"Here we are, my hatted companion," the elf said as he bent down to enter Henric's inn room. The gangly cleric was carrying a strange assortment of items, looking nothing so much like a coat rack loaded with paraphernalia. Two metal buckets, several waterskins, some cloth, and a vial with something strongly acidic going by the smell of it. After his failed attempt at finding information on stone houses among the populace, Hal had ambled into the inn a little while ago to find the group and report on his failure. Unfortunately, asking the proprietor to show him to the rooms of, in his own words, 'a tiger-woman, a gentleman with a hat, a very pretty lady whose name I think starts with R, and a nice goblin' didn't yield much in the way of results. He was about to be shown the door when the occultist happened upon the commotion and interceded on his behalf. And it was then that the cleric finally noticed that Henric was not entirely well. Eager to alleviate suffering and ingratiate himself with the party both, Hal promised that he would heal his new compatriot. Somehow this necessitated him leaving and now returning with an armful of pure thrift store.
"Now, firstly: drink this." The elf held out the foul smelling vial. "Not to worry; this is the hard part. Just swallow half of it or so and you'll be well on your way to recovery."
For all of Hal's eccentricities, his bedside manner as physician was not at all bad. The easy smile and dreamy demeanor that could otherwise be so unnerving were instead reassuring qualities in a healer, seeming so at ease as to comfort any patient. Still, it was most likely Audrahni's vouchsafing for the man that really convinced Henric to swallow the concoction.
"Good. Very good," Hal smiled whilst magicking the skins full of water. "You're a model patient, sir. Which is why I'm sorry to tell you that I haven't been entirely truthful with you. That wasn't the hard part. No, that starts now."
The words had nary left the grinning mouth before the occultist felt that not all was right. If the spider venom had lift him with light nausea and muscle cramps, then the ingested brew had transmorphed his guts into live snakes. Now he felt truly sick. The cleric held up the vial.
"I believe the technical term for these is an emetic. It's going to make you vomit, violently and often. Awful stuff. But that's the nature of toxins. Bad stuff goes in, bad stuff has to come out. Medicine can be simple like that sometimes. The body has to be purged and there's no way better. Well, bottoms up."
And just like that the elf drained the rest of the vomit-inducing mixture.
"Blech! Ah ha ha ha hah! Oh, we are in for some fun, my friend. I thought I might as well join you. They say misery loves company, and it seemed awfully unfair to leave you miserable on your own. If you're going to have to spend the next few hours puking and dry-heaving, better to do so with company. So, seeing as we're here, I thought we... excuse me."
Hal grabbed a bucket and voided his stomach. The two were in for a long night.
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It was almost afternoon before the party approached the wreck the following day, owing to the cleric and occultist having a late night. The elf seemed entirely himself, however, looking at the dilapidated house with the polite interest one would give a mediocre art installation.
"We, uh... we have gone through most of this first floor. The Attic Whisperer was upstairs. Hopefully there aren't too many more surprises."
"Heh, attic whisperer," he chortled at Henric's well-meant explanation. "I haven't got the faintest idea what that means."
The joy of the unknown clearly pleased him.
Kiley doesn't wake until late in the morning. It was after midnight when she finally drifted off into dreamless sleep after suffering through a few nightmares. She hardly looks the part of a performer with her dour mood and a cloak pulled low over her head. The march to Roderick's Wreck is a silent one for her, at least until Hal reveals his ignorance about what an Attic Whisperer is.
"It's an undead thing made of bones and rags the size of a child. Its bite can weaken you or steal your voice. The fight we had with it was hard, for several reasons," she explains before taking in a deep breath and leading the way in with Stryn. She keeps an eye and an ear out for anything that signaled the presence of the undead about.
Despite the night literal gut-wrenching, Henric wakes up feeling much more like his usual self. The young scholar makes sure to thank Haelador as they make their way to meet the others, and even goes so far as to offer to pay for breakfast.
------------------------
At the Wreck, Henric has his signature runed staff in hand, taking his place between the stealthy members of the group, and those who are not-so.
The gentleman at the desk promised that he would make the copy for you, and would have it ready by the morning. Sure enough, Henric is able to retrieve the copy of the map the next morning.
