All the bigger leeches manage to avoid the full brunt of the damage however the swarm can't move out the way enough and takes further damage. All of the remaining leeches freezing and falling out the sky.
Drak then moves in and kills one of the giant leeches leaving two shrieking from the cold Rikaku just left in his wake.
Jazz moves in and attacks another one of the leeches.
He also takes down another leech. All that's left is another giant leech and the creature tied to the ceiling.
The last giant leech is cleaved in two as Malthu brings down his might axe. The creature above them is still groaning in pain.
Well I hate to be the bearer of bad news but whatever that creature is on the ceiling it appears to be a nest for these things. Rikaku! Freeze it
Perhaps we should keep our distance and put that creature out of its' misery, Rybal says with pity in his voice. He backs up and draws a spear, throwing it at the stomach of the chained "thing".
Rybal throws a spear through the creature and it hits it with a slimy squelch. It writhes around in pain but you are unsure if it is more wounded than before.
Variel throws down his salt and draws his longbow, readying an arrow.
Clarence looks around the room, trying to see if there is any route up to the thing on the ceiling, or if he should instead gorge himself on the dead leeches on the floor and let the two-legs fight it out.
Trogg summons a ball of flame into his hand and launches part of it at the creature on the ceiling, trying to hit and hopefully cauterize the most leech infested areas.
Clarence clambers up part of the wall before resting on top of a bookcase within body reach of the creature, he is able to swipe the creature if need be.
Trogg sets part of the creature on fire and it continues to groan as the stench of searing, bloated flesh fills the room.
The creature cries some more then you hear it retching, it throws up putrid puss ridden vomit towards the doorway. Covering them in this rotting disgusting muck. After the creature finishes vomiting a massive wasp crawls out of its mouth and rests on its head. The wasps starts beating its wings ready to take off.
All that were covered in the vomit hold back the urge to hold throw up themselves, Rybal seems not to be phased from the vile stench. Probably smells no different to half-orcs that haven't showered for weeks.
Fort Save
Variel falls to his knees, hugging the bow to his chest as he too heaves the contents of his stomach to the floor.
Suddenly covered by a disgusting mess, Rikaku begins to retch, whimpering and shuddering. However, he recovers himself enough to oblige the order to destroy the terrible and disgusting vomiting corpse thingy in the ceiling. Blue flames leap from his mouth and collect in his hands, and Rikaku roars (if you could call it that) as the amassed rimefire surges together into a powerful, chilling blast.
Trogg targets the wasp with a blast of flame.
Rybal shakes off the goo and moves forward, striking at the feet and belly of the creature.
Drak will move to the edge of the room while invisible, stealthing and waiting for a good moment to get in position and strike.
Rybal has difficulty trying to figure out what the creature is exactly. It was human at some point he thinks, but something changed along the way. It hasn't become a new creature more it has been altered to become this nest-like thing for leeches. As far as he can tell it is perfect for them as it seems to be magically regenerating.
Trogg figures out the regeneration but knows as well that the wounds will stay open with salt similar to the leeches themselves.
Clarence, Trogg and Rybal all attack the creature with other people readying themselves to strike. The creature's blood starts to boil and the group can here bubbles forming and exploding as the walls splatter with blood. It looks as if it is preparing something soon. The wasp flies down to engage Malthu but gets swatted by both Malthu while Rybal swats ineffectually. It does not go down from the strike however and tries to sting Malthu.
The stinging attack however misses. Drak then invisibly moves to flanking position with the Malthu.
"Hit it with salt," calls out Trogg as he throws another ball of fire ceiling-ward.
Clarence continues to tear into the humanoid, unbothered by the strangeness of the whole situation.
Drak will then tumble away from the bug, heading outside the barricade to get some more salt to throw.
Rikaku tries to keep piling on the cold flames into the disgusting thing on the roof, but a sudden pain wracks his stomach and he is unable to do anything but bowl over and gag.
The wasp is cleaved into two pieces as Malthu cuts it in half. His earlier detect evil shows nothing evil about these creatures. Perhaps they were created in some evil ritual but they themselves are not. Maybe they are defending themselves just like animals would.
"We should slay that thing up there, and risk whatever the consequence may be. It's only going to keep spawning these little problems, and we might as well deal with them all at once while we have the chance."
"Can Clarence slash it down?" he asks Trogg, looking carefully at the badger to seemingly gauge if it'd rather he'd addressed the ferocious little monster directly.
"Unlikely. The chain's probably quite strong."
Since the bug was THOROUGHLY killed by Malthu - Drak will listen to the dwarf, looking to get rid of whatever poor creature is on the roof being used as a nest.
Drak moves to where the salt is , drops his weapons and grabs more salt.
Variel staggers to his feet and moves out of the foul corrupt fluids before sending an arrow into the chained morbid creature.
Bow
Dmg
Rybal strikes again at the creature, then backs away.
Variel manages to hit the creature though it barely pierces it due to Variel not pulling the string as far back as he should. Rybal also manages to swing and take off a good portion of its leg. The creature's blood is boiling audibly loud now. The blood starts to spit like a oil over a fire. Finally the group can hear gurgling of blood reach its mouth, then finally the creature vomits out a spike of coagulated blood at Rybal.
