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When the dagger hit her, Sprout yelped in surprise and pain.
Clear fluid oozes out of her cheek where the weapon slashed her face. She wipes off the “blood” as best as she can on Kragrak’s cloak, but the sore continues to weep. “Ahem. That is, I’m fine. Just surprised is all. Nothing to see here. Let’s figure out why the room smells so bad”.
She pouts and grumbles quietly, “Stupid bloody doll...”
When Kibble goes over to lick her, however, the pup’s affection quickly raises her spirits. “Now you are a true friend, Kibble.” She gratefully rubs his belly. “ Don’t feel bad about being surprised. We all were.”
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Kragrak takes a scroll out of his pack along with a handful of fresh berries. She’s probably too distracted to realize what I’m up to here, he thinks.
“Erm, I was just thinking maybe we should eat. I mean, it’s gross in there. Not saying that smell makes me hungry. But maybe after, so we don’t get hungry later? I can make these berries healthy, and they’ll also provide some healing. And erm, Sprout, as the lady of plants, you should try them first. For your health. I mean, erm, obviously you’re fine, but...plants.” His voice trails off, and he pointedly turns his attention toward casting the spell from the scroll.
Eesh, I doubt even Kibble can cover for me there.
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Oak Sprout narrows her eyes in mock annoyance at Kragrak before grinning, “All right, give ‘em here, you big boulder.” She grabs the enchanted berries out of Kragrak’s hands and smashes them up against her cheeks, painting them with a rosy hue. She then eats the squashed fruit. As she does, the wound on her face closes entirely.
The healing power of goodberries washes over Sprout, healing the little leshy. Then the group turns towards the kitchen door, steeling themselves for whatever may lay inside. The smell of rotting food and stagnant water rises from the filth in this small kitchen, mixing sickeningly with the strong, coppery scent of fresh blood. Broken jugs, upturned trays, and scraps of food litter the room. In the sink, a large bowl filled with chewed and spat-out food floats in thick, bloody water in the sink. An open door to the south reveals a ransacked pantry.
Where do you head next?
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"Your grace?" Lord Braggett asks, thinking that Princess is addressing him, "Are you home sick, then?" Unsure of the proper social etiquette in the presence of a retching princess, he decides that the most proper thing to do is to pretend that her grace is fine and clean up discretely when she is done. The smell doesn't seem to affect the brave knight all that much, but his noble steed looks to be struggling, "This is no place for one with a nose such as yours, my friend. Guard the door, do not let anything in or out while we investigate upstairs."
With his trusty steed in position, Lord Braggett heads towards the stairs, "I find it hard to believe that anything so small can cause such a mess! Keep your eyes open, comrades, for more traps and more foes." At the base of the stairs, he turns towards Castiel and asks, "Shall we?"
The group heads up the stairs. First poking around to the smaller rooms to the left, they discover a small storeroom. The shelves in this storeroom have been ripped off the wall and lie in a heap on the floor, along with their now-wrecked former contents—bloody linens, a broken broom, and other ruined household supplies. Past the storeroom is a tidy washroom that appears oddly untouched by the surrounding messy chaos.
As you enter the washroom, the washroom mirror crashes to the floor, shattering into pieces. Behind where it once was, there’s a nasty, scrawled message written in blood in a childlike hand: “You know nothing! You ruined everything! Your friends hate you! I HATE YOU!”
Then you see another hallway with two bedrooms. The smaller one appears to have purple goo seeping under the door. Which do you check out first?
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Lord Braggett almost jumps out of his skin when the mirror drops, having first been lured into a false sense of security by the weirdly clean room. "Wait a minute! Gellion is Pricknettle's apprentice, that means he's an alchemist right?" He asks, jumping towards the writing excitedly in manner that hopefully disguises his momentary loss of composure, "I'm willing to bet that the manic doll we threw into the fire was, in fact, Gellion's homunculus..." Braggett then waves his hand at the writing, "Which means that all this is probably the manifestation of his deep-seated feelings towards himself! That boy is on the edge, and I fear we may have to talk him down before this is all over..."
