Rivas saw the door open and a chance popped into his head. Maybe the man on the table can help. Certainly he hates this... thing. That... could be useful
He scrambled out of the chamber and grabbed the shears as he went to the table.
Stabilization check
Gladiola tried to take her time with her next swing, but the sudden strike on Pasiune threw off Gladiola's timing, her mind racing as her allies drop one-by-one.
The doctor breathed in and out deeply, looking across iron bars at Gladiola, snarled grin across its face. The creature turned around, noticing now that Davian had fled, and that the cell was now open. It let loose a growl, slinking to the shadows, fleeing to the eastern room.
With the threats gone, a silence overtook the room. It was cold, damp, and without a single window to let in light. Underground, you suspected. The stone walls were lined with deep fissures, rubble formed in places where the ceiling and walls had caved in. Where the blood wasn't viscous and sticky, it was had caked dry. Most all of the floor was covered in it, and splotches danced along the ceiling and walls closest to the operating table.
Six sacks lie by the northern cells, some appear empty, others bulky, tearing at the seams. They drew you in - yours, they must be, you thought.
Barely visible in the darkness, the Changeling noticed more than her human counterparts. In the corner of the room, an old, wooden chest lay unattended, perhaps forgotten by the doppelgänger and her compatriot.
Though pitch-black, there was more to explore in the south. To the east, a wooden remained shut. Nothing could be heard from either area.
The bound man broke the silence, wrestling with his bonds, scrambling as he looked at Rivas. "Hurry, damnit, free me."
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Ember is also bleeding out.
Rivas fumbled with the keys as he hurried to unlock the man's cuffs.
Eponine clutched the holy symbol, and tried to work through why it was familiar...
For the sake of any daily abilities, assume that waking up from your nightmare was a full eight hours rest. If anything needs to be prepared, assume you had the time to already prepare spells/other abilities.
Eponine surveyed the room, taking in the blood and fallen. She paced her way to the center of the room, looking all around. Her heart broke at the pain and the bloodshed of other victims like herself. As she clutched the familiar wooden symbol in her hands, she felt that sympathy radiate out from her and wash over the room.
As soon as she has the holy symbol, she moves to the center of the room and channels energy, excluding their tormentors. All allies gain damage.
When the radiance faded, she was left with the feeling that she had betrayed someone, stronger than any point since she awoke.
Rhade opens her eyes, head throbbing from expending so much of the strange psychic energy she barely realized she could control, and from her extreme bloodloss. She looked around at the now open cell door.
"Where did those two get off to? That crazy Doctor almost killed me! I owe it quite a debt now. Who are the rest of you," she adds almost as an afterthought. She wasn't sure who she was, but maybe the others had some light to shed on her own darkness.
All failed to get a hunch on the bound-man.
Pasiune awoke, the scene hardly different from when she was knocked out. Ember, while his wounds had sealed, was still unconscious, and laid motionless in his shared cell with the psychic and Gladiola. The three remained locked in their cage.
As Rivas unlatched the thick, leather straps that stretched across the man's chest, the man rolled off of the operating table, skittering away into a dark corner of the room. The man blinked at the four who remained conscious. In the darkness, Eponine saw a frightened, tortured man - skin more covered in blood than not, with deep circles under his eyes. "St-Stay back!" he barked, "why, why're you, you freaks acting l-like, like, people all'uva sudd-"
The earth trembled far beneath the six of them, a long, dull tremor that drowned the erratic clinks of metal and silenced the cries of the now-free man. Small bits of the ceiling chipped off into dust, crumbling at the floor.
"Get us out of this damn cage! We are sitting ducks in here, get us free so we can work together!"
Rivas let out a startled "EEP" and fell over as the man jumped away and Paisune shouted at him.
"I-I-I I don't know! Who are all you people!? I can't remember b-but it tells me I should trust you. WHY?!" He stammered out as he crawled under the table. "I saw all of you die! How are we here?! Why are we here?!"
he looked about the room still wildly before spotting a bag that felt familiar somehow. He threw the keys at Paisune and scrambled over to it, tossing it open and drew out a pristine, shiny and clean dagger before huddling near the bag and watching the others.
Gladiola trembled, her fingers still tensed around the trowel's handle. She whispered through clenched teeth.
"I am not a freak. I will never be called that again."
She stuffed the trowel into her belt and stood tall. She drew the group's attention with a few curt waves.
"Get yourselves together! We need to get out of here before that viscious witch gets back."
