Tharok, fully expecting further trouble of this kind, waits for just the right opportunity before firing his arrow into the thick of the melee. Gone is his hesitation that might have made such a chancy shot risky before; now he unleashes his arrow with cool calculation and confidence.
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Can someone move me up the right behind Q please?
Morgder growls at the creatures. Finally they bloody show themselves. With a roar he moves forward and drops his axe on the creature!
Grafelda moves forward and glares at one of the rats, trying out her newfound powers. She hums a lullaby hoping the creature will pass out.
The closest dire rat, also the least fortunate, is nearly torn in half mid-air from one of Arctorus's clawed swipes. It's lifeless form sails across the landing beneath the stairs and shatters through what glass remains in one of the window panes. Qytheerah attempts to cleave the rat that soon replaces it in half, but finds difficulty leveraging the length of her weapon around the sagging door frame into the room beyond.
Morgder mutters angrily at the crowded mass in the grand hallway between he and prey. Seizing with his one good eye the double-doors nearby, he forces them open and rounds the corner in short order. He barrels through a large chamber that once served as a hospice—more than a dozen cots running the length of the room in two rows—and towards a second door in the southeastern corner. His heavy footfalls come to a stop at the same landing the rats occupy, Morgder turning past a small wooden partition just as Tharok's first arrow sinks into one of the vermin. The large rat squeaks in obvious pain, but continues gnashing defiantly at anything nearby. It's long teeth easily pierce Morgder's boot to get at the dwarf's shin beneath.
Another rat looks surges forward and prepares to leap onto Arctorus as Grafelda presents her macabre effigy before her in the direction of the rodent. It falls to the ground motionless in the doorway, though the rise and fall of its chest indicate it still draws breath. A third rat continues its attack, eager for a taste of dragon-man.
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Skrioth commences a coup attempt on the blue one.
In addition to the 11 damage, there's a DC 21 Fort save to it die.
"Raaaaahhh! You little bastard!" Morgder cries out. He tries to butcher the disease infested vermin.
Arcturus steps into the room and continues slashing his claws.
Morgder's axe raises for a devastating arc only to see Arctorus burst into the room in a frenzy of fury. In his wake are the dismembered bits and pieces of rats that had occupied the chamber previously. Beyond the slain rodents, this room—an annex to the Plague House's central structure—plays host to a largely intact staircase that descends into the basement level below. A large, steel lockbox sits before the stairs. Cursory examination reveals that it remains firmly shut and locked.
"Curses..." mutters Qyth under her breath as her blow falls once again short. Once her companions' prowess has won the day, she tentatively takes a few steps down the stairs, falchion in hand.
"Hold on Qytheerah," calls out Tharok, as he sees his friend begin to make her way down the steps. "Let's clear this floor our first before we make our way down." He glances into the large room through which Morgder has sped, one eyebrow raised as he examines it. "We might have to beat a hasty retreat from whatever we find down there - like that flood troll - and I'd hate to run into more rat swarms or the like up here if we're badly hurt."
That said, he moves forward to retrieve his arrow from the rat corpse, and then moves warily into the large room filled with beds, looking around and glancing beneath the beds as he searches for anything of interest.
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After diverting Qytheerah's curiosity from the basement, Tharok begins to herd everyone into the infirmary Morgder had passed through previously. The room is dominated by two rows of scorched, wrought-iron bedframes that once served as patient cots. Above, the ceiling stretches the full extent of The Plague House's two stories—back when it actually had two stories, that is. A fire-blackened altar rests in the southwest of the room, beneath the soot-stained watchful gaze of stained-glass Iomedaean Saints that line the stone walls of the room. An unsettling silence hangs in the air with the recently disturbed dust—an abrupt bout of melancholy with no determinable source.
Tharok finds moving silently all but impossible with the sheer quantity of scrap and debris lining the floor, but detects no presence or entity that might offer protest to his presence. He does notice that the visages of the stained-glass remain peculiarly clear of soot.
Morgder walks into the room and shakes his head with a grunt. "Can't believe they've left this place such a bloody mess. It's a Damned ugly spot in the middle of town." He says, kicking one of the beds. He starts walking along the walls, getting in front of the altar as he looks around.
Arctorus looks around the room with a scowl. Seeing nothing, he says, "Our murderer isn't here. Let's go."
