Tattoo sees the half-orc aiming for her a split second before it happens, but the sluggishness in her body give her no time to react. The sword cuts deep into her side, leaving Tattoo unsure how she is still standing or even alive. Staggering backwards, she leaves behind a trail of blood and lifts her longspear weakly, trying to create some distance between the two of them. Staring deeply into the half-orc's eyes she sees confusion and turmoil. Hoping beyond hope that she can be talked down once more, she does her best to speak soothingly, "Calm down, Heavy Hitter. Don't lose control." Pausing to cough up blood, she can't quite hide the quiver in her voice as she adds, "Please. I need you to fight it..."
With her new found power, Goggles charges forward, striking the dread doppelganger with her meat cleaver, holding it in her both hands... she notices the satisfying sound of her cleaver breaking a rib and then the sound of running blood... bluish-blood.
The doppelganger's eyes meet with Reaper's and for a second she seems lost... almost helpless while Creepy slams her shoulder. Unfortunately for him this moment passes quickly. It seems to be too strong to be affected by such trick.
Intrigued by Goggle's new appearance, the doppelganger attacks her with both her dagger and her claw... luckily only her dagger hits her target and even so with it's power diminished by something...
________________________________
Doppelganger
Alenka - up
Cerio - up
Jenni - up
Lucius - up
Mira - up
The voice in Heavy's head fades away, and her vision clears. She sees Tattoo standing before her, blood everywhere. The desire to attack her is gone, but the memory is not.
Heavy thought she knew rage before. That was nothing. True, murderous fury filled her, the desire to utterly destroy another being, until even the memory of their existence has been eradicated.
Turning to the butcher, Heavy's fury became a truly terrifying calmness. Each step deliberate, teeth bared, she snarled...
"You." step "Made." step "Me." step "Hurt." step "My." step "Friend." step
Goggles caught Heavy's approach and quickly made room for her. She wasn't sure the half-orc would even notice her in her current state of fury.
On the word Friend, Heavy brought her sword down on the butcher, with all her considerable strength.
Reaper pales. His magic has failed again, just as it did against the monster from their dreams. For a terrifying instant he expects the shifter to assume that form now, that ragged mishmash of disgusting yellow tendrils and rotting, sharpened teeth.
He feels his blood dripping steadily onto the floor. Looking down, he realizes there is another reason he is turning bone white: he's bleeding out. He clamps his hands over his leather, where the blood is thickest, and calls again on that strange magic. The green light flashes beneath his fingers. He staggers back .
Meanwhile, Creepy continues its assault on the shifter.
::If't first y'don't succeed... Choke the life out'f it.::
Mustache dared a look at heavy and smiled, a wide smile followed by a friendly word. "Are you well, Miss Heavy?"
Not waiting for a response, Mustache moved slightly away from the big girl and once more tried to skewer the doppleganger.
--------------
HP 9/9
AC 15, touch 12, flat-footed 13
Conditions:n/a
Melee (rapier): +1 = +0(base) +1(STR)
Melee Damage (rapier): 1d6+1, 18-20, x2
7/7 inspiration
2/2 1st level spells
Goggles slides in behind the doppleganger and brings her cleaver down with great force at the point where spine and brain stem come together.
When a look of pure anger takes over the half-orc and she grips her greatsword ever tighter, Tattoo's first thought is that she has failed. Bracing herself, she holds her breath for what she fears may be her last moment. However, when the half-orc turns her murderous gaze towards the butcher, Tattoo lets out a painful sigh of relief.
Clutching her side, she moves up to try and surround the doppleganger. Gripping the spear with two hand, she tries to attack, but her injuries are clearly impairing her.
Frustrated with the whole scenario, she glares down the doppleganger, hoping that her companions can end the creature.
-Posted with Wayfinder
Goggles sidesteps and once more attacks with her cleaver... unfortunately this time the doppelganger dodged her attack, even if she was being distracted by the professor. While Reaper healed himself, Creepy attacked twice with his ghostly fists. For a fraction of a second he felt pity of the enemy and doing so caused him to miss his first attack, but the second found the creature's cheek.
The air almost changed around Heavy as she slowly moved towards the butcher... with each step she lifted her big sword higher until she was only a couple feet away and then bringing it down on the enemy... the chop sundered three of the doppelganger's fingers and also exposed the bone of its tight.
Still spooked by the whole scene around him, the professor once more missed his stab, and the same happened to Tattoo, still a bit shaken by her wounds.
