"Caaaw! Ca-caw!!"
Aeryc and Kadar hear sounds of loud caws and chaotic flapping from somewhere further in the house. Is it a caw of alarm? Or is it just a regular raven-thrown-down kind of caw? It is hard to tell.
Kadar casts light on a weapon that Aeryc can sheath, and then beckons to Quilmop.
He says to Aeryc: "Let's do this," and transforms into a saber-tooth tiger.
He snarls, tensing down on his haunches, gesturing towards the door.
By the light of the pebble, Aeryc and Kadar can see that through the open door, the dining room beyond is also in more disarray than before. The large mahogany table has been upended, as have several chairs, and a stained glass window depicting a gnarled tree with an enraged face has been cracked down the middle. Shards of colored glass have spilled over the floor. There are no signs of blood that you can see from here, but the door frame between the library and dining room shows long gouge marks, as if from powerful claws.
The cawing and flapping sounds continue from further in the house, echoing a little eerily in the shadowy creaky mansion. It sounds as if the noise is coming from downstairs somewhere.
Aeryc hears nothing new. He creeps into the dining room.
To the left there is the main hallway. In the middle of the hallway, a gaping hole looms, where the undead woman from the attic clawed her way through the floor. On either side of the hallway there is a door. The door to the right is open, and Aeryc can see there are stairs leading down.
It sounds like the noise of the raven versus rat fight is coming from down those stairs, so Aeryc creeps closer, and down the first few stairs. Peering with the aid of a sliver of light from his light-imbued sheathed weapon, he can just make out Picks-At-Scabs delivering a death blow to a diseased looking rat in a large room at the bottom of the stairs. Aeryc will have to go further to see what the room looks like.
Before Aeryc has time to do anything else, he sees an unsettling movement coming from the moldering plaster in the wall at the bottom of the stairs. The plaster shakes free in a cloud of dust, and a fat, diseased, deformed rat falls through the newly widened crack, and into the room beyond. It sniffs the air and launches itself at the raven, screeching high and loud.
If he has initiative, Aeryc intends to dispatch this rat quickly and get P@S out of harm's way and then return to the group to report. If not he would assume more rats would be on the way and try to withdraw and flee back to the party quietly with P@S. (Perhaps trying to get the rat to pursue.)
Quilmop wakes from what appears to have been a daze. It's something to do with the reincarnation, no doubt. His hands begin to smoke as he prepares a flaming sphere....
From the doorway between the library and the dining room, Kadar and Quilmop can just see Aeryc drawing his bow to loose at something down the stairs...
(+2 favored enemy assuming the rat is undead, +1 point blank)
Kadar is concerned about his née Gnome friend, and thus will hold his action to attack anything that comes within pounce radius that appears to be approaching or threatening Quilmop, using Claws for flanking and one attack. If something threatens Quilmop but cannot be charged, Claws will move first for flanking and attack, and then Kadar will follow for one regular attack. If nothing threatens Quilmop, Kadar will attempt to pounce on any target, from most threatening-seeming to least, before his turn comes again. Finally, Kadar, as the fourth condition, will do the same without pounce. If any of the threats strike Kadar as menacing (not sure what the exact criteria are here - basically large in number or size), Kadar will rage.
Chook! Chook! Kek-kek-kek!!!
Quilmop is less and less excited by the prospect of a fight with diseased rats. If everyone rushes that rat down the stairs, he will hang back and keep his readied action.
Kadar, tail lashing, hears sounds of thumping and cawing from down the stairs, but nothing immediately emerges to pounce on.
Quilmop backs away from the sound, flaming sphere hovering over his hand.
From the top of the stairs, Aeryc looses his arrow, but with a weak sounding "twang", it flops at his feet and bounces down the stairs. (For a moment, Aeryc remembers sniggers in Jargie's Tavern in Sandpoint, as the locals whisper his new his nickname to each other: "Second-Shot"...)
Kadar, Quilmop and Aeryc then hear a low, slightly slimy, thudding, sussuration in the walls of the creaky old manor. It starts low and builds quickly, punctuated by disgusting high pitched squeaks.
