As John and Miniel examine the bodies, they find that the pair are outfitted quite well, given the situation. In addition to the padded orderly armor and tough leather bandoliers they're wearing under their robes, each of the cultists has a masterwork silver dagger, a pair of pale blue potions, and an amulet that identifies as magical.
Strangely, Xander doesn't think the birdcage was a deliberately crafted magical trap. At the very least, it doesn't seem arcane in nature.
Desdemona meekly ventured into the room, her lantern once more in hand, and took a look at what they had found... studiously avoiding looking at the bodies the things had come from.
"The amulets appear to be charms to ward the wearer from harm ," she murmured, interest in the strange things overcoming her dismay. "And the potions appear to have healing properties. "
Then, hesitantly, she went over to look at the smashed birdcage... but shivered, and moved away again quickly. "A magical trap, do you think? What a horrid thing! Why was it here?"
"Xander, use the token thing!" Broom yells in vain as Xander is lifted into the air and slammed down again, not realizing that there was an invisible force propelling him downward.
As he hit the floor with a bone jarring thud, she rushed heedlessly into the room despite the noise. She still didn't know what was going on and wasn't certain why people were smashing the bird cage but if that was what everyone thought would help she would help too.
Just as she got a few steps into the room, the cage was smashed and the noise and more importantly the violent motion of Xander stopped. She helped Xander to his feet "Are you OK?" she asked, her voice filled with worry and concern. She felt immense relief when he indicated that he was not in any danger of dying.
Her relief was replaced by a tinge of envy as Laura casually strolled by and healed Xander's wounds "Why can'e We do that" she thought.
This negative emotion was only momentary as John explicitly asked her to clean up the broken cage. She grinned happily at the request as she took out her broom. "Should We try to fix it?" she asked as she set about mending the torn drop cloth she had covered it with when it first started making noises. Between the broom and a little magic she gathered all the pieces of the cage and the birds onto the repaired dropcloth and tied it up into a little bundle of twisted metal and stuffed birds. "John, you were Cage from the dream. And We are Broom and there was the broom closet. Do you think the dreams named us from different rooms?"
As she did so she took one of the nicer looking avians and mended it. She looked a little frustrated as she did so Why can We fix a stuffed bird, but not a living one?"
Xander thanks Miniel for the healing.
"I'll be alright, Broom," he says patting her hand. "Thank you for your concern." Hmm, I can't recall anyone ever having been concerned for my well-being. Of course, I can't recall much of anything. Still, it's an interesting feeling.
Feeling considerably more hale, he studies the cage as Desdemona examines the accoutrements of the bodies.
"Hmm, it appears to be some sort of haunt, perhaps. Haunts can be notoriously difficult to remove permanently. I suggest we have as little to do with his birdcage as possible."
He notices Broom "fixing" the birds. "Let's just stick with the one you fixed, and leave the cage alone. I don't believe we want it fixed," he says, still wincing at his bruised ribs as he moves.
"I'm not entirely sure you want to fix that thing," Reine said to Broom. She'd entered the room with Desdemona, and was now looking out through the windows. She wasn't quite glaring at the yellow fog.
"I think the dream named me Cage because I carry this little rat cage." John replies to Broom.
Miniel curses lightly as Xander identifies the birdcage as a haunt. Of course, why didn't I think of that? Useless... She tries not to mope for too long, busying herself with looking over the corpses and saying her prayers for the dead to keep it off her mind.
Despite her reluctance to seem intrusive, Desdemona was terribly curious about the shared dream the others had experienced. "Forgive me, but - this dream in which you were named. You all shared it - it wasn't the smoke from the incense? The names came to you in it? And not your own names? The... the terrible monster that chased you - was that the thing that named you? Or did you derive your names from the dream yourselves?"
She kept an oblique eye on her shadow throughout, but it was behaving, for once. At least, it was in her shape as it stretched to the wall, following her actions, as she swung her lantern here and there.
Reine looks through the window at the churning yellow mist. Outside it's just barely possible to see the dark looming shapes of trees away from the building and a suggestion of open sky. The sickly fog isn't thick enough to keep her from seeing the door of another building, or maybe another entrance to the blocked off part of this building, at the far end of a stone path through the dying garden outside the east door.