Now that he has shown off the incredible knowledge gained from his vast experience in the field, Lord Braggett follows Castiel to the goo filled room, cold iron at the ready.
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Everyone, Please stay back outside the hallway while Lord Braggett and I investigate these two rooms”
Hearing nothing from the room on the left, Castiel draws his sword as he moves towards the Goo filled room at the end of the hall. A faint glow emits from the runes and gets brighter as he gets closer to the room… Unable to hide the glow, Castiel listens for anything inside the room.
Downstairs, Wetbeard and Zakhar, ever dutiful, take it upon themselves to clean that horrid kitchen. “Whomever owns this house would not want to find it like this,” Zakhar notes. “Wetbeard, will you help me?”
Wetbeard rolls up his sleeves. “Aye lad, that I will.”
★ --- ★ --- ★ --- ★
Meanwhile, upstairs, Castiel hears nothing from the large bedroom and only the faintest of creaking from the small one. He opens the door...
This small room contains a simple bed, desk, and chair. Thick webs cover the west end of the room, where the bed sits—and two humanoid forms appear trapped within. Sticky, purplish-black strands cling to the desk and chair on the east side of the room, except in one spot where the strange filaments have left a clear space around a small piece of metal.
In the room moving around the purple goo, is an enormous black spider!
The spider, startled, moves forward to bite the tasty paladin...
...and misses! He bites the door instead!
★ --- ★ --- ★ --- ★
Round 1
Active conditions: None
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Spider
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Castiel
Prince
Bragett
Sprout
Zakhar (Cleaning)
Wetbeard (Cleaning)
Prince
Kragak
The whole party is up!
Castiel gets his sword right in the spider’s mandibles!
★ --- ★ --- ★ --- ★
Round 1
Active conditions: None
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Spider (-7)
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Castiel
Prince
Bragett
Sprout
Zakhar (Cleaning)
Wetbeard (Cleaning)
Prince
Kragak
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"Ha, no spider can fell a Pathfinder true! My way is blocked, so the glory is yours, Sir. Have at it!" Lord Braggett shouts out encouragingly and, remembering Prince's previous enthusiasm for consuming insects, he adds, "Soon we shall finely slice this beast and his grace shall enjoy a feast fit for his royal consumption."
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"Feast!"
Prince grins, and hobbles forward, down the corridor, coming up behind Lord Braggett.
The Grippli spots the spider, and thinks: Not an insect, but yummy!
Prince concentrates, and Divine Magic coalesces around him-- and then he flicks his looooong pink tongue out, darting past Fizzle, to try and touch the spider.
• Action to cast Orison "Touch of Fatigue", since it is a Touch spell Prince can attack as part of the casting. He uses Agile Tongue to make a Melee Touch attack at 10 ft.
He has -1, and +1 from Fizzle, meaning he rolled a 12 - most probably a miss because of the Cover (if it touches DC15 Fort save or be Fatigued for 2 rounds
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Princess sighs and moves forward-- stepping right through the wall!
In the room, she comes up to the spider, and, putting her power in the attack, tries to slam the arachnoid.
Outside, you see the wall is covered in thin silvery mucus, that drips down... and will remain for a minute/
• Action: Power Attack slam against the spider
Note Of course, the goo in there might harm her or change the actions, but I posted what she is aiming for
Prince waits patiently, Braggett offers a Lion's Call, giving a +1 competence bonus on attacks -- alas, not enough to help Prince hit through the cover. Princess phases through the wall, and slams the Spider!
The spider crashes to the ground!
The group shuffles into the room... Lord Braggett and Prince notice the humanoid sized blobs covered in webs, and that there is an open notebook on the desk, with purple gooey fingerprints on it. There is also a chest next to the desk, and a pile of purple goo in the room itself...
