Tristain, the name seems to spark some small memory: You're pretty sure the asylum was founded more than 100 years ago by the count of Versex County in Ustalav on the foundations of an old, half-built fort. It has since operated as a refuge for those affected by mental illness.
"Oh, dear. I don't recall any cutter," the old woman replies. "Perhaps he came while I was insensate? I suppose you probably scared him off and saved me, so yet another thing I have to thank you for!"
Heinrich frowns. "No, he was in a dream. Or a vision. One we all shared. I recall yellow. And blood. A great deal of screaming. Why is this not making sense?!?"
This seems like someone who knows things. Kyffin thinks to himself.
After a moment he asks, "Where are the records kept? We are having some trouble remembering all of our past" he gestures to the group, "And your records, if they're at all complete, might help us fill a few gaps."
"For that matter, have you seen any of us before?"
"...Ustalav..."
Tristain's face scrutches up as he reevaluates everything he knows about the known world is changed to a new referernce: Golarion.
"We are *on* Golarion then? Not some other place? Are you sure? Does the rest of the world exist?" Tristain confirms as he continues to expand his knowledge. He's quiet for a few moments.
"HA! I understand now! I am the man from cell with the starting corner that lies in the asylum known as Briarstone in the country of Ustalav on Golarion...aka, the known world on the prime material plane. HA!! We are learning much this day!! What wonders will come next!?" Tristain seems quite excited by the discovery.
Tristain smiles happily, erasing his chalkboard now that he has found his place in the world. He does not have a purpose yet, but exploration was interesting so far.
"Ustalav, that's well north of the Inner Sea, on the far shore of Lake Encarthan. Last I remember I was in Osirion, south of the Inner Sea, and I didn't have this overgrown beard." Perplexed, Belzoni looks to the others for their sense of place, except for Tristain the happy from the starting corner who obviously belonged in this institution.
"Records? Why they're through that area," the woman says, pointing north, through the rubble.
"Ahh thank you. I think we should get you out of here. There are some crossbow wielding guards, or something, in that direction. We need to show them some doppleganger bodies to show we're not them I guess. Care to join us?"
Kyffin/Walter hoists a pair of doppleganger bodies, one under each arm, and half drags them into the hallway.
Tristain looks to the records room direction and then back at the lady.
"Yeah, I would also like to see the records room near the place with the starting corner," Tristain mentions to Kyffin as he follows along.
Tenebrynn shrugs, "Maybe learn some names at least. Scope of all these dead bodies disconcerting. Absence of cutter also unnerving. Like seeing spider then turning and it being gone. Similar, but worse." She plucks a belt off a nearby body and wraps it around her waist four times as they walk, then casts it aside. "Wrong color."
"You should wait here a moment in case we run into any more bad folk." he advises the recently healed woman.
He heads off to the north, but waits for others to open any intervening doors if they wish. He keeps his scimitar out - just in case.
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Weapon in hand, Belzoni joins Walter/Kyffin as they explore the next doorway. "Seems there is a surprise at each portal, let's keep on our guard."
Confucius nods and heads off after the others, keeping his eyes and ears open. "It would be best to discover my true purpose for being in an asylum. I wonder if I came here voluntarily?"
Tenebrynn shrugs at Heinrich's question. "Maybe. Maybe not. Glad you are here, regardless. Not sure anything in this place can be trusted, but I am sure you can be. Same for you. And you. And you," she points to each of her new companions in turn, offering a firm nod. "Good to have friends." She then spins a tuft of her tulip-red hair between her long fingers and adds, "Not sure I trust broken leg lady though. She didn't seem scared. This whole place, asylum or otherwise, not how it should be. Guards were frightened, distrusting; expected response. Lady was not."
The woman nods at the half-orc's words and waits as you advance.
Most of this area has collapsed into a heap of dense gray rubble. The occasional clattering pebble makes it sound as though the mound is not entirely settled, and more rubble could collapse at any moment. Surviving doors lead off the hall to the west and east.
