When Nicoleta proudly proclaims there would be undead here, Aurelia claps her hands. "Bravo! That's why I bought those bolts and holy water, Peaches."
She has no problem following the monk's lead into the next room where she reiterates her use of her mind-clouding spell. "Halt!" she commands.
Nicoleta dashes forward and before the short fellow can take a swing at her, she sweeps his feet out from under him.
Vox shoots the nearest derro in the chest, then Nicoleta runs up and trips him. Aurelia just manages to daze the second enemy.
The first derro clambers back to his feet before swinging his club at Nicoleta! Once more, Rozalia's spell protects her from harm.
As the short creature rises, Nicoleta's foot snaps out at it.
She then continues to punch it ...
... before sweeping its legs again.
Aurelia switches targets and tries to daze the other derro this time, but she can't focus as clearly for some reason. This creature's ability to resist her attacks unnerve her and she growls, frustrated. "Dammit!" she curses.
Nicoleta finishes off her foe with two quick strikes. Roz commands her faeries to take the pliers to the other derro’s eyes, blinding it. Vox takes advantage by burying an arrow between its eyes, killing it in one shot!
The dhampir looks between the very narrow passage leading west and the slightly narrow passage that descends to the east.
"Let's go that way," she says, indicating east. "And keep an eye out. Four beds and only two of the little short f@+$ers. There's two more of 'em somewhere."
The narrow tunnel is little more than a crawlspace, forcing you to get on your hands and knees to proceed. It branches after a short distance, one passage leading north into the pit where the owlbear skeleton lurked, and two passages leading south.
You peek out of the first southern passage to see a room with three wooden tables, their surfaces stained red with old bloodshed. To the east stands a ten-foot-wide hutch with wicker doors opening into a straw-lined cage. A lone derro toils here over a fresh dead body. Three stirges perch on the body, drinking its blood, and the derro has just placed a fourth on it.
Nicoleta just manages to avoid notice.
The dhampir grins at the idea that the derro doesn't notice her. She moves quietly across the room until she's within striking range.
With a snap of her fist, she sucker-punches the short figure.
As Nicoleta sneaks forward Vox takes aim and unleashes an arrow at the derro.
Roz fires a crossbow bolt but fails to hi!
Aurelia joins Roz with firing and missing her crossbow bolt. She curses loudly "SHIT! Stupid f+%$ing thing! I had it lined up perfectly!"
Vox and Nicoleta strike the derro, and seconds before the wounding humanoid can react, Vox lands another arrow that finishes her off!
The four stirges on the corpse are content to sit there and drink its blood. Two more bloodsuckers are inside the cage, but they cannot get out unless you open it.
You head to the southwest. The majority of this room contains a nasty-looking stretch of mud—a partially collapsed sinkhole—kept damp by rivulets of water seeping from the walls. A patch of solid ground extends into the mud to form an island, on which is heaped a reeking pile of body parts. To the north, a rickety wheelbarrow sits on its side against the wall.
An otyugh wallows in the filth here. When it sees you, it bellows, ”Warm food!” and moves to attack!
Otyugh!" Aurelia exclaims upon seeing the three legged freak. "Watch out for those tentacles, Peaches."
The mesmerist casts Ill Omen on the creature, looking to put some bad luck on its side.
What the f+~$ is an at-yuck?" Nicoleta snaps as she approaches the creature. "Oh, tentacles! Why didn't you just say that in the first place!"
She attempts to kick the ugly looking thing and her foot connects solidly.
Roz grazes the otyugh with her bolt but Vox misses. Aurelia’s hex causes the monster to miss with its bite but it slaps Nicoleta with a tentacle, wrapping around the monk and squeezing her tightly!
The dhampir snarls as the tentacles tighten around and she twists and turns in an attempt to free herself.
With a well-placed elbow and a turn of her nimble torso, Nicoleta slips free from the beast.
"Time for that magic trick I told you about, Peaches!" she says and triggers the mesmeric mirror on the dhampir on her next attack.
The foul-mouthed mesmerist tries a bit of intimidation now, raising her voice and shouting "Hey Otyugh, you picked the wrong gal to try stick your tentacles up into! She's going to F~~$. YOU. UP."
