<BUMP!>
Let us continue. "Where to?"
"I'll let our fearless girl lead the way here." Xerice says with a wink towards the fellow dhampir.
Sighing, Risbeth heads up to the trapdoor and shoulders it open. It opens into a circular room above, choked with webs. A stone staircase curves
along the wall to another trapdoor in the ceiling. Peering at Risbeth from a few feet away is a tiny homunculus. It has larger eyes than normal and is looking at you inquisitively. The little fellow keeps pointing at one of the walls, then up toward the ceiling where it alternates between stomping around with a monstrous look on its face and miming someone trapped.
Risbeth whispers to her fellow adventurers. "Is it a mime golem? Or is it trying to tell us there is something nasty up there and it's trapped here? Or someone else is trapped, by the nasty thing?"
"Ask it to come down?, Sonny suggests with a question in his voice.
"Well you are the one who actually does the talking, especially with constructs, my dear Sonny." states the prof.
"Certainly Professor. Risbeth, would you kindly come down here so I can poke my head up there and see if I can talk the creature down?"
Risbeth comes down and allows Sonny up. The homunculus again does his pantomime: pointing at some faint scratches on the wall, then upstairs while miming a monster stomping about and someone being trapped.
Sonny whispers to the homunculus, "There's a monster here and someone trapped. OK. Why don't you come down here and give us more detail before it sees me?"
The homunculus seems to calm, but it refuses to leave, trying to drag you toward the scratches on the wall.
"What is it Lassie? Did Jimmy fell in the well again?" Xerice says jokingly as she recalls an old story about some smart dog humans liked to tell each other.
A whimpering sound from above comes in response to Xerice's jape. It seems to be coming from the floor above.
Risbeth sighs. "I suspect we will need to go up..." Risbeth begins moving slowly up the stairs, checking the bit of wall where the scratches are first.
Unless she finds something odd, she'll begin slowly moving up the stairs, as quietly as she can.
The scratches seem to be faint words and diagrams, but they've been wiped, if not clean, at least less than they were. You'll need a Linguistics check to read them.
Risbeth motions to the scratches. "Someone who knows more about languages than I should look at those.. It may be the map to the lost treasure of Andraste... although it's more likely a recipe for making a flying monkey skull that pukes up feces."
"Languages, you say? Let me check this..." the prof puts back his glasses in his nose and wrinkles his eyes.
May I help you.
Between Caesare and the Professor, you are able to figure out most of the scratches. A crude chalk diagram depicts the iron spire atop of the tower, and two strange apparatuses at its pinnacle. An arrow points to the larger of the two devices, next to the words “The Storm Caller must be activated to energize the Bondslave Thrall.”
"What now? I get the meaning of the words, but the deeper meaning still is beyong me. We have to delve deeper into the castle for an answer, I am afraid!"
From above the whimpering sound comes again!
"There appears to be nothing in this room but he seems to thing there is a monster in the next. Maybe we should burn away the cobwebs to clean this place up so we can see and move better."
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Risbeth shrugs. "In other words, Risbeth, open the door and get attacked, and we'll kill it around you while you fight it off?" She says with a raised eyebrow, and moves to go up and open the door...
This tower room, clearly once a laboratory, is choked with huge webs. Two curious objects—a large iron idol and a glass bell jar of the same size—stand against the eastern wall. The jar is filled with fluid and contains a human woman, while the idol has only two openings for eyeholes, through which blink a pair of terrified human eyes.
There is a large prominent lever and a ladder leading up into the webs above. The lever is connected to a heavy mechanism that looks as if it opens the ceiling onto something above, perhaps the odd mechanism you could see as you approached the tower.
Risbeth, something is slowly moving in the webs above...
"We have a spider of some type up here, rather large. And someone floating in liquid, probably dead, and someone in an iron maiden, looking alive. Anyone have a giant shoe to smash the spider? Or anti-venom?" Risbeth says in a stage whisper, quirking her lips as she watches the spider thing moving around. "Think we can burn the webs without killing the person in the iron maiden?" She asks, sounding as if she doesn't expect an affirmative answer.
The whimpering seems to be coming from the iron maiden, but another sound, like deep breathing is coming from the webs. It doesn't sound like a spider...
Carefully looking around Caesare moves forward to the iron maiden, fearing the worst.