The doppelganger stopped laughing for once, perhaps worried about her condition... or perhaps trying to goad you once more. She sidestepped away from the flanking position and... did nothing for a couple seconds before disappearing in thin air. Goggles tried to hit it but missed once more.
________________________________
Doppelganger
Alenka - up
Cerio - up
Jenni - up
Lucius - up
Mira - up
"Can someone find out where it is?"
Mustache felt around with his blade and waited for someone to point out where the thing was.
He then struck out once more.
-------------
Goggles sprints for an exit and grabs a sheet as she goes. "We have to make sure she doesn't leave."
"Wha? Where'd she get to!?"
Reaper steps forward and touches Creepy, granting him a little weird luck.
Creepy advances on the shifter's location , thrashing out blindly.
Tattoo frowns, "It can't have gone far.."
Backing up towards the door and closing it, she stands next to Alenka trying her best to block any escape attempts. Holding her longspear out, she tries to feel around for anyone who might approach.
"Quiet!" Heavy snarled the word, and the others fell silent. Eyes narrowed, ears straining, she stalked through the room on quiet feet, like a jungle cat hunting for its prey. Her clawed fingers alternately flexed and curled around the hilt of her greatsword, and her lips were curled up in a feral sneer.
Hearing a noise, she spun and lashed out, hoping to meet the resistance of an invisible body.
Despite your best efforts, none of you find anything of substance with your attacks. Looking beyond Tattoo and Goggle into the other room, Heavy and Lucius are able to see as the doppelganger appears in the middle of the other room... they also notice that the prisoner had also disappeared.
________________________________
Doppelganger
Alenka - up
Cerio - up
Jenni - up
Lucius - up
Mira - up
Roaring in frustration, Heavy shouts, "Behind you!" She then charges across the room, through the spot Goggles just vacated and towards the newly-reappeared butcher. Opening her arms wide, sword still gripped tightly in one of them, she leaped at the butcher, hoping to tackle her to the ground.
The professor reacted quickly to Heavy's warning.
Huffing and puffing, he took his bulk over to the doppleganger and once more struck out with his rapier.
"Stand still, will you."
------------
Damnit...How did it get through? Sighing, Tattoo thinks, Well, this is going to hurt...
Turning around, she stares the creature down. Lifting up her spear, she charges at it with all her strength, trying to skewer the creature and ignore the pain in her side.
Goggles takes off into the next room and tries to find some space around the doppleganger where she could get a decent shot.
Reaper runs and slaps Creepy on the shoulder.
"Y'think the crazy'n is in on it?"
He spins around in circles, fearful of another blade materializing from the shadows.
Creepy floats forward, reaching for the shifter.
Heavy charges forward an in her eagerness she slips on a pool of blood, falling prone into the ground. Soon after all the rest of you storm towards the doppelganger... but something is amiss again. Lucius rapier pierces through the enemy with nothing happening... the same happens to Tattoo's spear and Goggles' cleaver. Soon after you notice it is nothing but another illusion, another trick, except that this time no one was stabbed.
Goggles moves towards the door they had initially entered. "That's it. I'm camping out over here until whatever she did to herself wears off. She can't stay invisible forever."
The professor grabbed one end of a grimy sheet, "Someone grab the other end."
He then meticulously swept the room trying to find the invisible doppleganager, "Keep your ears open. It's bound to try and get away."
Rolling herself up into a seated position, Heavy felt the rage-induced strength leach out of her. Her fingers returned to normal, and she found herself panting heavily. Keeping her ears open, she chose to stay sitting until she felt herself again.
Turning to Tattoo, she winced when she saw her holding her side. "I'm so sorry, Tattoo. I didn't want to do that. I don't know what happened, I don't understand it. Somehow it made me... made me want to kill you."
tag Tattoo
Tattoo examines the half-orc for a moment with an unreadable expression. Finally she shrugs and waves away her concern. "This?" she asks, pointing at the gash, "It's nothing. It looks worse than it is, I'm sure. I wouldn't worry about it." Shifting the attention away from her injuries, she teasingly asks, "Are you alright? One sprint across the room and you're all tuckered out?". Her tone becoming slightly more serious, she adds. "You probably shouldn't be sitting. We don't know where it is..."
Beginning to look around the room, she sees Goggles sealing off the exit and the professor requesting help scouring the room. She starts heading in his direction, when something starts nagging at her mind and she just has to know. Turning back to the half-orc, she asks, "When you tried to hit me...it was like you split in two. Once half of you struck me, while the other half struck to the side. You saw that right? It didn't...hurt, did it?"
As she waits for a response, she begins moving over the professor and takes one end of the sheet.
