Elyna looks at Pahleg and Ulrich with a raised eyebrow, then she steps forward and places herself in front of the man "Pardon if I'm interrupting the conversation, but where are we?"
"The man offered for us to kill him mercifully. I say we oblige, "Goramar says as he inches closer. "Tell us about this place then I will do you the honor of ending your life by my blade. "
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Ushio Stealthily climbs the ladder.
He whispers down to whomever would hear him, "It seems safe.. don't climb with someone though, we shouldn't test it's capableness."
The man sighs heavily. "I see you have no intention of granting my wish before I answer your questions. Very well. I suppose I could atone for my sins by helping a group of newcomers such as yours."
"Oh, I think we've all sinned. That's why we're here, isn't it? 'Hellfire'? Who would that be and why would they want you dead?"
The man seems surprised and impressed by your statement, even lifting his gaze away from the paintings for a brief moment just to look at you in the eye. "For a newcomer you catch on quickly. Yes... I think we've all sinned to get here... but that's not what I'm talking about. I've sinned twice: in mortal life and here."
His gaze turns back to the paintings. "Hellfire is an organization a friend of mine found. Hellfire hunts those who've lost their mind, and those indicted. As for why they'd want me dead...the reason is the founder is no longer my friend."
The man seems to be looking at all the paintings, one at a time, rather than focusing on one single painting. He looks at each of them for some 10 seconds before moving on to the next.
"There is always something to be done. Do not give up hope."
"What are you looking at?"
The man flinches from your touch, but keeps on staring at the pictures on the wall. "This place has no hope you speak of. Optimists like you won't survive here for long, I fear..." The man doesn't answer your question about what he's looking at.
You follow his gaze. Right now he seems to staring at a painting of a halfling woman. She has tanned skin and curly black hair. You notice that all the people pictured in the paintings have their eyes closed, as if they were resting.
"Pardon if I'm interrupting the conversation, but where are we?"
"Ah, how rude of me not to give you an introduction..." the man says snarkily. "Welcome to the Labyrinth. As you'll soon notice, this place is damnation itself. Hell. Abyss. Abaddon. Whatever you want to call it... this place hates mortals. Of course, the 'formal' introduction to the Labyrinth would be to brutally slaughter you all. Consider yourselves lucky! Ha ha ha ha ha..." The man laughs, but for some reason you doubt he was joking...
"The man offered for us to kill him mercifully. I say we oblige, "
"Tell us about this place then I will do you the honor of ending your life by my blade."
The man sneers at your statement. "Hmph! I get a feeling you'll make it far in the Labyrinth with that attitude. Think I'll give you a hint... but first..." The man takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.
"None of us know how we got in here, I assume it's the same for you. We do know that we need souls to survive. The more souls you gather, the stronger you became and less hungry you feel. There is no food here, so souls is all we have. But take my warning: it's better to be hungry than insane. For if you gather too many souls, you start to lose your mind. Then again, if the alternative is to suffer hunger for eternity, who am I to judge?"
The man opens his eyes and looks Goramar right in the eye. "I haven't heard of a way out, but they say that souls is the key to freedom. Take that however you like. If that sounds too vague for your tastes, maybe you should seek the Explorer's Guild. If anyone ever finds a way out, it ought to be one of them Explorers. No promises though."
The man continues to look at Goramar in the eye, with the exhaustion gone and replaced by determination. "I think I've blabbered enough. Now, your part of the deal, if you would."
After warning his friend Kekkle down below, Ushio continues to climb the ladder slowly but steadily.
He reaches the top of the ladder and finds himself in another room. Ushio notices there is no safety railing to prevent anyone from falling down to the room you ascended from. He looks around the room, seeing a couple of corpses, five of them, lying around! Surprised and disgusted by the discovery, Ushio is unable to notice that one of the corpses slowly crawls towards him and pushes him off the ledge!
Ushio takes falling damage and falls prone.
Ushio is at -4 hit points, unconscious and dying. He has 36 seconds to live unless he stabilizes or is stabilized. Make Constitution rolls to see if you stabilize yourself.
"If the gathering of souls is going to lead to me leaving this place, it sounds as though killing you will benefit us both," Goramar says as he inches closer with his rapier. Once in range, the half-orc thrusts the blade between the man's ribs and twists before removing it.
Elyna scoffs as she turns her back on the man, leaving Goramar to satisfy his urge to kill and begins to examine the room for useful or valuable items.
The hall is roughly twice the size of the room you woke up in, 30 feet by 40 feet. The ceiling is an arched vault and the walls are full of paintings. You count at least 15 paintings, all of them portraits, all depicting people with their eyes shut. The paintings are relatively small, most being A4-sized or even smaller.
