Satomi has by now caught on to the fact that were they are now, which is still rather fuzzy to her, horrible things can come from anywhere and everywhere. As she looks around the room she uses her glaive to move and shift things. She's decided it's best not to touch without a check first.
Inside of the grotesque “corpse nest” (as it was so lovingly referred to), the remains of the doctor’s coat can be found. You find a stash of vials, six in total, inside the coat as well as a handful of coins scattered about the gore, totaling 24 gold and 16 silver, should you wish to pick through it.
Other than that, the rest of the collection of pickled organs and other body parts is likely worth a bit when rounded up and brought to an expert.
Ignoring the coins for now, Prasitis scoops up the vials, ready either to pass them on to anyone able to identify them or just to carry them herself. Another flash of memory prompts her next words, as her mind’s eye reconstructs a sweep through the slums back home, she and her sisters proud in their polished armour, expressionless helms without mercy. Some lunatic gangster and his sordid sideshow had finally made too much of a nuisance of themselves, and among the bizarrerie of the unnerving collections…
“What’s going to happen to this place now, do you think? If, you know, we can calm it down and the storm blows over before we all get eaten by monsters?” Her voice rises and falls through the light tones of someone brought up in the comfort of an ambassadorial posting, as her subconscious tries to steer her away from the worst of the present situation even as she speaks, indicating the cloudy jars. “The university would be a better place for some of that, at least, if it can be sent on.”
With that, Prasitis turns and prepares to start checking the other doors along the hallway. “We should expect trouble. I don’t know what leaves a trail of faint green slime, exactly, but it’s been to three of these rooms.”
Satomi takes Prasitis's question to be rhetorical, but it prompts her to ask in return "does anyone know what it was like here before? How long ago was it?"
Laura eagerly picks through the bloody trove to collect the coins, untroubled by the mess. In response to Satomi's question she turns and shrugs. "Not very long ago, from what that, mmm, person Winter said it sounded like only a few days." She grunts then, as if the effort of such a long sentence merited an expulsion of energy to recover. She hefts her axe and prepares to push forward.
The first door on the right of the hallway opens easily, revealing a small ruined office. The room’s sagging ceiling rests largely upon a pair of sturdy bookshelves. A desk and set of chairs skirt the edge of a sizable fissure in the floor.
Inside, scattering around on the floor, is another of the ratlings. This one appears to be wearing actual clothes he has scavenged from the asylum, probably from a children’s section.
As you enter the room, he cries out in a most high pitched squeal.
”Who dares impede upon the kingdom of King Ratch Mamby himself?”
“We beg your pardon, your majesty, we didn’t mean to intrude,” Prasitis says smoothly, her diplomatic upbringing - or whatever powers her witchery - coming to her rescue. “I am Prasitis, knight of the Scarlet Rose, out upon errantry. We’ve already met some of your subjects, who mentioned that your people have been cut off from your domains below. Might we be of assistance?”
Aoife lets Prastis handle this, knowing that she isn't likely to make things better.
Laura raises her eyebrows and sighs, as if annoyed to see another of these strange folk declaring himself in charge of the empty rooms of the asylum. "Does this mean you are to blame for what has happened here, your highness?" she mutters sarcastically under her breath.
"No, no, not at fault, no!" the ratling cries out in a mixture of fear and indignation at being accused.
"We ratlings simply took advantage of the situation at hand." he continues, setting a hand on one of the two large rats flanking his sides as he sits on what appears to be an office chair much worse for wear.
"The quakes above our dens freed us, and I have claimed this territory for the new ratling empire!"
Laura shrugs and looks at Prasitis. "There are monsters and worse out there. What will you give us if we kill them for you?" she asks the tiny monarch, her puzzled eyes remaining on her companion as a sign of respect.
What is it about disasters that encourages the most ridiculous upstarts? Prasitis wonders wearily. She’s been brought up to be painfully polite and mostly enjoy the game of it, but there are limits even to elven patience.
