"Ow!!"
Zoreck drops his sword and loads an alchemical cartridge into his pistol, then fires at the thing on the ceiling.
"Take THAT, snot-monster!
Grit: 2/2
Mythic Power: 4/5
Bullets: 5
Powder: 5
Alchemical cartridges: 8
Drancis sees the fungal creature climb out of range and immediately starts calling upon his aetheric powers, concentrating the mass into a force strong enough to knock it from its perch...
Mayenyi quickly sheathes her shortspear and her shield and bends down to lay a hand on the ground. It's only there an instant before she stands back up again, keeping her palm flat as she goes, until she is standing upright and her flattened palm is entirely over her head. Filling in the space between the ground and the oracle's hand is what looks like a slim, straight-trunked sapling - but when her hand is right around 7 feet in the air, Mayenyi suddenly stops raising it and instead just grasps the sapling around the trunk. Several narrow branches, bits of wood, and strips of bark fall away and evaporate into nothingness, and what remains is a shining, well-polished longspear, which she takes into both hands and points up toward the thing near the ceiling.
Rikkan delays to see if the others can finish the enemy before he had to throw another bomb.
Zoreck's pistol crashes another hole into the creature on the ceiling, ooze dribbling from savage wounds, but it still lives...
...and when Drancis attempts to push it backwards, it clings fast against the brickwork...
Seeing the creature on the ceiling reaching tendrils down, Kasia raises one of her lower legs pointing in its direction. She mutters briefly as the leg pulls web from her spinner, before hurling a fist-sized web at the creature, hoping to at least stop it from attacking the others.
Rikkan moves forward and uses a bomb, throwing it up toward the creature.
RTA
Damage
Kasia's orb of gossamer arcs up towards the ceiling, sticking steadfastly against the stone there... yet not quite holding the strange creature firm...
...all is not in vain though, Rikkan's bomb igniting the highly flammable silks - and providing a peculiar upside-down pyre for the creature above them.
The feeling of unbearable heat, of being burnt alive... starts to build in the minds of each of the group - and a strange, unintelligible voice screams out in fury at the edge of their consciousness. Clearly now, in a fight to the death, the fungus swipes down again with its tendrils...
Drancis eyes the mass of plant-flesh burning and inwardly shudders. Have to put it out of its misery! He thinks to himself. He then forms a large aether bubble in his mind and flings it at the alien fungus.
"Blasted fungus," Mayenyi murmurs through gritted teeth. She stabs with the new spear, trying to end the hated parasite's existence quickly.
,
As Drancis' manipulated aether crashes into the fungus, bludgeoning it and smearing matter across the ceiling, the screeching in the minds of the friends continues... it is enough of a distraction to send Mayenyi's spear thrusting at an inopportune angle...
....and, from within the strange glass prison in the chamber, the elali watches the friends with hope.
Furious that the thing just won't die, Zoreck reloads his gun and fires again.
Grit: 2/2
Mythic Power: 4/5
Bullets: 4
Powder: 4
Alchemical cartridges: 8
"Just DIE already!!"
Zoreck's gun finds an easy target - his bullet rending a massive hole in the plant and leaving it grievously damaged...
Following Zoreck's lead, Kasia opens fire on the creature as well.
Rikkan was torn as the creature appeared to be really wounded. He didn't want it to get off more attacks, though, so he used another bomb.
RTA
Damage
Possible crit:
RTA
Damage
Kasia follows up on Zoreck's wounding of the fungus... and Rikkan's bomb, exploding dead centre of the vegetable 'bulb', finishes the fight. Scorched matter rains down from the ceiling, spattering the floor, the group and the surfaces of the glass chamber with fetid black material...
Excitedly from within the chamber, surely convinced that the group are no allies of those that call this place home, the elali gestures for the group to rescue her somehow - yet although the chamber has the faint outline of a door within it, there is no obvious way of opening it.
The chamber radiates a moderate abjuration aura - its effects clearly blocking audible communication and sealing the elali within her enclosure. Further examination of the 'door' reveals the finest of orifices, a lock maybe?
With the snot-monster dead, Zoreck feels his ire drain out of him. He leans against a wall while he cleans and reloads his gun with a standard bullet and powder.
Grit: 2/2
Mythic Power: 4/5
Bullets: 5
Powder: 5
Alchemical cartridges: 7
He then approaches the chamber that entraps Mayenyi's friend. Tapping on it with the butt of his pistol, he asks, "Any idea what this thing is made of? Maybe we can blast our way through it..."
"There's an abjuration on it," Mayenyi notes, "which might be reinforcing the walls."
Drancis slowly approaches the enclosure. "Well, I think I can shatter the enclosure, BUT such an effort will no doubt trigger an alarm...especially if there is a magical aura tied to it. Give me a moment..." He studies the enclosure closely looking for a way to bypass the locking mechanism.
The more Drancis examines the glass enclosure, the more he is convinced that the 'cell' is both technologically and magically secured... and, as he traces out the shape of the keyhole, the elali looks at him encouragingly. Tracing out a word out on the glass, the peculiarly featured woman - her exposed brain pulsing gently, then draws an arrow pointing south...
...the word is 'Key'.
"Well, have we found anything that looks like it might fit in that keyhole? Any allies we can find here would make our job easier."