You notice a relatively small table put against one of the walls. The table has dried paint on it, of various colors. You figure the paintings, at least some of them, have been painted on top of this desk. Aside from that, the table is uninteresting: made of old wood, no items on it, no lockers.
You find nothing valuable or worth taking, unless you consider yourself an art enthusiast and want to collect the paintings.
"So there are enough forsaken souls... well, by souls I mean 'people'... in this Labyrinth that they've formed guilds of a sort. Courts of Hell to call our own."
Ulrich crouches near the man so that he's at eye level.
"Before...", he turns toward the male half-orc,"your name was Goramar, yes? Before Goramar sends you to whatever lies after death in this place- what was your name?"
"An optimist, that is true, but it doesn't mean I'm blind to the darkness in the world." Pahleg waits for the man's answer, then asks one final question. "We could take you wish us, are you sure you want to die?" If the man is adamant, Pahleg gives a sad nod. "Very well. I hope you found solace in knowing you were a great help to us. Rest easy, my friend."
"We could take you with us, are you sure you want to die?"
The man sighs. "Those pesky Hellfire fanatics put me in a pretty bad shape. It may not show, but I know my viscera have been hexed with some advanced pyromancies. I only have a day or so to live, and if I wait that long my death is slow and excruciating. I'd want it to end quickly." He speaks matter-of-factly with no fear in his voice.
"Very well. I hope you found solace in knowing you were a great help to us. Rest easy, my friend."
Your words make the man smile for an instant. "Heh. It's funny. If only you knew my sins... but I will not concern you with that."
"Before Goramar sends you to whatever lies after death in this place- what was your name?"
The man makes a nervous laughing sound. "M-my name? Why, it's not very important. You haven't heard of me, what difference does it make?"
"Oh, I almost forgot!" The man changes subject. "I have a friend on B14F, that's just a few floors above. Her name's Felisse, she's an alchemist. If you seek the Explorer's Guild, you should pay her a visit. If you do, could you tell her I was killed by Hellfire? Thank you."
The man then turns back to Goramar and nods. "I'm ready."
"If the gathering of souls is going to lead to me leaving this place, it sounds as though killing you will benefit us both"
The man closes his eyes and smiles. "This, too, is a way out. Good luck, newcomers!"
With those words said, Goramar thrusts his rapier between the man's ribs and twists before removing it. Blood dirties the blade and the man collapses, as if having just dozed off whilst sitting. His body then slowly starts to fade, skin, muscles and bones turning to ashes and dust. Within seconds, there is no trace left of him, except for a few drops of blood on the hall floor.
The moment his body turned to ashes and dust you sense something invigorating flow to your body. You feel your hunger satiated, as if just having enjoyed a luxurious meal. This must be a "soul" that the man spoke of.
Obtained 1 souls.
Where his body laid just a moment earlier is something floating.
Soul of Black Flare
A dark grey soul that radiates like a searing blaze.An incomplete Labyrinth Soul. Purpose unknown. Cannot be sold.
Prior to earning his title "Newbie Furnace", Black Flare was a teacher for his friend and teammate. Black Flare spent his final moments praying for his daughter and cursing his former ally, who had forcefully taken his weapon, armor and souls, yet returning his sanity.
Just after picking up the floating grey soul, you hear the sound of something bumping against stone coming from the passageway. The sound may have come from the room you woke up in.
Pahleg looks on in shock as the man's body disappears. "We have truly been thrust into an odd area." He carefully takes the Black Flare soul and wonders at it for a moment before stowing it in his rags.
At the thump he turns around. "Come on, let's go see what that was."
"Let's.", Elyna agrees with Pahleg.
Ulrich stares at the floating gray soul. He struggles not to lick his lips.
"Well. Since you got your hands dirty, I suppose that's yours, Goramar. Assuming everyone else agrees?", he says.
"What's that? You heard something?"
Kekkle waits patiently for Ushio to give the all-clear from up above. Unfortunately his mind soon wonders to greener pastures.
Just where were they and how had they gotten here? The two earlier had pronounced the name of their deity with a notable accent so they clearly weren't from around here - or maybe Kekkle was the foreigner?
As he considers the strangeness Ushio comes crashing to the ground in a crumpled mess, causing Kekkle to yelp is surprise.
"Ah! Gods, you near scared the fire right out of me! What happened?"
"..."
"Hey, wait. Are you all right? Hello?"
Blood starts to seep across the stone floor of the dungeon.
"Oh dear..."
Kekkle turns and rushes down the corridor after the larger group. When he makes it to the room the killing had been done and there was little evidence of the forsaken man. "Quickly, is anyone here a healer?"
