Storn brings his greatsword around, lifting the mite up into the air, then slices the mite into fragments with a great downward hack.
Herman does not find anything among the mite's mats, although the fleas and lice do find him, most annoyingly.
Outside the door, there are three mangled human bodies, hideously tortured and grisly, and covered with signs of disease, molds and fungi. Where clothes remain, it seems as though they were simple traveling merchants.
Torvic looks sadly at the bodies but doesn't recognize any of them.
You open the door on a grimy room, dimly lit by the fungi, and reveal a scene of horror. Three prisoners lie chained to stone shelving, a female human, a male dwarf, and a male human.
Torvic looks inside and recognizes – barely – the woman as Lyrehawk and the dwarf as Merisk, the two remaining Aspodell Rangers that accompanied Torvic to the Gallery. He doesn’t recognize the human male. ”By Torag’s grace!” he softly exclaims, ”What have they done to ye?” By the look in his eyes as he turns away for a moment, you know that he knows all too well.
Lyrehawk lies bound by ropy fungal growths that encase her head, seeming to have bored into her skull through the eye sockets. The growth extends down her chest and arms, pulsing with a rhythmic thump, like that of a heartbeat. She appears to be, mercifully, unconscious.
Bizarre, agonizing growths protrude from the limbs of Merisk, who lies strung across a box, bizarre and clearly painful pustules protruding from his skin. It seems he was flayed alive, and then spores were planted into the wounds, so that when he healed, the spores would then grow inside him. He, too, is unconscious.
Chained opposite the adventurers is the human male, dressed in what was once the garb of a Chelish merchant but which now is in rags. He has been scalped, and bits of his skull can be seen through the scabs and bits of flesh where his hair would be. He stares blankly at the ceiling, making the odd groaning noises you heard, and takes no notice of your arrival.
Jani quickly assesses Lyrehawk's grotesque condition and the means to remove this particular fungus, if fungus it can even be called, and does so, pinching the 'veins' on the fungal tendrils and slowly pulling and causing the mass to contract.
Although the mental wounds wounds are the worst, each also has substantial physical wounds.
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Storn looks over the sick with an expression of disgust.
"This is ... pointless and annoying! Worry not, for you have a healer of great skill and belligerence here."
With that, Storn heads over to begin investigating the sick. He takes his time with them, listening to Jani and carefully going over the wounds.
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Herman is a little grossed out by the fungus growing people, but when Storn asks for someone to nose around in the room, his natural curiosity takes over.
He also takes what little he knows about healing into consideration and tells Storn that perhaps they could all use a little healing magic as well?
Between Jani's expert healing and aid from others, Merisk, the unconscious dwarf, seems less pained. Eventually, after a fit of coughing, you see Lyrehawk slowly, tentatively turn her head one way and then the other, and then partially open her eyes. Bloody tears of joy and relief begin as she realizes that she once again can see and has been rescued. She gives Torvic and the group a weak smile of thanks.
Looking around the room turns up nothing of interest. In fact, it is relatively clean and bare, perhaps to keep prisoners from devising weapons or other means of escape, as Torvic relates, staring off into the distance as if watching a play of someone else's life: "I remember now: I found a bent nail and was able to pick the lock on my chains and Jorlin's. ... No one else was here, then. ... Knocked out a mite and escaped, hoping to find some help. ... It took a couple of days ... then the Pathfinders found me."
"Yes, not mites," she says weakly, "Derro, they are called... Mites servants, slaves. All under Lady Morilaeth, half elf, half nightmare..." Lyrehawk trails off at this point and seems to fall unconscious again.
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"Hmph, although it pains me, Hagan is right. The weak must be helped so we can focus our minds wholly to killing everything else in sight!"
Storn looks down and finally notices the gigantic war dart sticking out of his side. With a grunt he yanks it out, and stabs his wand into the wound.
With the wound closed, he leans in to look over the wounded. "Horrible things have been done to you. I am sincere - you look appalling right now. But fear not, we will bring you to safety and then beat this Morilaeth to death with her own limbs!"
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"But Derro are no more than wives tales, surely they aren't real...are they?"
Herman looks around uneasily, remembering the scary stories he heard of the derro as a lad growing up in captivity.
Finally, he asks the former prisoners: "Do you know where these Derro or their masters are now? Which way do we got of find and defeat them?"
Torvic tries to think, and says, "There were many more of them around here, I am sure. Don't know what 'them' were exactly, although I remember many more mites now. Don't know where they have gone, or where 'them' have gone, either... So many walls and holes in my mind!"
Torvic considers the options for awhile then shakes his head, "I'm afraid that won't work. They'd die in the cold like they are, or mites and ants would get them like the got me, or ... they'd fall asleep..." Torvic shudders. "But, there is a safe place here, I think, at least for the time being. We'll have to go there to see."
Torvic leads you back across the room and out the way you came, then a little farther down the hall, squeezing past some grotesque fungi, and to a pair of magnificent doors or gold- and silver-gilt cast iron, emblazoned with the sacred symbols of Torag. Inside, you find little more than a set of dusty pews and, behind the alter, a 20-foot warhammer, carved of stone, standing on its head and reaching to the ceiling.
You see no tracks in the dust here, and, unusually, there is no fungus or strange decay in this place.
Torvic helps you lay each of the victims out on a pew to rest. "I can stay here with them, though I feel they will be safe here, for now, but I feel I need to go with you."
"I don't know..." Torvic says in reply to Jani's question, but he stands a little taller after Storn's comment.
Storn's healing does wonders for the injured trio, as physical wounds heal over and the two regain consciousness, while the merchant groans just barely audibly, now seemingly out of long habit rather than intense agony.
Merisk, awakened, nods much thanks to the party.
It is obvious that, while superficially healed, it will take considerable time (and likely some powerful magics) before this group is able to do much beyond walk or ride a mule.
"Now you know the warm glowing warming glow of Gorum's light! Now, where to go."
Storn thinks for a moment. Knowing that democracy is the refuge of the coward, Storn says, "I'm going to that door over there!"
Storn exits the room, heads east down the hall, and listens at the door on the south.
As Storn and the group proceed down the corridor past blocking growths, he sees that the end of the tunnel was apparently an expansion that was abandoned long ago, and then collapsed. The 'door' turns out to be just a tangly blockage of ropey fungus hanging down from the ceiling, and he hears nothing on the other side.
Moving past the fungus leads to a kitchen, with two doors leading off it and a passage with stairs leading up. The creatures of the place have covered this room’s stone tables with dozens of ceramic pots, each filled with smelly fungal concoctions.