"Too bad there isn't some kind of gold-finding monster around here somewhere." Ragna laments.
Highness, having previously opened the door to the next room scampered ahead of the group. He rounded the corner and scurried into the large room, his red eyes glanced at the corpses on the floor before moving back to looking for threats and traps.
"I think some might consider us the gold-finding monsters around here..." Jonagher jokes from behind. Then, he sees Highness scurrying around ahead of everyone. "Or...maybe just that guy..." he sighs.
It depicts three Hellknights battling a black dragon in an ominous swamp. A fourth Hellknight leaps from a rise behind the dragon with her halberd raised, ready to bear down on the dragon's back while a robed Hellknight in the background attends to a wounded comrade.
Highness scurries ahead and opens the door onto a dark and cluttered room, its floor cluttered with toppled armor racks, as well as anvils, hammers, and other metalworking tools. Picking a way through it without getting tripped up looks like it would be difficult.
Expecting to find the room that the wooden attack statue had come from with the corpses on the floor, Highness was momentarily confused by the lack of dead bodies. Then, his goblin brain began to process the sheer amount of junk lying around on the floor of the room, and a wave of pleasure, much like a child biting into a chunk of chocolate, washed over him.
A toothsome goblin grin spread across Highness' face as he surveyed the chaos before him, and he stepped carefully into the room to investigate further.
"You know, if we're still interested in getting whatever residual value we can out of the stuff the Hellknights left behind, there's a tapestry over there that could fetch a handful of gold, I'd imagine..." Jonagher shares as he looks back over his shoulder despite following along with the rest of the group. When he returns his eyes to the way ahead, he sees that Highness has already ventured into potential danger without them. "That little guy's either braver than the rest of us...or suicidal...or maybe both. Let's see if he's found anything valuable at least..."
Highness starts sorting through the junk on the floor: bits of rusty metal, broken links of chain, pliers and hammers of various sizes. There is nothing anyone back in Breachill would consider valuable, but various mischievous uses for all the clattering junk blossom in the goblins' mind. It appears as if all the tables and racks in the armory have been knocked over and the detritus stirred around vigorously.
Jonagher follows at the rear of the rest of the team, his bow nocked with an arrow in case he needs to shoot anything.
"How did this happen? Is this something goblins would do?" Ragna asks, perplexed by the odd assortment of tools and hardware piled within the room.
"How did this happen? Is this something goblins would do?" Ragna asks, perplexed by the odd assortment of tools and hardware piled within the room.
Alak approaches the doorway and looks down at the mess with distaste. "Most probably," he answers balefully.
Highness, oblivious to anything going on around him was muttering to himself and occasionally giggling as he pushed and prodded the assorted detritus. A bit of metal shot off of whatever the goblin had in his hand with a loud "SPANG!!", the projectile narrowly missing his head before it went "Tink!" on the ceiling and ricocheted back into the junk behind him.
"Ooooh. I wonder if I could do that again?" he muttered, briefly glancing over his shoulder for the flying bit before shrugging and tossing the whatzit in his hand off to the side.
He brushed his hands off and stood up, "Well, there is enough stuff here to make a few fun traps if we need them. But I don't see anything ring-ish here." he said, his eyes gazing lovingly at the assorted springs, sprockets, spanners and whozits strewn across the floor.
"And the search continues..." Jonagher sighs as he enters the room last and hears Highness's assessment. "Shall we press on then?"
"Be careful, Highness. You'll get tetanus from that rusty chain." Ragnhild cautions the goblin kinglet.
Leaving behind the hoard of junk for the moment, the party goes back through the war room to check the chamber to the south. It appears to be another waiting room like the one to the north, though this one is bare: no furniture or tapestries, only bare stone walls and floors. Oddly enough, there are still a few rods up near the ceiling where tapestries once hung, but they appear to have been torn away only inches from the ceiling or perhaps devoured by moths.
Ragnhild steps into the room, shining her lighted shield about. "At least anyone living here would have plenty of room for activities."