A swarm of diseased rats floods into the room below Aeryc. The plaster comes loose all over in clouds of white and grey dust: they are coming out of the walls! Aeryc's target disappears in the fray of bodies. It is hard to say how many there are: there must be several hundred! Their tiny oily misshapen bodies slither over each other as they hop and snap blindly, trying to grab the raven in their midst.
Picks-At-Scabs squawks, and flaps back up the stairs and over Aeryc's shoulder. The rat swarm pursues, flooding up the stairs, and the first rats are almost within biting distance of Aeryc.
Kadar recalls that swarms can be dangerous if you don't have a good greatclub handy, or fire: because there are so many creatures it is harder to slash and impale them quickly and efficiently. If they are really very diminutive creatures it is hopeless to try and stamp them out one by one.
These rats look tiny, but perhaps not diminutive.
(What is the difference between a tiny creature and a diminutive one? That is a question for the shamans...)
Quilmop will spin up his fireball over the swarm if at all possible (doing what Aeryc suggested by ceding his initiative...)
If Kadar sees Quilmop begin to cast a spell, he will assume it has something to do with the swarm and hold his action to pounce if the rats (or anything else) get close to Aeryc or Quilmop. If both Aeryc and Quilmop take their turns without being threatened by the rats, Kadar will pounce directly after whichever of them is latest in the initiative order, using Claws for flanking if applicable.
Okay, then Aeryc will withdraw to a suitable point in the room that is sufficiently distant from the staircase and ready an action with a flaming burst arrow in the event any of the swarm either get past the flaming sphere that is presumably about to block the stairs, or if any rats begin to seep in through other cracks, plaster, etc.
Is knowledge: nature the skill to use for understanding some of the idiosyncrasies of swarms? If so: to either assist Kadar, or directly remind him that flanking will flunk when it comes to swarms.
Aeryc manages to cry out to Kadar: "It's a swarm! Flanking will flunk!"
Aeryc dances back up the stairs and into the dining room, readying an arrow with his back to the overturned furniture. Picks-at-Scabs flaps around his head cawing (curses? encouragement? advice? It is hard to tell).
Hundreds of rats surge up the staircase and into the dining room, right on the heels of Aeryc, their pale deformed bodies flopping disgustingly over each other in their haste to devour him. Most appear blind; all appear crazed and hungry. On some of them one can see a complex-patterned mold growing, much like the one that grew in the middle of the hallway on this level (before the undead attic lady clawed her way through that part of the floor).
From his vantage point near the door from the library, Quilmop interrupts the rats' progress by rolling a flaming sphere through their midst at the entryway to the stairs from which they came.
Flaming Sphere.
Quilmop takes a five-foot step diagonally, to stand on Kadar's right (per the map) if he can squeeze through the doorway.
The rolling ball of fire scorches scores of rats as they rush heedlessly into the dining room, and a truly heinous stench fills the air: a mix of burned flesh, open infected wounds, and rotten mold spores.
And yet they keep coming! How many could the creepy basement hold?
Aeryc releases an arrow at the rats, which explodes as fire in their midst. Charred bodies are hurled to all sides.
Between Quilmop's magical ball of fire and Aeryc's flaming arrow, at least ten score rats must have perished. And yet they keep coming! There must be swarms of swarms down there!
Claws charges in for one talon swipe.
Concerned by the sheer number of diseased rats, Kadar enters a bloodrage as a free action. Including this round, he has eight rounds remaining.
Kadar, saber-tooth teeth gnashing, hurls himself at the fetid mass.
The moldering hallway and dining room are now scenes of carnage. Tiger and dinosaur rake through the waves of rats in great sweeps, sending chunks of rat meat into the the air on all sides. In a matter of moments the floor becomes a mess of blood and half-recognizable smashed and slashed bodies.
Kadar looks up for a moment, crunching down on those unfortunate rats struggling to escape his maw, to see the swarm's flow ebb slightly. Then a new wave of diseased rodents surges up the stairs and around the corner.
Kadar and Claws bite and claw furiously at the horde as it surges up and over them. The rats crawl up Kadar and Claws's flanks, leap onto their bodies and heads, and bite and scratch back with equal fury.
