Cal puts down the book he has in his hand. "Fine. You are right." He pulls the books he put in his bag out (leaving one title on necromancy) and stacks them on the table, then sweeps the room with detect magic and looks around for hidden goodies.
The haversack definitely would not do it. Berta's bag might, but there would be no room for the rest of Gaekhen's body in there. The two bookshelves are fairly well bursting with books.
You could possibly split the collection between the two, but it's hard to say whether there would be enough room left for Gaekhen.
Based on the size of Gaekhen's arm that you found, he was an enormous and almost inhumanly muscular man in life; assuming he had roughly average arm-to-torso ratio, he was pushing seven feet tall and likely close to 260 to 280 lbs. If Berta only has a Type I bag of holding, it's entirely possible it won't even fit all of his body as-is, let alone along with a small library of books that likely weigh almost as much as he does.
After a thorough search, you find nothing else of value in this room.
"We can come back here when we are done. If we try to carry all these books now, they'll just slow us down and make us sluggish if we run into any more trouble."
Andakos nods. "She's right, Caladaer. Let's go." He heads to the western door and checks it .
Caladaer scowls, but agrees. "Fine."
You find nothing on the door to indicate it may be trapped, so you cautiously open it up. To your relief, nothing explodes or shoots acid at you. It simply opens into a painfully narrow tunnel that runs for about ten feet before opening into a larger room.
The nauseating mixture of decay and strange chemicals fills the air. Glinting saws, pliers, long stitching needles, and other surgical equipment are organized on shelves and benches along the walls. A sturdy wooden table in the center of the room supports a large humannoid shape--a thing stitched together from a patchwork of dozens of different bodies. The thing would stand nearly seven feet tall if it rose. The head is oddly small for the body; while clearly an adult human head, it is ill-fitting to the large patchwork creature, with dark brown hair and skin bronzed from constant sun exposure.
This is another carrion golem, though this one is unfinished and cannot animate--no elemental spirit has been bound to it yet.
"Another one. What was he going to do with these when they were complete?" He inspects the thing, and then takes a look around the room.
Caladaer approaches the body and looks down at it. He runs his fingers along the stitching in the chest, the neck. He also wonders what its purpose would have been. He lingers a few moments longer than he should, then looks around the room, sweeping it with detect magic.
Golloriel looks at the thing in disgust. "Andakos. We need to destroy it."
Andakos looks up from his inspection of the room, thinks a moment, then nods. "I agree. After we've checked the room for valuables."
Caladaer tries to think of a reason to leave the thing intact so he can study it, but comes up empty. He says nothing.
|
Berta cries, "Stop!" She rushes over to the golem and stares at the face. One thick finger traces the cheek and jawline of the head, and she feels the tears surge back, but this time she fights them off. Desna knows how many more pieces she's going to find of him; she can't fall to pieces herself every damn time.
With a shuddering sigh, she draws a starknife from her belt and begins slicing away the thick, coarse thread attaching the head to the stump of the neck, repeating that musical prayer in Shoanti again as she pulls out the large white cloth containing Gaekhen's arm and adds his head to it. She wraps the bundle back up and stows it in the bag.
She then steps back, sheathes the starknife, and nods.
As Berta places the pieces of Gaekhen into her bag of holding, your eye tries to follow the items' transition into the much smaller opening of the sack, but it doesn't quite work. Did the bag's hole widen? Did the bundle shrink? What kind of madcap multiverse is this, anyway??
Destroying the golem doesn't take much. Weapons--particularly Berta's enormous adamantine earth-breaker--turn the limbs and torso into so much rotten mulch very quickly.
A quick glance of the room shows the only prize in here was Gaekhen's head; nothing else is of real value outside of morbid curiosity. There are two exits from the room aside from the tunnel from whence you came: another rough-hewn, unfinished tunnel to the northwest, and another rickety wooden door on the south wall.
Once he realizes what Berta is doing, Andakos rushes to her side to help. The task is gruesome, but it must be doubly so for her.
What a horrible trip to an underground necromancer's lair this is turning out to be.
Andakos suspects the southwestern tunnel leads back to the large room where they fought the derro and the golem, but he takes a quick walk down it to be sure, looking carefully at the ground, walls, and ceiling.
Once the abomination is destroyed, Golloriel clutches her holy symbol and says a prayer over the remains. She doesn't know who the parts belonged to, but it's unlikely any of them deserved this kind of treatment.
You open the mildew-ridden slat that serves as a door and enter into another cramped, unfinished tunnel that wends and winds southward. You eventually come to a fork leading either east or continuing south. The south fork does indeed intersect with a familiar stretch of tunnel, and with your darkvision you can still see the battered remains of the carrion golem lying unmoving on the floor. The eastern fork, after a quick examination, simply loops about ten feet and reconnects to this corridor.