"The Book you foolish girl..." The quiet wind calls to her. Rilian looks around and notices that no one else seems to have heard the call. Her breath quickens as she feels her grasp of sanity slip. She rips her eyes away from where the man had just been and stares at the black book in her hands.
Suddenly there is a dull thudding sound from the room they had just been in causing Rilian to jump. She wheels around and starts to move back towards the room, worried about Kekkle and Ushio.
She steps into the room and sees the crumpled form of Ushio and Kekkle calling for a healer. She gasps and steps aside, staring shocked. They had only been awake for a breif few moments, and death was already on all sides of her.
"Ah-ha...ah-ha...So it begins."
Pahleg begins running at the call for a healer. He looks down to see one of his new companions lying in a pool of his own blood. He glances around in confusion at the lack of enemies, then kneels down and holds up his holy symbol. "Auorink, heal him!" Some of the wounds knit shut.
Ushio coughs to life and inhales deeply of what could only be very, very dry dirty air. He awakes and rises to his feet in an incredible hurry, very surprised at his new surroundings. He looks around and says to his fellow friends , "Do not *breath* go up *breath* there... there is a living or moving corpse up above. Don't know how many more." Ushio takes another look around, and spies the now fainter glowing light on Pahleg's hands. "My deepest thanks."
Pahleg nods and helps the fetchling to his feet. "I'm glad I found you quickly. We should stick closer together so we don't get surprised by things like living corpses." He gives a smile as he checks the wounds over and grunts. "I can only heal so much in a day, if it's alright with you I think I'll leave the bruises and save my magic for more life threatening injuries." He looks up the ladder. "So the question is, do we try again or do we go another way? Perhaps another way would be less troublesome. That's my vote."
"Did you find another way through in the other chamber?"
Ulrich stares at the floating gray soul. He struggles not to lick his lips.
"Well. Since you got your hands dirty, I suppose that's yours, Goramar. Assuming everyone else agrees?", he says.
"What's that? You heard something?"
Goramar grins wickedly as he reaches for the soul. "On the streets we take what we want, so I think it's only fair that it's mine." As Goramar is reaching for the soul he hears a commotion off in the distance and watches as Pahleg sprints down the corridor. "I suppose something is happening that way. Might be something "fun" to attend to," Goramar says to Ulrich, but mostly to himself. With that Goramar strides down the passageway and arrives in time to see Pahleg talking to Ushio. Hmmm, would of probably been better to leave him dead. One less person making noise.
Pahleg nods and helps the fetchling to his feet. "I'm glad I found you quickly. We should stick closer together so we don't get surprised by things like living corpses." He gives a smile as he checks the wounds over and grunts. "I can only heal so much in a day, if it's alright with you I think I'll leave the bruises and save my magic for more life threatening injuries." He looks up the ladder. "So the question is, do we try again or do we go another way? Perhaps another way would be less troublesome. That's my vote."
"Or we could send one of us up each ladder and engage whatever is up there. If we know there is a threat, why leave it at our backs? Perhaps we could throw it down here and give it a good thrashing. As a priest, don't you have power over such walking corpses?"
Ulrich chuckles dryly. "Corpses less lively than us, I mean."
Pahleg smiles. "I have the power to harm them easily, not control them. If the majority is in favor of confronting this threat, then we need to figure out a way to get up the ladder without being shoved back down."
Ushio ponders for a moment. Perhaps...
"They are attracted to living things, are they not? Maybe we could 'coerce it to fall as I did. There wasn't a railing to keep me from falling so maybe..."
Moritat had mostly confined herself to listening. She was going to volunteer for putting the man out of his misery, but her fellow half-orc had beaten her to the punch. It was no skin off of her nose, however. He did a clean enough job of seeing the man off, even if her blade would have done it faster and easier.
However, that had to take a backseat to the sudden commotion in the other room. The half-orc would sigh at that before walking back. She would let the others discuss for a moment, quiet all the while. It appeared that all of them were talkers. It was starting to get old, as far as Moritat was concerned. However, one them thankfully stumbled upon a good idea.
"They are attracted to living things, are they not? Maybe we could 'coerce it to fall as I did. There wasn't a railing to keep me from falling so maybe..."
Moritat would give a glance to Goramar before simply walking over to the ladder with scythe in hand. When there, the former bodyguard would simply tap loudly on the metal ladder with the metal part of her blade, and then simply waited.
Goramar watches as Moritat clangs her blade against the metal of the ladder. "Well..." Goramar hesitates, "Are you going to climb or wait for someone to do the work for you?" Goramar growls. "You seem so eager to make a show with your blade, prove to me you can use it."
