"I wouldn't be surprised if he is in the storage room and he's not allowing you to enter it yet." one of them responds, looking around cautiously and suddenly fearful of speaking out against him.
"Sorry, I didn't mean it. Please don't take my hands away again." it says to no one in particular.
Bidding them farewell, the party moves southwest down a long corridor until they come across a monstrous contraption of wooden beams and steel plates that occupies the east side of this noticeably chilly room. Narrow shelves hold containers of ink, sheets of paper, and boxes with small metal cubes, each cube bearing a single letter. A door opens to the west.
Lola stops suddenly, a strange look in her eyes, which clears after a few moments. She glances at Marya, who seems to be enthralled in the same way, ”mierda, these traps - Marya! Snap out of it!” She grabs at her new friend, trying to restrain her. ”Help me if you can everyone!”
Marya is entranced and drawn towards the machine, her hands outstretched.
Coral tries to grab hold of Marya and restrain her.
Seeing Marya drawn to the magic, Lola tries to grab her as well. ”no no, ignore the loco sign. It is a trick.”
Lola is able to resist the urge and even call out to Marya, but it's too late as the cleric is drawn to the strange press. The press opens up as Marya sticks her hands into the gnashing platen which clamps down on her arms and deals to her!
Pulling the injured Marya away from the machine, the press stops moving again. Looking around you find six vials of ink are worth 30 gp each, and 100 sheets of fancy paper are worth 1 gp each. A rod lay on the ground underneath the press that looks like it has been forgotten.
Marya winces as the pain wakes her from the hypnotizing draw of the machine and she screams. She instinctively kicks the machine as she tries to wave the pain off her hands. "F%&+ING F%+~. HOLY F#*% that hurts. Ugh...." She begins casting a spell to try to fix her hands. "Hey Vlad, why don't you take that adamantine warhammer and bash this f&&#ing thing to pieces before it does that to someone else?"
Her hands mend quickly due to the spell, though not as completely as she would hope.
Feena watch in horror as Marya approached the printing press only to have it try to eat her! She realized then that this scriptorium was a true nightmare, a blaspheme that needed to be purified, preferably with fire, lots of fire. In fact she was ready to do it, so close to violating the sanctity of what the place likely once was, but she managed to withhold her fiery vengeance...for now.
Feena re-directed herself to looking for anything of interest while keeping a wide berth between herself and the evil press. She spotted a rod beneath the press and tried to figure out how to reach it while keeping her distance. She wasn't sure if the rod was magical so she didn't think a simple mage's hand would work. Instead she thought it through and prestidigitated a tiny whirlwind that pushed the rod out from beneath the press and across the room to her.
Feena bent and examined the rod magically before deciding if she should touch it directly.
Coral looks on in horror as Marya's hands are mangled. Why did she do that??
At Marya's demand that Vlad smash the printing press, Coral looks a bit concerned, but bites her tongue.
Damian turns around from his examination of some parchment sheets just in time to see Marya's hands mangled in the printing press. "What happened? Did it attack you?" Thinking it another animated construct, he aims an arrow at it as Vlad starts smashing it with his hammer.
The party retrieves the rod while Vlad smashes the press into a million pieces. The rod turns out be a rod of ice which was causing the unnatural chill in the room.
Moving west, you find a a square room that contains nooks at varying heights in the west wall, each containing a candle with an eerie, green-hued flame. Several thin mats cover the floor near the nooks. A narrow archway in the north wall leads into a garden, while doors stand in the east and south walls.
Coral searches the nooks in the small square room, and under the thin mats.
Upon seeing the garden, she agrees with Vlad. "It is nice to see something growing here. We do have some more doors in this room to come back to, but we can check out the garden." The halfling moves alongside Vlad, ready to defend him against any unseen threats.
Marya shakes her head at Damian's question. "More or less. It's fine now."
Marya sighs. "It's probably a trap to make us lower our guard."
Having picked up the rod and examined it Feena said, "Well now, this is rather nice. It's a rod that freezes things. Mostly it's just used to touch someone with it to cause a little harm via the cold but it can be used to make a large patch of ice that functions like a grease spell would." Feena looked at the rod in delight as it was something she could use to contribute more and asked, "I know it's not my usual kind of magic but can I keep it for now?" Finding such a thing seemed to delight the pretty sorceress to no end.
When they reached the next room with the candles and thin mats Feena looked around in trepidation. "I don't like the looks of this either. We're dealing with a door that causes nightmares, going to sleep here is probably an exceedingly bad idea." She sighed, "As long as we don't sleep it's probably alright but I don't trust it and I agree, checking the other rooms is a good idea if we aren't in too bad of shape to push on."
As you pass through this room to the garden on the north, the candles behave oddly. Each candle gives a sickly green glow, and when approached by any of you, it goes out with a gasp. As soon as no creature is nearby, it relights with a low sigh.
One of the candles does not behave oddly like the others and gives off a magical aura. You determine it to be a candle of truth.
This garden’s many fruit trees are swathed in spider webs. A gravel path meanders from the southern end of the garden to a web-shrouded pergola in a high hedge at the north end. A door is set in the west wall just past the archway leading into the garden.
"The Dream Gate is at work here," Coral says as she perceives the candle's seemingly lifelike behavior.
In the garden, she regards the spiderwebs with some alarm. "Whatever made these webs might be in that pergola over there..."
