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"Hey, this is pretty cool. It looks like the whole thing tells a story. The 'bull' is in fact a Gorgon, a dangerous magical beast that resembles a bull with metallic skin and breathes deadly poison that turns living creatures to stone! It seems that the dwarf is a representation of Torag, chief of the dwarven gods." She looks a little closer. "Uh-oh! Though it appears that the dwarf in the statue has the advantage over the bull, look right here. Do you see that? The dwarf is actually off balance and the bull is poised to strike."
The bard scans the area for any magical aruas.
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Itami frowns, but keeps silent for now, taking the same path as Valais.
"Wait!" he orders suddenly. "Did anyone else see that? There was a horn, ethereal, coming from the wall and it moved back into the wall when we started to come in here." What ghostly apparition is going to be set upon us? That would be the perfect moment for Valais to strike us down!
"Be careful, I don't like this one bit!" he cautions, looking sideways at the VC.
"Ssss. Horn? Where? Yes. Speak your name." Valais says in response to Kenta.
Knowledge (arcana) DC19
Knowledge (arcana) DC15
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"I see two auras here. Not certain about the more powerful one, but the weaker of the two is definitely transmutation magic."
Realizing she was distracted before, she thinks about Itami's warning. "Yes! The horn was high up on the wall." She raises her arm up over her head. "Like all the way up here, or higher."
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Itami looks at Kenta sternly. "Do what you feel is right, but I don't trust the word of that," pointing at Valais, "when it comes to interacting with Asmodean symbols of power."
He keeps an eye on the exit and any other entrances to the room. This isn't right, this is right before the part of the trip where we would ambush the bloody Desnans, except they weren't so fortunate to have a demon to tip them off! Yes, engage with the dubious magic, it looks evil because it is disguised, oh ho!
Valais flinches as Itami points at her, and she takes a step backwards. Itami cannot see any entrances or exits - the point at which you all entered this chamber is beyond the limits of your vision, even accounting for your kitsune senses.
Kenta introduces himself to the statue.
Nothing happens.
.
.
.
.
.
.
And then, the bull and the dwarf twist and look Kenta in the eye. The altar moves aside on some unseen mechanism, revealing a spiral stair descending into another dark area.
Kenta leads the way, and the rest of you follow, with Valais and Itami bringing up the rear.
A cage-like spiral staircase of rusting wrought iron descends into a rectangular room. Dim but vibrant green light pulses from two large glass vats that stand from floor to ceiling in the far corners. Powdery rust coats much of the floor, though several lines of footprints crisscross the room. Metal doors lead to the east and west. Chalk writing on the walls next to the vats records strings of numerical data - but without context you cannot know what the numbers signify.
Hundreds of tiny black beetles scatter in front of your feet as you step onto the floor.
"Uhhhh......." Valais shivers, staring into the distance.
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Itami gives the beetles a mighty frown and he pulls out a vial of Alcemists' Fire with his other hand. "Anyone able to discern what the ominous vats are holding? And those footprints look like a possible clue as well," he points out.
Seeing Valais shiver, he snaps his fingers in front of her face to catch her focus. "What do you know about this? You seem familiar with it."
Kenta smells no evil - but there's the faint tang of blood on the air.
Itami gets Valais' attention. She blinks at the old sorcerer - disconcerting when one eye is human and the other distinctly demonic - and stammers: "This.... this is where Thurl w- would finish his experiments. H- he will be eviscerated slowly would visit me o- often here. T- took measurements. Wrote them on the wall."
As if to punctuate Valais' words, something strikes the vat on the eastern side of the room, on the other side of the glass. You glimpse serpentine scales before whatever it is disappears again into the luminous green fluid. Bubbles rise though the fluid inside both vats.
Checking the door ahead, Hiiragi hears something indistinct from the other side. But it's too faint to make out. The door, a heavy steel affair, seems safe enough. So, with spells and weapons at the ready, you open it. Kenta takes the lead.
The room beyond is a madman’s abattoir. Near the centre of the room stands a polished metal table with manacles bolted to each of its corners and a bloodstained hacksaw embedded in its side. A wooden workshop bench rests against the east wall, covered with tools of varying sizes, a spool of barbed wire, a stack of large metal staples, and a stack of notes, and even more grisly tools hang from hooks on the wall like pots and pans in a well-stocked kitchen. Reddish-brown splotches cover the floor.
On the table, a partially clothed male elf with a distended belly is sprawled on his back as he quietly moans in agony, his arms bound by the table’s manacles. (These quiet moans must account for what Hiiragi heard through the door).
Another steel door is opposite the one you have entered by. The beetles from the first chamber scuttle over the floor, avoiding your steps.
Onna and Itami sense no magic (other than the auras or your own items and spells of course).