Broom refrained from repairing the cage at Xander's request. She placed the wrapped remains on the desk, making sure that the cloth was tied neatly. She did take the one bird she had repaired however.
"Well, Our first memory was in a strange city covered in mist like the stuff outside. We think someone found a painting of the city in the doctor's office?" she looked about, not quite remembering who might have taken it. As she talked she gravitated to the mounted head where the body had been impaled and started casually cleaning the blood from it.
"Anyway, in the dream we met each other and wandered a bit. We all had an item in the dream. We don't know about the others, but Our item seemed significant somehow. Since none of us remembered our names, we just took to calling each other by the item we had at the time. Anyway, as we wandered through the mist, we were all attacked by the Ragged man and he killed us. But then we woke up in this place filled with doppledoctors. We don't know who called him Ragged man or why."
She gestured towards John "He had a cage in the dream and then found a cage among the items he claimed were his own when we woke up so We thought there might be a connection. We had a broom in the dream and in our stuff and then there was a closet with brooms here." The connections were tenuous at best and more likely coincidence than anything else given the common nature of most of the items, yet to Broom the pattern made sense considering all the strange stuff that had been happening so far.
"My--our--dream was a little different. We weren't identified by objects or things. But I do have this," says Rostam curiously. He holds up a strange rock tied around his neck to make a pendant. It is just a grey, smooth rock dotted with holes, come of which go all the way through the rock, but there's something wrong about the angles of the stone if gazed at for too long.
"I feel safer when it's with me, for some reason," says Rostam, in a rare moment of vulnerability, and tucks the pendant away.
"I suppose I would be Stone, then..." he says, and chuckles, and looks about to speak to Desdemona, then shuts his mouth again at the sight of her 'friend' near her. Don't say it, Rostam, he thinks, for once, don't say it.
Desdemona caught Rostam's look, and steeled herself for what was to come... only for nothing to happen. With a small sigh of relief and gratitude, she said, "Yes, we had no objects of note upon us on waking, but for Rostam's stone. Truly, a strange dream we are trapped in." Or nightmare. "Your name... I felt it, in the cloud of incense. Do you remember it?"
She raised a hand towards Reine, meaning to ask her to step away from the churning mist at the window... but let it drop again, warning unspoken. She didn't want those angry eyes turned on her.
Desdemona had been vaguely suspicious of the woman having been the other sole survivor of their group - she always seemed on the verge of violence, so furious all the time! - but with Rostam's appearance, her fears had been calmed somewhat. Or at least, subsumed by her constant fear of the dark.
Besides, violence hadn't saved her from the Ragged Man. It hadn't saved any of them. Desdemona shivered, clasping her arms against a chill that wasn't in the air.
The Ragged Man... what does it mean? Who is he? Xander had hoped it was all some collective delusion, perhaps induced but some shared chemical experience, like the incense. But these people had seen it, too, and they were no where near his original group. The mist. It has to have something to do with the mist. Perhaps it has some sort of hallucinogenic effects?
"We might want to check out this path. But we should be very cautious about the mist. I... I think it might have some sort of effect on living creatures. Mind-altering, perhaps. I'm not sure if it's the cause of our collective amnesia, but it's certainly a possibility." The others were looking at him as he spoke. Somehow that felt odd to him, like he wasn't used to people paying any attention to him at all when he spoke. Or even wanting him to speak. How long was I a slave?
Broom pause her idle cleaning for a moment when Rostam brought out the little pendant. She cocked her head a bit as she squinted, trying to keep her eyes focused on the stone. Something about the weird angles and all the little holes made her eyes slip off of it the longer she looked at it. She had mixed feelings of unease and intense curiosity about the pebble and was a little disappointed when he put it away. "Stone sounds like a great name." she said brightly.
At Desdemona's question she pursed her lips and furrowed her brow in deep thought. "The people in Our dream that looked like Us were called Mashiki, but they were different." She spent a moment struggling to try to find a way to explain.
"They were like Harrow, or Laura. They were different people in one body. But We are just Us. We aren't different Brooms like they were different Mashikis, We are just Broom. We don't know why We are different now than They were then, but there is so much We don't remember like everyone else here."