She grabbed the keys off the floor and unlocked the door. She threw it open so it banged against the bars. She ran over to the bags, snatching hers away. After a quick glance inside, she let out a single breath of tension. She straightened out her makeshift bandana mask and marched towards the frightened man.
"You. Stop your whining and tell me what you know."
Rhade quickly looked in her bag, having no idea what actually might be contained therein. At seeing the two flasks, she greedily tore the stopper off one and chugged it down.
CLW
She felt her gashes begin to heal. She put the empty vial bag in the bag, hoping to find a use for it in the future.
She turned to the woman who had used the keys. She could tell quickly that that one had no time for fools...perhaps they had something in common. She stretched and moved to listen to the man's answer.
Ember lost consciousness of the cell and fell back into dreams and visions. He struggled to understand why he kept getting attacked and killed. Someone must have figured out his secret. He wasn't sure what that secret was, but he seemed to know that when he got into trouble it was because someone found out he wasn't what he claimed to be.
He could deal with that, but now he sensed he may have gotten others into trouble. This caused some turmoil. He struggled to understand it and then he thought, perhaps this is that conscience thing he's heard others talking about. Bad time to grow one, just when it appeared he would need to do unpleasant things to survive. He tamped it down and then thought he heard voices.
"Oh!" Eponine exclaimed when the energy pulsed out from her. As she glanced about and took in the energy's effects, she noticed Ember. "Ah, the brash one is still not with us. We should all try to get out of here together; no one deserves to be left behind in this place."
She knelt down by the unconscious man, laying a hand on his chest. Clutching the symbol again, she whispered "Please. I don't know what I've done to wrong you, but please help this one." The energy pulsed again into the man, but Eponine was disappointed; the feeling of betrayal was still there, with no hint of forgiveness in the offing.
Magic Weapon for Cure Light Wounds, healing Ember for
Ember's recurring nightmare was interrupted by a surge of bright light that burned away the fog and then blinded him. When he opened his eyes, he saw Eponine's face, with her distinctive duo-toned eyes, looking troubled. "Have I died and gone to heaven?" he mumbled sincerely.
He sat up, noting the pain in his gut had not gone away completely. "Angels do exist! Thank you." he enthused and set a hand on her shoulder, ostensibly as a gesture of gratitude but also to reassure himself she was real.
He stood and looked around. Seeing the cell door open and his recent cell mates free, he strolled out, instincts kicking in to force himself to hide his fear and pretend to be in control.
Taking in the situation, Ember looked over the tray of torture devices, picking out the best improvised weapon he could and then anything that might make a good lock pick. "Name's ...Ember," he said, taking but an extra heartbeat to think of his name. He walked over to the bags and opened one that looked familiar. Seeing the ring, he pulled it out and slipped it on his finger. "I meant what I said earlier. I expect we've been kidnaped probably to get money out of my old man, assuming he did not commit me in the first place. Point is, he'll have someone working on getting us out, but we may as well meet them halfway."
He sniffed the flask of holy water and stoppered it. "Figures they'd take my brandy and leave holy water instead."
Rivas clutched the bag close and huddled on the floor watching the others. "I saw all of you die. I saw all of you die. What is going on?!"
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"Get a grip, fella," Ember says to Rivas. "As you can see, hallucinations of my death were highly exaggerated, although that last one felt too real," he adds, rubbing his chest where the 'doctor' ripped his flesh. "If that creature that was 'operating' on him," Ember gestures to the man Rivas freed from the table, "can change her form, she can probably cause us to have nightmares and gods know what else. Let's just get out of here. She's still at large so what say we find her and get her to do some explaining before she gets reinforcements."
He looks around for something that could serve as a light source, a detachable torch or lamp. He'll also circle the room looking in dark corners and the furnace for anything useful.
"And I'm Eponine. And I..." She trailed off and frowned. I betrayed some one. Who, damn it? Who?
Rhade looked around at the others through half squinted eyes, still smarting from the vicious claw she took from the doctor creature. "I'm Pasiune, but people call me Rhade...I'm pretty sure. What have they done to our minds here? I can't re,ember anything right now!"
Ember tucks the holy water flask in his belt and the bag in a back pocket. "Eponine, Rhade, please to meet you. Let's start by telling each other what we are good at. Memories may return, but we need to get organized and find a way out of here while we can. Eponine, I assume you are some kind of cleric or oracle or some such. Rahde, I saw you wrinkle your brow and that doctor screamed like you had poked a knitting needle into her brain. I'm pretty good with locks if I have the right tools and handy with a sword. I'm also pretty charming when I want to be." He regards Rivas on the floor. "You seem pretty good at cowering. Anything else?"
