After a few moments of considering whether or not she should ask everyone for some help tidying up the room before they left, she thought better of it. There would be time enough when everyone was safe.
"Ok, lets go!" she said cheerfully as her mercurial mood suddenly brightened up. She led the way back through the library where they had encountered that strange little rat lady with two tails and into the hall where the slime trail was last seen.
She looked to the left and right, pondering which direction to go. Since the slime trail seemed to go through a bunch of doors, there didn't seem to be any obvious start or end point.
Finally she decided on the left where the hallway seemed to end in rubble. Two doors led North. "Maybe we should check the nearest one first?"
"I'm more of the 'attacking and talking' type than the checking type," said Rostam apologetically. "But that sounds like a good plan." His hands rippled with energy as he drew his spear.
John moves into the hallway to the west and checks the first door to the north for danger.
He assumes that there aren't any traps and then goes ahead to open the door and look in the room.
Xander watches as John opens the door, several steps back, just in case.
John heard nothing through the door and saw no obvious traps. The door swung open easily enough onto a crowded office. Two desks were crammed into the small space. It seemed like more space had been dedicated to filing cabinets, bookshelves, and stacks of loose research the occupants.
The dead occupants, to be more precise. Two bodies lay slumped over their desks, both with gory wounds on the backs of their heads.
Further inspection revealed that in addition to the head wounds, both their legs had been savaged by something small but apparently quite vicious.
"Hmmm ... these guys are dead. Maybe somebody cracked them over the head?"
"Hey! This looks like a magic wand. Is that a symbol of Sarenrae? Anyone know how to use this?" John asks.
Xander isn't really able to help much with the dead. He's a bit distracted by the books and paperwork. Although he isn't able to add much more to the cause of death, he takes a peek at the wand John found.
"Yes, that's definitely a symbol of Sarenrae." Miniel looks over the note and comments, "Not a place of faith, huh? Look how that ended up."
John moves down to the door at the west end of the hall.
He listens and checks for traps:
If it seems safe, he checks to see if it is unlocked and he can open the door to look inside.
The slime trail led to- or came from- this door, but John heard nothing when he listened. The door was unlocked and opened with a little effort, the frame a little out of whack from the tremors. Inside was a once-handsome wood conference table, now marred by the partially collapsed southwest walls.
On the far side of the room, between heaps of collapsed stone, a closet door still stood. The slime trail led around the table and straight to the closed closet door.
John searches the room.
Broom wrinkled her nose at the slime covering the ground. "Its so disgusting. We wish We had time to clean it up. While everything needs to be fixed or cleaned, We just feel that leaving this stuff all over the floor seems to be especially wrong for some reason."
John didn't find anything interesting in the conference room beyond the slime trail, the table and some scattered and broken chairs.
John moves up to the slime trail door checks it for traps and takes a listen.
If he doesn't hear anything suspicious or see anything dangerous he will try opening the door.
Rostam stood next to John, spear at the ready, his expression firm.
John hears something moving quietly on the other side of the door.
Broom wrinkled her nose at the slime covering the ground. "Its so disgusting. We wish We had time to clean it up. While everything needs to be fixed or cleaned, We just feel that leaving this stuff all over the floor seems to be especially wrong for some reason."
Desdemona finally looked up from where she'd been lost in thought over the wand with Sarenrae's symbol, and the note attached to it - and Miniel's remark. Her expression was a bit strained, as though she were listening to something unpleasant, but her face cleared as she looked at Broom.
"Don't fret, Broom. We can't be sure this is really even a real place. You don't clean in your dreams, do you? Don't worry overmuch about the state of this... asylum."
She twitched, a slight tic in her eyelid, before she ventured closer to Rostam and John. "Things here aren't what they seem," she murmured vaguely.
John holds up a finger to his lips to motion for silence and then points to the closed door.
He waits for a moment to make sure everyone is focused on the door.
Then, he holds his longsword up in his right hand, reaches out with his left to grab the door handle and pull open the door.
Reine readied her bow, just in case something flew out of the closet, or jumped down from above.
Broom smiled nervously as she glanced about at her companions prepare themselves. She took a little step back from the door and whispered the words she did not understand and made the gestures that were meaningless to her. The cold, black mist from somewhere else coalesced around her and then faded away leaving the invisible suite of force protecting her.
John opened the door and just barely had time to register what he saw before the melee started. It looked like a large storage closet with a nest jammed in the far corner, made up of bloody doctor's coats and orderly uniforms and unidentifiable... things that look like they used to belong inside a human body.