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With the return to the Wreck, you decide to check the kitchen, first. Stryn and Kiley cautiously move ahead, the floorboards again creaking loudly under Kiley's feet.
Stryn and Henric's keen eyes spy a mass of what appear to be diseased plant fibers lurking among the moss and fungal growth on the northern wall, which suddenly shake to life and move to attack.
This is a garden ooze, an animate, acidic mass of protoplasmic goo that dwells among foliage and scavenges proteins in the form of carrion or small animals that blunder into its vicinity. Although garden oozes are occasionally found in underground regions near the surface—such as sewers, sinkholes, and shallow caves—these oozes prefer the outdoors. One reason for this is that garden oozes are attracted to large collections of organic material where other tiny creatures might come to scavenge.
They are immune to acid, and share traits similar to other oozes. They are well camouflaged among vegetation, secrete acid that breaks down everything, and can release a foul-smelling cloud of gas.
"Oh," the elf concluded at Kiley's description of the unsettling child-like undead. His ever-present smile faltered. "I think I was happier not knowing that. Hm."
On the subject of happiness, the young woman didn't seem particularly sunny herself which in turn saddened Hal. Dedicated as he was to helping others achieve personal fulfillment through his gospel of joyous oblivion, wonderful futility, and the ecstatic insignificance of mortal-kind, the cleric was distressed to see a companion so morose.
Haunted mansions unfortunately not being conducive for heart-to-heart conversation, however, the elf decided to bite his tongue for now and followed behind Stryn and Kiley. And the two proceeded to lead the party straight to a bizarre seemingly sentient mass of plant-matter. Hal didn't have the faintest idea what this was all about, but two facts stood tall in the confusion: firstly that the creature appeared hostile, and secondly that his knife should be perfectly capable of cutting through some weeds.
Putting his long legs to use, the elf strode forward and sank his dagger into the writing mass.
"Here we go again," Henric says aloud to no one in particular. A little surprised to see the cleric's willingness to wade into combat, Henric steps into the room and lends some of his own power to destroying this plant-.... thing. "Fuego!" he calls out, causing fire to lance out from his staff.
Move Action: Move into room.
Standard Action: Energy Ray vs. TAC
Hal didn't have the faintest idea what this was all about, but two facts stood tall in the confusion: firstly that the creature appeared hostile, and secondly that his knife should be perfectly capable of cutting through some weeds. Putting his long legs to use, the elf strode forward and sank his dagger into the writing mass. He successfully cut some of the thing's fungus.
"Here we go again," Henric says aloud to no one in particular. A little surprised to see the cleric's willingness to wade into combat, Henric steps into the room and lends some of his own power to destroying this plant-.... thing. "Fuego!" he calls out, causing fire to lance out from his staff. The bolt of fire goes quite high, due to how well the thing blends into the vegetation around it and trying not to hit the tall elf before him.
The vegetative thing lets loose a cloud of gas, which blows into Hal's face and lingers.
??? - 16/19
It took little time for Roderic's Wreck to spew more creatures at them. Brarely even Hearing the commotion in the other room, Renae grabbed at her and rushed through the entrance to see Hal stabbing at a garden ooze.
"It's a garden ooze!" She warned the others. "Its touch is acidic and it can emit a gas cloud that can leave you gagging. Stay away from it if you can!"
Move Action: Getting into the room.
Standard Action: Attacking Garden Ooze.
Her explanation done, Renae tried to hit the ooze with a bolt but found that her aim had decidedly not improved over night.
"Garden ooze? Is that what they actually call this thing," Kiley asks as she slips behind Stryn then lunging at the things with the tip of her sword leading.
"It's a garden ooze!" She warned the others. "Its touch is acidic and it can emit a gas cloud that can leave you gagging. Stay away from it if you can!"
"*HUGK* Thank you, Renae. I, uh *HUGK COUGH COUGH* I can verify the gaseous part. Oh dear."
