”That makes sense. Lead on,” says the dispirited halfling, moving away from the fountain reluctantly.
"Me too Sanduro. Felt a lot safer with her around." Ketra wrinkles her nose "We should stay on the ground floor first though, before we get ourselves in trouble upstairs. We should keep our eyes open for a net or something similar though, something we could use to fish whatever's in the fountain out and get a better look at it. If you're right Sanduro, I think we want to deal with it before we meet whatever its binding."
“Oh! I think I could summon a water elemental to get it for us! But unless someone speaks Aquan, we wouldn’t be able to tell it what we want it to do.”
Leaving the fountain be fore now, you open the doors to the south and reveal a longer, narrower room. The walls in here are painted with images of doves in flight--but the murals have been defaced, with dabs of red paint on the birds' eyes and smeared on their beaks. Flakes of paint litter the floor, like someone tried to scrape away the murals but gave up well before the job was done.
A door opens on the eastern and western sides of the chamber, the western one slightly ajar to reveal the scroll library and scriptorium that Silvia had been teleported to not long ago. The eastern door is closed.
"I wish I knew Aquan... but the one time we had an Undine staying at the Sagely Goat, they weren't exactly the teaching sort of temperament." Ketra shakes her head at the memory as she glances around the mural-filled chamber. "Lets check that scroll library first, in case there's something useful left over we can use. Especially if there might be something to drain away cursed water."
Garret brightens up at the mention of a library of scrolls, and he follows along, concentrating once more on Detect Magic.
"Scrolls? Maybe there are some with healing spells, or something that would help us break your curse, Garret."
Sanduro casts Detect Magic as well and joins Garret in scanning the room.
Several shelving units holding dozens, maybe hundreds of scrolls line this room, including several scattered across the tables along with an array of inkpots, broken quills, and scraps of vellum. A pair of lanterns, their oil trays empty, hand on hooks within easy reach of anyone sitting at the tables. A cursory examination of the scrolls reveals all the mundane bookkeeping that goes into the operation of a temple--membership rolls, expense ledgers, et cetera all dating to before the Bastion's sack by the Twisted Nail orcs.
Through the door to the south is what appears to be a vestry, with priestly robes hanging from pegs in several cubbies along the wall and a pair of pallets tossed carelessly on the floor. A wooden crate sits near the pallets, full of rotting food and swarming with flies. A silver platter crusted brown with old blood sits on the floor, and upon that platter sits a book bound in black leather. Stitched into the cover in blood-red threading is the title Serving Your Hunger.
Serving Your Hunger is the profane text of Urgathoa, goddess of undeath, hedonism, and war. Part unholy prayerbook, part cookbook, the tome has no inherent magic but contains the most basic of the Pallid Princess' vile teachings.
One of the scroll racks has a drawer with a false bottom! As you lift it free, it's much heavier than you expected--lead-lined, which is likely why the your detection spells didn't find anything. Inside are several sheets of dark parchment lined with sigils of golden ink.
”Ugh, such a foul book does not belong in this temple,” says Garret. ”Does anyone need to do something with it before I burn it?” he asks.
"All just dry bookkeeping, huh?" Ketra puts a hand on her hip "And we have ourselves gross reading material. I wonder if that belongs to those ghouls we fought back in the big room? I don't remember if any of them came out from here."
"I definitely don't want to even touch it Garret, but I can't imagine burning it indoors is going to make our exploration any more comfortable. Do we just toss it into the fog and hope that deals with it?"
“Ugh. I’m sure it does belong to the ghouls or someone with them. You’re probably right about not burning it in here, Ketra, at least not with mundane methods. There’s enough bad stuff in the air already without filling it with smoke. Garret, is your magical fire hot enough to reduce it to ash quickly, so it won’t put out a lot of smoke?”
”I don’t want to touch that thing,” says Garret, ”but I will use my fire to burn it as best I can. Unfortunately, my magic is not as potent as it was before I was drained.”
"Burn it, bury it, leave it, I'm not sure it matters. I want to think it's a good sign that the last few rooms have been empty, but I'm starting to get an itch on my back...every time we don't get ambushed that itch gets worse," Jando's eyes never stop roaming the room, checking and re-checking every corner and possible scrap of cover.
While the book's fate is discussed, Silvia has been methodically checking the drawers, scroll racks, and cabinets of the scriptorium. She opens one, frowns, and then opens the previous one to compare the depth. With a curious hmmm, she prods at the shallower drawer until the false bottom rattles loose.
"Aha! You should all come see this," she calls as she holds up the golden-inked parchemts for everyone to see.
Saying a short, quiet prayer, Garret fans his hands out over the profane book and pours out cleansing flame.