A pergola is sort of like a gazebo she recalls with growing dread.
"Yes, the dream gate should be everywhere - perhaps all of these effects are manifestations of it? I wonder if it is a dream - or a nightmare. Perhaps our enemy does not distinguish."
Lola keeps a careful eye out, watching to support the others however she can.
Unfamiliar with the workings of dream gates, Damian trusts his companions' conclusion and watches the effects curiously. Upon spotting the webs, he looks up, in case the web-spinner is luring above them.
As the party enters the garden and begins to make their way north, they quickly find themselves lost in a series of tangled hedges and towering walls of greenery that extend up to dizzying heights. No matter which way the party travels, they can't seem to find their way through the garden. At every turn there are numerous fruit trees with delicious looking apples and peaches hang from them.
Coral looks very closely, trying to see if she is being tricked by an illusion. While her senses are keen, her mental fortitude is not outstanding.
"Does anyone else see this? What is going on here?"
Coral looks around to try and see if she is being tricked, but she is completely lost in what is going on and isn't able to see through any trickery.
"We'll find our way out, don't worry." Damian smiles at the others reassuringly.
Marya takes a moment to say a prayer to Iomedae for guidance, not wanting to let her mind fail her again as it did with the press. As she touches the hedges, she realizes that they are simply a bit too perfect. A cynic like her has difficulty believing that any hedges could be so well-maintained in a place like this.
"It's just an illusion, folks. No big deal."
As they entered the garden and proceeded to go deeper Feena felt like the brambly hedges began to grow taller than she could see. Something was definitely wrong with this and when Marya said it was an illusion Feena began to look closer than before.
Unfortunately the feeling of being closed in was too much for her and she said hysterically, "Are you sure Marya? I can't see through it!"
Lola squints at the hedges herself, trying to see through them like the others have done.
Lola shakes her head, "no, the hedges are fake. Thanks for the heads up, Marya." She points towards the door as well.
The halfling looks a bit disappointed in herself.
"Oh yeah. I see it. Thanks, Marya."
Marya helps the others realize that this is nothing more than an illusion. One by one, each party member slowly sees what she sees and recognizes the door hidden in the hedges.
As they move towards it, three spiders emerge from the hedges and move towards you. Each has pale legs that protrude on either side which give it a very distinctive stance. The thing is the size of a large dog and definitely has a more ominous feeling than a tiny spider.
Coral's blade flashes out at a spider.
She readies to defend adjacent allies (Feena, Vlad, or Marya, it looks like).
Fail unless a +2 comes into play
Fail unless a +1 comes into play
After seeing the webs, Damian was rather expecting the spiders - or something like them. He quickly calls upon the goddess's blessing on the party, hoping it will help them in dealing with these creatures.
Marya steps into a flank with Coral and takes a slice at one of the bugs. "I'll help distract it for you, Coral."
Lola taps her feet slightly, flamenco style, and sings a song about a foolish spider, caught in its own web.
She dances over to interpose herself and keep Coral from getting flanked.
Feena gave a scream of terror when the dog sized spider approached her and quickly stepped back before throwing a fan of flames at it with a few words and gestures.
The party splats two of the giant spiders in rather quick succession, leaving only the one to the east. It lunges at his calf and tries to bite him with from its surely poisonous chelicerae, but the paladin easily sidesteps the attack.
With only a single crab spider left, the party easily collapses on it and squashes it before it can poison anyone and moves to the door that was identified moments ago.
Moving through, you once more see the remainder of the garden and move into a wide clearing surrounded by high hedges contains a moving sculpture of bronze plates that resembles pages from a book. The plates twirl slowly around a thick central rod. Four wooden benches surround the sculpture. A few tattered spider webs hang from pergolas to the north and south and completely enshroud a human-sized shape reclining on one of the benches.
Coral watches the moving bronze plates and tries to look for any writing on them. Could just be a representation of a book because this is a Scriptorium.
Then she sees the cobweb-wrapped human-sized shape on one of the benches. "Do you think there is a person inside those cobwebs? Should we tear the webs off?"
”Probablemente esté muerto, but some spiders just paralyze prey. Maybe they’re still alive?” She looks for signs of movement and life.
As Vlad moves across the clearing looking around, he tugs on several nearly invisible lines of webbing. This causes the bronze plates of the moving sculpture to fly off the central rod with lethal force!
The heretic dodges the plates, but one slices through the webbed figure. It bursts apart in a torrent of sticky fluid that entangles Lola and Marya threatens to root them to the ground!
Eerie, mocking laughter seems to echo from all around you. Shadows congeal in the center of the clearing to form a monstrous, nightmarish crocodile! It hisses and thrashes its tail as it moves to attack!
Lola is entangled, but can still move. "Eh, it is an illusory cocodrilo - conjured from the plane of shadow. It can hurt a bit, but if you do not believe it is real, it hurts less, yes? So do not believe it!" She smiles, and begins to dance like a crocodile, swimming in the water, mocking the summoned beast.
Lola stays put.
The crocodile bites at Vlad and snaps its tail at him, but both come up a little short and miss.
Marya is particularly expecting the worst, an assumption that helps prepare her to jump out of the way of the worst of the sticky webbing. She's still free enough to call upon Iomedae's Inspiring Sword, and that's what matters.