"Everything looks rundown and dilapidated here, but it looks more like the mess the Hellknights would have left themselves when they vacated the citadel," Jonagher observes, "I imagine that insane little wooden soldier thing we fought probably kept intruders away...including some of the invading frogmen and monkeymen we saw. So, maybe there's still something promising further in? At the very least, maybe it wound up protecting Alak's ring, you know?"
As she advances toward the eastern door, Ragna suddenly stops in mid-step, and Ren's arcane light seems to form a prismatic halo around her glowing shield.
Highness frowned seeing Ragna's sudden arrest mid-stride, as if she had suddenly run into something.
Not seeing anything, Highness sidled closer to the warrior, wary of any surprise hugging. "Are you ok?" he asked, red eyes narrowed.
"Ragna? Did you find a dragon scale or something? What's wrong?" Jonagher asks from the rear of the group.
Ren peers ahead for a moment, then reacts with alarm. "It's a gelatinous cube! She's walked right into it! Quickly, or she'll drown!"
Alak squints ahead, then strides forward and slashes his greatsword through the air at Ragna's side. A gush of clear liquid splashes onto the stone floor.
"What?! Where? I don't see anything. Are you sure she's not under some kind of spell? Or maybe that little devil we released has come back? It could turn invisible, right? Jonagher snaps his fingers from behind as if to draw Ragna's attention. "Hello?! Ragna? Snap out of it!" When no response is forthcoming, he decides Alak might have a better view of things and quickly summons his own bit of magic to further protect himself in the event the invisible creature comes his way.
"What!? What's a gerlaminous cub?" the goblin says, peering around.
The goblin remains confused.
Ragnhild tears away from the... whatever it is, sputtering and choking. "Argh!" She rages. "There's something there!" Inside the jelly, she could not hear Alak, and the empty air before her defies her expectations of seeing an enemy to face.
Neither Jonagher nor Highness can see what Ragna is pulling away from for a moment; then a strange shimmer in the air and a moist squelching sound reveal a massive transparent cube quivering right in front of them as it slides toward them.
The cube oozes forward; Ragna manages to stay on the outside of the cube's surface tension, but others are drawn into its acidic interior. The face nearest Ragna flexes with annoyance, slapping at the morsel that got away.
Inside the cube, Shaserai's mind races while his body is paralyzed.
The wizard, however, pulls himself free of the viscous goo. "Immune to electricity," he gasps as he backs out the door to a safer distance. "Smash it open!"
Heeding the wizard's words, Alak steps up and slashes viciously at the cube, its acidic interior splashing out liberally onto the stone floor.
Highness felt a wave of weakness began to pass over him before he growled and started thrashing, causing the sensation to vanish.
With a SQUELRCH, the goblin wriggled free of the creature and rolled away, getting some distance from the unpleasant beast.
Ragna rages at the indiginity of the situation. She swings at the monster cube thing, but holds back out of fear of hitting her beswallowed companions.
If both attacks hit, combine their damage, and then add any other applicable effects from both weapons. You add any precision damage only once, to the attack of your choice. Combine the damage from both Strikes and apply resistances and weaknesses only once. This counts as two attacks when calculating your multiple attack penalty.
Jonagher is frozen inside the cube as the acid surrounding him slowly burns his exposed flesh.
Ragna is momentarily paralyzed by the renewed touch of the ooze, but it doesn't stop her from being outraged.
Seeming aware of the large blade tearing at it from the rear, the cube reverses course and slides back over Alak, pulling Jonagher and Shaserai along for the ride. Having engulfed the Chelaxian, it vibrates its eastern face at Highness, the acid touch stinging the goblin king.
Inside the cube, the priest clumsily tries to rupture the surface tension and cut himself free.
"It resists electricity!" Ren shouts from the corridor. "Kill it quickly, or they'll drown!" He points a finger and intones three sharp syllables, and three shining arcane missiles burn through the air and extinguish themselves in the cube.