Wiping away at his watering eyes and trying to control the retching sensation, Hal acknowledged the ooze's fumes had him out of commission for now. Well, as a combatant, anyway. The elf wasn't much of a fighter even on the best of days, but he could still be a nuisance. Some seemed to think he was rather good at that. And as he looked to the clearly far more capable Kiley joining him on the front, the cleric decided his best contribution to combat right now would be to aid her.
So Hal reached up to grab a bit of wallpaper slouching off the moisture ridden wall and wrenched a portion of it onto the plant-thing. There. That should distract it.
Henric pulls out his own crossbow and attempts to put a bolt into the ooze.
Stryn, seeing the cloud of whatever it is lingering in the air, decides to stay back as he pulls out his crossbow and loads it. He calls out to the others "Draw it back, then Stryn stab it!"
Kiley’s charge cuts several plant fibers, leaving a gash, and Henric’s bolt finds a vital bit, slaying the ooze, which dissolves into a mass of goo.
Kiley was already moving to take advantage of Hal's trick when Henric's bolt comes whizzing in from the side and causes her to let out a squeak of surprise as she springs back away from the pile of now dead good. After a moment to fully recover from the slight nausea she was feeling and to make sure her voice wouldn't squeak like a little girl's she turns to the scholar and chuckles.
"Well aimed, if not well timed," she says with smile, feeling a little more like herself with the moment of levity.
The look of shock on his face is clear as he takes stock in his shot. When Kiley jokes with him, he looks at her, giving a bit of a goofy grin. "Guess I don't know my own strength... uh... or aim?"
"Yes indeed," Hal chimed in, briefly stopping to clear his aching throat. "That all went quite well."
One monster gone and everyone unharmed. The elf's eerie smile looked entirely justified for once. Still wanting to he helpful though, he then set about giving the room a quick once-over to find anything of interest...
... but unfortunately did not get far before being distracted. Poking the dead goo sent jiggles through its translucent flesh that the cleric evidently found rather amusing.
Seeing the thing dead and once the gas clears Stryn puts the crossbow away and actually checks the room instead of the elves cursory look.
When he is sure there isn't anything else of interest he shakes his head to the elf. "One more room we skip. Check it first."
When the others are ready he will sneak ahead to check out the room to the south of the eastern staircase.
In the back hall, Stryn finds the boarded up door to a closet with a missing knob, and the other door leads out to what looks like a dock of some kind.
Henric follows Stryn, crossbow stored and staff in hand, giving the goblin some room to work.
Well at least that encounter was resolved expeditiously," Renae says with no small amount of relief. In her experience, garden oozes tended to be more dangerous the longer they had time to emit their vile toxins and gasses.
Quickly moving away from the ooze's corpse, which was now just a foul smelling puddle, Renae followed the others as they made their way toward the dock.
Kiley follows Stryn to the dock.
This ruined deck clings to the side of the house and hangs at an angle four feet above the ground. Boards are missing, and though the deck once led to a place to dock a boat, now nothing but pilings and scattered boards remain.
Not wanting to brave the clearly dangerously rotting dock, Hal nevertheless tried looking about the area for anything of interest. Unfortunately, what the priest found interesting was a wide category indeed, and he was momentarily distracted by some reeds gently billowing in the breeze. They looked like dancers if you stared at them from the right angle. And were mad enough.
Stryn shrugs not directly seeing anything of interest or danger then turns back to the others "Closet or up?"
"The closet. I'll feel better knowing this floor is clear. I don't suppose anyone sees anything useful," Kiley asks as she scans the wreckage.
Kiley doesn't notice anything useful, but she does notice a pair of some kind of weird lobster-eels swimming around under the dock.
These are reefclaws, a lobster-eel hybrid more intelligent than your normal animals.
The door to the closet has been boarded over. The doorknob was broken off and a steel spike driven into what used to be a lock. Fortunately, the wood looks rotten, so it should be easy to break.
Henric readies his staff once more when they are standing in front of the closet door. "Thoughts?" he asks, a small bead of sweat dripping down the side of his face.
"Thoughts?" he asks, a small bead of sweat dripping down the side of his face.
"... It's a closet?" Hal offered tentatively, not really seeing any cause for alarm here. While it was true the elf spent much of his time contemplating the obliteration of the multiverse and so had a fairly skewed understanding of what constituted a real threat, he still ranked storage cupboards somewhere below 'magically animated pillow' in terms of perils.