The top half of a partially buried corpse -- wearing a uniform that's growing familiar -- emerges from the rubble.
As the undead creature rises from the rubble Belzoni draws his scorpion whip to lash at the horror and growls at the newest member of the troupe. "Right where the strange lady directed us, is this how you repay our kindness?"
Tristain, at seeing the emerging body, shirks to the back of the party, unsure if the body is living, dead, or undead.
"Is that body moving? I can't tell."
Perception
Tristain sees nothing unusual in the corpse under the rubble in the asylum that contains the starting corner.
That said, you do think you see its hands twitching slightly.
"Corpses everywhere in this mess, isn't there? Does that one seem to be human or one of those grey facechangers?"
Kyffin, unable to make the perception check, continues to wait in the hall, scimitar out, as the party investigates. "Find anything new?" he asks.
How recent is all this rubble? Was there an earthquake or something recently?
Fear having twisted his perspective, Belzoni does a double take at the un-undead. "Besmara's barnacles and Cayden's carbuncles, I thought that corpse was moving. This place would make a man crazy if he wasn't already." Breathing deeply to subconsciously relive the stress, the big man takes in the reality of the situation.
"Holy scat!" Belzoni bellows, "It is moving, stay clear friends, that's no natural thing!"
Though partially blocked by debris, the western door can be opened with only a minor bit of effort.
Sturdy racks and toppled tables suggest this space once served as a sizable laundry. Much of the northern end of the room is filled with rubble.
A wall of pipelike crossbeams fills the western alcove of this room. Three figures are manacled to the rack here, from south to north: a human wearing stained yellow sheets as robes and bearing a flame-shaped chalk mark upon his forehead; the corpse of a partially eaten patient, her left arm completely stripped of flesh; and a humanoid creature with pallid flesh stretched tightly over his starved frame and long, sharp teeth -- strained red with blood that drips down to cover his chin.
You're pretty sure it's a ghoul, though that makes almost as little sense as anything else in this insane asylum.
A door is closed on the far side of the room to the south.
"Moving? What's moving?" Tenebrynn looks at the rubble and sees only that: rubble.
"This looks bad. Three people, possibly none of them people, chained to the wall; who did the chaining? Answer likely not good."
"Uh, are we sure this is the right way? Gnome who started near the starting corner? Do you think we're going the right way?" Tristain asks, using the proper identification and reference as Tristain sees it.
Tristain, not sure of anything, waits to see what others do.
"Great flames! This house of horrors just keeps getting more... horrible. It is enough to make my skull itch. I believe we must be going the right way, for this is the only way we have to go." Heinrich/Confucius begins to scratch at his scalp, reddening the skin and making it bleed.
"Holy scat!" Belzoni bellows, "It is moving, stay clear friends, that's no natural thing!"
- is it undead or someone half buried in the rubble who needs aid?
Kyffin, scimitar out, approaches the body and looks more closely at it. If he can discern whether or not the person is alive, he'll either help them (if alive) or stab them (if undead).
When they reach the next chamber, he just shakes his head sadly. "Indeed, the horrors of this place are never ending. I remember little of my own life, but this does not feel like a normal thing to me. Most unnatural!"
"Bloody chin there is a ghoul, I'd bet Walter's life on it." Scorpion whip in hand, Belzoni snaps it out and cracks it upon the creature from a safe distance.
"Ow!" the ghoul cries. "What was that for?"
"A ghoul you say? Does a ghoul know it's a ghoul? And what is a ghoul?"
Tenebrynn looks at Belzoni, "Ghoul-that-might-not-be-a-ghoul asks a good question." She then looks to the chained ghoul, "Are you a ghoul? I think that's why he cut you." She then turns back to Belzoni, pointing now at Heinrich, "He asks a better question: what's a ghoul?"
Tristain searches his memory for any idea of what a ghoul is.
"Ghoul? What's a ghoul?" Tristain rhetorically asks, echoing Tenebrynn.
Know (Rel) - untrained
"Is it bad? Should we deal with it?"
