Still carrying the now vocal imp, Zev moves into the middle of the first area.
Round 2
Once there, he unceremoniously dumps the imp to the ground and pulls his bow from off of his shoulder, firing at the still standing adversary...
Zev's arrow does little to slow the creature, but Erylium will have none of it. As she is dumped, she swears some unholy filth that will not be repeated here...
Mysari attempts to finish the creature with another blast of frigid air and succeeds in shattering it into tiny pieces of ice before it begins dissolving, just like the other one.
"Korvus!! Where are you? You useless hunk of flesh. Rescue me!" Erylium is trying to get someone's attention..
Aurica looks around, eyes peeled for signs of another creature here.
Erylium's voice only seems to echo of the walls of this prison room. It appears no one is coming to rescue her, at least for the moment.
Their enemies defeated, Aurica takes time to walk the perimeter of the room, inspecting the various cages for items besides debris and detritus, as well as signs of what creatures have been held in the prison cells.
If there is nothing of note, she proceeds along the wooden walkway into the corridor to the east.
Milah, too, performs a cursory investigation of the room before leading the others eastward.
Most of the cells in this room only contain skeletons that must be extremely old, but yet seem very well preserved, similar to the wooden structure you are standing on, something Milah takes note of. The argument the two creatures were having seem to be over a pile of skulls, but nothing about them seems to be special.
You move along and come to a room that contains several ancient relics of what appear to be torture implements, although their function and style seem strange and archaic. In one corner sits a spherical cage with spikes
protruding inward from its iron bars. In another stands what appears to be a star-shaped wooden frame, its surface studded with hooks. And in the center of the room is a long table covered with leather straps and a number of cranks that seem designed to rotate and swivel. To the south is a wooden door that remains partially open and to the east, another wooden door that is shut. You can see inside the room to the south and the floor appears to be covered in books and papers...
Erylium begins to say something, but Maerra, having enough of the demon, decides to gag her again. She walks over, puts the rope back into Erylium's mouth and takes her from Zev. "I'm taking her back to Sandpoint to deliver her to Sheriff Belock." Mysari nods and adds, "I'm going with you to make sure you are safe."
The two of them gather their things, wish the rest of you well and hopes to see you again on the surface. The three of you stand in the torture room.
Not wanting to linger long in this place of torture, Aurica moves quickly to the room to the south to look through the papers.
Along with the books and papers in this room, the crumbling remnants of several chairs and a long table clutter the floor. Everywhere you look, there seems to a strange writing, similar to that which you have seen on the walls earlier. It covers the walls, the floor, the rubble and even the books and papers. To the south stand three stone doors, each bearing a strange symbol that resembles a seven-pointed star.
Eager to learn anything she can about the nature of this place, Aurica picks up and examines one paper after another.
Milah, too, examines the papers.
Other than seeing that all these papers appear to have been notes of some kind, scribbled in the margins and between lines of text in some of the books, you can't seem to decipher what all this could mean. The runes on each of the stone doors are recognizable however. You have seen them a few times recently.
Aurica approaches the door on the left. She opens it if there's an obvious way to do so, or looks and feels around for a handle/button/mechanism.
Leaving the notes for now, Milah joins Aurica at the door and readies her rapier.
Aurica opens the door to the first of the three rooms. Inside she finds the skeleton of what appears to be a small child, but counting the bones, you can see that it has three of them and it is missing neck bones..
"Three arms...and no neck. This is strange, indeed," Aurica says to Milah. Let's check the other rooms.
Aurica opens the center stone door and then the one on the right after she is done looking in the center room.
Milah stands ready, rapier in-hand, in case any of the bones (or anything else) decide they're not quite done moving...
The center room contains another skeleton, this one that of a large human with an oversized skull. The right room contains one more skeleton, that of a humanoid with an extended rib cage. Other than that, the rooms are empty. It seems you have found some sort of cell for experiments...
"Do you think the creatures we have been destroying are related to the experiments these poor souls underwent?"
You move on, opening the wooden door easily and climbing a small set of stairs. As you near the end of the hallway, you notice the the air in this area has grown colder, and you can even see your breath as you exhale. Just ahead, as the room opens up, you can see a vaulted ceiling and on the floor are several large pallets that appear to be covering large pits. You hear a strange sound, like that of ruffling paper coming from somewhere ahead. Every once in a while, you hear a pained moan as well, like someone is hurting somewhere, but it is low, so it is difficult to tell from where exactly. Standing next to one of the pallets by the far wall appears to be a rather large goblin with an extra arm, poking a sword at the wood. It's muttering something unintelligible. At first, it doesn't appear to notice you, or if it does, it doesn't seem to care...
