"Doors and windows are deathtraps. I can take out an entire wall if we need to, just tell me where."
"Curious what stories you bring."
{The sound of crickets outside}
He turns to look at the three humans then back at Kargas. "Fine, but remember that as an archer, I won't be all that effective in close quarters like that." Remembering what he saw during his scouting trip, Colvyn uses his kukri to draw in the ground. "There is two doors to the building. Here and here. I only looked in the window here. It is a fifteen by twenty five feet room. One fire place and a table. The place was totally gross, so you might want to cover your nose if you have a weak stomach. Two doors leads further in, but they were closed, so I couldn't see more. There are multiple windows, but they are barred up. No matter where we go in, the door and room size will limit how many people can get in at a time." He looks at the sword that Kargas carries. "Maybe you could make us a bigger door?"
"Perhaps we could use a distraction to draw the defenders out or to one of the doors. What did it sound like inside?"
"A new entrance sounds grand!" Flo agrees, smiling slyly. We've all manner of new tactics this time around! Feels good to be the ones on the offensive instead of just reacting to everything.
After some looking around, she draws on the power of her wand, holds her knife, and prepares to support the fighters.
________
The scent of bad meat, urine, sweat and decay wafts now and then from between the cracks of the wooden walls. While the farmhouse once had many windows, it appears they were shattered or destroyed long ago and replaced by simple boards (now rotten) blocking rain from entering.
Rather than attempt either of the two entrances, Kargas steps up to the south end of the building and begins slicing a new doorway in with his blade. The wood is sodden and tough, but his considerable strength and skill with the weapon means it simply takes a few swings to breach and about a minute more to clear an adequate hole to slip in.
Inside, you see the charnelhouse of a kitchen. Nothing appears to have changed in here since Colvyn scouted it out earlier. A door to the north and another to the west leave the room.
Stepping warily into the room, Kargas grimaces at the gory sight. "More gods-damned cannibals," he rumbles, thinking about the goblins' larder at Thistletop. "No prisoners," he says more loudly over his shoulder. He checks the doorway to the west for traps, severs the latch/bolt with the sword, and then kicks it open it if looks safe.
"That rocking chair looks... bigger than it should be for the Ogrekin, know? At the lease, they didn't strike me as the rocking chair type," Flo whispers to the others as she creeps in after Kargas.
________
While the door to the west doesn't appear to be trapped, both Flo and Kargas notice a small hidden lever built into the doorframe to the north side of the door. The lever is currently raised. There's no obvious sign of what mechanism - if any - its attached to
Colvyn follows the group, wary of anything that look suspicious.
|
”Wait a moment,” says Guiness, seeing the lever. ”Do you see that lever, how it trembles slightly at our footsteps? It is attached to a cable under tension, I’ll warrant, likely connected to something on the other side of that door. It could be related to a trap, so we may want to release that tension before we open the door.”
Flo nods at Guiness and gives the bravest among them room to pull the lever.
________
Guiness has to strain to budge the lever, but once it begins moving, it whips downward with incredible force. You hear a whir, a clank and suddenly
SHHHHHNK!
A massive rusty scythe blade embeds itself through the door, point facing toward you! Splinters of wood shower you, but the weight of the door stops the blade from piercing further. Looks like some mechanism on the opposite side of the door was designed to stab the blade into an unwary door-opener.
With the trap disabled, you swing the door open to a nauseatingly adorned dining room. This dark room stinks of putrefying flesh. Eight wooden chairs with grinning bleached skulls crowning their backs circle a monstrous four-foot-high oak dining table covered with a crude tablecloth of crinkly human skin leather. The centerpiece of the dining table—a rotting human head, its stringy red hair draped over its mutilated face—serves as a gathering place for a host of buzzing, bloated flies.
Two more doors exit this room to the north-east and north-west. Both have taughtly wound mechanisms attached to short-handled scythes, designed to swing outward when the doors are opened. With access to the traps on this side of the door, you can destroy or disable them easily.
"Agreed"
Colvyn easily takes apart the remaining two scythe traps, this time without the noise and impact of the safe trigger needed when accessing the doors from the other side.
On a search of the room, Guiness spots nothing beyond the grotesque surface level. The chairs, table and setting are well worn, showing signs that the ogrekin use this room often. While the room itself doesn't have anything of note, Guiness' sharp hearing picks up a well-muffled wailing from the north-east, likely somewhere behind the door.
"Without hesitation!" Flo adds.
"Not to be callous, but we should be careful with how we proceed. I don't want whoever is suffering to do so any longer than they have to, but with traps like this," she says, gesturing at the rusty scythes, "and taste in decor like this," gesturing now to the skulls, rotting and otherwise, "I think caution is the best way of ensuring we actually can help them."
