"Well, we can try for more of them. Just, it's also good to know when to retreat. Spells and channels are a limited but renewable resource, and having something to cover our -behinds- should we need to run is a good idea. Let's finish checking this hall and move to the last one."
"Sounds like a sound plan, Iesha. Peredur? Will you do the honors of leading the way?"
The ranger bows with a smile and heads north out of the room and across the hall before trying the north door.
The room to the north is mercifully empty. A few cots and tables and chairs fill the space, along with a heavy looking, intact winch and pulley system, almost certainly there to lift the portcullis to Reaper's Hold.
Peredur shakes his head. "Shall we to th' Hold, then? Stand ready, all, and keep th' door open so we can see anything that comes out." He raises the portcullis.
"Ready when you are," Eloise says, drawing her new sword. The blade gleams, but is as black as obsidian. "Huh," she mutters. "This feels... I feel so clear-headed." She grins. "I love this."
The winch groans and the rusted metal squeals and the portcullis lifts. Peredur cranks the heavy gate into an open position and then locks it there.
Back in the hallway, the opening to Hold is now open. Peering inside, an inner wall is lined with cells, matching the outer, and a path to the left and to the right both lead to darkness and the unknown.
"It's thinking I am we're unlikely to find th' warden's body in here, but we may find another of th' five." The ranger eyes the winch suspiciously, then drags a couple of the chairs over to block the portcullis if it happens to fall. "It's happier I'd be were we able to wedge th' thing in place, but mayhap we'll be glad th' thing is easy to close."
"I agree. And I'd hate to have it fall and be stuck on this side. Good thinking."
The mechanism is in surprisingly good shape, and bolstered with the additional supports from Peredur, it looks unlikely to be going anywhere.
Now, the simple choice remains... left, or right?
"Left, I'm thinking, but best we go slowly, and listen."
Talia whispers to Kieli on her shoulder, saying "That means you, birdbrain! No talking for a bit!" She grins at him, obviously teasing her feathery companion.
Iesha eyes Peredur's precautions. "I'd make a crack about paranoia, but, here it's appropriate." she whispers.
Sour Heck quietly cradles his face in his hands a moment as his companions whisper back and forth about the need to not make any noise.
Iesha
Peredur for undead
Sour Heck
Talia
Eloise
Proceeding slowly to the left, the party's lights illuminate empty cell after empty cell, their doors hanging open; prisoners freed from their cellsonly to meet a fiery death.
The path turns to the right again, and then again, apparently forming a loop. In the south western corner, a lone iron door waits between the cells.
"Looks like we need to find another mechanism," Eloise mutters.
Again, she casts her cantrip.
Peredur looks the door over for obvious issues before trying to open it.
It would appear that the dead have little time for laying traps. The door is un-trapped and unlocked. The only notable feature are the scuff marks on the floor in front of the door.
They appear to be drag marks, faded with age and blackened by soot. But it would appear that those who came to this door, did not come willingly.
Iesha enters cautiously, on the alert.
Talia brings up the rear, cautiously keeping her eyes piercing the darkness behind the party for signs of movement...
Peredur for undead
Sour Heck
Talia
Eloise
Iesha is quick to notice a secret door in the east wall.
The door groans as it opens, and light fills the room, perhaps one that was better left unlit...
Grisly tools of torment decorate the room. Cages hanging from chais along the walls, a stretching rack, a wooden tank, and a long-doused fire pit, all secondary to an iron maiden, the closed lid decorated with the face of a tormented woman.
The broken, twisted skeleton of a human, dressed in the tattered remains of a guard uniform lies upon the stretching rack. The body is surrounded by several discarded knives, branding irons and pliers.
A large, bloodstained wicker basket sits at the head of the rack.
"Ugh," Eloise exclaims, her face twisting with disgust. "I hate torture rooms -- and I'd say at least one of the inmates used it as their playroom before the end."
The Chelishwoman eyes the basket with suspicion.
"Might this body have belonged to the Warden?"
"Ugh, indeed," Talia replies. "I'm with you, Eloise. Torture is just... wrong."
She, too, looks warily at the basket and the skeletal remains. "I suspect we'll need to make a closer examination to determine if that was the Warden, or just another guard. Anyone want to volunteer?"
Peredur grimaces, looking around at the scattered implements. "I'll do it. Though 'tis certain I am of what'll come to pass." The ranger puts away his mace and readies his shield before advancing slowly towards the rack.
“So we’re talking again? Good. Plenty of time to enjoy the silence once we’re dead.”
Sour Heck moves warily into the room, then drops his guard and starts clucking disgustedly.
“Shameful, that a Ustlavian prison would fill its dungeon with these horrible devices! What a senseless waste of gold. What a torturer really needs is a knife, a hot fire, and some stout manacles, not all these fancy hunks of furniture. Well, that’s the government for you...I’m sure someone’s brother has an iron maiden import business or a rack shop.”
He examines some of the implements on the wall.
“Well, those are actually pretty terrifying. Nothing I’d like stuck in me, to be sure. But the same could be said of a pointy stick in the hands of some demented, tittering gnome.”
Broken bones, severed hands, dislocated hips and shoulders, and numerous long, thin, sharp metal needles were inserted into this poor guard's eyes, ears, elbows, hips and knees. He died after hours of torture.
Several keys have been wedged into the skeleton's pelvis in life. Deep scrapes and gouges in the bone indicate a level of hatred used to inflict the pain. The jaw and parts of the skull have been shattered by a metal disc that was jammed into the man's mouth.
