Ahahahha. I guess the shadow isn't very forthcoming in any case.
Something was going on at the front of the line and Broom wanted to see what it was. She squeezed passed the people in front of her so she could have a look in the broken window.
The scene inside actually disturbed her. She had seen plenty of corpses in the last couple of days, but they were for the most part relatively intact or were damaged in such a way that she figure they were conceivably fixable. Even the ones butchered by the doppledoctors were taken apart in a somewhat methodical way. This one however was just a mangled mass of gore and there was no way she could think of to change that.
She paused for a moment, her face going pale as she looked away "Did whatever did that break into or out of the cell?" she asked Xander. After a moment to collect herself she once again peeked into the cell and looked about, careful not to lean into the window.
Although she didn't see anything in the room or hear the scratching sound she offered a little help "If anyone sees anything inside there, We can use our invisible hand to get it out if it isn't too heavy."
There were too many people in too small of a space. And John had called a warning. Reine wasn't going to further crowd the hallway.
"Make room," She suggested to the others, "If there's space to go in through that window, maybe a few of us do that - quietly - if John is still hearing something. The rest maybe back up, in case whatever it is comes through the rubble?"
Desdemona's shadow slithered away through cracks in the fallen ceiling and hall too small for any person to get through.
Broom couldn't tell whether whatever happened was made by something trying to get in or get out.
John pokes about in the debris.
"Oh! Be careful John. Remember that body that was trapped under the rubble before? The one that came apart and all its pieces attacked us."
Desdemona blinked, appalled. "Excuse me, did you say that the pieces attacked you?!"
Xander mutters, "Might as well get this over with." He begins lightly picking his way through the glass and into the adjoining room.
The glass seems to make it hard. He looks around.
Broom answers Desdemona while at the same time watching Xander with concern as he climbed into the room through the broken window.
"Yeah, we found someone who had been crushed under some falling stuff. When we went to investigate, they were undead! At first we thought it wasn't a problem since the zombie thing was stuck under the rubble, but then its hands and head just tore themselves free of the rest of the corps and attacked us, like each part was its own thing and they just happened to be all stuck together by the same body. We think even its guts wriggled out, but We might be remembering that last part wrong. It was all very horrific."
Her eyes still on Xander she asked "Do you want us to clear away the broken glass first so you don't get cut?"
"Oh... oh dear." Desdemona swallowed, giving the dead in the room a sidelong glance. Then she fastened her gaze on Broom. Considering attack-intestines was a bit beyond her at the moment.
Should she offer condolences? But surely it hadn't been anyone they knew, inasmuch as they could remember whom they did know... Protocol was so tricky with the undead.
She settled for a quiet, "I'm glad you're all still hale."
"I do not remember anything like that," Reine muttered. She kept her eyes on the hallway, hopefully making sure that nothing surprised them from behind.
John didn't find anything in the debris but debris. With a few moments examination he determined it would take a few hours to clear a path through the rubble.
Xander made it through the window with only a little noise and found himself in what looked like a small patient room. These hardly looked like comfortable accommodations. The gore-covered bed, a low table, and a broken chair were the only furniture in the room, and he found nothing of interest in any of them.
"If it's the only way through, perhaps we all should follow Xander. If he lays a bit of the cleaner bedding over the glass, it shouldn't be dangerous to climb through," Desdemona ventured.
"Sounds good Desdemona, let's follow Xander."
Xander obliges the others, putting down some bedding or whatever he can find to cover the glass. "Thank you, Broom. I think this will do for now." Having done that, he walks over to the door and listens closely to any sounds that might be coming from the hallway.
Maybe it's the noise behind him, or maybe the door's really thick, but he doesn't hear much of anything.
Reine continued to watch the behind the party, backling slowly down the hallway, and making sure to be the last to go through the window.
There isn't enough floor space for the entire group in the little room, so as people keep coming through the window others have to go through the door. The hallway runs north and south.
To the south are 3 more doors like the one the group had just exited, and beyond them a spacious room with peeling paint and movable curtains in frames sectioning off an area, lit from behind by some sort of light.