"It looks like the other door might connect to the same area as the unopened door in the first room. Let's check it out to make sure nothing is going to ambush us while we press on?" she suggests.
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"Or another dead kid, looking to suck the air out of our lungs again," Kargas grumbles sourly. "Let's get on with it."
Guiness opens the way to the north-east, revealing a room strewn with toys. Some of these toys appear to be ordinary, carved wood or bone, while others appear to be little more than partial animal carcasses. Old bloodstains mar the walls. Some of these resemble crude childlike paintings, featuring all manner of macabre topics, from a grinning child tossing other children off a cliff, to a tentacled monster rising from a lake to eat the moon. A single well-worn chair lies in the center of the room.
Currently, the room is housed by two ogrekin. One is smaller and puffy, looking oddly childlike if one disregards his two arms that appear to belong to a gorilla, and his hooved stumpy legs. That particular ogrekin is currently in the midst of wailing, but his mouth has been stuffed with a bloodstained pillow. The other ogrekin looks almost entirely like a human teenager, except all his joints appear to have been put in backward, causing his limbs to bend in their opposite directions. This second ogrekin wields a spear in hand and gets ready to charge forth when the door opens.
-
|||| INIT ||||
Kargas
Guiness (12 dmg, 3 Dex dmg)
Colvyn (1 Str dmg)
Kellek
Flo
Blue Ogrekin
Orange Ogrekin
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Guiness has to strain to budge the lever, but once it begins moving, it whips downward with incredible force. You hear a whir, a clank and suddenly
SHHHHHNK!
A massive rusty scythe blade embeds itself through the door, point facing toward you! Splinters of wood shower you, but the weight of the door stops the blade from piercing further. Looks like some mechanism on the opposite side of the door was designed to stab the blade into an unwary door-opener.
With the trap disabled, you swing the door open to a nauseatingly adorned dining room. This dark room stinks of putrefying flesh. Eight wooden chairs with grinning bleached skulls crowning their backs circle a monstrous four-foot-high oak dining table covered with a crude tablecloth of crinkly human skin leather. The centerpiece of the dining table—a rotting human head, its stringy red hair draped over its mutilated face—serves as a gathering place for a host of buzzing, bloated flies.
"What an incredible smell you've discovered."
Kellek looks the room over quickly noting eight chairs before activating more arcane senses.
"When we are done here, we burn it to the ground, agreed?" comments Guiness seeing the continued depravity on display. Staying well away from the traps, Guiness searches the rest of the room gingerly for any clues.
"I could do that now if you like."
Guiness opens the way to the north-east, revealing a room strewn with toys. Some of these toys appear to be ordinary, carved wood or bone, while others appear to be little more than partial animal carcasses. Old bloodstains mar the walls. Some of these resemble crude childlike paintings, featuring all manner of macabre topics, from a grinning child tossing other children off a cliff, to a tentacled monster rising from a lake to eat the moon. A single well-worn chair lies in the center of the room.
Currently, the room is housed by two ogrekin. One is smaller and puffy, looking oddly childlike if one disregards his two arms that appear to belong to a gorilla, and his hooved stumpy legs. That particular ogrekin is currently in the midst of wailing, but his mouth has been stuffed with a bloodstained pillow.
"Konphehte!" a scintillating rain of glitter drifts down from the ceiling inside the room.
Colvyn climbs on the table to get a better vantage point. Seeing the ugly thing attacking Guiness, he sends a single arrow flying toward it.
Flo offers her standard butterfly to each of her friends before standing at the ready to help further should the need arise. What a terrible family and place this must be to be raised in!
________
"Careful, Guiness, he's quick with that spear," Kargas warns (perhaps unnecessarily) as he lunges in to counterattack.
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The remaining ogrekin rises it its stubby feet. Standing at a height of three feet, its huge head, torso and arms are sized for a full grown human. Its face certainly seems to be an adult man's face, its weirdly chubby and distorted. It wails in impotent rage, swinging its arms every which way while blinded. It's unable to land those meaty fists into any victim.
Out of Combat
"Um, at the least it needs to stop making so much noise..." Flo points out. Enough of a commotion will kill any chance we have at surprising... whatever is holed up in here.
"There's no door in here where I thought there should be. Either there is a fake wall, or maybe a closet or something?" she speculates. While the others get themselves sorted, she looks the room over.
________
Kargas easily knocks the remaining ogrekin out with a single violent blow with the flat of his blade. It groans once and then goes silent for a few moments before it begins snoring loudly.
Flo's search of the room uncovers a gross pile of humanoid-shaped straw dolls, similar to those you saw hanging off the trees on the way in toward the farmhouse. Each of these dolls however is darkly stained with blood, and underneath them you find a decaying pile of... some kind of flesh. A further look around the room doesn't reveal anything useful.
