Astra finds broken chemicals and pharmaceuticals on the ground. She finds a pair of silverdisks in the corner. Everything else seems to be junk, or broken beyond repair.
So let us try the north door.
Bloodstains mar the floor and walls of this hallway, while scorch marks and smears of ash on the walls evidence some sort of altercation having taken place in this area relatively recently. Four tangled mounds of metal and other materials lie further up the hall, surrounded by strangely colored stains.
As you examine the blood, it appears that there is a lot more pools to the West and streaks of blood like red rails to the East.
There is a pair of doors to the East and to the West. (You came from double doors to the South.)
"To me it looks like a battle has taken place to the left, and then the bodies were dragged off to the right", Astra says, taking a few steps forward from the double doors. She crouches by the blood pools and streaks, and tries to do some crime scene investigation as to how many people the blood might be from, does the blood look sufficiently plentiful to assume lethal, or just wounding, and so on. After that, she'll move on to examine the metal mounds and strangely colored stains.
[ooc]Astra, good deal, so I'd Life Link 10 DMG from you, and then get healed for 12! Excellent, we're both about full then!
I hope Khonir wasn't slain by these things. It seems we should follow the blood trails since the bodies were taken.
I’ll take the lead. Sneek walks towards the door to the east. Putting his ear to the door he listens for any sounds from the other side.
Astra crouches and examines the remains for a while, and then stands up. "I estimate one party did battle here...that would then probably be either Khonnir's party, or the Brighites. They fought robots, and lost...badly." She puts a finger to her chin, looking thoughtful for a moment. "Hang on. Let's do west first", she speaks up, having an opinion on direction for the first time since coming to this floor. "If they came to this room from the west, then it stands to reason there's an entrance to this level in that direction. We might want to secure access to an exit before we go deeper into this level. At this moment, climbing back up is our only exit strategy, and I would prefer to have a less difficult retreat route."
Very well, west.
Good idea. We go west.
Sneek hears no sounds to the west or east.
A large metal desk with blinking lights and strange glowing panels sits atop a raised area on the east side of this room near a circular table. Two couches covered with black material sit to the south a pair of black metal pillars. Splatters of dried blood stain the floor and walls near a pair of doors to the north, while here and there patches of rust-red mold and fungus cling to the southern wall. The room itself is brightly lit by glowing panels on the ceiling.
Astra will first examine the spores, molds and funguses. She will first do so at range, in case there is any brown mold or any sort of mold that is dangerous at a range. Then, she carefully approaches, studying each mold and fungus in turn, taking some samples into little vials and trying to determine the nature of each. Afterwards, if none of the molds turn out dangerous, she will study the machinery and try to figure out its function.
Liz examines the desk
The fungus seems to be russet mold. However, it has seeped through the wall and looks dead, burnt from fire of some kind. Definitely no longer dangerous.
You stare at the desk's machine. It seems to be circulating several images including boilborns and strange floating fungus plant . Androffan writing flashes on the screen, "Divinity is under attack. Find escape po-"
You see several images being circulated on the desk panels including a a strange plant man and another strange plant .
Astra tries to identify the two images on the desk panels.
These are very odd plant beings, unfortunately I am not skilled in identifying them.
Second plant is a tsaalgrend. Debate over where they come from, could be alien, fey or aberrations from the darklands. Vulnerable to fire.
"I can tell you a little bit", Astra walks over to Elizabeth, looking over the same screens as she discovered. She points at the first image, depicting an odd plant man. "This is a vegepygmy...they are small plantlike humanoids that arise from russet mold... That's the same mold that we encountered in the skulk caverns. Gerrol Sonder was infected with it. He was the one that we treated with alcohol to prevent a vegepygmy spawning from his corpse." She looks around, and points at some of the mold stains in the room. "There was plenty of russet mold in this room but it's been burned to an inert state -- possibly by one of the parties we are searching for. We should be safe from infection here. But the prevalence of russet mold does seem to indicate the possibility of vegepygmy infestation somewhere nearby."
She then points at the second image on the technological screen. "This second plant is less known to me... I've seen some pictures of something like this...called a 'tsaalgrend'...but I'm uncertain of its origins. It should be relatively dry plant matter though...susceptible to combustion."
"Look, if you don't know what something is, there's no reason to make stuff up and lie about it"
Chakos shakes his head in disgust, "plant men indeed"
Astra rolls her eyes and says nothing. I have a suspicion he'll find out soon enough...
Liz looks puzzled. Why would she lie? It does not sound unreasonable that this is where Gerrol got his infection. In any event, where should we go next?
"My apologies, my words were overly harsh. You've not steered us wrong yet, but I find the idea of plant men extremely far fetched."
No hard feelings I am sure. We should see if we can secure an exit route or at least a secure room to rest in.
There are a pair of double doors to the East. A single door behind the desk and a single door to the West. There are also the double doors back to the North.
"It seems we have many options."
Dice check!
1.East
2.Desk door
3.West
4.Lol, I dunno
You use a keycard to open the door behind the desk. Inside you find a small room with a few upright lockers. Some broken metal and gadgetry lies scattered amid debris. You find three batteries, 26 silverdisks and a tube of metal with a lens in the front. You also find a locked white bin.
Liz examines the tube
Elizabeth clicks the button and a cone of light shoots out of the front of the tube from the lens. When she clicks the button again, the light vanishes.
Interesting, this metal tube creates light. Very useful for those who don't use magic.
"I'm not sure I follow? It looked like magic to me."
Liz uses detect magic on the tube.
There is definitely no magic in the tube.
No magic at all, I guess it is a technological item. This can be useful if we run into areas that prevent magic.
Liz examines the white bin.
The white bin is locked. You slide the white keycard into the slot and it opens.
You find some kind of light armor suit with zero charges, an angular green gun with five charges, and four cylinders with a dial and button at each of their tops. Two of the cylinders have x's on them, one cylinder has a feather, the last cylinder has a sunburst symbol.
Astra will cast the spell Technomancy and study the items.
The cylinders are grenades. You twist the dial, push the button and throw (as a standard action). The two x's are bang grenades (no damage but staggers and deafens), a flash grenade (sunburst-blinds), and a soft grenade (feather-deals 5d6 nonlethal damage).
You aren't quite sure what the other items are. (Have to meet or beat the Craft DC.) One is light armor with no charges and a touch interface on the side. (+2 AC, 8 max dexterity). The angular green gun is timeworn and has five charges left. You can tell which direction you're supposed to point it in. It also has a trigger.
"These small ones are -- I suppose the best way to put it would be throwable explosives", Astra says, and offers to take the four small cylinders. She also offers to take the gun. "This one confounds me a bit more, but I believe it is a weapon and I think I know how to use it. That one", she indicates the armor, "is obviously some manner of exotic armor. I think I will be able to examine these at greater detail when we return to Torch."
"Let's head west", Astra says.
You head through the single west door and find yourself in a familiar place. You are in a hallway, it is very hot and you see a brown door marked Observatory, a red door marked Habitat Controls and a gray door. Behind you is a black door labeled Science Deck Access.
This is...I believe we are back where we fought that four armed creature, that means we can leave by heading west. So shall we keep exploring or head back to examine all the objects we found and rest?
"Discretion might be the path best followed here, to keep ourselves alive, and thus have a better chance of finding him."
Liz looks at Astra's items so she can add them to the list.Agreed. Liz will head out with the others when they are ready.