To the north two hallways met here beneath a lofty ceiling. High windows, alive with the nauseating fog beyond, gave the space an airy feel. A portion of the western hallway has collapsed, blocking it with tons of rubble. There is a path cleared to the west, toward where the group had heard noise in the debris.
Beyond the collapsed hallway were more doors on the left side of the long hallway and a large open space at the end.
John holds a hand and gestures for silence.
He indicates danger to the west.
He will ready his sword and advance slowly in that direction.
Laura nods and steps up to follow John, her axe at the ready.
Rostam also follows the...pregnant woman...?...carrying his longspear.
I need to get a bow or something similar, Xander thinks to himself.
Broom gingerly climbed through the broken window. Although Xander had already investigated the contents, she forced herself to look at the mutilated corpse. The sight of it made her feel both ill and an overwhelming desire to at least clean up the remains since their repair was beyond her means.
John's call for silence distracted her from the corpse, replacing her desire to deal with the mess at hand with a curiosity about what he was concerned about.
Once past the patient room and into the hallway, Miniel begins hearing the sounds that the others were warning about. Temporarily pushing out her disdain at not hearing it the first time, she readies her bow while surveying the hallway to the south. Hopefully there would be time to return and pray for the dead, but there are more pressing matters at the moment.
John turned the corner and sees a ghoul scrabbling at the pile of debris, heedless of the damage it was doing to itself as it clawed stone out of the way. From the look of the one-person wide track through the rubble, the monster had been at it for some time.
As focused as it was on its task, the ghoul didn't notice John coming up behind it.
John whistles to get the undead's attention and cocks back his longsword in two hands, ready to strike if it comes into reach.
"Hey ghoulie, want a piece of me?"
(power attack, 2 handed)
Laura readies an action: when the ghoul approaches John, she will five-foot step closer and swing at it with her axe.
The ghoul's head whipped around at John's whistle and it skittered toward him through the rubble, its inhuman gait alarmingly fast. But John was ready and the instant the ghoul was in place he sprung his trap, whipping his sword through the creature's neck like it was made of paper.
Almost as quickly as the encounter had begun it was over and the undead monster lay dead at John's feet.
"Nicely handled," Xander says.
"Unless we're going back to check out the bits we've missed," Reine suggested to Adelar and Desdemona, "you two probably want to go through that window now."{/b]
She gestured at the window, and her body language made it clear that she'd be following the other two.
[b]"Broom, you OK in there?"
"Yes, of course." Desdemona was quick to crawl through, her dress hampering her only because she refused to draw it up around her knees. She sighed when she found Broom regarding the dead. So much for sheltering the poor woman!
"Come, let's move on," she said gently, resolute in her determination not to give the gore a second glance. With an oblique glance back at Adelar and Reine, she followed the others.
"Did you all find what was making that- oh! Oh," she exclaimed, on seeing the impressive arc of dark spatter that had accompanied the launch of the ghoul's head.
John lifts the ghoul's head up on the point of his sword and then boots it down the hallway.
"Nasty things...." he says.
Then he looks to see what the ghoul was digging at in the rubble.
"We're fine" Broom replied to Reine "It sounded like there was something going on out in the hall, but its quiet again. One moment"
Broom headed to the door and looked around the corner to where everyone was standing before calling back "It looks like something attacked John, but its dead now." she paused for a moment as she looked around "That's strange, it doesn't look like it has a head." she said, unable to see the missing appendage.
Miniel is looking the other way when John approaches the ghoul, but the commotion draws her attention, and she looks back just in time to see the head flying away. She gives a nod of approval at the undead's timely death, but keeps her focus on the south hallway, moving over the the middle room and listening at the door.
It looked like the ghoul was trying to clear a path through the rubble- the debris had been moved just enough to let the ghoul through from the hallway to where it had been digging. For some reason the ghoul was trying to go west down the blocked hallway. John thought it would take them a couple of hours to clear the hallway themselves.
Miniel didn't hear anything making noise inside the middle room.
"That is strange, why didn't it just go through the window like we did? We assume that it was what was eating the corpse inside the room. Hmm."