Highness attempted to drop into wolf stance, but found his muscles locked up.
Ragna shakes off the cubes poison and goes after it again.
You lash out at your foe with both weapons. Make two Strikes, one with each of your two melee weapons, each using your current multiple attack penalty. Both Strikes must have the same target. If the second Strike is made with a weapon that doesn't have the agile trait, it takes a –2 penalty.
If both attacks hit, combine their damage, and then add any other applicable effects from both weapons. You add any precision damage only once, to the attack of your choice. Combine the damage from both Strikes and apply resistances and weaknesses only once. This counts as two attacks when calculating your multiple attack penalty.
Highness is momentarily immobilized by the ooze's touch.
Inside the cube, Jonagher continues to be slowly digested.
Outside the cube, however, Ragna steps up and slashes into the ooze with both her axes. With a splash, the cube loses its cohesion and spreads into a hissing puddle on the floor, Shaserai and Jonagher finally able to breathe again.
"I am not sure if that was horrible or amazing." Highness muttered as his muscles loosened. Then, seeing the puddles of slime on the floor, Highness immediately ran over and started jumping in the small puddles, sending splashes of slime everywhere.
I wonder if my toes will go numb? he wondered, wiggling them a bit in the slime.
Jonagher lies unmoving on the floor.
Shaserai weakly coughs caustic ooze out of his throat and wraps his fingers around his holy symbol, calling on Torag for healing for himself and all his companions, though the effect is less robust than might have been hoped.
Coughing and groaning, Jonagher weakly rolls over on the floor. "Am I still melting...? he asks aloud, "I could have sworn I saw my flesh melting away in that...thing..." He lifts one hand in front of his eyes, squinting against the residual acidic burn as he blinks and focuses. "Ahhhhh...yeah...I don't think I'll be drawing a bowstring again any time real soon..."
He lifts his eyes towards Shaserai. He wants to nod to acknowledge the priest's timely healing magic, but all he can manage is a couple of blinks with his stinging eyelids. Then, his gaze falls on Ragna. "I take it you're the one that brought it down? And saved me in the bargain." The half-elf gingerly tries to sit up, shaking slime away from his hands. "Well, it wasn't a dragon...but sure seemed just as deadly. You have my thanks..."
Alak tries to offer Jonagher a hand up without doing further damage to his burned skin. "Perhaps we should go ahead and return to Breachill," he suggests. "I hate to leave before we've finished searching this level, but it's preferable to anyone getting themselves killed. We can turn that halfling fellow over to the authorities and get some medical attention for those who need it."
As Highness splashes in the viscous puddle, the goblin-king finds a slimy battleaxe covered with goo that must have been floating in the cube.
"Perhaps we should go ahead and return to Breachill....I hate to leave before we've finished searching this level, but it's preferable to anyone getting themselves killed. We can turn that halfling fellow over to the authorities and get some medical attention for those who need it."
Regaining his feet, Jonagher winces with the acidic slime he can feel trickling down his back and in his boots. "Yeah. I think that's a great idea..." he responds to Alak, "I appreciate the reprieve. Truly."
"Ragna? Highness? Everyone else okay with that?"
Still grinning, and now a bit slimy, the goblin pounced and wrenched the axe from the floor, sending a trail of glistening material arcing toward Alek.
"I think you should have axed me first about going to town Jonagher. I might be a bit edgy going into a strange town." he said, a huge grin on his face as he swung the axe around, its weight pulling him off balance as he spun across the slimy floor.
"But if we cut to the chase, I know that this was a close shave. Its time to rest." he announced, then slipped and fell over, sending the axe flipping through the air in a high slow arc.
"Grrr. I still haven't killed a dragon." Ragnhild grumbles, spinning one of her axes and sending the goo on it splashing a line on the floor. Boys always slowed her down, but she didn't particularly want to spend another night in the fortress, anyways. "Let's go... tell the Bumblebrashers, I guess. Maybe Warbal will come visit town with us."