As people respond to his questions, he begins to sidle over to where Gladiola is questioning the poor beggar from the operating table.
Rhade had a tough time looking directly at Ember. "You've got the right of it. There's something really weird happening here, though. When I woke up a few mi Utes ago, the last thing I remembered was killing you in my dreams," she told him. "It was really vivid!"
As she spoke, she kept rubbing her head. He was right, she could use her mind to do things, but what had she used her talents for in the past?
"Everyone, let's go! I mean now! I'm not waiting for that doctor to come back," she snaps, feeling uncomfortable with her thoughts and the conversation with Ember.
Gladiola finally waved a dismissive hand at the prisoner.
"Hmph. Just come along. We need to get out of here."
She began to stride out of the room at the lead of the group, but froze as Ember began introductions.
"Glad..." There was a name in her mind, a name her lips expected to speak as they had many times before, but it wasn't her name. It never was. She knew her name, who she had always been. "...iola. Gladiola. Call me Gladiola." She began to smile under her makeshift bandana mask. The words were right.
She cracked her neck and shifted her dreadlocks out of her face. "I am sworn to valor. My blade defends the helpless. My might upholds the weak. My wrath..." She clenched her free hand, her wrist cracking. "...undoes the wicked."
She held up the trowel and grumbled at it.
"At least when I have a proper weapon."
Rivas hugged the bag and looked at the particularly intimidating women and smooth talker.
He could tell the man was mostly bluster and was as afraid as the rest of them. "I - Um... I think my name is Rivas but... I don't remember much of anything else. I think and things happen..."
"You. Stop your whining and tell me what you know."
As Gladiola marched toward him, the man shrunk further back into the darkness until his back pressed into the cracked stone wall. "I'll- I'll tell you anything, just, stay, stay away."
"My, my name's Campre Linweigh. I'mma, hell, was'sa orderly at Briarstone." Campre rose to his feet, hand against the wall to hold himself up, though hunched slightly over. His face, marked with cuts from his recent "surgery," was littered in short stubble peppered black and gray. Keeping his eyes on the party, he walked south. "'Round a week back, things fell apart. Don't know how it started, but all'uva sudden, staff and patient began changin'. Y'all met Scaen and Davian. Two a bit different after things went sh**. All them cells were packed few days back, we's all that left."
As the others talked about leaving, Campre acted friendly. "Pr-proper weapons?" He took a hesitant step towards the group. "Saw Scaen stashing goods in that trunk there. No one'll mind even if they ain't yours. Should take a look through if your gonna help me survive this." The man gripped a large piece of rubble firmly in his hands, and warily eyed the group.
After you emptied the chest of what seemed familiar to you, a few items remained.
- A small stuffed animal of a bear
- Five (5) days worth of trail rations
- Fifty feet of Hemp Rope
- Flint and Steel
- Twenty candles
Rivas hugged the bag and looked at the particularly intimidating women and smooth talker.
...
He could tell the man was mostly bluster and was as afraid as the rest of them. "I - Um... I think my name is Rivas but... I don't remember much of anything else. I think and things happen..."
Ember changed tack. He drifted away from the women, leaving them to threaten or cajole cooperation from the guy from the table. He walked over to Rivas and extended a hand. "Any day you get killed and live to tell about it, is a good day. It's possible we're all crazy, but let's work from the assumption we are not and make the world prove us wrong. And if you think and things happen, well, just direct those kind of thoughts at our crazy doctor. Ah, our former patient seems to be talking. Let's hear what he has to say."
After learning about the chests, Ember eagerly inspects the contents. Certain items seem to draw his hand, particularly a well balanced dagger. He pulled a suit of leather armor out, a backpack, and a belt loaded with weapons, including a cutlass, a club and a throwing ax. He set about putting the armor on and then strapping the weapons to his belt. He checked the backpack sighed pulled a hip flask out, saying, "Thank you Abadar." He took a swig, then another to keep the first one company, snorted in satisfaction, and stashed the flask in a pocket on his vest. "That's better. I just don't feel myself breaking out of an asylum where all the doctors have gone mad, without my gear."
He double checked his pack and located number of tools used by thieves to pick locks and disable traps. He tucked these into a number of pockets hidden in his clothes.