“It is traditional for royalty to sponsor the occasional quest,” she insinuates shrewdly, “but in any case, if you will grant us passage through your realm, we will do no harm to your subjects. As my sister-in-arms suggests, we are hunting monsters only.”
The witchy knight is certainly not above a bit of guile, though, which she cloaks in a gesture of false humility, gaze lowered. “If I may be so bold, though, sire, you may wish to proceed on a circuit of the bounds of your newly-expanded domains with your court before the fog entirely lifts. It pains me to say it, but I know the local gentry are not as chivalrous as we, and may also seek to take advantage of, as you say, ‘the situation at hand.’ You may wish to think on it.”
"Sponsor...a quest? A quest..." the ratling repeats, drifting off as he seems to think about what you have mentioned to him.
"Yes! A quest! To prove your worth, yes yes."
The ratling rustles through his nest, which in reality is a giant pile of trash and debris piled together.
Pulling out a small tattered scrap of paper, he holds it out towards you, nodding enthusiastically. On it is a dark blot of black ink, that obscures what appears to be some sort of winged beast, with a long tail and claws.
"The scary demon haunts the courtyard beyond the walls of my court, and could break in any day! Go, slay it and bring me its head, and I shall grant you wealth and fame beyond your imagination!"
He indicates the walls directly behind him, to the east.
Laura looks suspiciously at first the scrap of paper, then the wall behind him. She then looks to Prasitis with a shrug that might mean she's game if the cavalier-witch thinks it a good idea.
“We shall gather our strength and venture forth anon, sire, and do great deeds in your name!” Prasitis enthuses glibly, tucking away the image of their quarry. A vague inkling that her language is borrowed from the ghastly books she read as a bored and impressionable adolescent teases her badly damaged memory as she takes her leave of the ratling king.
Outside his throne room, such as it is, she turns to the others and asks quietly, “Humour him immediately, or check the other doors off this hall first? I’ve only got one healing spell left for the day, if that’s a concern.”
The room you’re currently in is directly North of the giant library in the middle of the asylum, at the bottom right hand side of the L shaped hallway.
You did get a flash or a feeling of anxiety pushing you further into the heart of the asylum, and as you are all discussing or thinking about it, you suddenly feel...something.
The door at the furthest north end of the hallway. It’s behind there, you know it. And it’s calling out to you.
But why? And do you answer?
Almost instinctively, Laura turns toward the door and advances, intending to open it immediately. She doesn't question where the orders came from, she only considers that they feel correct.
Prasitis shakes her head as if to dislodge the feeling, but follows Laura anyway. At least it’s not another voice, she thinks. The thought briefly sparks another fragment of memory: yes, impossible voices from nowhere, implausibly persuasive, and herself bound upright – but not here. The stone different, the air.
The distraction is dangerous, and she forces herself to refocus. “Careful,” she says mildly, not meaning to suggest Laura and the others can’t more than look after themselves, speaking only from her knightly code. “Allow me to give them another target at least, if they’re not friendly.”
She stands ready to interpose with body and shield if necessary.
Aoife grabs Laura's wrist as she suddenly turns, "Be careful ou' there. We don' know wha is going on, but there isn' much friendly here." she cautions the fighter, but moves to likewise check the doors.
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Yellow fog soundlessly roils against the cathedral-like windows of this opulent, two-story office. The ground floor features overstuffed furnishings, elegant side tables, and an altarlike desk of dark marble. A delicate spiral staircase and balcony of dark iron rises to a lofty library overhead. Both floors’ fixtures frame the lake of blood spread across the room’s center.
Kneeling in the pool is a middle aged woman with curled brown hair, matted to her head with what appears to be that very same blood. Her eyes glow an eerie blue, and yet that’s not even close to the most disturbing part. The woman’s neck is tilted back, her mouth wide open to the sky, as her soundlessly screaming mouth pours out an unsteady torrent of colored mist spurts like a fountain of gritty sludge.
