Deerslicer looks around while Gracie stands watch in case anything suspicious comes from the doors.
The south west cavern has a door secured with a simple wooden bar on the laboratory side. The cavern is strewn with refuse such as bones and broken equipment. Searching around, Deerslicer would notice that scattered among the bones are a few trinkets, including a low-grade cold iron dagger, a wolf fang talisman, and 8 gp in miscellaneous coins.
More interesting though, Deerslicer detects a secret door.
As far as Sinan can tell from what's on the table, they were dabbling with alchemy. Kunsheng is able to identify at least four viable flasks for consumption. Two lesser acid flasks, one lesser bottled lightning and one lesser alchemist's fire.
The western side of the cavern appears to have been used primarily for storage of alchemical gear and reagents. You can tell that most of the barrels and crates are quite old, but the gear and equipment in the laboratory is of the same style and make and looks as if it may have once been stored here.
The equipment here is old but quite valuable to the right buyer. If you were to return with a wagon, you could load it all up and sell it for 100 gp to the right buyer.
Gamble sweeps up the coins and makes a mental note about the found equipment . "Seems someone is mucking about with the natural order of things," he comments upon reviewing the contents of the table.
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Deerslicer walks back into the room, sitting the dagger, wolf fang talisman, and the dirty coins down on the table next to the alchemical supplies. "Got a secret door over there. Split up, an' some can come through the hallway, others through the back room, an' I'm guessing both doors lead to same place. Or just try to all sneak in through back way?"
"Maybe we ought to open the hidden door before splitting up," Gamble suggests. "If that's just some hidden closet and the rest are heading into an ambush, those at the hidden door are a long ways from the battle."
Simon opens the secret door quietly. He sees through the gap of the open door a rectangular room, perhaps twenty by forty feet. There are barrels and crates along the walls and the room smells just like the main chamber: a combination of smells that indicates alchemical regeants. There appears to be a worktable at the far end of the room. Simon sees no signs of the orc that you had seen previously enter this room.
Knowing he is less than subtle, Sinan positions himself at the double door to move in the obvious route, weapons at the ready.
Sinan approaches the massive double doors. Made from stout wood and bound with iron, the pair of doors is crudely decorated with a carving of a small rural village that has been set ablaze. Sinan can immediately tell that the carving must have been made many years ago and despite its poor overall artistry, the village bears an unmistakable resemblance to Etran's Folly.
On opening the doors, Sinan and Simon, now that they are inside the workshop of the unknown orc, would see a heavy iron door at the far eastern side. The iron door is closed. There are no signs of the orc in this room.
Gamble hefts his everburning torch and steps through the hidden hall with his sword drawn. He moves around the barrels to make room for the others, eyeing the door warily.
"Well, if he is intent on escape, it looks like he's increasing his lead," he notes.
Simon finds asmall stash of coins worth 18 gp and a fine set of silver scales worth 30 gp sit atop the desk. He also sees some notes on the table about oozecrafting, along as annotations on elemental mutations on rats. There is also a scrap of journal dated two months ago. The rest of the notes are in orcish.
Leopard specimen obtained. Elemental fire experimentation will begin tomorrow. Bakra captured a drunken idiot from the nearby village. Will test out the true experiment on him. Research is almost complete from the notes left behind by the Mistress. Jorkun is worried that the contamination is spreading out too much, having had to deal with the bloodlash bushes earlier today. Will have to remember to weed them out later.
This room also contains a trove of valuable information about what someone unknown was trying to accomplish here. Going through them will take several hours.
A quick perusal would allow Sinan to notice that most of the texts are about the various experiments they have been asked to perform over the past few months. Almost all of these involve evolving permanent mutations in creatures by exposing them to energy mutagens. While many of these experiments were ultimately successful, they had an unintended side effect: the creatures became far too bestial and unreliable to use as minions. There is more information about energy mutagens that perhaps Kunsheng would find interesting, but as the rest of the texts, you'd need time to comb through them.
One of the most recent notes says in orcish,
The coagulant thing is finally taking shape. It might not be what she asked for, but she is sure to be impressed! When it is ready, I will take it to Spite’s Cradle and show it to the mistress myself.
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If no one objects, Deerslicer takes the bottled lightning, snickering as he does so. "Zap, zap," He heads over to the door and begins inspecting it for traps, and checking to see if it is locked, while Gracie readies herself nearby.
He draws his kukri +1 and holds the bottled lightning in his other hand, then glances over toward the others, particularly Kunsheng. "Um ... me never fight oozes. Does slashing weapons hurt 'em?"
"She." Sinan quotes the documentation as he puts it all in his pack for later perusal. "The Mistress is in some place called Spite's Cradle. Likely the same one that the oaf worked for?" He lets the rhetorical question drop as he prepared his weapons.
"I hope so," Gamble answers Deerslicer.
From the moment the door is opened, whimpering moans can be heard from the center of the chamber, where a human man is strapped to a large rack. His flesh is missing in places, replaced with large glass and metal cauldrons that seem to be extracting blood from him, mixing that blood with reagents to transform it, then pumping the blood back into the poor man.
Around the room, you can all see shackles mounted to the wall where previous prisoners must have spent their final moments.