This was terrible enough, but even worse were the two deformed humanoid creatures, barely contained in thick glass jars and partially obscured by disgusting looking, yellow-green... water was the wrong word for it, because it looked too thick to just be water. Wriggling in their glass jars, the pair of deformed monsters scooted around inside- one on the floor and the other on the six-foot high shelf ringing the closet.
"Holy smokes!!!! What're those?"
John steps back to clear the path to the door, pulls out a dagger with his free hand , and throws it at the creature on the floor.
"What in the nine Hells?" Reine had thought herself done with being surprised in this place, but this was just odd and unexpected enough to make it through her defenses, it seemed.
Still, she took aim and fired at the thing-in-a-jar on the upper shelf.
Her disgust and revulsion, however, threw off her aim.
Broom's eyes go wide as she audibly gasps.
She stumbled through the debris to try and get a better shot at the things, but there were so many people in the way. Torn between doing nothing and trying anything she gave a quick flick of her hand towards the jar thing on the ground. Small viscous black drops leapt from her fingers
The drops of acid landed with a sizzle accompanied by the faint smell of vinegar
"Ewww."
Miniel hangs back and readies an arrow, unable to get a clear look or a clear shot.
Desdemona gasped and began to back away - with the curious result being that she appeared to moonwalk forward. Glancing down in horror, she saw her shadow stretching out in front of her, longer and longer, becoming serpentine and inhuman as it dragged her with it.
"No!" she cried out, her hands twisting instinctively to throw something at the horried creatures.
Twisting shadows flowed out of them, making her scream. In the doorway, John felt a chill as they gushed past him.
Her shadow surged forward, unconcerned. It wound about one of the things in the blink of an eye, and sought to smash it against the wall.
Defense:20% miss chance in normal light, 50% miss in darkness. Immunity to death effects, disease, and
poison.
Offense:
Melee attacks affect incorporeal creatures as if it had the ghost
touch weapon property. The eidolon’s melee attacks deal
only half damage to corporeal creatures.
The things' disgusting and unnatural appearance threw off Reine and Broom but John's dagger pierced the thick glass jar and nearly speared one of the tiny monsters in the eye. It half pulled itself out of the jar, gibbering with its horribly malformed mouth, spewing nearly recognizable words as it skittered toward its attacker along the floor.
Desdemona's magical acid splashed and sizzled on its head as it rushed John, but it was the shadow that really got a hold of it. Her shadow detached itself entirely, flowing across the floor to grab up the offending monster and slam it on the hard wooden floor. The jar smashed into a hundred pieces but the tiny monster just screamed in a horribly tinny little voice and surged out of the wreckage to attack the shadow back.
Xander put two and two together and realized what these things were- pickled punks. Normally just grotesque curiosities, these deformed, often humanoid fetuses were raised by necromancers and stored in jars of embalming fluid. Though they seem harmless at first —even laughable pickled punks were hungry creatures that attacked without provocation when not restrained. Unless weaned from their taste for blood or constantly controlled, pickled punks always eventually became a danger to their creators.
1) Pickled Punks have DR 5/bludgeoning.
2) The water in their jars is highly irritating and will cause living creatures to break out in an itchy rash for 24 hours.
3) When destroyed, they discorporate into a fleshy sludge that can get on adjacent creatures and nauseate them.
The punk in the broken jar clawed at Desdemona's shadow, its arms rubbery and inhumanly long. The fetus's sharp nails caught some of her protector's shadow-stuff but didn't do much damage.
The punk on the shelf screamed as its companion's jar was broken and slid down off its shelf to rush John, a terrible combination of rage, hunger, and glee on its deformed face. It pulled itself across the floor with its hands and reached up with a hideously long and unnatural neck to bite John in a very sensitive area. Its teeth barely managed to get through John's pants, but the tiny undead creature latched on like a weasel and continued to gnaw at the ranger's nether regions.
"Gahhh!!!!! Get it off!!!!" John cries out as the punk latches onto his cod-piece.
He slips his masterwork silver dagger free of his belt and stabs downward at the creature.
"Bludgeon it, John! Punks aren't hurt as much by slashing and piercing. Rostam, kick it!" he says with a small smile. "And try to keep the liquid off you." He takes a step back to try to keep out of the punks attacks. "I suppose we could damage them with positive energy, if we had to. They are technically undead."
He leans over and picks up a rock and drops it in his sling, just in case.
With both of the vile little creatures engaged in melee, there wasn't really much that Reine could do - especially given Xander's warning. Bludgeoning things with her bare hands wasn't exactly a strong suit, and she was loathe to fire another arrow.
So she stepped back and waited, bow ready, to fire an arrow at any enemy that came free of the fight and towards her, Desdemona, or Broom.
Rostam blinked at the odd little creatures. He uttered divine phrases, his halo glowing brighter.