"Korvus, isn't it?" Aurica calls out in a commanding voice. "What have you been doing all this time? Erylium demanded your assistance earlier, did you not hear her? Her enemies have gone away with her, now, because of your failure to respond!"
The creature looks up from what it was doing, brandishing the sword in its hand, then a dagger in another hand and an axe in yet another hand. It cocks its head to one side, as if trying to understand what Aurica says. His ears perk up as he hears the demon's name, but he points the sword at the entrance to the room.
Aurica repeats her question in the imperious cadence of the Infernal tongue.
Milah lets out an exaggerated sigh and reinforces Aurica's play, speaking to the creature in its own language.
The giant goblin stops what it is doing, looking back and forth between each of you. "Erlm go away? People take? Show me people! I take head for trophy!" He lowers his weapons slightly and starts advancing towards you, eyes scanning every corner of the room and looking past you...
Zev follows along, glad to be free of the sqirming imp, but sad Maerra and Mysari had to leave, only pausing when he begins to see his breath in the air, "Cold." he states.
He eyes the strange skeltons warily, but stands mutely as the others shout and command the big goblin, somehow realizing that this was a kind of game, and he should "keep his damn mouth shut!!" ; as his brothers had told him many times before.
Aurica looks at Milah and at Zev as if to say, Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Milah nods slightly to Aurica and steps aside as she says more in the goblin tongue.
Koruvus glares past you down the hallway and starts marching towards it and past you. You notice that he avoids the wooden planks set about the floor of this room..
Milah indicates that Zev should let the creature pass between them and, when the goblin is in the ideal position, she strikes!
Zev catches Milah's gesture and waits for the large goblin to pass by, watching it all the while...
... then when Milah attack, so does he...
Koruvus doesn't stand a chance as the three of you assault him from all sides. He goes down in a heap in the middle of the hallway, his weapons clattering from his hands...
Milah sighs as the mutant goblin goes down, "I'm glad he went down without more of a fight; that could have gotten ugly." She proceeds to search the body and hand Zev anything that looks to be of use or worth.
"Let's finish exploring and head back to town, shall we?" She proceeds to head back down the passageway and takes a peek under some of the wooden boards that Koruvus avoided as he crossed the room.
Milah picks up a rather fine looking sword, a dagger and an axe from the ground near Koruvus' body and hands them to Zev. As she enters the room he came from, the moaning from before gets louder. Peeking under the nearest wooden plank gives her the source of the sound. There is a zombie at the bottom of a pit! It is scraping against the walls with its mangled hands, trying to look up at Milah... and that twenty feet of smooth wall is keeping it just out of reach..
Milah doesn't even bother to hide her disgust, both of the zombie and of its treatment. "Well, I suppose we should kill it so that nobody else can do anything with it..."
Zev takes the goblin's weapons, then looks over Milah's shoulder at the zombie down below, then nods in agreement, and makes ready to jump in...
Aurica lays a hand on Zev's shoulder. "There's no need to risk injury, Zev. Shoot it with your bow from up here until it is dead."
Once that unpleasant business is done, Aurica opens the door to the east to proceed.
You easily uncover the pits and riddle the zombies with arrows and parts of the wooden planks until they succumb to their wounds. All that remains with you now is yourselves and an unconscious bird. A hallway leads south out of this room and from down it, you can hear a strange moaning sound...
Aurica begins cautiously moving south down the hallway, allowing Milah to lead the way.
You move down the hallway and spot an odd iron door ahead of you. It has several dark runes on it that seem to change shape the longer you stare at them. To the east is a hallway that looks like it leads to some stairs but they have been covered over with several tons of rubble. The odd sound seems to come from that direction.
Aurica moves east, closer to the source of the sound. She peers around big pieces of rubble as best she can or even moves smaller pieces if that will open the area up more.
Milah investigates as well, hoping it's just the wind...
Whatever the sound was, it decreases as you get closer to it. Once you reach the rubble, it disappears entirely. Without a lot of help and workers, it would take some time to clear the mess to get to the stairs. As you stand there, you see words from in the air around you. At first they are shimmering and gibberish, but soon they turn to something you understand.
"He is listening."