"Looks like it was just too dumb to find the window."
"I'm going to take a look in here..." Not hearing anything, Miniel alerts everyone, then proceeds to try the door to the middle patient room.
Miniel opened the door to the middle room, where a shapeless mess of sheets and pillows piled atop two plain beds. Bold chalk letters high on the opposite wall proclaimed it to be “Brenton and Debis’s Room.”
"North or south?" John asks the others, gesturing up and down the hallway.
"Lets make sure the rooms are clear, first," Reine said to John, as she moved up behind Miniel.
When she looked into the room, her already pale face lost what little color was normally there.
"I remember this one." Her voice was soft. "There's a figure - a knight - in the bed over there." Reine pointed to the Southern bed. "It's important, somehow. We need it. We came here for it, I think. And then..." She trailed off, with a look at Desdemona, then Rostam, and then, Adelar.
Then we ran, and we died. Again. She did not finish her thoughts aloud.
While the others check the small rooms, John crouches down and tries to determine where the ghoul came from in order to backtrack it.
"Hmmm ... which way did the ghoul come from to get here...." he mutters to himself.
Laura frowns at Reine's memory and carefully approaches the bed that she indicates. She sniffs the air and squints to see if she recognizes any danger.
At Reine's words, Desdemona peeked into the room... and then carefully stepped inside.
"The toy was for that boy... I don't know if he exists, any longer. However, if he does, I'll not lose a second chance to give him a memory of his family. Not because of... well. There are so many reasons, it's foolish to dwell on them all. But I'll not be terrorized by memory."
Not on top of what the shadows whispered to her.
More scared of the darkness under the bed and in her very mind than even the horrors that had occurred since, she lowered her lantern to the point where she could pretend that was why she could see into the darkness.
Only then did it occur to her that something might be hiding in the pile of sheets, something the darkness hadn't revealed to her.
She picked up the knights, hurriedly tucking them into her pouch one-handed as she left the room, and Laura, behind.
Laura didn't sense any danger in the boys' room and she quickly found what Reine had described- a pair of toy knights caught in the tangle of sheets.
The southernmost room contained nothing of interest, just a collapsed ceiling.
In the room with the old man who beat the cultists to death, the only apparent item of any value are the dead man's very well made boots.
these boots could still fetch up to 200 gp from a buyer.
John's keen eyes were able to make out that the ghoul had come from the north.
Meanwhile, there was still the large room to the south with the lighted curtain to examine.
Xander continues to keep his eyes open as they rifle through the rooms looking for anything useful.
"Nice boots. Angier's if I'm not mistaken. Apparently, this man was someone of some importance." He's not quite sure how he remembers this. Odd how that information is right at hand but that I have such a hard time remembering where I've been recently.
Looking closely at the ring, his eyebrows shoot up. "Oh my, an important person indeed. This crest is from the Millair family. Out of Redleaf lake."
Redleaf Lake is a small expanse of water in western Varno, Ustalav, around which the small settlement of Redleaf is located. The lake lies on the border with Versex county and in the northern stretches of the Forest of Veils; the proximity of the forest provides the famous fire-coloured waters of the lake each autumn. The Nicklecross River flows out from the western end of the lake.
The manor houses of the families Adler, Boadely, Druanwiet, Millair, and Vanache circle forested Redleaf Lake. Though the retreat is known for its seclusion and waters that take on the colour of fire every autumn, generations of bad blood among the resident families taint the quiet serenity. While the other four proud estates circle the lake at roughly even distances, Adler Manor rises ominously upon eroding cliffs, visible from any shore and home of the spiteful recluse Damita Adler—though none have actually seen the bitter spinster for years.
More than 80 years ago, Camille Adler was murdered on the night of her marriage to Halister Millair, locking the five families of Lake Redleaf into a prison of misinformation, pride, and suspicion. This old man looks almost that old, himself.
Xander relates all he knows about Redleaf Lake and the nobility who reside there...though he's not sure anyone is listening.
"Does anyone recognize any of those names?" he asks.