Miniel has no way to affect the fight from where she is, so she hangs back and watches the rear while the others deal with the threat.
John stabbed the punk gnawing at his crotch through the top of its distended skull, killing it instantly. It immediately began to twitch and spasm, dancing like a macabre puppet on John's dagger. As it thrashed, bits of its waterlogged body started to fall off. First in tiny flecks, then in larger bits, then in chunks, the pickled punk quickly convulsed itself into a greyish pink, fleshy sludge- largely on the front of John's clothes.
John bends at the waist and is noisily and voluminously sick.
After a moment it is difficult to tell where the bits of pickled punk end and the half-digested eggs from breakfast start on his britches.
Desdemona turned away delicately, her hand over her mouth and eyes closed - until she realized that the hand was the one the shadows had leapt from, and she whimpered as she wrenched it away.
Her distorted shadow, however, was not through. It slithered after the other punk, aiming to wrest it limb from limb like some dark nightmare.
Defense:20% miss chance in normal light, 50% miss in darkness. Immunity to death effects, disease, and poison.
Offense:
Melee attacks affect incorporeal creatures as if it had the ghost touch weapon property. The eidolon’s melee attacks deal only half damage to corporeal creatures.
Broom turned an odd shade of grey as the ugly little creature dissolved into a noxious puddle. Her disgust turned to alarm as she saw John begin to retch. "No no no no! Wait, We will get a..." Her words were cut short as John added his own vomit to the puddle of noisome corruption on the ground.
It was all she could do to keep her own lunch down, but if there was one thing that she worked hard to do, it was to control her own body.
"Who would create such senselessly disgusting things?!" she asked, the distress clear in her voice. "Is there any way we can just keep them inside their jar when they die?"
"Maybe if We just burn them away with acid they will be easier to clean up" she thought as she moved over to be able to at least see the other thing.
Inside the room she saw the shadow attacking the other punk. She paused just for a moment before flicking the black beads of liquid from her fingertips; while she wasn't completely concerned about the welfare of Desdemona's tormentor, she also wasn't certain what would happen if she accidentally hit it. Thus, she decided to err on the side of caution.
She watched with dismay as the corrosive droplets splattered across the doorframe well clear of anyone including the punk.
Ewww, Xander thinks as he whirls his sling around.
Miniel continues to hang back, unable to help.
Des's shadow glided along the floor toward the other punk, rearing up at the last second to smash the other punk to the ground, rendering its head into sludge with a nightmare-sized fist. The rest of its body soon followed as it also convulsed its way into a puddle of noxious goo.
"Well, that stinks," Reine observed from the doorway. "Now what?"
John heaves one last time, then straightens up and wipes the back of his arm across his mouth to clean away some of the filth there.
"What kind of monster puts dead babies into glass jars?" he asks.
"Who were the people that ran this place?"
He looks obviously shaken by this encounter.
"Broom," Reine suggested, "I think John would appreciate it if you could clean him up a little bit." She grimaced at the smell coming from in the room. "I think we all would appreciate it."
She didn't respond to John's question. For some reason, she felt like babies in jars wasn't the worst thing she'd seen in life.
Or the worst thing they were going to see in this place.
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Broom kept eyeing the mess on the ground and muttered "We need a mop and bucket of water to clean up properly. There were some back at the janitor closet..."
She suddenly looked up at Reine's request "Oh! Yes, of course! We are sorry John. And We might be able to help a little bit with the smell as well."
Broom took out a couple of towels and aided by her magic began busily tending to the matter of cleaning off the filth and sick from John. As she did so, she also took a moment here and there to freshen up the air a little. "Do you think they are what killed those other people and stole pieces from their insides?"
She glanced at John's torn pants and her cheeks turned an odd dark grey colour as she quickly averted her gaze and glanced uncomfortably around the room "Ummm... If you take those off we can fix them now. Or We can take care of it later if you want to wait."
"I'll keep my pants on for now."
"But we might as well poke around and see what else is in this closet."
John covers his nose and mouth and steps forward and retrieves the dagger he threw at the beginning of combat.
Then he pokes around the closet to see if there is anything of interest/value.
Rostam stepped up near Broom. "I can create some water, at least." The bald aasimar moved his hands and uttered a phrase. Immediately, the bucket filled with blessedly clean water.
Broom watched in delight as Rostam conjured clean water out of nowhere
"You have to teach Us how to do that." she said as she took out some rags and happily started cleaning while the rest of the party examined the room.
"I honestly have no idea how these spells came to me," said Rostam, and shook his hands ruefully, with a smile. "Although it probably has something to do with whatever partially occupies my body and spirit, across at least one plane..."
He touched his wrist tattoos and his amulet self-consciously.