"Well, now I am completely confused," says Rostam with a laugh. "'Stone' is fine. I can hardly remember who Rostam was anyhow. As for different people in one body, I can relate. I have some sort of...rider. It is under control, though. I don't think it's from...wherever we originally came from."
'Stone' nods at Xander. "I think I was taken by the mist, the second time."
He points his spear past the rubble. "Let's head north. We're alive. The birds are broken for the moment." He carves a big X near the door with his spear point. "Let's celebrate our small victory and move on. Oh, and those daggers...something reminds me of something as a child. They would be good to have. I would take one if no one has an objection."
All of the conversation caused Reine to turn from the window at last.
"There's a path out there. I think I can see another door. Maybe a different wing?"
She shrugged, and her ever-present anger seemed to have abated a bit. Her voice itself had always been lovely from the perspective of the pure sound it produced, but when she wasn't actively angry at something, it was actually quite pleasant.
"We should probably check out the rest of this wing before we venture outside. But it's... nice to know, I guess?... that there's potentially somewhere else to go from here."
"Out...side...? I thought we went out there and..."
'Stone' shakes his head. "Very well," he says, his confidence waning.
"Not outside," Reine shook her head. "Not yet. And when we do, not for long. Just a quick jog to that door over there. But for now, we've got enough inside here to explore." She gestured out through the doors they'd come into the room through, and the hallway beyond.
Then, her eyes fell on the amulets Desdemona was inspecting.
"Did you say those things were protective?" She frowned, looking at the bodies. "Not protective enough, for them at least. Still," she shrugged, "every little bit helps, I guess. May I see one of those?"
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Broom take a sharp little breath and stiffens for a moment as Rostam carves the X. Her surprise passes quickly, but for the rest of her time in the room she keeps glancing at the vandalism.
Adelar grew silent, contemplative as Broom recounted shared dreams and the others divvied up the spoils of the cursed room.
He had not had any items. Even Desdemona, Reine, and now 'Stone' appeared to have shared this connection. Worriedly, the Galtan had patted himself down subtly, out of sight of the others, to try and determine if perhaps he had overlooked something. Anything. But there was nothing: just his crusader's sword, a few alchemical effects ... his amulet?
His amulet to The Inheritor? No. That was most certainly his. Had been since ... well. He couldn't quite remember, could he? But he was positive it had been his for far longer than just showing up at some horrid house of horrors. That was sure.
The wing would be good to explore next," Adelar suddenly burst out, breaking his imposed isolation, "Best to know what is around us currently. Better to have a place safe to retreat to if all goes further south or we run into any more traps and curiosities."
It was a military sentiment spoken with military gruffness. Yet, Adelar had a care to his eyes as he spoke - it sounded as though the others had been through Hell.
All he had done was die in a nightmare.
Xander has no problem if people wish to continue to explore this wing before heading outside. He's certainly nervous about the prospect of possibly exposing themselves directly to the mist. "Very well, let's continue. I believe there were some areas near the administrators office that we haven't inspected." He lets someone else go first. He's had quite his fill of being tossed about for the moment.
"I think we should backtrack to the rooms by the administrator's office. Let's make sure this area is clear before moving on to the next." Miniel gives a few glances out the windows at the mist - she hasn't had as many of the strange dreams as the others, but it sure seems unpleasant.
"What about those two door right there?" Broom asks, pointing the the set of facing doors down the short hall directly ahead as the group left the den.
"Those two will do fine by me," Adelar confirmed to Broom with a nod, striding ahead of the group. His blade was clenched tight in his fist, wary as he was of the trickery that had nearly killed him shortly after meeting the others.
With care, he inspected the one on the left first, looking it over and then pressing his ear to it to see if he could hear beyond the barrier.
Desdemona nodded thoughtfully at Broom's answer, as though what she said had made perfect sense. Her gaze roamed the middle distance distractedly until Reine approached her.
She had given Reine the amulet she asked for immediately, as though it were a hot potato. She was still quite intimidated by the woman, and didn't meet her mismatched eyes.