If you examine the humanoid sized blobs covered in webs, may I have a heal check?
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"Ha ha, Good show your grace! It never saw you coming." Lord Braggett says as he shuffles into the now cramped room, "I dare say tha- Good grief!" He exclaims on seeing the blobs of web, "You don't think the children could be..."
Clearly concerned, but woefully inexperienced in these matters, Braggett decides to keep himself occupied while those more qualified than himself investigate. He culls as much of the goo as possible and searches through the notebook for clues.
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Seeing as there is still Goo to remove, Castiel sets off to rid the place of the filth… Each swing into the glob, the runes in his sword glow more brightly until the pulse fades to steady source of white light for all to see in the room. After the Goo is removed, the steady glow lessens and fades away...
As Castiel clears away the bile, Braggett and Prince investigate the desk and the webs. Beneath the webs lay a man and woman, both in their early forties, covered head to toe in many spider bites. They are deeply unconscious, and Prince thinks they may be still suffering from the spider poison, but they are barely alive. If you could get them treated, they might survive this.
As Braggett searches through the notebook, he finds that the early pages are pages of meticulous notes and observations on alchemical reactions, interspersed with angsty teen poetry and plaintive marginalia that reads, Will I ever be good enough for them? Why do they hate me so?
There’s a petry dish on the desk with a bit of bile in it, along with a cold iron arrowhead around which the bile has retreated in a neat circle. There are notes next the petri dish. Adverse reaction to cold iron. What about magic? Fire? Cold? Further trials are required.
Meanwhile the notes in the notebook grow more and more erratic. They’re after me. They’re all after me but I’ll get them FIRST.
★ --- ★ --- ★ --- ★
In the chest near the desk there are a number of neatly labeled alchemical items: six flasks of acid, two flasks of alchemist's fire, two tanglefoot bags, a potion of remove disease, a potion of lesser restoration, and three potions of cure light wounds.
What next?
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Sprout stays behind for a few minutes with Kibble, petting the wolf's back. "It's OK, Kibble. Braggett will be back soon." She's not eager to see what's upstairs, but the smell isn't bothering her too much.
Then again, if I hesitates too long, people will get all protective again. At least Kragrak tried to put on a show of not being too worried about me. Not sure if anyone bought it though. Ha! Kragrak couldn't fool a toddler!
Just after the sounds of combat begin upstairs, Sprout notices Kragrak waving to get her attention.
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Kragrak has a strong stomach. He decides to hang back with Sprout for a moment to make sure that she's OK. When combat begins upstairs, however, he decides that he's waited long enough. He waves to Sprout to get her attention and hurries up the stairs. The leshy nods and follows close behind him.By the time he reaches the top of the stairs, his fellow Pathfinders have made short work of the threat. He looks around the second floor to get his bearings. First, he peeks into the washroom and notices the message behind the fallen mirror.
He thinks aloud, "More of those bloody footprints? Did the doll write that message? This place just gets creepier by the minute."
He doesn't linger long before seeking out the other PCs. When he reaches the entrance to the room, he flinches at the hideous sight before him. "A lot going on in here. Hard to make sense of it all. Mind catching me up one what's happening with all the notes and webs and goo?" Pushing past his initial aversion, he strides into the room, being careful not to step in spider guts.
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In response to Kragrak's question about the bloody message, Sprout says, "Sure looks like it. Just goes to show that it's important not to underestimate small people. We can be fierce! Not that I go around killing people like the doll was trying to do, but, well, you get my point."
When she reaches the door to the room where the rest of the PCs are, she thinks, Yeaaah, I'd really rather not go in there. She puffs up her chest, holds her cold iron longspear at the ready, and says, "I have appointed myself the official guardian of this door. I will watch for threats so the rest of you can investigate in peace."