Elyna grins at Goramar's remark. She points up the ladder. "She's waiting for it to do the work for her."
"Well it would be nice if it worked faster. I have things to attend to and the longer we spend down here..." Goramar trails off, leaving the last part to everyone's imagination.
Moritat taps the ladder with her scythe. She then waits, hoping the loud metal sound would attract the malevolent creature above and make it fall down. Moritat, along with several others, gazes above, waiting for something to happen.
...
A minute passes, but there is no sign of the creature.
Ulrich nods to the other ladder.
"I'll climb this one, you climb that one."
He begins climbing the ladder, torch in one hand. When he reaches the top, Ulrich will pause and look over the edge to try and see Ushio's attacker.
Perception:
As Ulrich reaches the top, he cautiously looks around before stepping to the platform. His torch illuminates his surroundings, revealing a chamber, 20 feet by 30 feet, the same size as the room you woke up in. The chamber's floor is gruesomely decorated by humanoid corpses. Ulrich counts one, two, three, four corpses. None of them appear to be moving, but you cannot be absolutely certain all of them are actually dead.
The chamber has two exits: one leading forward and the other leading right (looking from the ladder).
Pahleg follows right behind Ulrich, coming up to examine the corpses.
Ulrich calls down, "Ms. Moritat, would you poke these corpses with the end of your scythe? Playing dead would be far too easy for these..."
Pahleg begins climbing the other ladder, and soon reaches the top. Peeking over the edge, you see the chamber and the four corpses on its stone floor. None of them appear to be moving, but you cannot be absolutely certain all of them are actually dead.
"I'm going to step off the ladder; be ready, if you would be so kind.", Ulrich calls down before stepping off the ladder and drawing his sword.
Pahleg nods and goes back down, gathering the others to all be ready to catch Ulrich if needed.
Pahleg descends the ladder and tells the others to prepare to catch Ulrich should he be pushed down like Ushio earlier. Ulrich steps on the platform, one hand holding the torch and the other firmly grasping the longsword. His one and only eye vigilantly sweeps across the chamber, looking for any movement.
He stands still for a moment, waiting, expecting the corpses to move. None of the corpses show any movement, so Ulrich begins to examine them closer. He pokes them with his longsword, one at a time, to ensure they are dead. None of them react to poking in any way: they're all dead corpses.
Pahleg climbs back up the ladder when it's apparent that Ulrich isn't coming back down. He looks at the corpses again. "Perhaps decapitate them, just to be sure."
Ulrich calls down again.
"I'm the only moving corpse up here! Come, join me!"
The knight shrugs, offers the torch to Pahleg and takes his longsword in both hands to lop the heads from the bodies.
Ulrich decapitates the four corpses with four careful and precise chops. He then examines the corpses more carefully, seeing if they wear anything worth pillaging.
He strips them from their rags and gathers the four rags. The prize is not flashy, but it's something.
Corpse Rags
Torn, well-worn, dirty clothing.Can be equipped in shoulder slot, like a cloak. Gives +2 circumstance bonus on Disguise checks made to disguise as a corpse. Weighs 1 lbs. Worth 0 souls.
Rags taken from a corpse. Most maze dwellers don't leave behind their attire when slain, so this was ripped from someone while he was still alive.
Ulrich briefly gazes at the corpses and quickly concludes that there's nothing else worth taking. He's had enough looking at this gruesome picture, which was only made worse by the corpses' lack of heads.
Pahleg gives them a once over to make sure the ever-perceptive Ulrich didn't miss anything.
"Hmph. Whatever pushed you down has fled, it seems. Or was disguised as a corpse to begin with. What say we take a look this way?", he says, pointing to the passage on the right-hand side from the ladder.
Unsatisfied with Ulrich's all-too-careless search, Pahleg moves closer to the headless corpses and begins searching for valuables.
One of the corpses, whose stature suggests he used to be an elf, is holding a dagger.
Dagger
A dagger that has a blade 1 foot long.Standard dagger. Worth 1 soul.
The backstabber's perfect tool. Most dangers in the Labyrinth come head-on, but the most vicious ones may be caused by betrayal.
Examining a female dwarf's corpse, he also finds a small shiny necklace in her tight grip, as though she was holding onto it for her dear life.
Trinket
A necklace made of fool's gold. A single glass jewel decorates it.Worth 1 soul.
While this fake jewelry would fetch few coins in the market, here in the Labyrinth it has some value. Some twisted individuals collect these, perhaps to remind them of their old days when materia mattered in life.
The two other corpses, one which belonged to a human female and the other to a hobgoblin male, seem to hold nothing.