The sound and feeling that have drawn you here seems to be emanating from that very same mouth, issuing out from the wide open mouth and echoing across the room and into your heads.
Well, surely this isn’t normal.
Laura's eyes widen at the disturbing scene. Looking slowly to the others, her expression slightly disgusted, she hefts her axe experimentally and gives a silent questioning nod as if to ask if she should put the woman out of her apparent misery.
Prasitis shakes her head No, not yet! gently, as she sheathes her sword and cautiously assesses the situation. There’s that flash of memory again, blending obscenely with this room’s flood of emotion and mental anguish. The mysterious touch years ago on her own mind, in her own hometown, was infinitely more gentle, but Prasitis is disinclined to take final measures with someone clearly at the mercy of an overwhelming external force before ascertaining that there’s no hope of freeing them any other way.
Besides, the ruthless pragmatism somehow drilled into her in that same clouded past suggests that this might well be the Baisily they’re looking for, and the folks behind the barricade didn’t specify what condition they wanted her back in. She can only hope that if she can be dragged back to the chapel, her connection to whatever will be broken.
Her unusual training has hardly prepared her for anything like this, but like any proper knight she tries to do the chivalrous thing. She approaches tentatively, trying to avoid contact with the blood and mist as best as possible, and reaches out carefully to grasp the woman's shoulder. Prasitis isn't the perfect mage either, but she figures getting her out of the significantly located pool of blood might be a start, and she tries to move her as gently as possible.
"Well. Tha's distrubing." Aoife vocalizes what's on everyone's mind, "Any idea what happened ta her?"
The knowledge check doesn’t reveal exactly what happened to her, or what’s going on now, but you can be pretty certain that entering within the five foot cloud of smoke around her is most likely going to cause some sort of issues.
Probably not instant death, but there’s always a chance, right?
Laura makes sure the room is otherwise secure, examining the exits and going through the other objects in the room looking for treasure or clues.
A rare gleam of common sense stops Prasitis from actually closing to try to rouse the poor woman. She shakes her own head. Think, girl! She’s screaming out fog, the fog did this to this place. Do you really want to get that close to the source?
“Does anyone have a bit of rope?” she asks. “Failing that, Satomi, do you think you could snag her out of there with your glaive? Maybe she just ... got drawn in, and it won't come out of her once she's clear?”
Laura wordlessly draws a long coil of rope from her pack and fashions a sort of noose or lasso out of it. From her position on the other side of the room, she carefully tosses it over the woman and tightens the loop. She looks to Prasitis for the nod, and then pulls hard on the rope.
Aoife waits with bated breath to see what happens.
As you pull on the kneeling...woman inside the pool of blood, a loud screeching yell seems to echo through the clouds of mist her body is spewing out.
She lunges forward as the lasso wraps around her, and then she collapses to the floor right outside of the pool.
Her body now lifeless, there is no resistance to pull her out of it and away from the pool you found her in.
Her body does not move, even after several seconds of waiting, and no attempt to call out to it elicits any response whatsoever. She is still dressed in the doctors' coat she presumably died in, but it is torn to shreds and covered in blood as well as a horrific number of other incredibly colored fluids, bright purples and yellows.
Prasitis’ basic training as a warrior has her instincts screaming to raise and lock shields in response to the yell coming from the mist, even as her witchier side notes that that’s not likely to help much against a fog that’s magic besides.
As a measure of stillness settles over the room again, her glance flickers up uneasily, daring to hope that maybe now the fog the poor woman was spewing will have started to dissipate, before turning back to the wretched corpse before her.
She wonders if this was the person they were meant to find, and asks, subdued, “Shall we bring her back to the chapel so they can get her cleaned up, at least? And-”
She can’t bring herself to voice her concerns if there are more ghouls running around, and she concentrates on trying to figure out if the unnerving fluids the body’s covered in are dangerous.