Rhade also dons the found gear. A good bit of it seemed quite familiar to her in a strange way. She listened intently to the tale the man told about the goingson at this place recently. "Linweigh, tell us more. What is Briarstone? Tell us more about these changes everyone underwent! Is there a reason our memories are gone? Is that part of the change," she barked out at him.
Campre appeared confused by Rhade's questions. "You can't remember?" In silence, his glance shifted to each of the freed prisoners. Then, putting the pieces together, the man cursed. "It'sa sanatarium. A, uh, asylum for the disturbed. Y'all were dumb and deaf, now you decide you can't remember? Just my luck I'm stuck with five loons who can't settle on their disorders."
The orderly looked at Gladiola, expecting backlash. "Patients, not loons. Sorry. New ones I'd bet, don't recognize your mugs." His apology didn't sound sincere. "Looks like we're in the furnace rooms. Protect me and I'll guide you outta here, understand? I live, we all live. Think ya can remember that one?"
Entry created for Campre Linweigh.
"I'll wager some shared enemy of ours cursed us with being deaf and dumb and used that as a way to have us committed. Given my standing in noble circles, I'd further wager we were being held hostage or some plot to keep me from an inheritance or from interfering in some family business. In any case, we weren't really crazy, just victims of some scam. They further affected our memories. We just need to find someone with the appropriate magical spells and these effects can be removed."
"Looks like we're in the furnace rooms. Protect me and I'll guide you outta here, understand? I live, we all live. Think ya can remember that one?"
Ember stuffs what extra items remain from the chest into his backpack and then draws his cutlass, swishes it through the air a few times as if limbering up his right arm. Then he holds the cutlass to his forehead in a sort of salute and swishes the cutlass to point toward the door out of which the other two left. "I will defend your life with my own. Lead on, Master Linweigh!" He glances around at the others. "We ready?"
Rivas pocketed the coin from his bag and slowly made his way over the the chest. Seeing a familiar set of goods he slid a well fitting chain shirt over himself and slid on the backpack.
He stood slightly away from the party as they readied themselves and eyed them warily. Sometimes twitching and looking at things that likely weren't there.
"If it will get us out of this place, then please lead on."
Eponine fingered a point of the starblade, her brow furrowed in concentration. With her rediscovered pack over one shoulder, she nodded. "Yes, the sooner we are away from here, the better."
Rhade fell in line. "Let's go then," she barked out, holding her short spear at the ready.
Gladiola found a corner away from the others to don her armor. She continually glanced back over her shoulder to check to make absolutely sure nobody peeped on her. The lucerne hammer felt odd in her hands, like she had stolen it from someone else. She held it out, pointing towards the hall.
"Let's go. Our memories can wait until we have escaped."
Ember looks everyone over, once it seems all are ready to set out. "Gladiola, is it? You seem the most capable should we have to fight again. Would you lead the way? I'll back you up. The rest of you fall in as you wish. Master Linweigh, stay in the middle and give us directions for the best way to find the way out of this hell hole. If anyone prays to a god or goddess, now might be a good time to say a prayer." Cutlass in hand, Ember waits for Linweigh's instructions on which way to go next.
General perception roll at the door to hear sounds or see evidence of anyone/anything beyond the door.
While positioned in the center of the group, Campre followed closely in the footsteps of Eponine, checking over his shoulder on occasion, giving concerned or frightened looks to Rivas and Rhade backing the rear. "And now he won't shut it." he murmured as Ember stopped speaking. "There're stairs right out here, take us right to Admissions."
Gladiola gave a push to the thick, cold door leading out of the furnace room. Before the door swung open, before the lamp's flame could reveal what the room stored, the overwhelming smell of rot and decay greeted the five patients and the orderly. Bile crawled up the back of your throat.
A mound of mutilated bodies lay heaped against the eastern wall, piling almost six feet high. Patients, orderlies, doctors, though it was impossible to determine where one began and another ended. Hundreds of lifeless eyes looked off in every which direction, from whatever angle, at least three bodies stared at you soullessly. Limbs reached out, some mangled and crushed, though some seemed to almost stretch towards you, calling for help, their plea unanswered.
Interrupted, thousands of flies circle in a swarm over the carcasses. Campre's vomiting is hardly heard over their buzzing, and the smell is masked completely by the bodies.
A staircase lay to the south of the carrion hill, each rising step covered in more and larger rubble than the last - a collapsed wall eventually stopping any from ascending more than half a dozen steps.
To the north, a tunnel stretched hardly five feet before debris blocked the path.