Skrioth casts detect magic and scans the room, particularly the stained glass.
Remember though, I can only see for 30'.
Tharok remains close to the entrance of the room, his back to the wall, an arrow nocked to his bow but not drawn. Frowning, fighting the pervasive air of melancholy that suffuses this ruined chamber, he lets his gaze linger on the soot-free Iomedean images.
"Can anybody guess why those glass panes are clean?" It takes some effort to speak, when all he wishes to do is succumb to his thoughts of entropy and decay. "Residual holiness? If so, then why did the altar burn?"
Qytheerah freezes in her steps as Tharok beckons her to come back, clipping her overeagerness. Surely that's the smart thing to do. He's a good leader she tells to herself as she quickly climbs the same stairs she's just descended, though not before managing to detect a magical aura surrounding the chest.
"We're already outside Trunau's walls, if only barely. From here on, it's orc territory – as this place's former residents discovered to their detriment" she bitterly says upon entering the derelict infirmary in response to Morgder's observation, the stifling sense of doom suddenly pervading her and fueling her unusual bout of cynicism. Once again, her eyes flash purple as she joins the red-haired young woman in examining the room.
"It's a fair assumption. Or perhaps some unknown devotee of the Blessed Inheritor has taken it upon himself to help preserve at least a modicum of this place's ancient splendor" the Shoanti smith thoughtfully says as she approaches the glass-stained window.
Morgder grunts and shrugs, his one eye sweeping the room. "If they can't control it and it's in enemy territory, I'd just burn it down. Suppose you can't always do that though."
Even one so stolid as Morgder is unable to shake the feeling of unease about the room. He feels as if he has lost something dear to him, despite his mind screaming that no such sorrow stands true. There has been loss in this place: suffering and devastation on a scale such as no living creature should be forced to endure. All around lies the fire-scarred remnants of what had been a holy place dedicated to preserving and defending life. And yet, the one-eyed dwarf can only picture the unmitigated carnage that must have befallen this place. Ignorant though he may be of what truly transpired in the ramshackle sanctuary, the painful howls of voices begin to encroach into the fringes of his mind. Morgder is rewarded for his efforts—and the carelessness of past visitors—as he turns over a veritable trove of abandoned items .
Qytheerah's eyes, aglow with divination dweomer once more, survey the stained-glass windows lining the walls of the sanctuary-turned-hospice. No traces of magic linger in the room—only the soot and debris of a wreckage abandoned by the roll of time. . .
Left with little to occupy her time watching the others from the back of the room, Grafelda's imagination takes a grim turn much like Morgder's. The dread sensation is not so palpable at the room's threshold, but immutable nevertheless. That same sense of pain and loss calls to memory pangs of her own past torments at the hands of her orcish and giant tormentors. It seems somehow more profound in this current moment. Unwanted as the memories and sensations are, her eyes begin to sag towards the floor reflexively, though not before they catch sight of something beneath one of the cots: some sort of trap door—fire-scarred, but intact and closed.
Impatience settles upon Arctorus as strongly as the sense of loss pervading the room. As he makes to maintain a vigil in the center of the room, the feeling suddenly amplifies before twisting entirely. All within the room find themselves no longer overcome by melancholy, but instead by sheer rage. Where nothing had existed before, Qytheerah's eyes now detect an overwhelming tide of necromantic energies surging through the room. Breathing becomes a labor, and the features of the room distort into a haze briefly before shifting once more to a tortured landscape. Smoke and flame billows up the walls and across the ceiling. Stained-glass images of Iomedaean saints are replaced by images of burned out husks, faces twisted in pain in their final hours of life.
Atop a half dozen cots, corpses wreathed in flames appear where there had previously been nothing. Each one howls in torment as they rise, eyes long since boiled out of their sockets and blackened, charred skin pulled tight across their skeletal flames. As one they clamber out of their cots and rise to exact their vengeance on those still living within the room.
Such horror unleashed on them unsuspecting, Qytheerah and Tharok abandon their wits entirely and bolt from the room in terror, intent on doing nothing but putting as much distance between themselves and the madness behind them.
