Jordon grunts, and drags the "prisoner" back to the lobby and over to the stairs, avoiding eye contact with any of the undead he passes.
Upstairs you find a small office area which appears to have been converted into a brig of some sort. Iron bars reinforce wooden walls, and cover the windows of the doors. You can hear the faint moans and whimpers of people inside. On the far side of the room, you see a windowless door with heavy chain locking it closed.
Regaining his bearings, Victor makes another attempt at bursting the door open.
The locked door on the other side of the room shudders under a fierce blow, along with the sound of splintering wood and a pained grunt.
Jordon, hearing the blow, quickly looks around the room and, if he doesn't see any undead around, moves to the door to investigate the bumping.
If he does see any undead, he temporarily ignores the noise and moves to him, whispering to Rekkstuff along the way, "If I give the signal, we take this guy out." He then presents his "prisoner" and says, "Got another to toss in. Open 'er up."
As you investigate the door that just bumped, you hear the faint mutterings of Victor on the other side, cursing at the door and grunting in pain.
Jordon, hearing Victor, knocks on the door, in the first half of a catchy rhythm, waiting to hear the second bit from the other side.
After a moment's hesitation, Victor finishes the rhythm with a returning knock.
Jordon slowly opens the door, peering into the room beyond and hoping he sees who he thinks he will.
Upon spying Victor, Jordon says in an excited whisper (which doesn't match his undead disguise in the least), "Ah, glad to see you made it, my man! We've seen a bit of the place; I think our prisoner is being held in these cells, rather than the forge area beyond."
As soon as Jordon finishes speaking, an alarm sounds, and you hear something shifting up in the ceiling. As you look up, a swarm of tiny black crawling hands pours on top of Jordon and begins pulling and scratching at him.
Jordon panics at the swarm of freakish, clawing, disembodied hands, letting out a high and girly shriek as he tries to bat them off of himself and move away.
Jordon take damage in the surprise round.
Roger will wait for Jordon to get out of the way, in order to not catch him in the cone he's about to unleash. You might want to move, y'know.
The magical shards cut numerous swaths from the swarm of tiny hands, but they continue to crawl all over Jordon.
Swarm Damage:
However Jordon maintains his composure and pulls himself out of the writhing mass of undead appendages, and heals himself.
Victor sees the door open and discovers a couple of zombies freaking out about a bunch of zombie hands. Fortunately, he knows these zombies. But what to do?
*gulp*
Victor casts grease on the enswarmed Jordon, then says "Sorry buddy, but hey, maybe they'll die before you do."
Rekkstuff flies into a rage and swings his axe at the swarm of hands, only destroying a few of them as his blade slices their fingers off.
Attack:
Damage:
Roger barks another fierce word, sending another chord of shards hurtling towards the swarm.
Reflex save:
The hands are heavily thinned out by Roger's blast of magic.
Jordon moves to the door, closing it and summoning a piano in front of it in an attempt to bar any guards who heard the alarm.
The swarm of hands turns toward Roger and begins crawling all over him, leaving greasy fingerprints.
Swarm damage:
"DIE FREAKY FREAKS!"
Victor casts spark, igniting the grease coating the swarm.
Rekkstuff charges Roger and attempts to knock him out of the flaming swarm of undead hands.
Bull Rush:
Roger goes flying 10 feet back, his greasy clothes still burning, and hands falling off of him from the shock of the impact.
Roger, on his turn, will try to put out the flames.
Roger successfully puts out the flames, but the burning swarm starts lurching toward Rekkstuff.
Fire damage:
Swarm Damage to Rekkstuff:
On his go, Jordon fiddles with a bead on his necklace, then, deciding against it, instead moves toward Roger, healing him with a CLW.
Thanks, Jordon.
Victor tries to pull Rekkstuff away from the burning mass of hands.
Rekkstuff beats furiously at his flaming clothes.
Roger readies an action to run through/around it if it comes near.
Swarm burn damage:
The still-smoldering swarm crawls toward Victor and envelops him.
Swarm damage:
Jordon moves to Victor, drawing his wand from his side as he goes and casts CLW from the wand on Victor, staying out of the hands.
Victor shrieks like a little girl as he draws his sword and tries to scrape the remaining hands off of himself.
Victor flails uselessly at the swarm as he screams.
Rekkstuff attacks the swarm again with his axe.
Attack:
Damage:
Despite the reduced effectiveness of his slashes, Rekkstuff deals enough damage to the swarm to cause it to disperse. Now that everyone has stopped screaming, you can all hear the pounding of fists against the piano-blocked door.
Jordon quickly loks around the room, taking stock of what it contains.
Jordon scans over all the cells, then, dropping the disguise, he shouts to the prisoners, "Do any of you know a woman named Elendra?" He doesn't like where this is going; the group can't just take the one guy and leave, but they've no way of getting everyone out. Bothersome indeed.
"It's time to fight, people! End the tyranny of... er... the Boss!"
Victor strides over to the armory door and opens it, gesturing to the racks of weapons inside.
"It's time to arm yourselves!"
Meanwhile, Victor is thinking to himself, "...as long as we can get all those cells open fast..."
You hear only moans from the cells in reply to your pleas.
Heal check:
You realize that they are all in various stages of transformation to undeath.
The wood of the door above the piano begins to splinter as heavy blows rain down on it from the other side, accompanied by shouts.
Jordon, hoping to stall them when the door is busted down, moves to the magically summoned piano and takes out his flask of fine wine. Tearing out the cork, he gives it one quick gulp, a kiss goodbye, then pours it onto the piano. Well, I guess I won't be summoning this particular piano in the future, Jordon thinks to himself. Meanwhile he says to the others, "Get the cells open however you can! When they bust through the door, someone set the piano on fire!" He then moves to the armory to retrieve a dagger or short sword, and work on breaking the locks with it.
Got it.
Roger begins singing, trying to match the resonant frequency of the locks with his voice.
Activate Wordstrike, dealing 1d4+4 damage/ standard action and round of performance expended.
Victor prepares to ignite the piano, in an uncharacteristically non-figurative way.