When you crack open the second door from the 'kitchen' area, you find that it houses a set of stone stairs that descend down into a damp, dark basement below. The smell of musty, wet earth wafts up from below.
|
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Taking a sip from his special flask, Guiness carefully closes the door and says, ”There is a downstairs—perhaps we should finish this level first?”. Taking a moment to assess the quality of the spear the ogre kin was wielding, he moves on to the western door out of the dining room. Holding his hammer as before, he prepares to open the door once the others are ready.
"Yeah we can put off going down in the cannibal ogres basement, that's fine." Kargas grates out through gritted teeth.
Flo shivers. Why is there always an extra creepy basement? At this point, I'd settle for a plain creepy basement! "As much fire as we can make when we leave. Nothing left standing."
She shakes her head and rubs her temples as she forms up behind Guiness.
________
Guiness finds the spear fairly ordinary quality, bordering on amateur. Its clearly seen quite a lot of use, and not a lot of care taken to ensure its head doesn't rust.
The western door out of the dining room opens easily, revealing a long corridor with doors branching in various directions as well as another set of stairs ascending up to a second floor. Each of the doors along this hallway are carved with names in common. To the north "Rukus", then heading down the hallway "Crowfood", "Erryone", and "Mammy".
Opening the first door off the hallway to the north, you find a filthy bedroom. In here, there's little more than a lumpy mattress heaped with twigs, mud and what smells like sewage. Dozens of humanoid fetishes crafted of scraps of leather, straw, corn husks, twigs and bones hang from cords throughout the room. Well-gnawed bones lie scattered in the corners of the room.
Guiness finds the spear fairly ordinary quality, bordering on amateur. Its clearly seen quite a lot of use, and not a lot of care taken to ensure its head doesn't rust.
"Honestly man, you've seen where that thing has been." The wizard looks down at the red hole in the dwarf's clothing. "Just leave it be."
In the dining chamber Kellek notes the house's strange architecture. Most homes are built for ease access with lots of doorway. Logically there should be one along the south wall.
Kellek also notes the fact that many of the residence he's been in of late have no water closets, or garderobes. Have they given up on sanitation this far west?
Flo frowns at the ceiling. They probably know we're here. Haven't been quiet, but they also haven't tried to rush down to chase us out...
________
With the rest of the group moving forward, Kellek takes a look at the ogrekin's spear and doesn't detect any magic. Guiness doesn't spot any traps on the door marked "Crowfood" and opens it up. The room beyond was likely once another bedroom based on the sleeping mat squished into one corner. The majority of the room now is filled with crates and barrels. A thick smell of mildew hangs in the air and mixes with the sour aromas of pickled foodstuffs.
Inspecting the crates and barrels, you find the majority contain bulk foodstuffs, their contents relatively fresh. A few of the barrels are even still labeled with the names of merchant companies and traders on them, along with the correct contents. A few of the barrels instead contain a mixed assortment of bones, small enough that they clearly came from humanoid babies.
The light creaking above continues.
"This is a vile bunch. Shame the Black Arrows caught the worst of it instead of this lot. Something to set right, aye?" Kargas eyes the southern door suspiciously and moves cautiously down the hallway, instead lining himself up with a blank section of wall and started carving through into the room behind.
Flo nods. "Agreed, this is sick. Even considering what we've already been through," she remarks. "I can put a decent hole in the ceiling I think. It'd take some luck, but whatever is lurking upstairs could take a sudden trip down here with us. Just a thought." She smiles slyly.
________
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Kellek cocks an eyebrow at the grisly container. Smuckers?
Kargas' adamantine blade passes with ease through the wall and he hacks open a new doorway to the south. The first thing you see is the back of a moldy yellow sofa. The room beyond appears to be a lounge. A mangy bearskin rug lies before a tremendous hearth set into the wall. The bear's visage seems to still be snarling up at whatever cruel hunter took its life. A second look at the yellow sofa reveals that it has been reupholstered in stitched human skin that has then been stained a bright color. A rough collection of talons, spider's legs and fox paws serve as a trim along its edges.
There's no sign of any ogrekin inside, but there is a door to the south that leads to the building's porch and the rocking chair you saw while outside.
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A second look at the yellow sofa reveals that it has been reupholstered in stitched human skin that has then been stained a bright color. A rough collection of talons, spider's legs and fox paws serve as a trim along its edges.
Flo brings her hand to her mouth. O-oh my.
Looking back down the hallway, she takes a few deep breaths before stepping into the room. She does everything in her power to avoid looking at the couch. "Do we, uh, have enough fire for this place?"
________