And a cursory glance at the closed door revealed nothing overly interesting.
"Should we open it?"
Henric watches the strange elf attempt to open the closet on his own for a moment, then steps forward to help.
Unfortunately, he can't seem to get a firm grip to be of much use.
"I think we'll let the strange lobster-eel things have whatever is on or under the dock," Kiley says as she turns around and sighs as both Henric and Hal struggle with the door.
"No, you do it like this," she says before demonstrating how to brute-force a door.
With so many of the others trying to open the door, Stryn stands back with his crossbow at the ready. He chuckles at both Hal and Henric's attempts, but when Kiley goes to work he gives her an approving nod and a grin.
As Henric struggles at the door, he hears the sound of water churning behind the door. Before he can say anything, Kiley demonstrates how to break down a door, smashing it, revealing a closet that appears to be full of water that suddenly rushes out, enveloping Hal, Kiley, and Henric.
Henric gets slammed by the torrent of water, but manages to avoid getting completely engulfed.
Hal's surreptitious little smile, that seemingly permanent feature of his face, initially turned from ambiguous to overt as Kiley shattered the door. Every white tooth was on display as the elf beamed in wonder and delight. Water inside a closet, just standing by its own volition like a transparent tank? Oh, what fun!
But like all amusement, it was short-lived. The cleric's grin shrunk into an anxious little frown as he noticed that the liquid was rather less than stable.
Hal managed to hop aside easily enough as the cascade poured out of the cupboard, primarily due to Kiley taking his place directly in front of the door. As he watched the stream, however, a thought suddenly occurred to him.
Hold on. Water... in the closet. A closet full of water. A water-closet.
"Is this a pun?" the elf asked out of the blue, seemingly addressing no-one at all, but really intending the question for the spirit that supposedly haunted this place. Hal didn't have any strong feelings one way or the other when it came to the undead, but lethal puns? Outrageous. Even he had to draw a line somewhere.
Renae was just about to congratulate Kiley on busting through the door when a torrent of water surged out of it!
The wizard wanted to run into the rush and help her friends but reason told her that such a move should have been folly given the likeliness she would be just be overwhelmed as well, even if by some miracle she made it in time to pull them out of the way.
"Kiley, Henric, Hal!" She spoke their names urgently. "Are you all alright?"
Kiley only has a moment to realize her folly before the wall of water slams into her and sends her tumbling back into Henric. She manages to keep from being swept away, but the torrent has ruined her disguise, revealing a pair of tiger-like ears of auburn and black stripes with tufts of white within and a now drenched feline tail coming from underneath the scarves around her waist. She splutters for a moment after being caught by Henric and looks to him and Hal.
"I think I am. Sorry about the scare though," she apologizes before asking, "Why are you all looking at me like that?"
Henric lays on the ground, hat half-covering his face, Kiley sitting on his chest. He coughs and sputters as he clears the water from his lungs and lifts his hat from his face just in time to get slapped in the face with a wet, cat-like tail. This causes more coughing and sputtering for a moment as he clears his vision and airways once more. Finally, he looks up to see a strange Kiley-shaped cat-person looking down at him. "Oh, uh... that's uh, that's new. Did you get your hair done last night at some point? It, uh.... it... ummm. looks.... good." It is unclear if the scholar's flustered demeanor is because of the sudden revelation, or the fact that he suddenly has a young girl (cat-girl, it seems) sitting on his chest.
Stryn is shocked at the sudden rush of water from behind the door. He wonders Who the heck keeps water locked in a closet... When it is clear everyone is ok, Kiley asks why everyone is looking at her oddly which promptly draws Stryns attention.
To answer her question he points to her head and then his own ears, then makes a hand motion to imitate a tale.
Kiley's face flushes as she reaches up with one hand to find her ears uncovered and the scarf half untied and tangled with her hair and down with the other to find her tail free of the concealing scarves around her waist.
"I guess the cat's out of the bag, huh," she jokes weakly as she begins trying to untangle and wring out her scarves.