The spike shears straight through Rybal. Rybal feels that something dangerous has entered his body.
Though he manages to resist whatever it might have been. While Rybal is reeling, Drak takes the salt and throws it at the creature. The bone and sinew of the creature begin to give way. The creature was only being held up by its regeneration. The body starts to collapse and crunch underneath the weight of the chain before it splits open. Falling off the chain it lands in a crumpled heap on the ground, with its own weight crushing the life out of it until it gasps a last few times before dying.
With time now the group can look around the room, it is a small atelier to a mage of some kind. There is a table set up on one side of the room with a circle seen next to it. The circle is complete but is waiting for activation as Trogg discovered the day before. On the table is a set of equipment used to distill ingredients for spell components and the like.
Adjacent to the table is a set of shelves with some common supplies for casting, however Variel discovers that some of the reagents for the circle are here too. This circle must've been a common practice in the room to have it here so readily.
Trogg and Variel could activate this circle between them if they so chose to see what it does.
There is a small bed in this room as well with a painting of Dragash and what the group presumes to be his mother on his left. The painting shows another hand coming around Dragash to his other side. However the painting has been torn so you can't see who was by his other side. Since this looks like a family painting presumably it is his father.
Looking up at the chain there seems to be some iconography on it in the centre. The creature was previously encapsulating this iconography with its body so it is drenched with blood. The group can't really make it out but perhaps the group could find a way to clean it, though it is 15 feet up and 7 feet away from the wall.
What would the group like to do?
Vvariel uses a healing hex on any who wants it.
Rybal retrieves his spear and wipes off the goo, waving away Variel's healing efforts. I'm fine, treat the others.
"This very well might be a portal, Malthu. The other magic circles we've encountered in these parts certainly were."
"There appears to be something on the chain up there. Anyone have any ideas how to get it down without going through the ceiling?"
Trogg glances around the room, looking for books that might explain what is going on around here - what the portal does, why the humanoid was chained to the ceiling, more sections of Snow's diary, etc.
Rikaku looks up at the design on the ceiling, if only to avoid closely investigating the remains of the horrible vomiting thing. "Rikaku wonder if could fly up there..." The kobold's tiny little wings twitch emphatically.
There may be no need for that... the flying I mean.
Variel uses his mage hand cantrip to see if he can recover the icon.
He then looks at the circle.
I am not positive we want to activate that circle - it could be a door to somewhere we need to get to as much as a gate for something unfortunate to come through to us. Let us see what can be found first here in this house...
He looks for books among the furniture or any concealed compartments that may hold books.
We want a closer look at that chain? Let me see what I can do.
Drak tries to jump up and grab the chain.
He will see if he can figure out a way to bring the chain down to the rest of the group
(10+11 -> 21)
Trogg inspects the room closer, the painting is on the wall. Indeed there is a gap between the wall and the bed. Looking underneath there Trogg spots a small chest () that has been sealed quite tightly to the bottom of the bed frame. The chest is currently locked. The bookcases are free standing, looking through the books and at the circle Trogg can see that the circle is similar though not like the ones they spotted in the tunnel and in the tower. This one likely serves a different purpose, as to what he doesn't know. Looking through the books he finds most of them are about arcane theory of some kind.
Unfortunately Trogg's knowledge of the arcane is a little too rudimentary to understand what the books are going on about. However because of chapter headings and the title's of the books he does know that they are about divination magic.
Variel however understands that these are ritual circles for communication. They are beyond his ability to prepare himself however but he understands the concept. There are three ritual circles in one here, one is to divine the location of who it communicating too, one to open a link for communication and one to make sure the components aren't all expended, just the primer. Some very complex magic but set up in a way that anyone could use it if they knew at least the basic casting to complete the circle. Who is on the other side?, Variel wonders.
Drak just before jumping gets Rybal to make a foothold with his hands and gives Drak a leg up to the chain. With their combined efforts Drak grabs hold of the chain. Drak looks at the chain up and down slowly climbing towards the edges of the chain that are in the wall. Drak can tell that the chain has been rusted quite a bit however the bolts holding the metal plate that the chain is attached to can still move. With his tools he can undo them.
One side of the chain comes clear and falls to the ground, any of the group that are nearby can easily dodge the falling metal. Drak runs to up the other side quite easily now that the chain is down and undoes the other end. The chain now left on the floor the group can get about cleaning it.
Cleaning the away the coagulated blood and dead leeches the group sees the symbol underneath. It is one that even the more knowledgeable of them is unfamiliar with. The icon is a picture of a hand holding up an orb, within the centre of the orb is mist.
Malthu does not recognize what the symbol means or who it belongs to but does realize it is heraldry. Thus this is likely denote someone's noble house or status, who or what he doesn't know.
"There's something under the bed that won't come loose easily. Anyone want to try their luck at it?"
Trogg looks behind the painting and the bookcases, searching for anything out of place.
He also examines the body, trying to figure out what it once was (human, elf, dwarf, etc.).
Trogg takes a look at the body, the scariest thing about it is the bones aren't linked up to muscles anymore. Which is why the creature is just a heap on the ground, the bones seem to be floating in the flesh. If Trogg wanted to he could probably just remove a bone by pulling hard enough. Trogg figures out that this used to be a human woman.