The children were ecstatic over the puppy, and the puppy seemed just as happy to be left with the two of them and their minder.
The explorers made their careful way nearly all the way back to the Apostles' camp before needing to make a decision. They could hear people talking and moving around in the day room, where they had put to rest the wheelchair-bound woman's spirit and stopped the river of blood. No one had yet braved the Administrator's office, but there were definitely people looting the rooms further east.
"I say we tie on our fake yellow arm-bands and try to bluff our way through." John suggests to the others.
Desdemona had been thrilled with Broom's culinary skills, and seemed much cheered compared to the day before after eating. "Just what we needed to fortify us for the trials ahead. Thank you, Broom," she smiled.
***
"I agree," Desdemona said. "The worst that can happen is that they don't believe us, and we fall to combat once more. Frankly, that seems the only other option, to me. Assuming the cultists are all zealots, of course..."
She fished out her yellow armband and tied it on, studiously ignoring her slowly spreading shadow.
Broom helped everyone tie their armbands on before securing her own. Before following the party into the room, she conjured up the images and feelings of a dark place out among the stars and spoke the strange words that came to her mind.
A dark, cool mist briefly coalesced about her before fading away leaving behind and invisible force that helped protect her from harm.
With that, she held her trusty broom at the ready in case she needed to bang it against something and rant to convince the other patients to let her through.
She took a deep breath and steeled herself "We are ready. Let's open the door.
"Sure," Reine said, double-checking her own armband, "Let's go. But don't be surprised if you hear screaming from in here." She moved to open the door, making sure to do so with excessive force.
As she stepped out into the hallway, Reine's malevolent gaze scanned the scene before her, as if she was looking for someone to cross her.
When you modify a character’s attitude with the Diplomacy or Intimidate skill, the attitude change lasts 1-1/2 times longer than it otherwise would.
Whenever you create a fear or mind-affecting effect that imposes a penalty or bonus with a duration of at least 2 rounds, it lasts 1 additional round after it would normally end. For example, if you demoralize a foe with an Intimidate check and beat the DC by 5, the victim is shaken for 3 rounds instead of the usual 2 rounds.
The Apostles in the day room had opened every door off the corridor south and were rummaging around to bring mattresses, linens, and anything else remotely useful to their camp. Nobody seemed inclined to challenge the group as they strode in from the forbidden western corridor, and the unfortunate woman who caught Reine's gaze squeaked and scurried away like a mouse who spotted a cat.
The party walked confidently through the horde of desperate looters and through the camp like conquering heroes, warding off any possible questioners. The halls beyond the Apostles' camp were eerily quiet, and the tower was silent as the grave as the group climbed up to Aggra's last stand. The guards' bodies were untouched by either by ghouls or normal vermin, unmolested as their vanquishers walked past.
Making their way around the broken end of the wall, the party find cracked pillars bent at broken angles supporting a sagging ceiling. While most of the walls looked ready to fall apart, the northern wall had already done so, creating a massive gap open to the strange weather beyond. Opposite it, the wall in the best repair was laden with parchment pages covered in stark lines of coal and chalk.
A hall stretched to the west.
This now-dilapidated hall looked like the broken remains of multiple rooms, former patients’ cells, and nurse stations. At present, it had more in common with an opium den, as the smoky breaths of prone figures filled the air. Dusty pallets slouched against walls and piles of rocks, surrounded by clouds of yellow fog that pooled on the floor and fell out the broken wall into the open air beyond.
Broom warily eyed the crazed woman's corpse as she unconsciously rubbed her neck. She was a bit relieved that the body did not rise again as a ghoul or doppleganger.
The sight suddenly brought to mind the events of the that last fight. "If we get into another big fight, does anyone want to be made big? We don't know how useful it was when we were fighting the bag lady so
We wanted to ask before We cast it again."
As the party advanced, she peeked over the pile of rubble that used to be a wall and looked into the room with the other smoke spewers.
"We suppose that we will have to kill them as well, right? To stop the smoke? Its hard to imagine that all that storm and yellow fog surrounding this place is coming from them." she said with a note of pity in her voice.
