The floorboard creeks heavily as some of you engage on its worn surface.
"Mireza, the voices downstairs...they are getting curious. You know...we could lure them up here and set a trap..." Valiard whispers.
"Tch!" Mireza stops in her tracks and spreads out her fingertips to the others as the whisper sounds in her ears. "The apothecary wants to draw them upstairs to us -- lure them into our web rather than blundering into theirs," she passes on.
"Because our web is something to be feared? Where you there when we were combating Mr. Myre? You do remember our efficiency in dispatching him and his undead minions, do you not? I do. It was horrendous. Mr. Vachkov nearly died--twice I think--; Mr. Tessar was severely weakened; you, Madam Mireza, had acid pouring from your shoulder and I was nearly bludgeoned to death by a zombie." He recounts. "Regardless, it matters little. Lead them up." He pulls out his staff and then straightens himself to look presentable.
Apothecary, Mireza messages, you have a plan?
"Frater Kolnikov, in the middenstone vats we were constrained by the setting, and had spent many of our most efficacious attacks on the ghouls we faced earlier. Now we are better prepared, and have expended only a modicum of our powers for the day."
"Ah, certainly. Make some noise. One or two will come up to investigate, we dispatch them quickly. The ruckus will draw the remainder up. Then, well, we dispatch them as well...look, I am not a warrior, so I really don't know too much about this. I imagine the Crow would have a better plan."
I imagine the Crow would have a better plan."[/b][/smaller]
Grigor shrugs as if to say, 'sounds ok to me' and draws his swords.
You hear footsteps coming up the stairs...
"Not much of a plan," Mireza sighs disconsolately.
"Madness in the very walls of this place, but I sensed ten lunatics, and three others who are sane but evil." Windle readies mace and buckler and moves to the front near Grigor.
"In the walls?" Mireza asks as she retreats, trailing her fingers lingeringly against the walls in question as she goes. "Do they infect people with madness or absorb it from them, I wonder?"
"I wonder if it is too late to go knock on the front door and distract the inmates..." he whispers, almost to himself.
"Frater Kolnikov, in the middenstone vats we were constrained by the setting, and had spent many of our most efficacious attacks on the ghouls we faced earlier. Now we are better prepared, and have expended only a modicum of our powers for the day."
Iozef looks to the Inquisitor with indifference. "Hm. I suppose I cannot disagree. Nevertheless, I would still gather we are not the most battle hardened lot. Outside of Mr. Vachkov of course... and possibly yourself." Iozef then pulls out a vial from within his backpack and unstoppers it, readying to drink it as soon as he sees the first sign of the lunatics.
Iozef rolls his eyes at Mireza's query, not daring to approach that one.
Two inmates show up at the top of the stairs, followed by an orderly. They wail and flail as they are quickly taken out. The orderly falls from a precise stab in the neck he never saw coming...
The three are quickly followed by eight more inmates. This time, the semblance of precision and expertise of the previous strike only contrast with the savage melee and bloodbath that ensue as the inmates blindly charge flailing at a wall of weapons.
Covered with blood, you hear the two last orderlies downstairs open the front door and make a run for it...
Let them go - we need search this place and fast for our villain.
"Didn't seem very sporting," Mireza notes dubiously as she rejoins the group at the top of the stairs.
Windle pauses to clean the gore from his mace before following Grigor down the stairs.
Well that was gruesome.
"I guess the way is clear now." Valiard says, stepping over the mangled corpse of an inmate, a grimace on his ashen face. "I think we should get moving."
"Crow, do you know what the Asylum-Keeper looks like," Mireza asks, "or where his rooms might be?"
Grigor shoots her a look, face streaked with blood.
Do I look like a lunatic?
He stops think.
He'd have the nicest rooms - lets look on this level for carpets and pictures on the walls. That will lead us in his direction. Otherwise? He's likely in the basement... not sure what it is about basements that draws in nutcases who like to summon demons and other tentacled terrors.
Grigor shoots her a look, face streaked with blood.
Do I look like a lunatic?
Mireza smiles with amusement but doesn't directly reply. "You look like a Crow, who delivers little birds to Crove's nest when they don't play nicely with the world as it is. I thought perhaps you'd been here or met him."
not sure what it is about basements that draws in nutcases who like to summon demons and other tentacled terrors.
She hums a tune, still trailing her fingers against the wall as if feeling for deposits of madness. "The Apothecary thought they might be trying to balance the darkness within them with the darkness without. It makes sense, does it not? Most crimes are committed at night, after all, when people feel free to let out to play all the secrets they lock up tightly in the daylight."
You look around the building and find it completely deserted, except for some patients locked in cells. The place is pretty rundown. The smell of moisture and molds mixes with the fresh smell of plaster from the leaking roof, and the old smell of sweat and blood coming out of the cells.
The grey-green walls are streaked with dried blood from dragged inmates and you can almost hear their forgotten screams as you look at the walls.
Thunder startles you as the building is lit by lightning and the gaping mouth of a narrow staircase stares back at you, leading down into a wailing madness.
"Maybe the madness seeps up the walls from below, like oil in a lampwick," Mireza suggests thoughtfully. "Perhaps the inmates are the flame that draws upon that reservoir."
"Dungeons or high towers, but in this case we seem to be called downwards." Windle casts light on his mace.
Iozef sighs. "Madam Mireza, the walls do not make men go mad. Men usually allow circumstances to drive them to such or they just choose to be such. Not walls."
Pretty big words for something that makes me skin feel like it wants to crawl off me body.
He draws both blades in the light of Windles spell and then stepping as quietly as possible, leads the way down.
You creep slowly and silently down the stairs. The walls turn to stone, and so does the floor, as the smell of molds and humidity becomes more pungent.
As you reach the bottom of the stairs, you see torchlight flickering on the deceased piled bodies of several inmates. It looks as though they had been chained to the stairs, perhaps as guardians, but have instead turned on one another.
The stairs open to a long room, perhaps 60 feet long. On both sides of the long walls, four narrow corridors are filled with darkness, wails and screams. At the north end, you see a steel door, while at the south end is a table with chairs, with two steel doors leading east and west.
Doors or hallways? Mireza's whisper sounds in everyone's ears. And which one?
First on the left...
Grigor checks the handle and then opens the door.
Valiard flinches.
The heavy door is made of steel, and shows sign of advanced corrosion. It creeks loudly as it opens. It reveals a long corridor shrouded in darkness. The ceiling drips softly, forming shallow pools on the floor. The dripping sounds gently breaks the low wailing coming from the darkness.
At the edge of your circle of light, a steel door can be discerned on the left wall, while the corridor extends further...
More doors, Mireza informs the others, and then a left turn.
"So do we stick together? I mean, there might be some fiendish traps down here...it is a dungeon dug by crazy people..." Valiard whispers.
The doors might be cells; if we open them, we'll only be letting out an inmate. Let's pass them by for now. The Asylum-Keeper wouldn't have locked himself up ... unless he had a moment of clarity and recognized his kinship with the little birds in his nest.
Grigor nods, leaves the door alone and continues to pad foot down the corridor.
You move in silence down the corridor, your light sources casting long shadows along the walls. Lonesome wailings and sobbing come form the doors you pass. At its end, the corridor turns sharply, only to meet a steel door. The door doesn't look like its been used for a long while, and it's heavily corroded.
Placing the ioun torch above his head, Iozef follows the others. "Mr. Vachkov, would you prefer a light source upon your own weapon?" He asks as he takes in the sounds of the asylum.