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"Thank you Lady Sprout, the extra guard is most welcome. However, should you notice any activity in the opposite room, please notify us immediately and do not engage on your own! That was far too close a call downstairs..." Lord Braggett says as he passes the notebook to Kragrak, "After that display in the orchard, I believe you have far too great a purpose to be put in needless danger." He bows deeply to the brave leshy and turns to Kragrak, "It seems the boy was growing more paranoid by the day, thanks I dare say, to the goo. It's all in that notebook, but I fear we must make haste with these victims of the spider, or they will be lost!"
Braggett rushes to help Prince cut the two people free from the webs and lay them safely on the floor, and asks, "Will they make it that far, your grace? Can you not suck out the poison as if it were a snake bite, or use healing magic perhaps? We have found some minor healing and restorative potions, and you could try my wand..."
At Braggett’s urging, you apply some healing magic to the pair before transport.
It is clear to the Prince that the deep draining of blood the pair received is also problematic. Although Pricknettle’s antitoxins would definitely help, they may need the sort of long term care and divine magic that Father Ruvarra and the hospital at the Temple could provide.
★ --- ★ --- ★ --- ★
Meanwhile, the thorough Castiel checks the Master bedroom, just in case the children were there. This large bedroom is full of upturned furniture and decorations knocked from the shelves and walls. Every painting has been smashed from its frame and torn to pieces. Sitting on the otherwise-undisturbed master bed is a single journal.
The journal appears to belong to Gellion's mother. Its contents are quite mundane—simply a record of the family's life from day to day—but every page has the message, Our son is an awful disappointment, written over it in blood, in the same childlike handwriting as that behind the washroom mirror.
From the journal, it’s clear that both parents, worried by their son’s early arcane interests, prayed over him and meted our rigid discipline to discourage him from witchery. They finally gave in when Gellion wanted to try alchemy, though. At least he’s not doing spells and devil worship, and Pricknettle does well enough. Goodness knows he’s no interest in other work, his mother wrote in a prim hand.
Still, the most recent entries indicate that the strict Beldonna was becoming concerned about her son's well-being: He’s never home, he’s moody and he’s spending too much time on his experiments concocting who knows what. He’s not eating well, and seems distant even to those no good friends of his... That girl, Nolaria, came by today, demanding to know where he was!
A couple of the very most recent pages are ripped out, leaving you to wonder just what the Mother wrote in them — and who ripped them out.
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"Methinks we need to block the poison, then remove it, and then give them long term rest and healing... but if you wish we can pour one of these in each of their's throats".
Prince shows the two Cure Light Wounds potions, and is ready to use one if Lord Braggett wishes to and uses the other on the couple.
Both patients breathe easier but neither wakes... So Braggett pours the potion of Lesser Restoration down the mother's throat, and her eyes blink as she blearily looks at all of you.
"Who are you?" Looking down at the spider bites that still cover her arms, she shakes. "Spider! Gone?" Then she sees her husband just lying there... "Altius!?"
He does not rouse.
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"Ha ha! You're awake!" Lord Braggett says happily, and it takes a second or two before he composes himself, "Have no fear, fair lady! We have valiantly slain the colossal creature and you are now both perfectly safe under the protection of a fully trained knight. We shall shortly place you and your husband in the expert care of Father Ruvarra, where you are both sure to make a full recovery." He tries his best to reassure her while everyone prepares to transport the couple to safety, "But even as we depart from your dwellings, we need to find out what happened here."
Lord Braggett looks around at the ruined room, and considers the sum of their evidence, "Now, it appears that your son is under the influence of some foul substance, causing him to grow ever more paranoid and angry by the day. Either Nolaria has taken your son in order to heal him herself, or your son has kidnapped all his friends in some goo stricken rage. Please, if have you any idea where he might go if he is feeling particularly scared and alone, you must let us know?"
The somewhat panicked woman calms down at Braggett’s gentle tone. “Thank you for rescuing us, kind knight. Gellion has been increasingly strange, almost like he was under the effects of horrid magic. We yelled at him about it, but he wouldn’t listen. He was all twitchy, and started ranting about how we were all against him. The last I remember we tried to go in his room, and there was this horrid doll, and the spider, and purple goo... And then I heard him ranting about the old abandoned Bravoni warehouse. Saying we didn’t know nothing and all the answers were there...”