-Posted with Wayfinder
At Tattoo's gentle chiding, Heavy clambered to her feet. She still felt strangely weak and winded, but was starting to feel better. But at Tattoo's strange questions, she paused. "You saw me...split? That's not right. I think you imagined that. Probably because I'm pretty scary." She said that last bit with pride.
Reaper nervously looks around. ”May be it’s still behind us in that room there!” He scurries over beside his own ghostly doppleganger, trying to reduce the chance of being stabbed in the back.
Despite Lucius's cleaver technique with the sheet, he and Tattoo found no evidence of the doppelganger's presence. On the other hand, you are now able to properly see the remaining of the room. Three pull chains hang from the ceiling along the south wall and two more tables are filled with butchered corpses.
You also notice a folding ladder close to the southernmost basin. Sitting next to a lantern on the far south of the room, is a single key, and a set of reasonably well-kept surgeon's tools rests on the table nearby. Additionally, the table holds a haversack, containing a pouch with 3 pp, a strange runestone, and a phylactery. A 6-foot-tall standing mirror also leans against the wall, and six 10-foot poles sit propped in the washtubs, two in each.
Mustache examined the haversack but did not recognize it.
He did, however, recognize the runestone. The amber polished stone was inscribed with a rune that he did not know what it meant but he knew how to use. Mustache was able to substitute part of his magical power by the runestone once per day.
He asked, "Can anyone else use this stone? if not, I'd like to keep it."
He also knew about the phylactery, "You wear that around your head so the little box is on your forehead. It will warn you when something is about to threaten your inner moral compass."
He asked, "Anyone recognize the other items?"
As Mustache looks over the implements, Reaper surveys the room. "...two...three...fou--" His breath catches in his throat. "I'd say they's an extra body in that there corner," he whispers as he points to the northwest. "That body wasn't there a minute ago. Look out!"
"Mmhmm, yeah. Sure. Whatever Prof...someone grab the keys..." Tattoo responds to the professor, as she drops her half of the sheet and wanders off, much like a student who isn't really paying attention to the teacher. She walks south, as if something else has caught her attention. Did I hear...?
Cerio's remark, however, does recapture her attention. "Approach carefully. This doppleganger thing, it could look like anyone now, right?" Her attention returning again to the southwest corner, she moves towards the southernmost basin. "...and this thing...I think I heard something move inside," she explain as she cautiously uses her spear to move around the metal poles, while staying ten feet away.
Heavy came to the same conclusion Reaper did, at almost the same time. Turning to Goggles, she said, "What was the plan for corpses? Chop 'em up? Let's get started. You chop, I'll cover you."
She moved towards the pile of bodies, greatsword ready to slice the first thing that moved.
Goggles knew the exact spots to give the corpses a quick chop with her cleaver to make sure they were indeed dead. She wasn't completely sure why she knew the vulnerable arteries of a body, but she did. Trusting in Heavy to indeed cover her, although not really knowing why considering the doppleganger had been messing with the others, she approached the first body to deliver her first blow.
"If I'm doing this, someone else needs to cover the exit."
As Goggles was about to attack the corpse it springs to life, indeed revealing to be the missing doppelganger. Fortunately Goggles was fast enough to bring her cleaver down, almost finishing it. The staggered creature moves to attack her but Heavy is faster, chopping its head off! Bluish blood is spattered on the northwest corner of the room and the body falls limp on the floor atop the other corpses.
On the creature's ragged clothes you are able to find a cure light wounds potion, a magic dagger (+1 dagger), and 48 pieces of gold.
Mustache shuddered at the violence of the kill. He remembered Heavy attacking Tattoo and made a note to himself to be extra friendly to the big girl.
He neared her, rapier sheathed, arms raised, "Good job, Heavy." I hope she doesn't mind 'Heavy'
The other girl with the bloody cleaver looked just as dangerous. "You too, Goggles. That was great!"
-----------
"Bloody hells, these things are tricksy!" Heavy moved through the room with Goggles, ensuring that the rest of the bodies were in fact dead. Once they were done, she wiped her sword on a filthy sheet, and looked curiously at Tattoo. "Why are you poking that stick?"
Goggles wondered the same as Heavy about what Tattoo was doing. She also was puzzled by the mirror. "Who puts a mirror that big in a laundry room or surgery room? It seems odd."
tag?
Tattoo shrugs at the others, "Thought I heard something is all." Before giving up, she gives a peak over top of the tub.
Reaper's mouth hangs open and a bit of blue blood finds itself in his mouth. He spits and gags, licking his sleeve to rid himself of the taste.