"Skeletons, zombies, mummies, ghosts, ghouls, they're undead and a sickness upon the lands. I feel like I've seen this kind before, but I do not know where?"
Tenebrynn shrugs, offering flatly, "Maybe the ghoul is as much a ghoul as the not-doctor was a doctor."
The creature snarls and instead of answering turns back toward the corpse next to him, ripping another strip of flesh off it with a spatter of blood.
The man in the stained yellow sheets moans, trying to strain away from the carnage next to him. "Words fail!" he wails madly.
After the ghoul slurps the gibbet of flesh down, he responds, "Maybe I am. I was a patient here, before everything started falling apart and these shapeshifters caught me."
"For the love of god, Montessor, why are you EATING that man?!?"
"The shapeshifters made you into a ghoul? I'm not a doctor, but does that even make sense. Wait...did you say, 'ghoul' or 'girl'? Even if they removed...ehrm, certain parts that does not make you a girl...but only a, uh, eunuch and that's no reason to eat people."
Kyffin/Walter watches the tearing of the flesh, and grows dizzy with confusion. What the hell is going on here?
Nothing makes sense, and he doesn't know what to do. "Ghouls are undead, right? Evil, abomination, undead? I mean, I understand he may not have always been this way, but how do you go back from this? We can't let him loose and there's no one to keep him imprisoned."
He fidgets with his scimitar. Killing a strapped down creature has no honor.
I will not abide evil, and will combat it with steel when words are not enough. I do not flinch from my faith, and do not fear embarrassment. My soul cannot be bought for all the stars in the sky.
Belzoni's whip cracks again when the creatures continues eating flesh.
Tristain, believing that he has as much duty as anyone to remove monsters, places the hammer down that he had been carrying.
With a flick of his mind, he sends it at the ghoul.
"You should really be dead, monster in the rubble above the room with the starting corner."
to hit;
bludgeoning damage.
"I'm so hungry," the ghoul replies to Confusious' question. "And I can't reach anything else, now, can -- OW!"
Lucky's whip hits him again, flaying another long strip off his chest and exposing several ribs and inner organs. You think another blow like that could well kill the thing (again).
"Stop it,"[b/] he whines, flinching away as the man from the cell with the starting corner's hammer whips into the well a good foot from his head, chipping off a small fleck of stone as it clatters to the floor, and causing the old woman you rescued to give a little start of alarm as she waits behind you all.
[b]"Praise! Zandalus sees!" the other bound man exclaims excitedly, straining at his manacles.
Tristain concentrates again, trying to find the aim with the hammer, something he has not done often.
"Stop moving so much! We're trying to help end your hunger."
to hit;
bludgeoning damage.
Kyffin sees the sense in what they're doing, and he helps to end the ghouls pain. He tries to do so quickly, rather than slamming into the table and scaring the poor beast.
Tenebrynn frowns as the ghoul is put down, "For not knowing your own names, you seem awfully certain about that man and about ghouls and that he actually was a ghoul. Hope you are right. Still, seems sad. Hard to trust things in this strange place." She then turns to the other figure and asks without skipping a breath, "Who is Zandalus? What does he or she see and how do you know?"
Tristain's blow renders the ghoul unconscious, and Kyffin quickly decapitates the thing, leading to a scared eep from the grandmotherly woman with you.
"Words fail," the bound man whispers.
And then, more hopefully as he strains at his bonds, "Zandalus sees?"
Heinrich stares at the 'ghoul', still not certain what he is seeing, then cringes as the thing is dispatched. He moves toward the bound man and begins to undo the bonds.
Heinrich unconsciously starts to pick the lock on the manacles.
"Who is Zandalus? What does he or she see and how do you know?"
"Yes, yes, who or what is Zandalus?" Tristain echoes the gnome again, following the important train of thought. "And if you could frame your answer in reference to the starting corner, that would be keen."
Tristain racks his own mind for anything about the name 'Zandalus'.
Know (History)
Know (Local)
"Do you mean 'sandals'? Did you want your sandals?"