Wetbeard and Zakhar come up the stairs in time for this speech. “Zakhar and I have been talking. We can take the Navarros to the temple for their healing, and then catch up with you at the warehouse. There’s no time to waste if the kiddos are in danger, but the Navarros need help too. We’re both strong and fast, and can carry them if necessary.”
★ --- ★ --- ★ --- ★
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Watching the other PCs fly into action so quickly warms Kragrak's heart. Lots of good-hearted agents on this mission. People I can count on. I'm honored to have been chosen as a part of this group.
He does what he can to help Wetbeard and Zahkar hoist the couple onto their shoulders. Once they are ready to depart, he nods and says, "Thanks, Wetbeard. Zahkar. I know they're safe in your hands.
"Also. Braggett. Thanks for helping her feel better. Yer good with words. M'Hoping we have the whole family together and safe again very soon. And Wetbeard's right. There's no time to waste."
To that end, he follows hot on the heels of Castiel's determined stride.
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Oak Sprout matches Kragrak's pace.
"An abandoned warehouse, huh? I wonder what we'll find there? When I think of warehouses, I think of rats, with their nasty little gnawing teeth. Not as bad as squirrels, mind you." She frowns, adjusting her acorn cap carefully. "Ooze-squirrels. Now those would truly be creatures of nightmare..."
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"Mighty noble of you chaps!" Lord Braggett says as Wetbeard and Zahkar depart on their mission, "Very knightly, I should think..." He then turns to Kragrak and humbly says, "You are most kind, Sir. My extensive vocabularian training is but a small part of what makes me the exceptional knight that I am!" After a small bow, he whirls around and hops onto the back of Sir Kibble once more, declaring, "To the warehouse!"
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All the talk of squirrels (one of the few words in common that he understands, along with 'sit' and 'walkies') makes Sir Kibble's ears prick up *Arf!*. With renewed enthusiasm, the shaggy wolf lopes off after Castiel, tongue flopping from the side of his mouth, and desperately hoping to finally catch one of his oldest of enemies.
★ --- ★ --- ★ --- ★
The group says their farewells and heads to the Warehouse to the South of town. They pass by some locals who seem to unloading boats late at night, but once they realize that you’re just seeking the warehouse and not them, they cheerfully give you directions.
“The Bravoni Warehouse? Just a few blocks that a ways... Can’t miss it.”
Another cheerfully adds, “Bravoni’s been gone for a while. Maybe goblin et him when he was out of town.”
The directions are good. Soon you see the big building, still labeled with the words Bravoni’s Goods on the side...
Then... From out of nowhere, a tiny flying fiend pops out of invisibility next to Braggett, clawing at him!
But it was giggling too hard as it set off its ambush, and misses Braggett completely!
★ --- ★ --- ★ --- ★
Round 1
Active conditions: None
Prince
Princess
Castiel
Kragak
Sprout
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Quasit
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Braggett
Everyone but Braggett is up!
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Man's always talking, no wonder he angered someone!, Prince thinks as he sees Braggett being assaulted.
The Grippli come leaping up and around, leaving space for the more martially inclined to be able to come closer, and he casts a spell, dark energies appearing in his mouth as he flicks his tongue out at that little thing...
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Lacking the requisite planar knowledge to identify the creature, Kragrak says, "What is it with tiny murderous creatures today? D'ya think this is another one of Gellion's homonculus things?"
Whatever it is, I can't let it hurt Sprout like the last one did. With that thought, he reaches for a weapon.
Sprout isn't sure what this thing is either, so she doesn't have any helpful advice to share. Kragrak draws his trusty quarterstaff and charges at the flying creature. Grasping the stick in both hands, he brings it down on the creature's head.