There was but a final exit to the room, and fortunately, one that was accessible following the Asylum's fall. Eight feet above the ground, a chute wide enough for a single person to climb angled towards the surface. It was from here that the bodies came from - discarded from above, now piling into the rotting mass that formed convenient, if morbid, stairs to the exit.
There was no sign of rubble in the chute, but neither was there any indication of how far it extended.
Rivas nervously followed along as they walked into the darkened corridors wishing only to be able to see.
Suddenly his dagger lit up with the glow of a torch to his startled astonishment.
As the entered the room though, he wished that he in fact could not see. His stomach nearly leapt out of his throat as the pile of bodies met his gaze. Soulless eyes that he could swear murmured to him.
"No no no no no you must be joking... There has to be another way. This is some sort of trick right? Heh."
Rhade tried to keep her wits about her, not easy when viewing the gruesome sight laid out in front of her. She fought back the rising sickness in her throats and took a deep breath. "That chute's the way out. Let's get out of here. One of you push me up and I'll check it out," Rhade volunteers, either showing bravery or wanting to get out of this awful room as soon as possible. Perhaps a bit of both.
As Ember enters the room and sees all the bodies, he feels the blood falling from his brain and down to his feet. He gags at the smell and fumbles in his pocket for a handkerchief. He opens a small bag from his pack and pours some coffee grounds into the handkerchief, wraps the grounds so the handkerchief holds it in one spot and ties it around his face, so the powder dampens the awful stench from the bodies. This also distracts him from the awful possibilities of what had killed all these people. He offers the coffee to anyone else who wants to do the same trick.
As soon as he has dealt with the smell, he hustles toward the stairs. Seeing that way block, he doubles back, not waiting for the back markers get back down and pushes on to the tunnel. His heart sinks as he sees it too blocked.
When Rahde asks for a push, Ember doesn't wait for anyone else. He takes a deep breath and begins to climb up the pile of bodies, saying "Follow me, unless you like the company down here," he says, trying for more bravado than he feels.
Panic rises in his gullet, but he keeps climbing, focusing on the task at hand, singing softly to further distract himself.
"♪ There was an old farmer who lived by a rock
He sat in the meadow a shaking his fist
At some boys who were down by the crick
Their feet in the water their hands on their marbles
And playthings in them days of yore
There came a young lady she looked like a pretty
Young creature... ♪"
Eponine took the scarf she reclaimed and pulled it up over her nose and mouth to try and mask some of the stench. Or at least to hide some of her disgust from these strangers.
But not strangers, really. something about them was so familiar about them. Escaping with them felt... right.
As Ember says "follow me," Eponine lays a hand on his shoulder and murmurs "Be careful."
Casting Guidance on Ember as he starts up.
Gladiola took the coffee beans offered by Ember, but did nothing with them yet. She stood back and scanned the room for lingering signs of evil . She raised an eyebrow at Ember's show of bravado and turned her judging gaze to him.
"You are injured and lightly armored. It makes little sense for you to lead the way."
She strapped her hammer to her back and pulled out her shield.
"Someone lend me a one-handed weapon to use with this, and I will lead."
Rhade passes Gladiola her short spear. "Keep them off us if they show back up. I feel naked without that spear!". She hoped she wouldn't need a weapon, ready to fall back on her strange mental abilities if needed.
She again tried to avert her gaze from that awful pile of bodies laid out in front of her, while passing the weapon along.
Rivas watched and retched as they prepared to climb through the bodies. He couldn't help but think about what disease festered on the corpses.
"Are we sure there's no other way out? A secret tunnel perhaps? Anything?"
Ember climbed the pile, sinking down to his knees in twisted limbs, finding support when he stepped on torsos. Most of the now bloated bodies gave in to pressure, though some snapped to the sharp sounds of bones breaking.
He arrived at the entrance of the chute, it stood about as high as his hip when he stood upon the mountain of corpses. Lamp in hand, he spied a faintly lit exit after around fifteen feet that lead to dark room.
It would be a tight squeeze for Gladiola to crawl in the chut with a shield in hand, but possible. Campre covered his nose, trying to speak between gagging. "We're in the -glergh- the "secret tunnel" you, you," He heaved against the wall, looking away from the bodies. It seemed there was not much left inside him. "C-Courtyard. Up there. S-Slight detour. Move."
When a couple of people have reached the tunnel without being clutched by hands in the grotesque pile, Eponine steels herself and follows.
Will
Will
Rhade fights through the nausea as she climbs the grisly pile of human flesh to the chute above.