After a moment of contemplation, she abruptly cast her thoughts about to recall the words and gestures that summoned her invisible companion.
"Don't make me big," Reine said as she looked over the smoke-spewing forms grimly. "John did well when he was bigger. Well, he knocked down the wall, and made a good target, anyway."
She sighed. "And yeah, these're gonna have to go. Remember what happened last time. Maybe we should try to hit them from a distance."
"You can cast your spell on me Broom, but make sure there's enough room for everyone. I don't want to get trapped on the wrong side of a door." John says.
"Ready? I'll start." Reine, seemingly sure that the path forward was clear, and once she saw that the others were ready, pulled out her bow, drew back one of her strange-looking arrows, took aim at the closest "living" corpse spewing smoke, and let fly.
Despite all the rationalization and justification for killing the smoke spewers, Broom still had trouble actually going through with it. She hesitated as long as she could to see what everyone else was doing first.
Desdemona was torn. One one hand, to attack people that were merely asleep? Her stomach felt hollow at the thought.
But they did appear to be responsible for the yellow mist...?
Her desire to be rid of the mist won out, and she reluctantly drew her dagger. They're already consumed by it, she told herself.
At least, she thought that was her inner voice.
Her shadow spread across the floor, slinking among the sleepers... but not choosing any to attack just yet. She wondered what evil guided it.
"Let's be about it..."
John advances on one of the smoke spewers, raises Red Destiny, and plunges it into the prone mans breast.
(power attack, favored enemy)
Reine fired an arrow right through the mist and into the sleeping man's side, with John marching into the sour yellow mist and stabbing Red Destiny straight into the prone man's chest.
Despite the sudden and grievous damage, the man stirred and started to rise to his feet, the energy animating him forcing the oneirogen to defend itself.
Desdemona's shadow lashed out at the man at his first twitch, smashing an enormous, shadowy fist into his back.
While the badly mauled man didn't make a single sound to warn his companions, the other two stirred and started to get to their feet, too.
Broom was taken a little aback by the smoke spewers rising up. She had assumed that they would just lie there like the last one did. She squeezed up past Des an stood behind a little pile of rubble to get closer to the fight.
She focused her attention and the little black beads of liquid formed on her fingertips. With a well practiced flick, she sent the corrosive droplets towards the smoke spewer threatening John.
Because John and the shadow were in the way, she had picked a weaker attack just in case she accidentally hit one of them. But as it turned out, all of her recent practice had made her pretty good at avoiding her friends, even when shooting near them.
The little droplet scored a direct hit and splashed across the creature, burning it where they touched it's flesh and filling the air with a strong smell of vinegar. Broom winced at the sight of the damage she had done.
Taking a deep breath, Desdemona steeled herself.
You can do this. You are the Warden of the dark.
Tentatively, she lifted her hands and twisted them, somehow knowing that the way in which she did so would open a path... to shadow.
And so it did. A tiny shadow, no larger than a cat, pulled itself through the veil of reality before her. She fought the urge to look away, or to banish it with the light of her dagger.
Instead, she pointed at the larger shadow. Her shadow.
"Help it," she croaked, sweating.
To her amazement, it only danced around her mockingly for a moment - then it zipped across the intervening space to the oneirogen, nipping at his life force like a terrier harrassing a bear.
Trembling, Desdemona clutched her dagger to her chest.
It worked! Broom was right.
John stabs again as it tries to stand up.
(power attack, favored enemy)
(power attack, favored enemy)
Between Broom's spell, Desdemona's... cat, and Red Destiny, the closest of the sleepers went back down permanently. That only left the other two.
Stretching into the shadow of that strange, spined serpent, Desdemona's jailor/prisoner crept towards the other oneirogens, arms stretching out implausibly far.
:O
John steps over to engage another Oneirogen.
(power attack, favored enemy)
Reine stepped up next to Des, drew back her bow and let fly at the onigeron closest to John.