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Though likely an apparition of some sort, the heat and smoke that cover the room still manage to sting the eyes and nostrils of those resisting the urge to flee outright. Unperturbed by their environment, the charred corpses surge forward with blinding alacrity to begin trying to tear apart everything that lives. Their attacks are clumsy in spite of their frightening speed, but Arctorus and Morgder both find themselves being surrounded by a couple of the baleful creatures. Skeletal fingers, exposed from the burned away flesh of their hands, dig their way into flesh that hisses and bubbles from the scouring flames that swim about their terrifying bodies.
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As the overwhelming necromantic aura washes over her, Qytheerah stands frozen as if transfixed by fear, sweating and trembling. The flames devouring her flesh, the acolytes' screams, the pain, oh Goddess, the scorching pain – it's as if she's experiencing the Sanctuary's ekpyrosis first-hand.
No. It's not as if. Skeletal figures are now appearing amid the smoke, hungry for the flesh of the living. The powerfully-built, 6'1'' woman is now shaking like a scared little girl.
I failed you, Falayna. I am no warrior. I'm just a smith who doesn't know her place in the world. I'm weak, and now those abominations are going to rip the flesh from my bones and drag what remains down with them.
With this last semblance of rational thought, the tall Shoanti snaps completely, pathetically faltering her way out of the room and down the stairs she descended previously.
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As purple and orange rose, Skrioth claims some AOOs. Not against the one next to me, as I interpret it stood within my 5' range.
Purple
Brace, Reach
Orange
Brace, Reach
Tharok presses himself back against the wall as the flames spring up, his thoughts vanishing as his basest instincts for survival come roaring to the fore. Flames within a trapped space. The acrid tang of smoke and the gritty taste of soot. His eyes wide, he whips his head from side to side as the skeletons emerge from their cots, and with a roar of panic he shoulders his way out the door, intent on escaping what is clearly a deathtrap, pounding his way down the hall and away from the scorching heat.
Skrioth takes her fire damage:
She then takes another swing at the purple creature, or if someone has dropped purple already, she will strike another injured enemy.
Brace, Reach
No stranger to loss, Morgder feels sympathetic as he gazes around the room. But before he can fully comprehend or appreciate it there's suddenly a fiery undead threat! He roars as the fire burns at him, then steps north and tries to crush one of the vile undeads!
Qytheerah and Tharok bolt from the room in a panic, a wild terror laying upon their visages that appears all too fitting given the sudden shift in the haunted room's ambience. Grafelda thinks of turning to flee herself, but for the presence of her three fellows who yet remain within the room. She clenches her jaw and concentrates. As she does so, a lattice-work of scars begin to harden into dense calluses—some small measure of buffer between her and the burning terror before her.
Skrioth's boarding pike repeatedly strikes one of the risen monstrosities, but seems to have little appreciable effect on the char-hardened cadaver. For her efforts, she manages to leave a shallow rend along her foe's brow. It seems not to notice, its attention remaining affixed to Arctorus in the center of the room, who encounters similar difficulty with the pincer of burning corpses around him. His claws streak scratches across bone, earning him some singes along his knuckles and forearms, but fail to penetrate the deceptively compact hide of the entity.
Morgder meets with far greater success, the heft of his enormous weapon carrying through its strike much as it ever has. In its wake, one of the corpses explodes in a shower of fire and bone all around where it had previously stood. The dwarf is able to weather the worst of it, though the explosion does take its toll on his stout frame.
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Fire and razor-sharp bone assail Arctorus from both sides, nearly eviscerating the enormous bloodrager where he stands. He sags to his knees and slumps against one of the cots after their vicious attack. Even before he has come to a rest, their burning, malign eyes seize others in the room to continue their insatiable assault. The first begins rounding the altar to lend aid to efforts against Morgder, while the second spots Grafelda's form in the nearby double-doorway and rushes forward.
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Deep down the stairwell, Qytheerah hears the faint sounds of battle coming from the infirmary. Sobbing and shaking, she knows her friends need her, and yet she still can't shake off the fear paralyzing her body; and she hates herself all the more for it.
Skrioth takes her fire damage.
Skrioth takes a 5' step away from the pink skeleton and casts bless
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Morgder roars as the fire continues to burn at him, filling the room with the smell of burning dwarf beard. "You unholy bastards will die to my axe!" He roars, yelling in vain at the mindless undead as he swings.
