"I think the body chute is our option."
Cage takes his backpack off and withdraws a rope, tying one end to the pack.
He also removes his swordbelt and attaches it to the pack
He sticks his dagger in his boot and ties off the rope around his waist.
Then he tries climbing up the shoot.
Better him than me, Xander thinks. "Be careful," he whispers as Cage begins his ascent, his voice extra muffled by the cloth over his face.
Climbing the heap of bodies is simple enough, albeit thoroughly disgusting and unhygienic.
Once he reaches the chute itself, the passage is 15 feet long but the rough walls make it easy enough to scale. A metal door at the top of the chute is closed, but can be pushed open easily, and the ranger ascends into a small room.
Cage chokes down the vomit that rises up in his throat.
At the top, he looks around the room.
There is little to be seen in this small room, but there is a wooden door nearby.
Cage pulls his pack and sword up the chute with the rope.
Then he looks for a place to tie it off so that the others can use it to climb.
The chute extends slightly above the floor, so Cage is able to loop his rope around the top to secure it.
After Cage disappears up the chute, a few moments later the rest of the group sees the rope and Cage's pack pulled up. Then, slightly later, the rope is dropped back down, and it flops onto the floor in front of the pile of bodies.
"If this is how it has to be..." Pouch grabs the rope. "It'll be easier with two of us to help others up," he says. With the rope firmly tied on, he begins his ascent.
While the others climb up the body chute, Cage listens at the door for any sign of trouble.
Listening at the door, Cage hears the sound of a gentle rain coming down, but a few moments later, an explosive peal of thunder crashes. The ranger is glad he wasn't outside for that one. At any rate, it sounds like this door leads to the outside.
Xander easily clambers up the rope, and soon finds himself in the same room as Cage.
"All clear," Xander calls down. "Let's get the next folks up." He tosses the end of the rope down for the next person. Can't wait to get some fresh air. "Cage, any idea where that door goes?"
Durril is the next up the rope. He struggles a bit, but ultimately makes it up unscathed. Once he's up, he listens out the door with the others. "Sounds like...outside."
Harrow hears some of the conversation up the chute and, shrugging, attempts to ascend.
Succeeding, he brushes some carrion off his clothing and hears the rain. "Quite the storm outside." He noted. "That thunderclap was most impressive; I heard it whilst in the chute. Do we want to take a peek and see what awaits us out there?"
Without waiting for a response, he moves to open the door should it be unlocked.
Broom looks dubiously at the rope as it is lowered back down. Taking a deep breath of the fetid air she rushed up the corpse pile and the rope as quickly as possible.
Once at the top she immediately begins cleaning the corpse filth from her hands and clothes before looking around the room.
"If anyone has a healing spell they could use on me before we venture out into the storm, I would be most appreciative." Cage tells the others before opening the door.
"It's not much, but it's what I have," Xander says touching Cage on the shoulder. "Let's ALL TRY not to get injured until we have more effective healing means."
As the flesh knits from the claw marks on his shoulder, Cage's face shows relief.
"Thanks friend. That makes me feel much better."
"Now that we're armed and armored, hopefully we can deal with any enemies with less trouble than that shapeshifter in the basement."
Cage will open the door and look around outside.
Hearing Cage's request for healing, Mashiki stops what she is doing and watches Pouch intently as he magically mends Cage's wounds.
"How can we learn to do that when we don't even know how We do the things We do?"
She then moves over behind Cage and peeks out the door when he opens it.
Cage opens the door and gazes out. Trampled flowerbeds lie smeared and squashed across this muddy courtyard. On all sides, stark gray walls climb toward a narrow gap of sunless sky. Rain comes down steadily.
There is another door to the west, just to the right as the door opens. A shedlike structure to the southeast lies largely collapsed; it probably once connected to the top of the stairs that are now blocked in the basement.
You notice scabby stains amid the mud puddles, faintly leading from the door to the west to the service room containing the chute.
"Looks clear...." Cage tells his fellows as he steps out into the courtyard with his sword drawn.
"Hang on, Cage." Xander points out the odd stains in the mud puddles leading from the west door back to this one.
Already near the door, Harrow bows to Cage as the man passes him and opens the door. "No no, dearie, after you."
"Oh, this is lovely weather." Seeing what Xander also saw, he patted the half-orc on the shoulder. "Good eye. Do we follow or avoid that? I'm kind of keen on finding answers, so my vote is to follow."
Idly shifting his dagger in his hands, Durril is also able to make out the trail. "Well, I don't see any other way out of the courtyard, so I don't think we've got much of a choice."
"Good catch. I say we try that door."
Cage walks over and checks the door for danger.
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Mashiki looks out into the courtyard. The wrecked shed and trampled flowers bothered her. She looked at the bloody trail leading to the other door and knelt down. She carefully examined the mud, taking a small bit of it and rubbing it between her fingers to get a feel for the texture and composition. "Hmm, sandy soil" She looked at it closely before looking upwards at the overcast sky and the tall, walls blocking out the light. "Shady conditions". She then considered what the orderly had said about them still being near Thrushmoor "Temperate climate"
Mashiki stood up and cleaned off her hand. "Is it weird that We know this spot would be Ok to grow carrots and maybe beets if you wanted a little garden?" she asked quizzically.
The group makes its way across the muddy courtyard. Not noticing anything strange about the door, Cage opens it.