"Stercus," Eloise swears as she looks at the state of the body. "Keys... No disrespect to the victim, but we might be able to use those. And what's that in his mouth?"
Peredur looks back at the bard with a haunted expression as the Ustalavan's words sink in. "It's missing th' point you are, Sour Heck. For when th' gnome stabs you it's for a reason--she's angry that you kicked her puppy, he's got a toothache and a radge on for all that moves, she's just that way--all of these, you can grasp even if you don't share th' feeling (or if it wasn't you who kicked th' puppy). But a place like this...there's little or naught of hate, or anger, or joy in th' work here. 'Twas not Warden Hawkram who singled out prisoners to be done to death in this place. 'Twas th' law of Ustalav and th' power of th' state, a vast and impersonal machine.
"And there's th' true horror. For your gnome may be turned from his course by argument, but if you turned one guard th' same way he'd just be replaced by another who'd do th' job, same as switching out a part that don't work.
"And on that cheery note, Iesha, what can you tell us about yon bones?"
"I know some'aught of states that're like big machines what chew up people," Eloise mutters, looking about the place with loathing. "Believe it or not, it can get even worse than this. So much worse..."
Talia looks towards the remains of the corpse, checking to see if she can determine cause of death, or who it might have been.
"Well," she says, looking around at her companions. "I can safely say, whoever it was, that he or she is dead..." She looks slightly disturbed, though by the surroundings or by a lack of knowledge is uncertain.
Eloise peers closer at the piece of metal in the poor sod's mouth...
It is a metal badge, tarnished with age and ash and dried blood.
Talia looks towards the remains of the corpse, checking to see if she can determine cause of death, or who it might have been.
[dice=Heal Check:]1d20 +4
"Well," she says, looking around at her companions. "I can safely say, whoever it was, that he or she is dead..." She looks slightly disturbed, though by the surroundings or by a lack of knowledge is uncertain.
"That," Eloise says, her voice suddenly excited, "that's a badge in that poor sod's mouth! It's pretty old, and dirty with ashes and blood, but that, that's a badge, that is! Could it be the one we're looking for?"
Almost immediately, excitement turns to suspicion. "And if it is, how bad are the securities here going to be? Is every soul that ever died in this poxy hole going to rise up against us taking it?"
“No, see, what I was saying is that it’s cheaper to hire a demented gnome than to buy a giant, impersonal machine that eats people.”
Sour Heck steps over to the rack and gives a low whistle.
“I’m going to guess that after several years of threatening to shove a guard’s keys where the sun doesn’t shine, some lucky prisoner got his wish. Just before dying of the smoke.” The bard pauses and considers. “Which is a whole lot better than burning to death, on the whole. Twice lucky.”
He plucks the keys from the skeleton’s pelvis and the badge from its jaws. Then he starts piling its bones in the basket. “The ghost lady you mentioned will know if this is her husband. If it is, we can lay them side by side in the Restlands.”
Iesha checks out the body, in spite of her obvious shock about the contents of this room. "Oh, there's some kind of secret door on that wall."
She points to the spot.
She looks up from her study of the body, shuddering. "This took hours. Poor soul."
"May he have found peace with th' Lady, then. It's wondering I am who did this, though. Whoever it was didn't fall to th' fire here; mayhap they went through th' door there." Peredur walks over to where Iesha indicated and looks for the door himself.
Peredur finds a false stone panel, which reveals a lever. Apparently the wall here slides open.
The moment that Heck lifts the lid from the basket, two skeletal hands leap out, clawing at his face. Bony claws dig in to his throat, choking him.
One of the claws actually manages to grab the bard by the throat, squeezing with an unsettling strength. The other claw, brushed off, drops to the ground.
Iesha
Peredur
Sour Heck
Talia
Eloise
claws
"Heck!" Talia shrieks, dashing up beside the bard and quickly thrusting her hand out towards the claw grappling his face.
HP: 20/20
AC 17 (touch 12 flat-footed 15)
Spells used: lvl 1: 1/3, lvl 2: 1/2
Round 1:
Peredur looks at the hand on Sour Heck's neck, then at his sword, then back at the hand before rushing over and trying to pry it off of the bard's neck.
Flushed and shaking, Sour Heck snatches the heavy mace from his belt and hefts it above his head with both hands.
"Guess who won't be getting a fancy funeral!" he shouts, smashing at the remaining claw.
Iesha jumps backwards when the severed hands burst from the basket, then reacts by grabbing a vial of holy water and emptying it onto the thing.
"Can't anything in this place stay dead?"
Peredur wrenches the grasping claw from Heck's throat and throws it on the ground. Heck's fury is meted out in short order, and he pulverizes the thing with a sound mace strike.
Snarling, exchanges her sword for her mace.
"Careful of other surprises!" she warns.
Round 1
HP: 26/26
Status: x, round x of y
AC 15 (touch 11 flat-footed 14)
Spells used: lvl 1 0/4
Arcane pool points used: 0/5
Iesha manages to douse the other claw with holy water, but it still moves, hissing and spitting with the contact of the sacred and profane. It skitters across the floor and lunges at her, but only meets open air.
Round 2:
Peredur brings his sword around in a lateral blow, catching the claw and knocking it sideways.
Peredur destroys the last claw with ease.
“I’m going to give you what I gave your partner, you little...” Watching the claw scuttle this way and that, Sour Heck steps to trap it between himself, Peredur and Iesha, then takes another great overhand swipe at it.