"Wait! Is that what they do with their tentacles?" Nicoleta shouts at Aurelia. She turns her attention back to the otyugh. "Pervert!" She snarls at it.
Roz reloads while Vox shoots the otyugh with an arrow. Nicoleta slips free and Aurelia shouts at the creature. It seems to work, as the thing winces and takes a lumbering step back. ”No f$$% up! Only hungry! Give warm food, no eat you!”
"Oh." Aurelia says, letting her mean voice fade away. "It's just hungry. Peaches, give it a ration or something."
"That's probably not going to cut it. What is it you want to eat? How about a derro? Do you like derros? We just killed one around the corner just for you."
"Sure, fine. Give him a f%%+ing daro if that means he'll keep his pervy tentacles to himself!" Nicoleta says, her voice rising loudly on the last part.
The otyugh accepts the derro corpse, happily and noisily chowing down on the fresh meat.
Among the still-uneaten body parts on the muddy island in the center of the chamber are the broken legs and hips of a human—both of which are decorated with bold Shoanti tattoos. It is likely these legs once belonged to Gaekhen.
The mud here is a few feet deep in most spots, and would take quite some time to sift through in any thorough manner if you wanted to dig for treasure.
Nicoleta eyes the mud and then looks at Aurelia. Her eyes narrow. "You just want to see me root around in the mud, don't you?" she asks. She plants her hands on her hips and shifts her weight. "Fine. I will if you will," she says, raising an eyebrow.
Aurelia nods when the monks calls her on the mud bit. "Yes, I do. Very much."
When Nicoleta says that Aurelia needed to join her in the mud, it suddenly seemed like a whole lot less enjoyable. She knew that this likely was going to take some time and there was no way that Nicoleta would do it alone.
"Fine." she says, rolling her eyes. "I would rather just watch you in the mud, but if you insist, I will join you." She raises her hand to point at the monk and adds "You will scrub my back in the bath tonight though."
Nicoleta and Aurelia dig through the mud for several minutes, getting quite filthy in the process. Their efforts are rewarded, though, as they are able to discover a few interesting trinkets left over by the otyugh's messy meals: an amber necklace worth 350 gp, a silver dagger, a wax-sealed elixir of vision in a metal flask, a wand of spiritual weapon (48 charges), and a ring of swimming.
Rozalia uses two charges from her wand to heal Nicoleta's wounds.
Wiping off as much mud as she can, Nicoleta grins at Aurelia when the two finally plod their way out of the mess.
"Enough messy fun," she says, flicking away some of the mud in her hand. The fact that it splatters across the mesmerist's back would seem entirely accidental if it weren't for the snicker that slips out from Nicoleta's lips. "Back to the room with the blood bird ... things."
The walls and ceiling of this tall hallway are encrusted with dozens of yawning skulls. Their mouths open into dark holes in the walls. A door is set at the end of the hall.
Nicoleta looks over the walls and shudders.
"Ok, this is just so f$@+ing creepy that I can't even describe it," she says with a grimace. She then narrows her eyes at the gaping mouths on the skulls. "It does, however, look like the perfect place for a trap."
Indeed, Nicoleta's instincts serve her well. She notices several of the skulls are part of a devious trap, designed to open and spray acid from their mouths at any creatures in the hallway. There is a short delay before the trap is set to trigger, so if you hustle through the hall, you might be okay...
"Oh, isn't that special," the monk comments when she notices the laid trap. "I don't have any way to disable it, so we'll just have to move quickly and try to avoid it."
"Everyone ready? On three. One, Two," she begins and on the third count dashes down the hallway.
"Blech!" she protests, climbing out of the mud. "That was not what I would consider enjoyable. I don't know how you tricked me into that. I want to vomit." she groans, shaking the mud and filth off her.
"Can we just hurry up and finish up down here? I want out, now."
You race down the hall and through the door, making it through before the trap triggers. The wooden tables here are stacked with vials, beakers, and other alchemical gear, although the southern one is heaped with broken vials and leans awkwardly on a hastily repaired leg. Three large cauldrons sit against the east wall, one of them upended. Its foul, rancid contents—old rendered fat—have spilled onto the floor.
A fourth derro is working to clean the mess, but he reacts to your sudden arrival with shock, eyes wide as he stammers in confusion!