"Gods that's vile. Maybe they's some ale in that basin to wash out the taste. Though at this rate, I doubt it."
Tattoo climbs over the ladder and peeks inside the washbasin... and almost falls of the ladder as a clawed hand almost reaches for her face! Inside this washbasin there is a single creature, much similar to the one which was feeding from the corpse on the former room, with the exception that this one is wearing some ragged priestly garments.
She notices that it is quite harmed, probably too harmed to climb out of the washtub, and also notices a couple strips of flesh around him... it looks like the creature was being fed by the doppelganger.
Tattoo reflexively leans back, as the hand reaches for her. Realizing quickly that was a bad instinct, she tries to correct it by grabbing onto the side of the ladder. She manages to catch herself, but grimaces as the sudden movement sends pain through her side. Regaining her balance and her composure, she reaches for her spear and tries to end the creature's miserable existence as quickly as possible. Sighing, she grumbles jokingly to the others as she moves down the ladder, "You know...I'm starting to not really like this place." Frowning, she adds, "Any luck finding more doors? We've been through every one we found, right?" Thinking, she turns to Alenka, "What was that about a mirror? I can't say I noticed it. That is a bit strange?
-Posted with Wayfinder
Lucius pocketed the runestone, happy with his new find.Not a bad place after all
He neared Reaper and Tattoo, "Look here, my voice... it sort of releases magic and I can heal with it."
He then cooed and comforted them and smiled warmly as their wounds healed.
He looked at the dismal place, the rotting corpses and recently killed monsters.
He took some time to fix his torn clothes and addressed his companions, "Maybe we can now go back to those other people. We can certainly show them proof of us killing a doppleganger and those other cannibals."
------------
"Why'd a feller want t'go an' feed one o' these suckers? Jus' don't understand't."
Reaper listens to Mustache's song with a smirk. "You sure got a purty voice. Sounds familiar t'me, but not sure why." He rubs his side where the scar tissue is forming, pink and shiny.
"Hey, you reckon we's in this place on account we can't remember nothin'? Maybe we done gone crazy." He chuckles halfheartedly, realizing his little joke might be quite close to the truth. "But you's right. Let's carry the body back and prove we ain't shifters"
Tattoo continues trying to downplay the severity of her injuries as the professor talks healing, not wanting to further distress the half-orc. However, as her wounds close, she feels an immediate sense of relief, earning the professor rare words of sincerity from the usually flippant woman. "Thanks. That's...a lot better."
Replying to Cerio, Tattoo muses, "We've killed several of them now. Perhaps you're right and that will be enough to earn their trust..."
"I hate to rain on your corpse parade but carrying a body back to the others doesn't prove that we're not dopplegangers. The blue blood is proof but I really doubt those guys will listen to reason. That and we'd need to bleed each of us and find a live doppleganger to bleed in comparison."
tag ?
As Goggles talks, she moves towards the mirror to see if there's a reason for it being propped against the wall. It seems out of place being as tall as a person in such a room as this. She also adds the surgeon's tools to her dissection kit.
"Did anyone check the other tubs for more of those undead-things? Could the doppleganger have been making them in the tubs? Maybe that's why it was feeding them."
tag ?
"Speaking of dopplegangers...we may want to come up with a random safe word for each person so that the rest of us will know if they've been compromised. I suggest everyone write down a word specific for them, pass it around the group - nothing verbal because who knows who's listening, and then we destroy them. This would only work if we have a different word for each person. If we really want to be safe, before we do this, we should also prick everyone's finger and test their blood."
tag everyone
Heavy climbed up the ladder and took a peek at the creature inside. Blanching, she said, "I don't think we should leave any of these guys alive behind us. They are definitely not friendly." Balancing carefully, she reached her sword over the edge of the tub and stabbed downwards at the creature.
The half-orc checked the remaining tubs to see if they held any silent surprises, intending to take care of them.
When they were done in the laundry, Heavy added the haversack and the gold pieces to her bundle of goods. Looking at the dagger, she said, "That's a cute little knife. Who wants it?" Finally, she shouldered the dead 'ganger, and said, "They wanted to see a dead body, and we got one. Maybe they'll be friendlier now. And if they're not, I can try digging through those rocks," she pointed to the rubble to the north.
[ooc]I'm ready to move back to the crossbow dudes, once everything in here is dead. I'm happy for Mira or Cerio to take the CWL, depending on who's actually hurt the worst.
The half-orc stared uncomprehendingly at Goggles. "You want us to write the word safe on some paper and pass it around? How come?" Looking at the others, she swirled her finger around by her ear and said, "Jail for crazies."