After smacking into Kiley and Henric, the water forms itself into an orb-like shape and swirls angrily. Fortunately, no one was caught in it, or else they may have drowned. After several seconds, the water disperses, soaking the floor and dripping through gaps in the floorboards.
You suspect this was not, in fact, a natural water effect, but a type of supernatural manifestation of Roderic's grief and pain known as a haunt. You suspect the effect will likely recreate itself after a certain period of time, remaining indefinitely until Roderic's ghost can find peace in the afterlife.
The behavior of that water was remarkably similar to an aqueous orb spell.
Flushed out of the closet you notice a pair of fine red silken slippers that seem to have survived their immersion in water surprisingly well - much better than silk should have, at any rate.
Kiley shudders at the display, but when nothing more seems to come of it, she continues to wring out her clothes as much as she can while wearing them.
"So, anyone want to see what's up with the slippers," She asks as she finishes getting the water out of her scarf. "They look like new, and I thought no one really came here."
Relieved that everyone is alright but not entirely sure that Kiley wants to have this conversation to continue given what transpired between them last night, Renae promptly started to explain the likely cause of the sudden water attack.
"Ahem. For those curious about why some of us just get splashed with a lot of water that was trapped in a closet of all things, I have a theory. The attack mirrors the effects of an aqueous orb spell, but I theorize that no true arcanist cast it here as a trap. More likely that not it was a symptom of Sir Roderic's spirit lingering here. His grief made manifest... and dangerous."
"And this is why I didn't want to come here. Nothing good ever comes from messing with the dead."
Kiley tries to squeeze a little more water from her clothes, but nothing comes out that isn't immediately soaked back up by the fabric. Annoyed, she looks at the others and asks, "any of you have a way to dry us out more quickly?"
Henric eventually gets himself up off the floor, still a little flustered from the close encounter. He doesn't pay much attention to his wet clothes, thankful that his coat and hat are treated to repel at least some of the water.
Finally, Henric approaches the slippers, and offers his expertise. [b]"If you like, I can try to read the aura on these, to see what they are all about.
"any of you have a way to dry us out more quickly?"
"I'm not entirely sure. Let's find out," the cleric said as he began fumbling for something at his chest. It proved to be a simple wooden disk, roughly carved, hung around the neck by string. It was inlaid with a grey marble-like stone, unremarkable in every way save perhaps its contours giving the vague impression of a skull. This the elf clutched and then set his usually so dreamy expression into a deeply concentrated frown.
For a second this resulted in absolutely nothing. Then the light became apparent beneath Hal's hand. Then it became apparent through his hand. The holy symbol was glowing furiously and only growing brighter. Like the cascade pouring out of the closet, the light seemed to reach some sort of upper limit and burst out from the cleric in radiant rays that rattled the damp walls before fading.
"Did that help?"
It honestly didn't. While the light had carried some heat, as all energy channeled straight from the Plane of Positive Energy should, it wasn't nearly enough to dry clothing in an instant. It did, however, immediately alleviate all the bumps and bruises Henric and Kiley had suffered in the miniature flood.
"Hm. Sorry to disappoint."
Stryn nods when Kiley mentions gathering the slippers and he is glad to see Henric take them for a closer look.
He gives them a cursory look while Henric is examining them just to get an idea for if they might be worth something.
With no where else to go in the lower level Stryn points to the stairs "Up now?"
"No, Hal. It did help, though not with the clothes," Kiley says, trying to cheer the cleric up as she does her best to rearrange her scarves to cover her inhuman features while still allowing them to dry.
"Yeah, and let's hope Roderick isn't in too bad of a mood," Kiley answers Stryn before giving him a nervous smile, "so the two of us looking ahead?"
Henric fails to get any sense of a magic aura, but Stryn is able to determine that a pair of silk slippers like this could probably sell for around 50 gp - especially since they don't seem to have any stains or mud on them. In fact, once they dry out, they'll probably be in immaculate condition.
Stryn and Kiley lead the way up the stairs and back to the landing, where they find everything much as they'd left it the day before. The door to the room the attic whisperer had been in was still open, and there were four rooms left to investigate.
Stryn sneaks over to the door that was open to see if the attic whisperer was still waiting inside.