She definitely didn't want to go into the mist. Who knew what could be hiding in it? Stoutly ignoring suggestions of such horror that the darkness whispered to her, she followed Adelar, keeping back out of the way, and endeavoring to maneuver her shadow out of his path, as well.
"Be careful," she warned him, quite unnecessarily - he wasn't exactly kicking in the door. But the sight of his limp body in the grasp of the decapus was yet another memory that was large in her mind, expanding to fill the empty spots of her more distant past.
Reine had thanked Desdemona for the amulet with a nod. Then she'd looked over the thing carefully, as if suspicious that the thing would bite her.
Eventually, after a few moments, she shrugged and picked up the second amulet and the rest of the recovered items while Desdemona, Broom, and Adelar headed out towards the hallway.
"Here," She said, handing Xander one of the satchels. "This'll help you carry stuff." She slung the second over her own shoulder, then walked over to Laura.
"These might help you stay alive, if Desdemona is right." Reine handed the woman one of the amulets and a vial.
"Miniel, right?" Reine said to the red-headed elf, "You should keep this on you, somewhere easy to find, in case... you know, if one of us needs to help you up, instead of the other way around."
"Rostam," Reine didn't raise her voice much, just enough to get Rostam's attention. "You should probably go ahead and take both of those daggers."
Lastly, Reine walked over to John, handing him the second amulet. "Try not to get dead, right?"
Then she did her best to put on an encouraging smile, and nodded in the direction of Aldelar, Broom, and Des. "We should probably catch up."
Miniel nods to Reine as she gives the potion, then packs it away for safekeeping. Then, she heads over to where Adelar is investigating the remaining doors in the area. While he's inspecting the door on the left, Miniel begins to look over the one on the right.
Laura watches Reine approach her, her free hand still resting on her belly, and she squints at the items she offers. She shrugs, smiles briefly, and accepts them with an open palm. She turns in place and examines the amulet with searching eyes, and seeing nothing to worry her, slips it smoothly over her head.
"Thanks, I think I was dead in a dream once, and I didn't like it." John replies to Reine.
Adelar listens closely at the left hand door. It sounds like the outside. Wet leaves stir in a sluggish breeze and thunder rolls overhead, sounding almost like the roar of an immensely huge creature rather than the crack of a bolt of lightning.
Rostam took the daggers from Reine. "One of you...will probably want one of these...if something vulnerable to silver appears. I think I recall...vyrkolaki...but then again...I don't recall what those are." He gave Reine a nod and a smile, then thought, looking at her eyes. "Didn't we...meet an eye?"
Adelar gave a soft, barely-heard rap of his knuckles to the door he had leaned against, turning back to the others with a shake of his head. Or was it a shiver from that unnatural roll of thunder above? It was just wind, damnit! Just wind.
And the creature that had nearly killed him had been a dying man, too.
"This leads outdoors," he informed the assembled, his lips pursed.
"Sounds like a storm is coming in ... Big one."
He glanced over towards the elf opposite him, Miniel.
"Same thing on your side?" he asked.
Miniel's door seemed normal enough, and if she tried the knob found it was unlocked. There was a spatter of debris from the collapsed ceiling on the right was behind the door but she was able to get it open. Beyond it was a hallway that took a turn to the left after a little distance. Yellow, mist-tinted light shone through windows and made the whole scene feel unnatural and strange, but other than that nothing looked amiss through the door.
"No, it's..." Hearing nothing like a storm, she tries the door, and it budges after a bit of struggle. "...another hallway. Doesn't look like there's anything here, at least until it turns away."
Seems as good a place as any to start," Adelar tried to smile at Miniel, glad that there was no apparent danger so far.
Having learned from the illusory horror, though, the knight of Iomedae took a quick peek into the hallway and rubble to make sure the cost was well and truly clear.
Once he was reasonably sure it was safe, he resolved himself to move cautiously down the hall towards the bend at the end. His blade never left his hand.
Xander follows close behind Adelar, his eyes rapidly scanning the environment for traps or clues. Though I have done terribly with illusions. I hope I do not miss any further traps. Or other oddities. I must read further on illusion magic. Perhaps there is a way in make my mind more resistant. Of course, me worrying about this is distracting me from actually paying attention. The half-orc shakes his head as if to clear away the cobwebs and focuses on the task at hand.