Laura nods, taking a quick look around the room first.
"Bloody haunts. Why couldn't I have gone somewhere normal with my life?" Aoife mutters, then carefully edges towards the body. If nothing bad seems to happen, she works to retrive the corpse, first poking it with her sword to ensure it's safe.
This one in particular appears to be connected to whatever place you visited in your dreams, as the yellow mist is nearly identical to the mist in the yellow city.
It does appear to be safe to move her out of the pool, as the yellow mist pouring out of her mouth has stopped, and nothing happens when you poke her.
The office itself probably once contained a large variety of rich furnishings, but most are covered in scratches and tears. They are not nearly as impressive as their former glory.
In a short search of the room, Laura finds a number of interesting curios. The most valuable include a brain-shaped sculpted wooden box, bookends depicting twin screaming and crying figures, and a brass sculpture of an Osirian pyramid. Each are worth 50 gp.
The offices' crowded library might hold more pieces of value, but that'd require more investigation than a handful of minutes, and the large marble desk in the corner of the room appears to be locked.
On the corpse, however, Aoife finds a keyring with a handful of keys on it.
Aoife stands up, cracking her neck "Wel' naw, what do we have here?"
With her newfound keyring, she saunters towards the desk and tries her keys on its lock, after poking it to make sure the desk won't explode on her, naturally.
If the key does not open the lock on the desk, Laura prepares herself to try and break it with her crowbar. Once the room is gone over and looted, she takes hold of the rope and begins to drag the body back to the chapel.
One of the keys from the ring does in fact open the marble desk, surrendering its contents to your hands.
Inside, you find a heavy leather-bound book which appears to be a journal or diary. It is very extensive and detailed, and requires more time to dig deep enough to get any information out of it.
Alongside the journal is a magnifying glass, two vials of alchemist's kindness, a vial of smelling salts, two vials of soothe syrup, 4 doses of antitoxin, 2 doses of opium, a scroll of fox's cunning, two scrolls of remove paralysis, a candle of spirit protection, a small tin filled with incense of open thoughts, a greater talisman of beneficial winds on a thin silver chain, and a braided leather cord holding a lesser talisman of healing power and a lesser talisman of warrior's courage.
Aoife riffles through the scrolls, looking at their new findings, "Nice haul. Yamind if I hold on to this?" she asks her companions, hefting the scroll of Fox's Cunning.
Meanwhile, she tosses the talismans to Laura, who she figures could probably make the most use of them.
Laura catches the talismans as they fly toward her and shrugs amiably to Aoife's question. "Let's get all this stuff back to the chapel," she mutters gruffly.
Taking the loot and the journal back to the chapel proves a safe task, with nothing nefarious remaining alive between you and your destination. For now, anyway.
The survivors inside the chapel welcome you back with open arms and eager ears, curious to hear what lays beyond the walls of their sanctuary.
Winter intervenes, pushing aside the gathered survivors to reach you.
”So? Did you find a way out? Or at least get to talk to Doctor Losandro? I know you’re curious about who you actually are.”
Oh there you are! I'm feeling much better again and would really love to know who i actually am! Have you found out something?
Veda greets you with a friendly smile, but also anxious and impatiently.
There's this flicker in her eyes every now and then, giving away everything might not be as allright as she says.
Laura shakes her head back and forth, sweating a little from dragging the body all the way to the chapel. "Don't know," she growls in response to Winter's question, "This her? She weren't in much state to talk, but she had this stuff in her desk." She holds up the journal and other loot they recovered.
She nods to Veda, indicating without words that she remembers the drow woman, though her eyes crinkle slightly as if she is trying and failing to remember from where.
What kind of stuff? Did you find out anything? Show it to me! Maybe i can remember something. Anything!
Veda scoffs at Laura, a manic glow in her eyes.
Clearly the situation is not becoming her.