Lets search the room quickly to see if we can find any clue as to who she was or hints about what is inside. Then we sweep the floor for enemies and move onward.
Perception
"Good idea, maybe the woman left a key behind..."
The lower floor of the caretaker’s house consists of a sitting room, a kitchen with well and pantry, a dining room, and a small privy. Furnishings are worn antiques, dry-rotted and in poor repair. The pantry holds only a modicum of rough foodstuffs—most of it spoiled. Ophal keeps a banked fire in the stove with a pot of water for tea always close at hand. Spice racks hold unlabeled bottles covered in decades of grime. The dining room is in shambles with the table and chairs collapsed and apparently worm-eaten.
The eastern wall of the dining room is riddled with dozens of holes. Tal detects a hideous surging sound coming from the walls, as if of waves on a pebbly shore.
rats start pouring through the hole!
"Huh, this won't do as a base." Richard notices the waves of rats coming at him. "Let's get out of here."
Tal starts swinging his blade into the rats as fast as they can pour out of the walls hoping g to keep his party protected from the swarm. Thankfully his clasp holding his cloak on was able to aid him currently as he had no trouble dealing the rats damage with his enchanted blade.
Swarm bane scarab
Full attack with power attack and keen for
Iterative for
Aoo 1 for
Aoo 2 for
Rat parts fly through the air as Tal slices and dices. Soon the remaining rats think better of going to the slaughter and retreat into their holes.
"This is the type of place where you wake up with the plague. Richard has it right let's go"
With the rats disposed of and nothing threatening them Tal follows the other 2 out looking for the next avenue to pursue to enter the building.
"Well, that was some quick extermination. Maybe we can search this place again?"
The overhang of the caretaker’s house leans against the brick wall of the main building here, creating a tunnel of sorts. Lining the southern wall is a number of iron rings sunk into the masonry serving as hitching posts for mounts. A short stone stair rises to a door set into the brick wall.
Standees the stairs to the door and pauses looking at the others. Seems like as good of an entrance as any others and no one else is around. You want to take a look Richard for any traps or alarms before we enter?
"Might as well." Richard takes a look.
Richard notices that the door has not been used in some time and when he opens it, he sees why-it has been bricked over from the inside!
"Huh, emergency remodeling? Or maybe someone is in there who they don't want to escape. Not much we can do here without revealing ourselves and drawin' attention. We gotta move on for now."
Any magic you can use to get past the bricks? Any fancy way to bore through it or tunnel around or beside it? With that hag fleeing I am pretty sure that the place has been alerted already.
"If we needed more bricks, I could use the Lyre of Building to make it. But destroying? Nope. I don't have it."
A wide arch beckons into a cobbled entry foyer flanked by two cloister breezeways looking out over the yard. Two side doors open off of this foyer and a double door stands opposite the arch. Engraved in the stone lintel above this arch is a single word in the Common tongue—“Walcourt.”
"Boss." Sherix pipes up. "Footprints. See the far eastern end of the cloisters? There's a path back there behind the shrubs. Maybe we can check it out?"
"Looks like a path worth following. Good eyes Richard."
The team works together to try and figure out how many individual ran off in that direction.
This looks like a well used path that leads to the wall behind a thick olive tree.
Tal moves to the wall and starts pushing on it in different positions and angles trying to find a secret door or way in.
perception
Tal's instincts prove correct as he finds a button that opens a secret door.
Moth-eaten curtains of red velvet drape the walls of this chamber, with low-burning torches mounted on sconces between them. A large oaken table stands in the center of the room, its rickety benches pushed back against the far wall. Atop the scarred surface of the table is a human corpse, so mangled and mutilated with cuts and slashes that it is difficult even to tell if it was a man or woman. A pool of blood has formed on the floor beneath.
The body on the table has been dead for several hours. His lower jaw has been cut away, and a set of quieting needles transfix his mutilated body.
Richard recognizes something about this person, but not enough. Their grisly demise is enough to upset him.
He reaches for his whip. "Behind the curtain. Come out, now!"