(+1 vs traps)
Reine followed along with the others, making sure to stay close to Desdemona and Broom. Though it wasn't obvious, the taller woman was also careful not to step on Desdemona's shadow.
It seemed, however, that her cautiousness with the shadow distracted her from much else.
Desdemona trailed after the others, seemingly lost in thought over Adelar's words. In truth, she was letting her peripheral vision track everything around them, wary of some new monster showing itself. She memorized all that she saw as a matter of habit: the cracks in the stonework, the clothes the others wore, their positions, arrayed before and around her, the shape of each piece of rubble. She was all too aware she could see into the dark, when the lantern did not shine that way; all too aware of the taint of darkness within her. Using her very eyes.
Hearing her thoughts?
She walked silently as she withdrew into the most inner chamber of her mind, where she imagined the darkness did not look. There, she thought her private thoughts, even as they moved forward into the unknown, their steps echoing in the empty halls.
The group carefully explored down the hallway. On the left were tall windows looking out on a spacious courtyard garden. Only thin breaths of sickly fog seeped in from overheard, though beyond that the mist is just as thick as ever. Wisps of yellow fog slip between leafless trees and simple benches, giving the impression of silent beasts prowling through the garden.
On the right were smaller windows to let light into 4 patient rooms on the right. Yellow light illuminated the corridor and the garden view would certainly have made for a pleasant view when the curtains on the other side were open. The group could see into two of the rooms, where the curtains had been violently torn down and the scenes within belied the calm in the courtyard.
Three figures lay dead in the first room . Two bodies wearing yellow robes were slumped on the floor, having suffered repeated vicious blows to the face. A third — an old man easily in his eighties and wearing a light cloth dressing gown — had fallen back across the bed. He was dead, but had a satisfied smirk on his face as he still gripped a sturdy leather boot with blood on its heel. The boot’s partner was easily spotted on the floor near one of the yellow robed bodies.
In the third room , human-shaped carnage covered the bed, the gory remains of a patient trapped here and savaged by something that eats human flesh and bone. The group found that window to this room was broken.
The end of the hallway was blocked by the collapsed ceiling of a crossing hallway.
Miniel stops briefly at the first room, gazing at the scene. More yellow robes. Doesn't seem like they're well liked around here. She then moves on to the next, with the broken window - and has to hold in a retch. Recovering as quickly as she can, she calls out gently backwards, "This window's broken, so we could go through to the other side......but I'm not sure we'd want to." Something bad happened here. We should get out.
Laura stares at the corpses that have had their faces beaten. "Why, why do these madfolk keep attacking each others' faces?" She edges forward down the hallway, peering into the rubble.
Seeing nothing, she places her hand against her stomach and makes quiet cooing sounds under her breath. "Hush, hush," she whispers.
Rostam looked at the bodies to see how an old man could have killed two yellow robed human(oid)s.
Rostam is pretty sure that the tough old man beat them to death with his boot. The cultists, honestly, didn't look in much better shape than the refugees in the chapel- they looked like former patients, not orderlies. It's pretty clear they messed with the wrong old man.
Unfortunately for him, they had knives while all he had were his boots.
"hush!!!!....I think I hear someone or something digging on the other side."
"We should go say hello," says Rostam. 'Desdemona...?"
Desdemona had looked on the scenes within the rooms with an expression of sick horror - the same look she'd given the misty garden. She jumped when Rostam addressed her, bumping into Laura.
"Oh! Forgive me, do pardon me... Say hello? But... what if it's the ghouls?" she whispered back. "Or some other thing? I daresay I shouldn't like to give a hello to the likes of them."
Reine, towards the back of the formation, heard nothing, but dropped into a ready stance when John hissed his warning. She put one hand out behind her to stop Desdemona from walking into her.
Broom remained quiet, but since she had the opportunity she inquisitively peered into the first room.
"Where do you suppose the cultists got the yellow robes from? If they were former inmates, then its not like they could have just placed an order at the local tailor and you would think the staff would notice a bunch of people sewing up or dyeing new clothes. I wouldn't think that yellow dye or cloth would be something they would keep on hand either."
She hushed up again as someone up front warned of an unusual sound.
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