Desdemona's shadow slithered along the floor toward the closest of the two remaining oneirogens, rising up off the floor at the last second to throttle the woman only a bare second after Reine's arrow nearly took her in the throat.
John strode through the eddying mists like a conquering hero, ignoring the eddying energy that tried to lull him to sleep. He snapped Red Destiny into the sleeper's chest as smoothly as sliding the blade back into its scabbard and the oneirogen slumped to the floor.
The remaining somnambulist weaved a wild, back and forth path toward John, its jerky legs looking like they were moving independently of the rest of the man's body. The yellow mist continued to stream out of the oneirogen's mouth as it's upper half swayed and bobbed like a cork in the ocean.
John once again ignored the unnatural energy that tried to pull him down into sleep.
Just like its' unnatural, jerky walk, the oneirogen's flailing arms looked like the kind of nearly random lashing out one would see in a puppet show. The man hit John in the face with one forearm but thudded harmlessly against the padding under John's chain shirt.
"That's two of them!" John exclaims, then "Whooof!" he grunts as the last of them punches him in the face.
Emboldened by her recent success, Broom moved up a little closer and summoned a larger amount of the black liquid. Cupping her hand, the fluid filled her palm before forming a small glob. She tossed the golf ball sized sphere at the last smoke spewer.
The air filled with the familiar smell of the substance, but she couldn't make out whether she had actually hit the creature through the copious amounts of smoke emanating from the thing.
Unlike Broom, Desdemona hesitated to get any closer - not to the oneirogen, for which she felt little, but to where her shadows cavorted, gleefully drawing away the oneirogen's life force.
Her shadows.
She shook her head, still shaken by this turn of events - but managed to lift her hand to point at the puppetlike man.
"Take him!" she declared, trying to make it sound more like a command than a plea.
But this time the little secondary shadow merely looped about and came to circle her pool of light, and she squeaked and turned to keep it in view and warded away by her dagger's glow at all times, forgetting the battle for a moment.
It's not life force, she thought feverishly. It's memory, kindness, compassion, warmth, the pleasure of company and the will to strive. All that is what it steals away, until your very body rebels against you and you die.
And what becomes of you then?!
Reine, though she didn't follow Desdemona's commands - not any more than the shadows did, at least - agreed that the situation needed to be brought into hand, and quickly. Rather than drawing another arrow, Reine simply strode forward, into the yellow fog and towards the shapes at the center of of the cloud.
Whether it was her focus, her momentum, or the protective rage bubbling ever just beneath the surface, Reine shrugged off the cloying calls to sleep. Instead, she simply reached out and slapped the flailing almost-corpse, letting the pain and terror flow from her touch into the poor creature before her.
"Take that!" John snarls as he slashes across the oneirogen's stomach with his magic blade.
(power attack, favored enemy)
The shadow also failed to respond to Desdemona's command, instead swirling slowly around the last oneirogen, circling, circling.
You seek to command what you do not know. By what name and right would you do so?
Desdemona stared at the swirling dark. You... have a name?!
All things you might wish to command must have a name, the sinking black chided mockingly.
Defense:20% miss chance in normal light, 50% miss in darkness. Immunity to death effects, disease, and poison. Evasion.
Offense:
Slam reach 10', bite reach 5', increased by 5' each when Large. 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. All attacks are treated as magic. Combat reflexes (3 AOOs).
Between Broom's magic, Reine's devastating touch, and Red Destiny, the last oneirogen went down in a tangle of spasming limbs. The group could already see the room starting to clear as the first sleeper's fog cloud dissipated.
Opposite the collapsed wall, the wall to the south- the one in the best repair- was laden with parchment pages covered in stark lines of coal and chalk. A hall stretched to the west.
"There .... that should clean up the smoke." John says.
"I'm sorry we had to kill them, but from what we learned earlier their minds were probably gone anyway."
John will step over and look at the parchment on the wall.
"Probably," Des echoed distractedly, still chewing on the idea the dark had planted in her mind. She knelt by the ex-oneirogens, closing their eyes with no sign of squeamishness, safe in her pool of dagger-light. She also quickly searched them for anything that might help them in their efforts. Her shadow oozed back into her own shape, reconnecting with her heels, but out of her view.
