Judah started to open the latch, then looked at the heavily reinforced door, the hook, and the dark stairs.
"I am not this stupid."
He went back up the short flight. "Big door. No traps, no locks, but something about it doesn't seem right. Yellow, Pink, you're up."
I'll continue to hold the fort, he says cold iron dagger and rapier in hand.
Mr. Yellow nods and moves to open the door, weapon in hand.
Mr. Pink prepares for the worst.
|
Lorant pulls hard, dragging the great iron door open. The floor of this large chamber is hidden beneath the murky water filling the room to just below the bottom of the door. Dozens of pale cadavers silently float in the ice-cold waters, bumping into each other or against the damp walls. The air is still and quiet, broken only by the sound of water lapping against stone walls. Oddly enough, there is no odor of decay and all of the bodies are in reasonably fresh condition.
Mr. Yellow gasps in disgust.
"By Iomedae, Pharasma and Andoletta...what were these men DOING?!"
Once he regains his composure a bit, he turns to the others.
"I think we found the bodies missing from Morast's cemetary."
Mister Grey turned away, suddenly cursing his new ability to see in the dark. Those bobbing bodies were going to haunt his thoughts for a while.
He took a few deep, composing breaths, then stopped.
"How come they don't stink?"
Chemical admixture I dare say... let the dead lie. We can get them cleaned up later. We have all the evidence we need.
Mr. Yellow nods.
"You'd know best; and you're right. We need to get changed and cleaned up as quickly as possible! This is going to be QUITE a show!"
"Alright. Yellow, you and me will start moving all the evidence and those two monsters to the front door, and get that cart out front ready to haul." Mister Grey said.
"Pink, we need horses for the cart."
"Black, do a sweep of the lab and their rooms again and see if you can find any notes or medical diagrams, or anything like that. These two had to have kept a record of what they were doing somewhere."
Mr. Yellow nods and begins moving to follow Mr. Grey's direction.
As they're hauling out all the macabre things that could be considered evidence, Judah makes sure to keep his eyes peeled for things he might have missed the first time around.
|
|
A thorough search of the rooms reveals nothing else of any potential value as evidence, but there is that ladder that leads up to a trapdoor in the ceiling in the little one's room...
You collect the various skins that you found, but by and large, the two perpetrators will make for far more compelling testimony. The little one is still unconscious, but the larger of the pair (the skin stealer) might be compelled to talk if given proper incentive.
As Mr. Yellow works to get their suspects trussed up and ready for the courtroom, he takes a look to try and wake up the gnome.
Judah looked pained when he saw the trapdoor. If anyone was up there, they'd undoubtably heard them by now. He checked the ladder, then climbed it and checked the hatch.
Then he lifted the trap and stuck his head into the upper area.
|
|
With no traps evident, Judah peers into the darkened space beyond the trapdoor. He finds himself looking into a chamber of strange art and artifacts from distant lands filling this tower room. Another ladder rises upward to a trapdoor in the ceiling. Suddenly, something small comes flying at him from the dark! An incredibly strong set of jaws snaps down on his arm, sending waves of pain through it. Pain radiating through his arm, Judah slams the door shut. From what he was able to see of the creature, it looked like a tiny human with a distended metallic lower jaw.
"So...you gentlemen are in a LOT of trouble right now," Mr. Yellow says, his eyes boring a hole through the man's soul through the mask. "It's only a question of how much you'll confess to and how much we'll have to drag out of you in the courtroom."
"F@+~!" Judah yelped.
"F!!$ f@*& f@%@!" Judah ran.
Mr. Yellow straightens up when he hears Mr. Grey's cursing.
"What did my friend find to make him yell so?" he asks their prisoners.
"We've seen your grim handiwork already; why weren't you having it protect those things?"
The Doktor rushes off to aid Mr. Grey.
Judah had a great deal of practice staying awake. Sleep was full of horrors that the recent events of his life didn't compare to.
This was the first time anything had threatened to make him fall asleep against his will. He hadn't been prepared for that, of for the terror that gripped him at the the idea of it, or for the all-consuming rage that followed.
He wanted to stomp the smug right out of the monster talking to Mister Yellow, but his better sense prevailed. He'd seen what happened when tempers flared while on a heist.
"Switch," Mister Grey growled to Mister Yellow. "I'll keep watch over them. You go kill the thing in the attic."
He glanced over at the lanky figure looming in the dark near the captured pair. "You go with him. Protect him. Destroy anything that attacks him."
"According to our 'friend' here, it's a snapjaw homunculus," Mr. Yellow informs him. Then he notices his "partner" for this venture...had it been there this whole time? Perhaps these were questions better discussed later.
He retraces Mr. Grey's steps to reach the homunculus' lair...
Edit... apparently it takes a freaking hour?! For a handful of hit points?!
Second thinking it he hurries on to join the fight against the homonculous
Mr. Yellow attempts to enter as quietly as possible.
Taking it's cue from it's current charge, the black, long-limbed thing slunk behind.
Lorant attacks the nearest homunculus, trying to keep close to the door in case he needs to beat a hasty retreat.
Dammit.
The inky black figure wormed it's way through the trapdoor, for a moment seeming more serpentine than humanoid, moving with an unnatural jerk and slither. A claw lanced out from behind the tiny thing.
Mr. Yellow takes another strike!
Ha!
The Doktor strikes with his silvered rapier.
for
|
|
Though both attacks hit, the homunculus refuses to go down! It is bleeding profusely, but fights on! The bite attack on the gate was only a graze, but the poison does its work, and that which should-not-be feels lethargy overcome its senses.
The Open Gate is asleep (unless it is immune to such).
The wounded creature snaps again at Lorant, the jaws narrowly missing their target.
"Dammit," Mr. Yellow says ruefully.
Id come to rely on him... it...
for