Kenta approaches the elf, hoping to ease his suffering. As Kenta wipes the elf's brow, too late he notices that the elf's eyes are glassy and unseeing: already dead.
At Kenta's touch, the elf bucks on the table and the unfortunate prisoner's abdomen bursts open! You are all drenched in vile viscera, as a wave of negative energy washes over you. Dozens or slimy, worm-like tentacles flail out from the dead elf's ruined guts, seeking new hosts...
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This is a serial killer's playground. Only someone truly unhinged could have bothered to put this place together, let alone use the tools here. No wonder Pathfinders would end up dead, I bet he'd slaughter some in the debrief if they came back wounded. Zon Kuthon demands pain from the faithful, but these are a butcher's tools, not a pain taster. Itami's eyes narrow in disgust, but he doesn't get to look at much before the Elf bursts like a balloon. Thankfully, due to his positioning, he is able to avoid the worst of the fetid shower.
"Is everyone ok? What the hell was that?"
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Even worse than the smell and taste of the viscera, the worm-like tentacles force their way down the mouths and nostrils of Hiiragi, Onna and Toshiko. They detach from the dead elf, and slither inside you. With a violent cough, Itami expels them from his own innards. They do not touch Kenta at all, nor Valais.
"THURL YOU CLEVER BASTARD!" says Valais in her domineering demonic voice. "Perhaps Thurl's methods are detailed in those notes on the table?"
Party health
Hiiragi -9hp, infected
Onna -4hp, infected
Toshiko -4hp, infected
Itami - 4hp
Kenta -9hp
Valais -4hp
Kenta's skills as a physician are not sufficient to determine what just happened to his worm-eating friends. But perhaps that big pile of notes on the butcher's table might be illuminating?
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Itami grumpily blasts the worms with his wand twice before walking over to the table and snatching the piles of notes off of it. THIS is what I'm getting too old for. Demonic gods damned worms. This better be good.
He reads the notes, scowling at the sheaf of paper as though it were the reason worms just tried to force their way down his throat.
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Itami fires off a couple of magic missiles and the worm/tentacles remaining in the dead elf become dormant. The sorcerer leafs through the notes left on the table...
They are full of disturbing surgical diagrams, and cramped notes in several languages, but it might be possible to make some sense of them.
"I can't understand any of that, but if it relates to what Thurl was doing here then we should take those papers with us. Evidence of Thurl's mad genius corruption" Valais comments.
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"Certainly evidence... though I think a visit is the only thing that will give any oversight committee the full effect of what's happened here..." Itami grumbles. Once everyone has had a chance to look at the papers, he stows them away for future submission.
"Once our 'eyes' are done searching the room, let's leave this little pit of demonic depravity," he says, standing by the door.
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Though the stack of notes is largely unintelligible, Itami takes them anyway as potential evidence against Thurl.
With nothing else to be found (unless you are interested in surgical implements) you examine the door opposite the one you entered by.
The only thing peculiar about this door is that it is cool to the touch. However, neither trap nor magic is detected; Kenta opens the door.
Clawed limbs, scaly torsos, and other large body parts hang from large hooks connected to the ceiling by thick chains. Along the walls, large canisters and jars hold dozens of smaller body parts suspended in clear liquid. The entire room is very cold.
DC20
Onna and Itami detect a magical aura - it emanates from a wand placed on a shelf near the entrance.
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Onna looks around the room. "This is decidedly creepy. All of a sudden, pretending to be a dead merchant in the desert sounds way less morbid."
The bard studies the wand for a moment. "Wow! This has some pretty powerful magic! It's like they shoved an entire blizzard in here. I think I can activate it. Like a fifty/fifty chance."
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"A blizzard? I can probably draw that kind of magic out more reliably," Itami points out, holding a hand out briefly for the wand if Onna's willing to part with it.
"Looks like a dead end too, time to turn this carriage around." Not eager to stand in a cold room with limbs hanging around, he waits back in the room prior.
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Do any of the limbs look like matches to the VC?
No human limbs here. They're all monstrous. For more info, you'll need to pass the Knowledge (planes) check above.
You turn from the cold storage room and return to the entrance chamber.
You find nothing unusual about the eastern door, but whilst Onna and Hiiragi are checking it over the rest of you see a grotesque, demonic face pressed up against the glass of the western vat. Multiple sets of eyes regard you as you pass, before the visage retreats into the bubbling green liquid of the vat.
Kenta pushes open the door to reveal a corridor. You follow the corridor to a T-junction, and see stairs descending to the east and west. Taking the left-hand route to the east, you descend until you find that the stairway is partially flooded. Beneath the water is another door, leading further east. Onna senses no magic. (Itami is too far back to be able to view the door).