He continues to pound the floorboards sending splinters flying. The cracks spread until a small hole has opened revealing a dark space beneath.
Jessamy waits to see what he does next.
"He's not hurting anyone, so maybe he can lead us somewhere? To this Ada person, maybe?"
Pirknok continues to watch as well, though he peers into the hole when it appears.
As Pirknok watches the fist-sized hole quickly grows to the size of a dog. Peering over the dead man’s shoulder, he can see that the hole he’s opening leads to a lower floor.
Eli stays back, watching the dead man, wincing occasionally at his fury.
Pirknok heads for the down staircase and proceeds down it, then nears the spot the undead man will reach when/if he jumps through to the floor below.
Rushing down the stairs, Pirknok doesn't immediately see a way under the space where the undead man is smashing.
A large oaken table, its surface covered with moldy stains and rat droppings, sits in the center of this large kitchen. Shelves line the walls, and an oversized fireplace dominates the northeast portion of the room. The shelves in the southwest wall are in a much greater state of disarray, and two one-footwide cracks in the wall near the floor lead south into the earth beyond the basement walls.
As Pirknok rushes to the stairs down, Ysme calls out. ""
Turning to Adventus & the others. "This place is too dangerous to separate, but at least one of us should follow him," indicating the walking corpse with a nod of her head, "while the rest stay together."
It is obvious she considers herself best able to handle the dead man 'alone' as Betheda is unlikely to separate from her. Ysme pulls out the wand & presents it to Eli. "This should help you all if anything untoward should happen."
Eli's eyes widen as he remembers something. He steps over to Ysme and says softly, "I think this was Iago Foxglove. Ada's husband. He hasn't been seen in months, and the townsfolk assumed he had gone away on a business trip."
"Pirknok! Don't..." he calls after the Dwarf, echoing Ysme's warning. He sighs.
At the wand, he says, "Healing wand? I'll do what I can. I don't have the innate talent for using wands but I can usually get it to work with some effort."
"Shout if something changes up here," Ventus says, moving to follow Pirknok.
Taking a moment to look around the kitchen Pirknok notices the table vibrating subtly. The vibration grows in intensity until the whole thing room is shaking slightly. Something is coming.
Once a pantry, this room has become a filthy, reeking lair of what must be hundreds, if not thousands, of rats. Swaths of fur cling to everything, and mounds of rat droppings cover the floor.
In addition, a carpet of diseased tumor-covered rats come pouring out.
Jessamy, following everyone else, rushes after Pirknok.
Jess rushes down the stairs to see a carpet of sickly rats pouring over Pirknok and Ventus.
Pirknok shakes off the repulsiveness of the swarm and steps back to hack at it with his katana.
Jessamy retreats up the stairs. "Rats!"
AC 19, touch 15, flat-footed 15
Fort +3, Ref +7 (+1 vs. traps), Will +2
CMD 18
HP 38/38
Effects:
Jessamy snatches her blades from their spot at her hips, ready to attack should the rats come up the stairs.
Pirknok carves a wake through the tide of vermin.
Feeling dirty claws and needle-like teeth up and down his legs, Ventus viciously cuts and hacks at the swarm as best he can.
Eli rushes down to help his friends, drawing a bomb. Seeing the multitude of vermin in the room, he bowls the bomb into the mass of rats.
Ventus's blade and broad shield make short work of the vicious rats causing the survivors to flee in all directions.
No sooner has the danger passed though before the source of that rumbling Pirknok detected earlier makes itself clear. Pouring from the kitchen is another wave of diseased rats. They blindly rush towards the party tearing and biting.
Pointing to the dead man & calling out "Watch" to Betheda as she quickly runs to aid her comrades as best she can, Ysme all but leaps down the stairs. At the bottom she cries out, "Shelyn be with us!" as a similar beneficent coruscation washes out from her.
Ysme's prayer fills the party with a bit of divine inspiration.
Pirknok continues carving.
Eli draws another bomb, strafing it through the rats.
Throughly disgusted, Ventus continues his messy work and tries to force his concerns about disease and filth out of his mind.
Ventus and Eli make short work of the remaining rats. What few survive flee in terror, disappearing into cracks in the walls or beneath furniture. Once again, the area is deathly quiet.
Pirknok finishes looking around the kitchen before returning to the door he thinks the dead man will come down behind.
Rushing to southern door, Pirknok finds that it opens into a long hallway (not underneath the area the undead man is pounding). Moving to the end of the hallway there's another door.
This room looks to have once been some sort of arcane workshop, although it now lies in ruin. A row of soggy books sits on the northern end of a workbench along the western wall. At the other end of the workbench, what looks like three iron birdcages sit, each containing a dead diseased rat. To the east, two stained-glass windows loom. The northern window depicts a thin man with gaunt features drinking a foul-looking brew of green fluid, while the southern one shows the same man but in an advanced state of decay, as if he had been dead for several weeks. His arms raised and head thrown back in triumph, his rotting body turns to smoke and spirals into a seven-sided box.
"Ugh, I hate this place," Jessamy whines as she looks around.
Jessamy notices that the dead rats are fairly fresh, within the past week or so and a small symbol of a pig with a mouthful of lock picks peering at a keyhole can be seen on the bottom of their cages. Under the pig is a guildsign that says “Pug’s Contraptions—Magnimar.”
Peering through the stained glass window, she realizes that they look out over the Varisian Gulf.
Also, something, begins to press against her mind...
Jessamy finds herself frozen in place as a flood of information flows through her mind. In the form of animated stained glass windows, she experiences a series of visions chronicling the various stages a man, Ada's grandfather, went through in his quest to achieve immortality via lichdom, from researching the works of previous liches, to gathering the components for the lich transformation potion, to building his phylactery, finally culminating in a vision of the man imbibing his potion and doubling over in agony as his body began to rot away. A woman, his wife, appeared and in disgust she shattered his phylactery before his ritual was complete.
Jessamy is suddenly filled with the man's blinding shame that a loved one would see him do such a thing to himself and burning rage that she would keep him from achieving his goals.
It feels like the visions are trying to take control of her body but with a surge of will, she shakes them off and returns to her senses.
Jessamy gasps for breath as the vision fills her mind.
"This place really *is* evil," she exclaims, shivering.
"Someone tried to make himself immortal here. His wife stopped him, I think, but..."
She trails off, shuddering again.
"I think it may have been the woman we heard upstairs, wondering what someone got up to below."
Pirknok's eyes widen. "Thuh wummin in thuh pikcher... an' thuh hatred ah felt..."