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Another corpse erupts in a small explosion as Morgder continues his rampage. He simply weathers the conflagration while his one good eye seizes another horror on approach. Grafelda disappears through the double-doors and slams them shut behind her, leaning her back against them to prevent her assailants from pursuing. Even as the slamming doors resound throughout the room, Skrioth's brief chanting pierces the din of fire and combat, Angradd's favor shining with the ferocity of a raging forge through the redheaded woman briefly before receding out of sight.
Angradd's blessings falter in the face of the burning terrors within the room. Pressing forward with unholy fury, one of the burning corpses swipes wildly at Skrioth. While she easily avoids the first, the second proves impossible to evade--flame-licked skeletal fingers rend her throat open, and she drops to the ground immediately with a loud thump. Grafelda grits her teeth and closes her eyes tightly, the pounding and jostling of the door she leans against barely prevented from flying open and delivering her a similar fate. She gathers wit enough about her to cry out, ""
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"Raaaaawwrrghghhhh!!!" Lost to the rage, all eloquence of speech has left the dwarf. The next enemy is the only thing he sees.
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It's a massacre, a damned massacre Qytheerah thinks as she hears Elda's scream. Somehow, this shames her enough to allow her to recollect some of her composure. Her mind clearing, she concentrates on calming the tremors shaking her body.
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Skrioth's body, battered and burned by the assault of the skeleton as it was, nonetheless made every effort to keep her alive. She briefly stabilized before the creature's inherent flame set her afire again, and she resumed the process of dying.
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The screams and acrid stench of burning flesh finally pierce Tharok's blind, instinctual fear, and with a growl he peels himself away from the wall, shivering as rage consumes his panic.
"Qytheerah! Come on! Hurry!"
With those bellowed words, Tharok grabs his great ax and dashes madly back up the stairs, taking them three at a time, only to tear into the hallway and see Grafelda cowering outside the door.
"Open it!" roars the half-orc as he sprints toward her, "Open that damn door!"
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Blood still sizzling along the blackened bone of its fingertips, the creature that felled Skrioth speeds across the room to the growing pile of bone debris that once constituted its brethren. The dwarf's wild swing affords him some distance and a reprieve from the burning rends of another corpse, but he finds himself being slowly surrounded once again. The two undead at the door continue, in vain, in their attempt to force their way through the door and to Grafelda on the opposite side. She seems reticent to heed Tharok's direction at first, but as flames begin to flare up around the door flame, she looks ready to relent and turn to face her pursuers with the return of her fellow half-orc companion.
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Skrioth's body refuses to give up in its efforts to stay alive.
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Whump! Mordger swings once again, trying to clear the burning bones from about him.
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What am I doing here? They need me! Tharok's voice calling for her seems to finally make Qytheerah snap out of her fear-induced paralysis. She runs up the stairs and back into the infirmary as quickly as her lame leg allows her; as soon as she steps through its threshold, however, she finds a grim scenario welcoming her: Arctorus, the mighty Arctorus, fallen and bleeding, with Morgder on the brink of being overwhelmed by two flaming skeletons, a third one lying in shambles at his feet.
She's about to charge into the room when she notices a third figure lying unconscious immediately to her left. Oh no. Skrioth. She freezes in her steps, hoping to use the door as a bottleneck while getting ready to pour her healing magic into the red-haired oracle.
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The door is finally flung open, and a horror from beyond the grave rears up before him, incendiary ossuary blasting forth a punishing furnace heat.
"Arctorus!" roars Tharok, espying the great man on the floor, his scaled body lying still. Rearing back, he swings his great axe, but the doorway is too narrow for him to bring his full skill to bear.
What remains of the creatures continue their fiery assault against the Trunuan interlopers that remain standing. Two manage to find purchase with their talon-like fingers in the flesh of Morgder and Tharok. Grafelda devotes herself to fending off the rain of blows from the two dominating the double-doorway, not willing to commit to attempting a bite on a creature wreathed in a perpetual fan of flame.
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Qyhteerah steps into the infirmary and kneels down over the fallen Skrioth, pouring her healing energies into her.
"Skrioth... Skrioth! Please wake up..."
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There is nothing left anymore. Just the fire and death around him as the one-eyed dwarf continues his rampage.
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Skrioth's eyes flutter open. She focuses her vision on Qytheerah's face. "D-d-d-did we win?"
Skrioth reaches down and casts cure light wounds on herself before rising to check out the status of the rest of the group.
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