"Can you tell where it leads to?" Amy asks hesitantly... "Before we... close it?"
"I'm not completely sure, but maybe ..."
Most oneirogen's channel the Dimension of Dreams, a demiplane hidden deep within the Ethereal Plane created by dreamers of the Mortal Plane. It is home to strange, otherwordly beasts rarely seen on the Mortal Plane, where the link to the Great Beyond is thin and it is far to easy to slip into the realm of something far too powerful for mortal comprehension. Perhaps even the legendary Leng has its home, or at least is part of, he Dimension of Dreams, though that thought beckons mind-shattering implications.
It is highly likely this oneirogen is a standard one and links to the Dimensions of Dreams and as such the multicoloured fog spewing out of its mouth is Dream-stuff: the power of Dreams in vaporous form.
"... What GM said :-)
You have to admit that theory explains a whole LOT of what is going on here. It is now all starting to make sense.
So, does everybody agree? We try to kill her?"
So it seems this is some kind of residue or side effect, and not a portal itself. Toad looks with some sympathy at the husk of a person, feeling bad that he hit her with a book. Let's put her out of whatever misery this is.
"Agree but stick to staying back and using ranged weapons like I said before. I don't want to see what a lung full of dream fog will do."
Amy look at the women sadly, then starts flicking her wrists to fire globs of magical acid at the poor girl.
By the time the woman's dead, Amy has tears rolling down her cheeks.
Desna forgive me...
While it is hard to pine point the woman, with the fog obscuring her enough to make hit her difficult, Amy eventually managed to strike her with a glob of acid, eating away at the skin and quickly killing the woman. With the portal closed, the Dream-stuff quickly dissipated, leaving only the burned woman on the floor of the now empty office.
Outside, the yellow fog continues to roll past the windows.
Toad tries not to lose the contents of his stomach. He approaches the body, looking for clues or useful items...
Victor says a prayer over the fallen woman.
"Maybe there's more than one portal person? Or we might be lucky and it will just take time for the effect to clear." He looks about the room. "But we should keep looking for supplies and a way out regardless."
"Well, that was, anticlimatic. I was hoping for more.
Yes, lets keep exploring and see what we see"
Amy stares at the dead woman in a daze.
Eventually she realizes she's crying and wipes the tears from her eyes before approaching the woman's corpse. She reaches down, then hesitates... After an weighted moment she closes the dead woman's eyes and stretched open mouth.
"May Desna help you find your way to the Boneyard."
She stands up and wipes her eyes again, before finally moving to follow the men deeper into the room.
On the body Toad finds a key ring with a set of keys.
Around the room is a series of book shelves, the desk, and the door to the southeast.
"That was...unpleasant," Toad remarks, unsure of what else to say. The keys jingle in his hand as he slowly walks the perimeter of the room, taking in the titles of the books. Then he approaches the desk, checking if the drawers of locked in case the keys might unlock them.
"Once ye have finished checking here let's go through that door. For now I'll just keep an eye on it in case something comes through from the other side."
Shirrin looks at the books, looking especially for ANYTHING on dreams and other dimensions
Amy crosses her arms over her chest nervously, and follows close behind the others. When everyone fans out to check the room, she moves over to the desk.
Shirrin reconizes a number of mundane but remarkable texts:
On the Treatment of Ambitions, Disappointments, and Regrets by Doctor Beaurigmand Trice, On Violent Sands by Doctor Henri Meirtmane, and a signed copy of Ailson Kindler’s Galdyce’s Guest: Feast of the Nosferatu.
Toad notices a series of six coal sketches on torn parchment with the name Ulver Zandalus and dates ranging from 4708 to 4715. Each of these sketches are of strange vistas of a empty city under a sky of swirling mist. It tugs at the back of his mind for a moment before he remembers the city from his nightmare from when he first woke up in the asylum. The two cities look remarkably similar.
Trying the desk, Toad eventually unlocks one of the drawers, revealing a treasure trove of items. A worn leather journal is burried under contains a magnifying glass, two vials of alchemist’s kindness, a vial of smelling salts, two vials of soothe syrup, 4 doses of antitoxin,
2 doses of opium, a scroll, two scrolls of different scrolls that were the same ,a candle, a small tin filled with incense, a talisiman with four strange runes on it on a thin silver chain, and a braided leather cord holding a talisman different symbols and yet another talisman with different symbols.
Opening the journal and skiming through it, it is clear the journal belongs to the overseer of the aslyum. While the majority of entries detail staff meetings or interview with would be patients, in the final year the names Haserton Lowels and Count Lowels appear with increasing frequency. The final three passages stand out:
"Oathday: Another unexpected call from Count Lowls. These have become so common and Lowls’s focus is so singular that they no longer leave me apprehensive. He requested to see me after his visit with Zandalus, though. He claims to have a theoretical solution for the poor man’s condition. I don’t know what the count and my prized patient have been discussing and Lowls again refused to share but I doubt that lordly amateur psychologist has truly hit upon anything of worth. Regardless, I’d be a fool not to humor my liege.
Starday: Lowls’s ”solution” was not at all what I expected. I have no clue where he turned it up, but on his most recent visit he brought along a copy of Valhadis’s The Chain of Nights, a near-legendary collection of psycho-arcane studies and treatments focused on dreaming. While I abhor arcane tampering, if there’s a permanent solution to Zandalus’s nightmares, it could be here. Lowls allowed me to study the text for the duration of his visit, but staunchly refused to leave it in my possession.