Drancis shakes his head in frustration. "This is beyong my capability to open safely. We need to find the key first." He motions to the south, "and I'll give you one guess as to who carries it."
The elali within the enclosure can do little more than underline the word that she has written on the glass and, reinforcing the point, indicate towards the south... out of the room - and, presumably, along the corridor to the door that has yet to be explored.
Mayenyi nods, looking frustrated. She mouths WE'LL... BE... BACK... with exaggerated movements at the elali, then returns to the hallway, longspear in hand, and heads toward the door to the south.
The woman in the glass chamber smiles benevolently at Mayenyi as she promises to return... and the group head southwards - to a sturdy door at the end of the passageway. Rikkan, and then Drancis, examine and listen at the door... finally determining that it is 'safe' to continue.
Opening the door, they find an octagonal chamber containin a smaller, square glass enclosure centered on the floor. A dense, roiling mist fills this box-like structure and an occasional thud sounds from within - as in the previous chamber, the outline of a glass door appears on its north facing, and the walls of the glass enclosure run from a gleaming metallic floor to the stone ceiling 15 feet above.
A set of double doors exits the exterior room to the west... and, peculiarly, a 5-foot-wide hole appears in the floor to the southeast.
Zoreck looks around the room, hoping to find the key... or anyting else of interest.
While searching, he looks at Mayeni. "So...your friend back there..." He points over his shoulder back the way they came with his thumb. "...um...Is her skull supposed to be open like that, or did Lomrick do that to her?"
Drancis cautiously enters the room, his attention immediately drawn to the enclosure and the mist contained therein. "What...IS that?" He breathes as he looks around for the mechanism that operates the cage.
Perception
Rikkan also searches the room, hoping he could locate a key, but doubting it would be lying around all Willy nilly.
"Elali come that way," Mayenyi murmurs as she examines the area. "Not everything different is bad," she continues, looking over her shoulder at Zoreck and grinning, "and not everything different is something Lomrick has corrupted." The grin flickers and disappears as she says that last.
As Zoreck moves close to the glass enclosure, a horrific mass of eyes, mouths, and formless flesh flings its bulk against the transparent walls. For an instant, its many eyes study Zoreck intently...
...and then it slides back into the mist - moments later, the sound of a hundred voices laughing uncontrollably pours from the glass enclosure.
Mayenyi, moving past the glass enclosure, examines the hole in the greater chamber’s floor - it descends five feet before entering a narrow tunnel although it's far too narrow to use as an escape route, even for small creatures...
Zoreck flinches as the thing thuds against the enclosure.
"What the hell was that?!"
He also describes what he saw. (Read the spoiler)
Looking back at Mayenyi, Zoreck responds, "Just asking questions. Didn't know if your friend needed a healer. Never seen anyone with their brains exposed and still alive, is all... but for that matter, I've seen a plant-woman or a spider-woman before, either!"
Mayenyi smiles at Kasia, nodding, "She came as a bit of a surprise to me too. But as for plant people... well, I was a bit taken aback the first time I met someone who wasn't at least part plant!"
- the mass, distinctly different to the rest of the creature's rolling flesh, reminds you of the mass on Silam Oddle's - the man who was abducting villagers back at Holver's Ferry - neck...
The creature, whatever it is, is not held within the same kind of soundproofed enclosure that the elali was... the laughing turns into muttering... and then into crazed shouting - hundreds, if not thousands of voices chattering, whistling, bawling... so crazed is it that the friends start to question their sanity...
Her mind assaulted by the horrible gibbering sounds, Mayenyi searches desperately for a way to get inside the box and expose the abomination within so that she might be able to attack it.
Will
Confusion effect
"Leabe that thing alone in its cage, and let's get out of here," he Ratfolk calls out as he takes a double move aWay from the creature making that godawful noise.
Drancis successfully withstands the gibbering, though not without some straining, and replies to the others. "LOmrick must have set this beast as a guard for his redoubt! He surely knows we are here by now!"
Mayenyi, examining the glass enclosure - and the distinct door that leads into the mist-filled enclosure, quickly discovers that - unlike the enclosure holding the elali captive - this chamber does not appear to be locked.
Zoreck becomes enraged at the sound of the gibbering. An odd glimmer of might surrounds him as this happens.
He then opens the door, points his pistol at the thing, and fires.
Grit: 2/2
Mythic Power: 3/5
Bullets: 4
Powder: 4
Alchemical cartridges: 7
Pushing the door to the glass chamber open, Zoreck stands at near point-blank range to the shape in the mist... and fires!!! There is a sickly wet sound as the rolling flesh of the beast is punctured by the firearm... followed by the distressing sound of child-like giggling...
Once a way has been opened to face the horrid beast, Drancis holds his arms out and reaches his mind out to grab the aether surrounding it and squeezing it...
As Rikkan rushes from the room, the giggling and jabbering grows to a crescendo... and, more bubbling than moving, the mass of wild flesh moves through the mist to bite at Zoreck... hundreds of tiny mouths snap at the Numerian, no sooner has he avoided one of the bites than he finds himself being bitten at from a different angle...
Drancis finishes moving the aether bubble around the hideous beast and attempts to grip it, flinging it against the far wall.