The eyes visible through the mask widen as you approach. A weak male voice whispers, barely audible "Please. Be very quiet, the Aberrant is above and it is angry."
Caesare holds up a hand to indicate silence and whispers back.
"How can we help you.. and what is the aberrant?"
Risbeth continues looking up, keeping an eye on the shadowy figure, ready to call out if it begins to move.
The voice whispers back in a ragged tongue that is obviously weak from disuse. "Open this thing. Let me out." He swallows. "The Aberrant. I created it, but it was unfinished. The necromancers completed it too soon. It is mad. And powerful. You need the Thrall. Call my son. Call the Beast. On top of the tower. Hurry. Hurry!" The last word explodes into a shriek as something huge moves in the spider webs, dropping to the floor below as Risbeth calls out a warning!
A stitched abomination made from the parts of at least half a dozen creatures, the Aberrant Promethean is primarily a mixture of choker, chuul, cloaker, and ettercap, blended together into a disgusting mass of
unlife. It is huge, with the lower body of a chuul, tentacles erupting from its humanoid top half and two huge arms ending in pincers. It is definitely unnatural and irredeemably insane. It throws its head back and shrieks a great hunting call.
Initiatives!
Round 1:
21 Zanu
19 Caesare
16 Xerice
12 Augustus
11 Risbeth
8 Sonny
5 Aberrant
Risbeth spends a move action to give herself Boar Style, and Bleeding Attack.
She then waits for the abbarant. "We got a nasty one here! Everyone look careful! Hey, big and ugly! Over here!"
Augustus puts his glasses back on his nose, scanning the creature, but he quickly chooses to chant arcane words to enhance the party.
"Μαι θε φορς βε ωιθ ιου!"
"Right, that's my cue, let's get to the top of that tower and summon Beastie!" Xerice says and makes like a tree and leaves.
Xerice flees to the iron ladder and shimmies up as fast as she can. The ladder opens on the top of the tower. The tower opens onto a flat platform high above the raging waters. A spire of twisted iron rises from the tower’s roof in a series of three triangular iron platforms. Perched at the very top stands a huge lightning conductor and numerous lightning rods. It's another 30 feet up to the device, which matches the scattered descriptions of the Bondslave Thrall.
"My dear friends, I believe this flesh golem is tougher than all others we've met before! And it looks... a lot more quick than it should be! Interesting!" warns the prof.
Grabbing the Prof by his collar Caesare ... insists that they should try to outrun the beast."Not now, Prof... now it´s time to RUN!"
"I don't know that that is a .... never mind. Try to keep it off me while I open this thing.", Sonny shouts as he moves toward the iron maiden.
Caesare grabs the Professor and hauls him up the ladder, followed by Zanu whose magic missiles seem to do nothing to the strange beast!
Sonny moves toward the iron maiden, which he can see now is bound in adamantine strips. However, he can discern no information about the Aberrant!
Round 1:
21 Zanu
19 Caesare
16 Xerice
12 Augustus
11 Risbeth
8 Sonny
5 Aberrant
The Aberrant watches the fleeing party with hateful eyes, but is distracted by Risbeth's taunts and cheers. It leaps forward, its pincers coming toward Risbeth!
Risbeth drives a fist at the abberation as it attacks.
+
Risbeth pounds a fist at the Aberrant, but its thick hide turns aside the force of her blow without causing any damage.
It howls in anger and its pincers flash! for damage and for damage! If either hits, then it gets a grab attempt! and
"Oh, my god, she is in the hands of the beasts. Professor.. any idea??"
There is a sudden sound of crashing, as the folks atop the tower peer over the side to see the Beast crawling up the side of the tower like a great spider! In a moment he is beside the group atop the tower, panting and gasping. "Beast come to help Father! Help Beast help Father!"
Inside the Iron Maiden the faint voice can be heard, "Use the Thrall. Help my son fight the Aberrant. You can make him stronger with the Thrall."
Round 2:
21 Zanu
19 Caesare
16 Xerice
12 Augustus
11 Risbeth
8 Sonny
5 Aberrant
1 Beast
Risbeth gasps in pain. "You may wish to hurry, I will not slow it down much longer... If I rise as an undead, and can't control myself... I apologize in advance for eating you alive..." She grins fiercely, and then pummels the creature again.
"Right, to the top then."
Sonny scurries up the ladder to the device.
"Ok what do we do now?