Claws goes into a frenzy of slashing talons as the rats surround him, sending misshapen rat parts in all directions.
Kadar shakes off the rats clinging desperately to his forepaws, and hunkers down low, mouth gaping wide, in front of Quilmop's magical ball of fire. As waves of singed rats scamper out of the flames, Kadar gulps them down, crunching as he goes, sweeping the stragglers into his maw with his paws. Tens, then scores of rats find their death in those jaws.
For a moment, it looks as thought Kadar will be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers. Then, just as quickly as they appeared, the rodent swarm dissipates. The clicking of tiny talons can be heard all over as rats scamper in all directions, looking for places to hide in the walls and corners of the old mansion.
Everything is still, apart from the sound of Kadar disgorging his disgusting meal - a truly horrifying sight.
If Kadar is OK, he'll nudge Aeryc in the direction of the stairs (if that is the way we went down last time, I can't recall), waiting for Aeryc's light source before he proceeds. Kadar will attempt to perceive threats along the way.
Quilmop will follow Aeryc and Kadar down the stairs, but he's hanging back maybe 10 feet or so. He's not traumatized per se, but he did just die here a bit ago, and he's not super happy to be back.
Aeryc creeps down the stairs, with just a sliver of light showing. Picks-at-Scabs takes a perch on his shoulder, and looks around all over for stray rats. No sign of them; they must have crawled back in the walls. The rest of the party follows, Quilmop bringing up the rear at a safe distance.
Kadar perceives no immediate threats.
The stairs open out into a large room. A large oaken table, its surface covered with moldy stains and rat droppings, sits in the center of this large kitchen. Shelves line the walls, and an oversized fireplace dominates the northeast portion of the room. The shelves in the southwest wall are in a much greater state of disarray, and two one foot wide cracks in the wall near the floor lead south into the earth beyond the basement walls.
The rats probably use those cracks to get around.
Quilmop suggests trying out the door on the western wall (going into B27)
Aeryc takes 10 for a perception check (21) and searches the kitchen for secret passages or trap doors. (Especially behind the fireplace.)
As soon as Kadar realizes that they haven't been down these stairs before, he mews a bit and gestures back up the stairs, hoping to get back to where they went the first time (through the hole? Intelligence check??).
Aeryc searches the kitchen, whilst Kadar mews and looks pointedly back up the stairs. Everyone recalls that last time they climbed down from the hole in the hallway on the level above, which was made by the undead attic lady. That hole led to a spiral staircase, but you don't see a spiral staircase round here. This kitchen is definitely new territory.
In a cupboard near the kitchen's oven, Aeryc finds a very fine silver dinner set and a dozen crystal decanters. Looks fancy!
No secret doors are revealed, but the chimney of the fireplace has a loose brick. Prying it loose, Aeryc finds a small urn inside. The urn contains some dried pine cones and three small violet garnets.
Picks-At-Scabs nabs a pine cone, and refuses to return it to the urn. He worries at it busily while Aeryc continues his search.
Not hearing otherwise from his comrades, Quilmop unwisely walks over to the door and jiggles the handle.
LOOT FROM FOXGLOVE MANOR KITCHEN
- A very fine silver dinner set and a dozen crystal decanters
- Some dried pine cones and three small violet garnets
Quilmop jiggles the handle, and the handle comes loose and falls at his feet as the door swings wide.
On the other side of the door is a small rectangular room. Once a pantry, the room has become a filthy, reeking lair of what must be hundreds, if not thousands, of rats. Swaths of fur cling to everything, and mounds of rat droppings cover the floor.
There are no full grown rats in here now. But as the door bumps fully open against the wall, there is furtive movement in amongst the fur and faeces. Quilmop hears the sound of quiet, high-pitched squeaks coming from under the mess in the middle of the room.
A diminutive baby rat emerges from the rat nest close to Quilmop's feet, glares at him with misshapen red eyes, and rushes forward. Then another. Then ten. A score! A swarm of diminutive deformed baby horror rats surge out, desperate for tasty goblin meat! It seems they haven't eaten in days.
Kadar and Aeryc can just make out the scrabbling swarm as it rushes Quilmop. They realize these horrid little monsters will surely be too small to stamp out one by one.