Then she, too, wandered over to look at the parchment. Her eyes scanned the sheets, but her attention was really on the interesting idea she had uncovered. She didn't really register what the writing said.
As much as she hadn't wanted to kill the smoke spewers, Broom was relieved when the foul jaundiced fog began to thin somewhat.
She retrieved a cloth from her pack and held it out in front of her. "Get Reine's arrows, wipe them clean and give them back to her" she ordered her invisible helper before heading to have a look at the drawings with the rest.
The cloth floated through the air and the spent arrows were retrieved, wiped down and presented to Reine by the unseen servant.
Reine accepted her arrows from the invisible servant without comment, though she did look at the ruined tips with a sigh. She'd have to repair those before they'd be useful again, but it was better than having to start from scratch. Who knew if they'd ever get out of here to a place she could buy new ones.
She walked over to the wall of drawings, reaching to pull one down off the wall and examine it.
*+2 if the save is vs something with the fear/emotion descriptors
The pictures on the wall depicted scenes of chalky mist filled with impossible, ominous charcoal shapes. Many of the sketches resembled the city where the group had fled from the Tattered Man in their dreams.
John and Reine were mildly disquieted by the depictions of the place where they were hunted and died, but Desdemona was fascinated. The lines on the pages swirled and moved, the mist flowing and the far-off buildings shifting as changed her point of view. Des couldn't help but stand and stare.
Reine pulled down a drawing and found that there were scribbled notes on the back. She could barely make sense of them, but thought they might hint at a way to strike bargains with outsiders.
"It's almost... beautiful..." Desdemona murmured, growing more absorbed by the moment. Her fingers traced some of the images, as though she might feel the texture of those foreign, impossible places. "Alien, but beautiful..." She sounded even more distracted than usual, more than half-asleep.
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"Interesting," Reine said, checking the back of another drawing. "There are notes here. If someone who knows a lot more about magic than I do were to spend some time with these, it might make some sense. Be worth some money. Maybe we should collect them.
She looked around the room, at the pages posted and scattered...
"It would take an hour, wouldn't..." Suddenly, Reine stopped, and turned to Broom with a smile on her face.
"Broom," Reine said, holding up the two pages to show the smaller woman the notes written on the backs of them, "Someone needs to collect all of these pages, and then put them in the right order. If they do that, they'll have a book that tells secrets to summoning creatures from beyond. Does that sound like a project you or your servant friend would enjoy?"
Broom took a look at the pictures that Desdemona was looking at. "These pictures are interesting, aren't they. They look like the city we were in when the Tatter Man attacked us. Zandalus keeps drawing that city."
She studied the pictures a little more before Reine brought the writings to her attention. She cocked her head and peered at the writing for a few moments, trying to decipher their meaning
She frowned "We can't find any memories about what these might mean, but..." She cast her mind back to the memories of that strange creature in its great library, forever collecting and sorting tomes and manuscripts. These thoughts had left a strong enough impression with her that it was easy for her to find them again.
Her face lit up "...We are certain that with a little help We can put it back together again if all the pages are here. It will take a while though. Maybe if We just collect all the papers then We can sort them out later."
She turned to the empty air beside her "Collect all the pages and stack them nicely. Desdemona, is it ok if we take those pictures? We can look at them together later and you can help Us sort them out if you want."
Broom took a look at the pictures that Desdemona was looking at. "These pictures are interesting, aren't they. They look like the city we were in when the Tatter Man attacked us. Zandalus keeps drawing that city."
"Fascinating," Desdemona agreed dreamily. Even the mention of the Tatter Man didn't seem to make her any more alert.
She turned to the empty air beside her "Collect all the pages and stack them nicely. Desdemona, is it ok if we take those pictures? We can look at them together later and you can help Us sort them out if you want."
"Lovely..." Desdemona was fully absorbed by the pictures, and didn't seem cognizant of exactly what Broom was saying. Still, she made no protest or resistance against Broom's (and her servant's) course of action.