Moonday: Lowls has made me an offer: his copy of The Chain of Nights. All I must do in return is accept a handful of new patients former associates of his that have suffered some unprecedented manner of group amnesia. I might accept this as charity on the count’s behalf, but he insists that I keep no record of their committal. The terms make me suspicious, but I can learn more of these curious strangers once they’re in my care. If it means the possibility of a cure for Zandalus and others, I welcome the bargain.
Toilday: The Chain of Nights is a marvel. It will take years of study to unravel all its possibilities, but already I’ve discovered a process by which chronic dreams might be drawn forth and disposed of like so much psychic gristle. Tomorrow our experiment begins."
"I wonder if WE are the new patients mentioned in the book. Very likely. Very interesting. We need to find this The Chain of Nights""
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Suddenly a thick dopy substance bubbles up and covers Amy's eyes. She let's out a scream and bats at it in a panic. Evertually she stops shrieking and looks around only to see she can still see. With panicked breathing and wide eyes she looks around.
While all the scrolls,talismans, candle and incense radiate magic, Amy is unable to determine their properties. No other magic items seem present in the room.
"Oh! Ewwww!"
She makes sure we collect all the mysterious magical items.
"Get that! And that! And that! and.... EWWWW!"
Victor will move to help her. "Are you alright?"
"I don't know!" Amy shrieks in a panic. She finishes pointing out the magical objects and then breaks down into tears. As she sobs, her tears cause the strange drippy goop to run and drip off of her eyes, leaving big green goo streaks down her face.
"What did they do to us?" she wails.
---
Eventually she gets ahold of herself and wipes her face on her sleeve. "Sorry..." she mutters.
With a sniffle she looks at the magical objects she's collected.
"Will we press on through this door now if you are all done here?"
Amy puts the unidentified magical objects into her backpack, along with the scrolls.
Then she nods. "The sooner we get out of here, the better."
"Yes, lets continue. I share Amy's desire to get the hell out of here"
Victor nods before he carefully opens the door.
Amy leaves behind the opium, but stuffs the rest of the useful items in her backpack before following the others out of the room.
The next door opens to a hallway. There are six doors in this hallway: the one the party came through, two on the north side, two on the south side, and one at the other end of the hall.
These recent revelations are the most profound they've uncovered since awakening within the hospital. Yet behind every door, another horror. Their only chance of escape, or at least of learning the truth, stands beyond those doorways.
Toad digs for crumbs from his pocket and feeds them to Toothy as they approach the first door.
Victor carefully moves to the first door on the north side and opens it.
Victor opens the door a storage room. Racks of clustered boxes and a haphazard collection of random junk fill the dusty room. The room itself has been partially ransacked; some shelves knocked over and their contents scattered across the floor.
Inside the room are two men. Both are dressed in rags and bedsheets that roughly form the shape of yellow robes. Each is armed with a thick piece of wood and has a flame marked on their foreheads in yellow chalk. One is milling about the room while the other is teaching a class of dolls. As Victor opens the door, they both turn towards the noise and move to attack.
Toad and Toothy both bare their fangs in surprise (it's amazing how alike they are, really). Toad gestures, and Toothy is flying off of his shoulder, fracturing and splintering into the hundred-fold mirror images of himself until they fill nearly the entire floor, moving forward at Toad's will so that they consume the northern man and his little dolls.
The first man tries to bash at the rat swarm as it rushes past him, but it's too fast for him. The rat swarm proceeds to feast on the second man, who begins to scream and dance around in panic.
Amy's eyes widen. From the back of the group she calls out nervously, "What is it? More monsters?"
The glob misses the advancing man, exploding on the back wall. Both men move up and attack Victor with their clubs.
Victor strikes back at one of the men hoping to put and end to their attacks. Better for them to attack him than the others.
"Victor, if you'd step into the room we could come help you!!"
With that, George looses an arrow in the general direction of the attackers
Missing badly (no precise shot, cover, makes that about a 7)
"Is there another way in?!" Amy calls out. She can't see anything from back here...
Toad clutches Victor's shoulder, trying to pull him back but inadvertently discharging a healing spell (he's got to learn to control this). Then he throws his back against the nearby wall and shuts his eyes tight, not wanting to see the carnage inside the room, or hear the screams of the men as his rats bite them to death.
As the swarm of rats come rolling over them, both men try desperately but ultimately fruitlessly to bash at the mass of flesh threatening to consume them. One poor man, beat within inches of his life, falls to his knees and tries to crawl away towards the other door in the room to the east .
The other man, relatively fresh in the fight, brushes off the rats crawling over him. grits his teeth and swings at Victor again.
Victor stays his hand against the crawling man but strikes at the other.
Still unable to see the enemy, Amy works up her courage and hurries into the battle, slashing at the nearest cultist with her claws.
She lets out a little shriek of surprise as she misses, digging her claws into the door.
"Eeek!"
Unable to reach into the doorway, Toad continues stand flat against the wall, waiting for the gruesome inevitable.
The crawling cultist screams in fear as the swarm rolls over him, burying him in a mass of writhing flesh. His scream trails away to nothing, leaving only the sound of gnawing teeth.
The second cultist, beaten and bloody but now trapped between the swarm and the man attacking him, has little choice but to attack once more.
Victor swings his scimitar once more at the man. "Stop this madness you fool!"