Four rogues come rushing out from the curtain!
Know local
Tal points to the body on the table. Well we now know what has happen to the elder Drovenge. Vassidio’s death leaves the door open for other select few to take his grisly place.
Tal is about to say more when Richard points out the curtains as the 4 rogues come crashing out of hiding.
"That is Drovenge? I know Captains like to go down with their ship, but this is a bit over the top, don't you say?" Richard points at one of the rogues (dressed in Red) and casts >Hideous Laughter< (Will Save DC 15)
Then he begins to Inspire Courage (+2). "Be strong, everyone! These ruffians are fast but fragile!"
Red falls to the floor laughing. Blue and Yellow will flank on Richard!
Tal steps up to engage with the rogues that are swarming around Richard. Hoping to keep him from getting surrounded Tal swings mightily twice.
power attack +1 keen inspired for
crit confirm with crit focus for
iterative for
crit confirm with crit focus for
Tal makes quick work of the thieves and Yellow, Green and Blue are all dead! Red is still on the floor laughing!
Richard nods to himself. Fragile, yes.
Maintaining his Inspire Courage (+2), Richard cracks his whip once, nonlethally.
"Let's hurry this up."
Richard whips Red and although it stings, he can't stop laughing!
Acheh will pickoff one and send Cheken at another.
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Acheh and Cheken finish Red off quickly!
Tal quickly searches the thieves for valuables mainly potions that he hopes Richard or Achehcan identify that they can use before piling up the bodies next to the doo. Hopefully this will prevent anyone else from following us this way and protects our backs. How you holding up Richard? Any damage that needs attending to before we continue on?
Perception
Bah, they have nothing of use at the moment. Better to leave them here and grab the rapiers to sell on the way out if needed. Now then let’s find that most mage and finish our fight from earlier. Tal heads to the nearest door and tries to open it.
"I think I am fine." Richard checks himself for injury. "I wonder if they were sent to guard the area. Or maybe they noticed us. Uncertain." He follows Tal to the door.
Each of these rooms is littered with assorted rags and a number of tattered bedrolls and is, for all appearances, a common room where local drunks, indigents, and homeless folk can find a warm place to sleep at night.
This room has been set up as a soup kitchen with two trestle tables running down its center. A kitchen area is cobbled together in the southern alcove near a small fire pit that holds a large cauldron for preparing meals. The fire box is currently unlit and the cauldron empty.
Stacked beside the fire box are a number of sacks of meal for making the thin gruel the kitchen serves and a large sack of stale bread.
Richard and Sherix keep a look out for danger. If none are present, they proceed to the next room.
He adjusts his disguise to look like one of the thieves they met. Maybe this one can get further inside without raising suspicion.
Tal keeps moving on through the rooms stopping only to give each room a quick look for foes, hidden doors, or information on the enemy. Otherwise he keeps moving closer to the interior and other foes.
Perception passive take 10 is 25
Tal notices that behind the sacks of meal he sees that a portion of the wall, roughly 3 feet in diameter and about a foot off the ground, has been chipped through.
"I'll take a quick look." Sherix does her best to hide and flitter through the tunnel.
Assuming all is safe, she becons the team to follow her.
Acheh watches bow ready to defend the azata should anything interrupt her investigation.
Tal stands there as well waiting to rush forward should it sound like Sherix needs backup.
As Sherix crawls through the hole a guillotine blade falls on her!
"Seems simple enough... eeek!"
Sherix skitters back, bleeding profusely. "That's the last time I'm scouting for you... maybe."
"I think I defused the trap?"
Richard pulls out the wand of Cure Light Wounds.
Tal rushes forward to help Sherix back after the blade almost cut her in 2. Sherix! You ok? I am sorry that you got caught by the trap. Let me go first from now on and hopefully my shield and armor can hold up if and when we find any more traps. Richard or Acheh do you have a way to boost my defenses further to hold up to any traps that we come across?
With the trap tripped and no longer a threat Tal enters the room to see what he can find.
Perception 25