Broken lanterns and several battered doors line this cold, rubble strewn hall. To the south, a pair of swinging doors lies shattered upon a 4-foot-high heap of wrecked furniture clogging a broad doorframe. As with most of the asylum, it is dark, though light is visible beyond the makeshift barricade to the south.
Suddenly, you hear a voice call out from the south, "Whoa, there! We got more of them."
John thinks he spies a human standing behind the barricade, visible thanks to the light from lanterns on the walls beyond the furniture wall.
Pouch whispers, "Be wary. We need to figure out their intentions."
”Who’s there?” Cage calls out.
A few more men step forward to the barricade, and another voice, more authoritative calls out:
"Don't come any closer, doppelgangers, or we'll shoot."
Oh no... how to convince them we're not... Or is it a trick, and THEY'RE all doppelgangers? He doesn't remember the circumstances, but he feels like he's dealt with people like this before. In a meek and mewling voice, Pouch calls out, "Oh, please don't shoot us! We are not shape-changers! How can we prove it to you? We just want to be safe."
Perhaps these people will know a way out. Although I suspect they would have used it if they could. How many damn doppelgangers are here?!
"How do we know they aren't dopplegangers? There are blood trails running from here to the body chute."
Durril silently mutters to himself: "Doppelgangers? We're not doppelgangers. We kill doppelgangers. But...how do we know they aren't doppelgangers? How do they know they aren't doppelgangers? Do we know we're not doppelgangers?" Shaking his head to clear it from that strange line of thought, he simply calls back: "Who are you?"
Mashiki listened to the others all asking the same question "how do we know we aren't dopplegangers?" After all, she didn't remember anything before waking up, and she didn't know anything about any of her companions other than they were all in that dream together.
She thought about it for a little bit while the others talked. She concentrated hard and tried to alter her appearance. She felt her insides shift a little, it was both thrilling that something happened, but it made her feel sick at the same time.
Mashiki leaned over and whispered to Xander "We are trying to see if we can change shape, do we look any different? We should just ask them how to get out, We don't want to get shot."
Harrow tries to think of something he could say that would have helped Xander convince those beyond the barricade. However, his mind is tumultuous, filled with confusion of his circumstances and unhelpful "advice" from the female creature that seems to live within him.
As such, all he can do is mutter and slur his words at the moment, further confused by the current dilemma.
"I'm not a doppleganger." Cage calls out to the unseen voice.
"but I don't know you. How do I know you're not a doppleganger?"
The man that seems to be acting as the leader of the guards at the barricade continues, nervously, "Well, if you aren’t doppelgangers, why don’t you go kill the ones that are lurking in the washrooms to the south. Bring back a few dead doppelgangers, then maybe we’ll rethink whose side you’re on." The man seems stressed, and suspicious to the point of paranoia.
"Just don’t try to come through the barricade, or we’ll make a pincushion out of you."
"What do we do if they look like people too? Is there some way we can tell who is a doppleganger? Can you just tell us how to get out of here and we will leave you all alone?" Mashiki asks, calling down to the barricade.
Multiple doppelgangers? We barely dealt with one. True, we were unarmed. "Can you tell us how many there are? I suspect they would try to fool us otherwise. And how do you know they're doppelgangers? I would rather we not accidentally kill people based on an incorrect suspicion."
"If I knew how to tell a human from a doppelganger, do you think we'd be pointing crossbows at you?!" comes an obviously flustered voice from the leader. "And no, I don't know how many of the damned things there are. Too many, that's for sure."
Pouch turns to the others. "It seems we have little choice. Unless one of you is immune to crossbow bolts." He lowers his voice to a whisper. "Or we could just do our best to escape on our own."
"Well, we'd better go see first. If there really are more doppelgangers about, we'd better deal with them. And perhaps these people know more about this place than we do. It's better than wandering about in the dark, hoping to find more clues on our own, right?" Durril shrugs, not knowing if his words even make sense to anyone.
"We guess we need to go to the washrooms, but We are worried that it sounds like there is more than one doppleganger. Just one hurt everyone before but what other choice do we have?"
"Washrooms it is...." Cage tells the others.
He looks around for what might be the path to the washrooms.
Stepping out into the hallway, Cage sees a door directly across, but it likely leads to where the crossbowmen are holed up to the left. It’s plain to see something has tried to beat its way through this door in the past, but succeeded only in weakening it. Further down the hall to the right are a few more doors, on either side, and the hall continues even further into the darkness.
Pouch follows close behind Cage. He's wary, as always, for traps. He doubts there are any but you never know. Paranoia is just a survival instinct in this place.
+1vs. traps
His orcish eyes allow him to see a bit farther into the darkness probably than most of his companions anyway.
Mashiki peers into the dark hallway for a moment, then rummages around in her pack. "We're sure We saw something in here, hmmm. Aha!"
She triumphantly pulls out a lantern. She fills it with oil and lights it up, illuminating the hallway.
"Why don't we try this one first," he says walking up to one of the doors.
"You know," Mashiki whispers conspiratorially, "we could just go back down and get the doppledoctor to show them, maybe they will let us in then?"
Durril nods his thanks to the now-lantern-bearing woman. He's pretty sure he can will some lights into existence, but he decides to keep that in reserve, in case the lantern go out.
"Well, they did say that there was more than one out here." He shrugs, looking to the others for their thoughts.