You do see that the tunnel splits again ahead of you; a tunnel springs off to the left, heading eastward, and the tunnel that continues south soon opens into a large room of some sort. While it's hard to make out what's down there, you can definitely smell it: the stench of sweat, urine, and feces are unmistakable.
You hear the faint whimpering of people coming from the room, barely perceptible over an only slightly less faint humming off key. A thick, deep, gurgly voice mutters, "Princes, pies, full of lies, all the peoples dead... Giggle and die, eat some rye, me name is Cabbagehead... Hurr hurr..."
"There are voices down this way. Quiet."
Andakos slowly leads the group toward the voices.
"'Quiet' isn't really my thing, but I'll try."
As you slink up to the opening into the modestly-sized cavern, a hulking, misshapen figure lumbers back and forth between the three makeshift cells. You can see a person locked in each of the cells, malnourished and weak. That would be the whimpering.
The huge figure continues humming his rhyme, up until the group is right up at the front, at which point he whirls around and you can see why he's called "Cabbagehead." His weird, twisty, vaguely round head is hideously misshapen, with a strange, tumorous growth drooping down over his left eye. His teeth are small and unevenly spaced, some rotting right out of his mouth. He wears wide studded leather straps in some strange form of armor, but his thick, saggy skin pours out and hangs over the straps as if he's made of melting flan. His skin is an unnatural shade of pinkish-gray, and his sad, pale hair is little more than a handful of strands jutting out in odd angles. One of his fists is significantly larger than the other.
"Hey! You not supposed to be here! Cabbagehead gonna knock you out! More prisoners for Rolth! He be so happy at Cabbagehead!"
The hulking freak of a... man?... lumbers up to Andakos and swings that huge fist, clobbering Andakos hard in the chest and knocking all the wind out of him.
ROUND 1
[color=green]
Cabbagehead (0 dmg)
Golloriel (33/33 hp)
Andakos (20/23 hp, 10 non-lethal)
Caladaer (23/23 hp)
Berta (39/39 hp)
[/color]
Cabbagehead is clearly an ogrekin, a horrific cross-breed of human and ogre. They are significantly stronger and usually heftier than their human forebears, but much smaller than their ogre brethren, with strange deformities like vestigial ears or eyes (in this case, hella gross skin and tumors). They are about as intelligent, however, and generally have the same taste for murder, cruelty, and incest as their ogre parent.
Thanks to the impurities in their blood, ogrekin also have weak wills, and are fairly susceptible to enchantments, enscorcelments, and the like.
Andakos yelps and reflexively jabs at the large ... thing ... rushing him.
Andakos lets out a violent cough from the unbelievably powerful punch to his chest. As he tries to squeak by the ogrekin, it occurs to him that this one did not try to kill him. That's ... unusual for their kind. Curious.
"He's not trying to kill me! Maybe leave him alive?"
While he's trying to decide whether to brain this thing with the butt of his spear, his tail drops the tanglefoot bag in his hand. He sometimes wonders if it really does have a mind of its own.
From around the corner, Golloriel hears Andakos's entreaty. Leave who alive? She had felt a quick painful pressure on her chest -- she presumes it was through her link with Andakos -- but it had gone away as quickly as it had come. If he had been hurt, she would have felt it, right?
Not really having any other options, she touches her father's shoulder. "May Sarenrae's light guide you."
Cabbagehead swings clumsily at Andakos as he passes, but the investigator is just too spry, ducking the blow easily as he gets into position. The tanglefoot back splatters against his feet, sealing the lumbering oaf in place.
"Heeey! No fair! That's it! I punch you lots!"
From one of the cages, a prisoner speaks up at Andakos' statement. "Yeah, he's only taking prisoners for a murdering psychopath necromancer," she drawls, "surely he's secretly got a heart of gold." She's holding a broken arm in a makeshift sling made of strips of cloth from her pants.
I suppose she's got a point.
|
|
Berta follows suit with Andakos, hustling past the hulking creature. It's too preoccupied with the hardened goo around his feet to swing at her. She takes the opportunity to swing her earth-breaker at him. She's not really one for killing unarmed opponents, so she tries to wallop him with the side of the giant hammer instead of the spiky-smoosh side.
Caladaer takes a step forward so he can see into the room.
"This is an ogrekin. They are cruel abominations. It cannot live."
He loads up his last acid dart and launches it.
Cabbagehead yowls in pain. "Ow ow ow! You the mean one, stupid elf! That hurt!"
He vents his frustration on the only nearby enemy, Berta. He swings his clumsy fist again, but she takes it on her pauldron, deflecting the force of the blow.
ROUND 2
[color=green]
Cabbagehead (7 dmg, 12 non-lethal)
Golloriel (33/33 hp)
Andakos (20/23 hp, 10 non-lethal)
Caladaer (23/23 hp)
Berta (39/39 hp)
[/color]
Andakos looks to the prisoner that spoke, then to the other cells, then remembers the golems made from various body parts. This whole operation has to be put down. "She's right, Berta. We can't let this continue."
