaches the caster at the end of the cavern and slashes at him with a focused vital strike.
Viv manages to strike the mi-go with her blast, then Holg smites it with a mighty strike from his sword! The fungal creature falls. You are able to restrain your confused companions long enough for them to recover from the confusion before they harm themselves or others too severely.
It takes a while for Holg to recover from the fury induced by Kaska's song and the blood on him. Then, he cleans the blood on the blade and sheathes it so he can take the mi-go's body and bring it back to the group, including the fallen staff.
"Here you have, this was the caster that was radiating us. As the Red Talon's say... To taste the marrow, first crack the mammoth's bone" the man offers the prayer beads to Fireday, but will keep them if the holy warrior does not want them. He will give the staff to Kaska and Isuma hoping they can identify the strange device "Do you know this mi-go leader from your trip Isuma? How do you think all this infestation is related to the aliens in the valley?"
Isuma shakes her head. "As I mentioned before, these creatures are not associated with the Dominion of the Black. I can only guess at their purpose for coming here."
There is one more tunnel leading to a final cave in this area. This cavern is dry and warm, with no evidence of the fungus that grows rampantly elsewhere in the cave network. Strange carvings adorn the walls, while an alcove to the north contains a low flat rock on which sits a single dark metal cylinder--another brain cylinder like the ones you discovered earlier. However, this one seems to contain a living brain inside of it! You might be able to use it to communicate with the mind of whoever it belonged to.
A compact heap of sticky fungus behind the pillar contains some gear. The gear consists of a ring of protection +2, a +2 laser pistol, a wand of fly (13 charges), a wand of technomancy (40 charges) a red access card, and several spellbooks.
Molly eventually regains control of her senses to realize that the creature has been defeated. She shoulders her weapon to join the others in looking over the valuables and then moves on to the last chamber.
"Wait, you're telling me that some poor fool has his brain in there?" she questions, pointing at the cylinder. "That's just wrong," she says with a shake of her head.
Fifteen collects the laser pistol and the access card before offering Kaska the zero pistol she was given a few days before. "I will use this one now, but thank you." She says.
"The capsules are designed to preserve and allow the interrogation of a brain." Fifteen says when Molly expresses her opinion. "If there was not a brain in the jar then that would be wrong."
Viv's fingers flicker over the brain cylinder, checking the buttons and knobs to see if it has some way for the captive brain to "speak" through the device, or if it requires some sort of telepathy or other mystical method of communion.
"The entire idea of having a container to preserve someone's brain in is wrong," Molly says with a shake of her head. "It means that someone thought it would be acceptable to remove some poor sod's brain and put it somewhere else rather than in his skull." Her tone is patient. "That's wrong, Love."
"Ahh." Fifteen says, as her eyelids flicker briefly. "I understand. Does that mean that we should not attempt to speak to it? Or should we destroy the container?"