Gamble enters the room and grits his teeth at the macabre scene before him. He drops the everburning torch onto the stairs and makes an arcane gestures. "The spirits of those you have caused pain return to visit it back upon you," he says with an supernatural reverberation in his voice.
+
Critical Success The target is unaffected.
Success The target takes full initial damage but no persistent damage, and the spell ends immediately.
Failure The target takes full initial and persistent damage, and the target is sickened 1. If the target recovers from being sickened, the persistent damage ends and the spell ends.
Critical Failure As failure, but the target is sickened 2.
On entering you see that the shackled man is alive and moaning in pain. He keeps muttering in a low voice, "Please make it stop, please make it stop, please make it stop", over and over again
As soon as Deerslicer gets dangerously close, the orc smiles and yells in triumph, "Witness the birth of perfection!" as he injects a transparent substance into the man's body.
The man unleashes an ear splitting scream as the veins in his pale skin swell up, his body straining against the restraints as he begins to sweat blood. More screaming echoes in the large chamber, as from the man's body a swelling mass of flesh and blood rips through his skin, with the orc laughing derrangedly as an oozing thing that looks like it is made entirely from blood emerges from the dead body of the victim.
The thing is slick, with a crimson membrane marred only by spots that look like clots formed on the surface.
The orc's victory is cut short as Gamble power flows into his head. Still laughing and with watery eyes, he doubles over as blood streams from his nose and eyes.
The blood ooze quivers as it keeps growing. Deerslicer, Gracie, Kunsheng and Simon suddenly feel dizzy as the blood in their bodies reacts to the blood ooze!
The orc's flowing blood from his nostrils and eyes fly towards the ooze and he beams even though his veins are bulging.
"That is the most disgusting abomination I have ever seen! Are you responsible for this?" he barks in orcish at the Sculptor as he steps into the room.
Sinan's eyes begin to glow with a radiant aura that he directs towards the Sculptor. "La tanzur mubasharatan 'iilaa alshams!"
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The strange behavior of their blood has profound negative impact on both Deerslicer and Gracie ... particularly Deerslicer, who spits blood out of his mouth as he coughs. He stumbles away from the creature and throws the bottled lightning at it.
With shaking fingers, he pulls the healing potion from his belt with the now free hand.
Painful lacerations rip through the skin of Simon, Deerslicer, Kunsheng and small Gracie. The blood flows and quivers on their open skin before floating in small globules suspended in the air that are immediately sucked into the blood ooze!
Deerslicer and Gracie are in terrible shape, yet the goblin ranger's bottle strikes the creature, breaking on impact. A jolt of electricity stiffens and releases the living ooze, the blood that forms it roiling sickeningly
The orc, a tall lithe one wearing goggles and a leather apron, shrugs away whatever Sinan did to him and tosses some dust on the ooze.
"Feed! Feed!", he cackles madly as the dust hits the ooze, yet the thing remain immobile, if anything it's turning towards him. He tosses more powdered dust at it and the ooze turns towards the party, as the mad orc runs away woozily.
Gamble's eye bulge at the emergence of the sanguine ooze-like creature. He grits his teeth and calls out to the others, "Things look grim, but we're in the mire and the only way out of this is to fight our way out, so light the fires in your hearts and let's put down this affront to nature and society!"
He strides across the stairs and stabs his sword at the orc alchemist.
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Deerslicer quaffs the minor healing potion.
He whistles for Gracie, then nods toward the half-orc. The bear lumbers across the room toward him, getting into a flanking position with Gamble as she bites at the blood ooze's creator.
Deerslicer spits some blood on the ground as he moves away from the creature ... a nasty creature, even by goblin standards. "I'm outta bombs, and not sure my kukri will do much. Anybody know how t' kill it?"
Gamble's words lift your hearts as his longsword swings down and misses the orc alchemist, who despite the pain scurries away right into Gracie's teeth! The small bear tears at his leg as Deerslicer looks slightly, ever so slightly better.
With the others preoccupied with the orc, Simon steps in and scans the ooze for any weak spot he can find. There is no such thing as its an amorphous creature. Undeterred, he brings his dagger in, issuing cut that would have critically impaired another opponent,slicing the membrane across neatly and spilling blood over the dead man! To what I imagine would be his surprise, the wound heals up immediately, forming a dark disgusting scab over where Simon's dagger sliced thought it like butter.
Simon steps back his blade still slick with blood as Kunsheng throws a flask at it and the ooze catches fire!
The ooze quiver and moves towards Simon. As it grows and extends itself taller, Sinan would see it strike out with a crimson pseudopod that slams into Simon, crushing the man's ribs as tendrils coming from the pseudopod itself lacerate his skin!
Sinan watches his friend fall and for a moment, considers attacking the creature that felled him. But this is not the time for that particular valor.
After a quick word to raise his Lady's shield, "Sayidat, ahmini." he leans down to try to staunch Simon's bleeding.
"You have much work to do for our lady, my friend. I cannot allow you to leave her grace yet." he says while tying off ripped portions of Simon's tunic on the wounds.
As Simon is revitalized by the energy of the Dawnflower, you would all watch the orc rush past all of you, getting away from here as fast as he can! His laughter echoes as you hear the familiar sound of stone against stone of the secret door.