He tries to distract Cabbagehead, making it easier for Berta to hit him.
Then he takes a step to his left and aims his spear for Cabbagehead's throat.
Caladaer pulls the longbow from his back, nocks an arrow and fires.
Golloriel rushes past her father, dropping her spear and drawing her mace as she goes.
Cal's arrow sails far, far wide, but despite Andakos' attempt to lower its defenses for Berta failing, his spear still catches the ogrekin inside his armor, sending a rivulet of dark blood pouring down his arm from under the right pauldron.
Golloriel rushes in, blocking further embarrassing shots from her father, and lands her mace home. Though the damage is minimal, it's enough to grab Cabbagehead's attention. "AUGH! NO PRISONERS! YOU ALL DIE NOW!!"
His meaty fist catches Golloriel directly on the chest, cracking her ribs.
ROUND 3
[color=green]
Cabbagehead (19 dmg)
Golloriel (24/33 hp)
Andakos (20/23 hp, 10 non-lethal)
Caladaer (23/23 hp)
Berta (39/39 hp)
[/color]
Andakos moves into a flanking position with Golloriel, then harries the ogrekin to keep him off of her.
Then another stab with his spear.
Golloriel struggles to catch her breath, wincing at the pain in her side. Protecting her ribs with her off-hand, she swings the mace again.
Cal knows he has almost no chance of hitting with the bow, but he's not wasting a spell on this thing.
|
|
Berta looks stricken at the events unfolding, but she has a job to do. These people need freeing and Gaekhen needs to be made whole. Whether or not this ogrekin deserves death is second to those tasks.
At least, that's what she tells herself. It doesn't help much.
Fortunately her conscience continues to remain clean, as she missed horribly.
Cabbagehead is crying and screaming now, covered in horrid spear wounds and trapped in place. "I sorry, Rolth! I sorry! Not my fault! Please don't be mad!"
Despite Andakos' best efforts to harry the ogrekin and keep him off Golloriel, his frantic swings are just too wild and erratic for the oracle to evade, and she takes that huge fist to the side of the head. She twists just enough to keep it from completely clobbering her, but it's nonetheless a vicious hit.
ROUND 4
[color=green]
Cabbagehead (28 dmg)
Golloriel (15/33 hp)
Andakos (20/23 hp, 10 non-lethal)
Caladaer (23/23 hp)
Berta (39/39 hp)
[/color]
Andakos cringes at the second brutal hit to Golloriel. "Golloriel, get out of there!"
He tries to create an opening for Berta, then stabs again.
Golloriel's whole chest is on fire now. She desperately needs to take a deep breath but she cannot. She isn't one to shy away from a fight, but she can't help if she is down. She severs her links to Andakos and Berta and stumbles past her father .
Caladaer has seen about enough. He figured these brawny types would make short work of this thing, but clearly he overestimated them. Again.
He flicks his wrist, catches the wand of magic missile, and fires of one of its three remaining charges.
Cal's missiles slam into Cabbagehead's chest, cracking bone. Almost instantly after, Berta utters a final bellow and follows the missiles with her adamantine earth-breaker. The ogrekin's sternum shatters from the blow, and he falls to the ground coughing and gasping, choking as his lungs fill with blood.
COMBAT OVER!
You can now see that your GM is an idiot, and the people are not locked in cells, but rather languishing at the bottom of three different pits, each 20 feet deep with relatively sheer walls. All three--two women and one elderly man--look badly malnourished, but could probably climb if given he aid of a rope or pulled up.
Andakos pulls out his silk rope and, one by one, assists the people out of the pits. He hands them his waterskin, reminding them to go slowly.
He speaks to the woman that made the sarcastic comment about the ogrekin earlier. "My name is Andakos. Who are you and how did you end up here?"
As you pull the prisoners from their pits, you see the bloody remains of other prisoners rotting at the bottom. Despite being the youngest and the least malnourished, the young woman with the sardonic mouth is actually the hardest to retrieve thanks to her broken arm, but she manages to grit her teeth against the jostling long enough to get pulled out.
None of them remember much, all of them seeing a shadowy figure and then being struck by magic before blacking out. The girl with the broken arm--she introduces herself as Tati--sheepishly admits, "I, uh... I may or may not have been pickin' the guy's pocket and got spotted. Reckon he didn't care much for that. I'd say the punishment was undue, but really, the treatment at Volshyenek wouldn't have been much better. Doubt I woulda got a broken arm though." She kicks the ogrekin viciously. "F&&%ing moron brute." Cabbagehead doesn't respond; he has long since bled out and died of his wounds.
The other two, a middle-aged half-elf woman named Anya and a particularly unhealthy, wizened man who appears on death's door who croaks out the name "Gork," have little to add.