In a blur of movement, Nicoleta rushes forward and sends a spinning foot towards the derro's head.
Vox puts an arrow between the derro's large eyes.
The derro drops without a sound, killed by Vox’s arrow.
Most of the items here have been destroyed, but a search of the ruins (which requires 10 minutes of work) reveals a fair amount of surviving treasure, including enough material to cobble together an alchemist’s lab, 3 doses of vermin repellent (this is the same foul-smelling mixture you found in the old fishery), two tanglefoot bags, 4 doses of black adder venom, a hybridization funnel, 2 doses of silversheen, and a handy haversack containing three potions of cure moderate wounds, a potion of lesser restoration, a potion of invisibility, two scrolls of false life, and a scroll of dispel magic.
You also find a secret door that leads to another crawl space.
Nicoleta's eyes widen at the discovery of the magical backpack. "I've always thought that these were pretty cool, but I could never afford one," she says, looking the bag over.
Once everything of value has been thrown into it, she looks to Aurelia with a questioning eye.
"Nice work, ladies. And Nicoleta." the mesmerist says with a smirk as she begins to inventory all of the numerous items they discovered. "This is like the jackpot! All of this shit in addition to what we're getting paid? Payday, baby!"
With everything tucked away, sh elooks to the secret door and then motions to Nicoleta. "In you go."
The crawl space leads to another room. Two wide, freestanding bookshelves furnish this room. The shelves are filled with row upon row of carefully arranged tomes and scrolls.
The books and scrolls are mostly treatises on necromancy or the art of crafting golems, but there’s also a surprisingly large number of books about diseases and plagues here as well.
The collection of books as a whole is worth 300 gp. Of more portable interest are two magic scrolls wedged between the pages of a thick picture book on humanoid anatomy— these are a scroll of identify and a scroll of command undead.
As Nicoleta scans over the book titles, she scrunches up her nose in distaste. "May I just reiterate that this guy is creepy?" she says with a scowl.
"Let's head through this door," she says, indicating the door to the east.
The nauseating mixture of decay and strange chemicals fills the air of this large room. 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 humanoid 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 stitched to the body is strangely small for its massive frame—a head crowned with brown hair and bearing a distinctive scar upon the left cheek. This is, of course, Gaekhen’s head.
A passage leads to the northwest, while a door is set in the south wall.
"Lots of books on disease and plagues here, we need to take caution down here." the mesmerist says, scanning the library of tomes.
Sighing when looking at the table, she shakes her head slowly. "We're going to need to get that head. Uhm, Vox. Why don't you see if you can take it free?"
Vox is able to slice the head free from the body with a chop of her sword.
"I'm going to have nightmares about this place, I can just tell," Nicoleta says with a shake of her head.
She indicates the northwest passage. "That way."
This chamber holds a large four-poster bed and a simple writing desk, along with a full-length mirror propped up against one earthen wall.
Sitting on the desk is a curious but broken knife with a key-shaped blade. The broken blade itself is of sufficient quality to count as the masterwork component for forging a dagger, and is thus worth 300 gp. The weapon is similar to the one you found in Gaedren’s lair--the sign of the Key-Lock Killer.
Another passage leads to the east.
Nicoleta holds up the broken knife. "This is the same kind of thing we found at Gaedren's place, right? You don't suppose Gaedren's son - what was his name? - is the Key-Lock Killer, do you?" she questions. After a moment of pondering the possibilities, she smiles. "I wonder if there's a reward for him?"
After taking a moment to groan at her muddy appearance in the mirror, the dhampir moves towards the eastern tunnel.
This dry, well-kept chamber contains a narrow bed, a relatively empty shelf holding only a few books and some bones and skulls, and a long bench. A man’s torso, the chest bearing numerous tribal tattoos, lies on this bench. The right arm is still attached, and periodically thrashes and clutches at the air as if it were alive.
A derro wearing robes of bones floats in the air, and a human zombie stands beneath him. The derro cackles when he sees you. ”More subjects for my experiments! What fun!”
Nicoleta's near freak-out when the arm begins thrashing around is short-circuited at the sight of the necromantic derro. She moves across the intervening space to high-kick at the probable spell-caster.
Aurelia tries to daze the derro, but is unable to overcome its relative to her magic.