”I tried to do right by you at the altar and failed to cleanse your statue, but I hope this act gains your favor, blessed Sarenrae.”
"I'm with you Jando. I can't help think about more of those ghouls getting ready for us somewhere." Ketra heads over to watch as Garret incinerates the book. She pauses afterward, as if waiting for some cleric to show up out of nowhere to chastise them. "Well, you did it. Lets hope that makes a difference."
When Silvia uncovers the cache of magical scrolls, Ketra leaves them to the others. However one particularly catches her eye "That's for stopping curses, right? Maybe that'll work for you Garret! Assuming someone can actually make the magic come out of it, of course."
Garret smiles widely, hoping his prayer might have just been immediately answered! He says, ”A scroll of Remove Curse? Fantastic! Can anyone cast it on me?
“That’s great! I can’t cast that spell, I’m afraid, but maybe Silvia can? Anyway, let’s see what they all are. Maybe we’ll find something else that will help.” Sanduro casts Read Magic and reviews the scrolls.
"It's got to be Silvia then." Ketra turns, looking to the tiefling hopefully. "If not, then..."
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Silvia nods, unfurling the scroll and reading the prayer written upon it. Come on, work.
As Silvia invokes the scroll's stored magic the guecubu's curse is swept away. It's like a fog has been lifted from Garret's mind, and his body feels lighter, his thoughts and movements more precise.
”Th….th…Thank You!” says Garret in a stronger voice than he has used in quite some time. Though he still looks pale, the lifting of the curse seems like a surfacing from murky water into bright sunlight!
"There we go!" Ketra slaps Garret on the back "You look like a million gold pieces." With his condition improved, Ketra makes her way back to the mural room and spends a moment checking for any changes in the fountain room before moving to the closed eastern door. She inspects it for any surprises left behind before opening it up.
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“Glad to see you looking better, Garret! Hopefully we’ll find a way to restore the energy the bodak stole from you, too.”
Sanduro moves up by Ketra, unconsciously leaving space for Zsofia despite the phantom’s absence. “See anything?”
The fountain room looks just the same as it had before, and Ketra sees no traps on the eastern door nor hears anything in the room beyond. Upon opening it, you all behold what might've been a vestry but now is a scene of destruction. Smashed furniture and smears of mud and blood cover the space, with another door to leading south. That door has what's left of the room's furniture piled up against it in an impromptu barricade.
Sanduro frowns at the makeshift barricade on the other side of the trashed vestry. “I may be young, but I’m old enough to learn from experience. If Zsofia were here, she could take a look through that door, but do we really want to open it blindly? Garret’s still suffering the effects of what was behind the last door we saw like that.”
Ketra wrinkles her nose "Last time we found a barricade, it was something really bad on the other side. Something that even the ghouls didn't want to deal with." She looks at the barricade to try to deduce if it was made recently or a long time ago.
”With all the undead here, there could be another bodak behind the door, just like that item in the fountain could be a lich’s phylactery. Regardless, we need to find a way out…though I am okay with checking this direction last,” says Garret, moving over to the barricade and listening to hear what he might on the other side of the door.
Garret presses his ear against the door, hearing nothing at first--but then a wet snuffling, sniffling, wheezing sound like labored breathing. The sound is almost regular...not unlike snoring with some difficulty, the halfling realizes.
”Sounds like someone is snoring in there,” says Garret, ”Dare we try it?”
"Maybe very quietly. That way we can see what it is while it's still sleeping." Ketra sizes up the barricade to see if she can disassemble it without making too much noise.
Setting up a small "bucket brigade" under Ketra's direction, you all carefully pass the pieces of the barricade to each other, quietly clearing the obstruction after a few minutes' work. Slowly, slowly inching the door open--every creak of the hinges sounding like banshee wails to your own nervous ears--Ketra eases the doorway open enough to behold it's occupant:
A bear, or something like a bear, large patches of its fur fallen out and replaced with bulging tumors and unhealthy-looking grey flesh. It wheezes and snorts, stirring but not waking. It appears to be alive, though somewhat emaciated and clearly not well.
Ketra side-eyes the other members of the team. She whispers "Sanduro, what's your expert opinion? Dangerous? Can we save it? Should we?" She examines it herself from the open doorway, but massive wild beasts are not her forte. Still, she tries to see if it looks like some variety of undead.
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The druid looks at the mutated? infested? bear in horror and whispers, "Let me think for a moment."
Sanduro prays quietly for a bit of Pharasma's guidance (stepping to the far side of the room before casting the spell) and tries to identify what he can about the bear.
Sanduro considers the creature carefully, and is forced to conclude that it's a bear that must have been quite large and healthy--perhaps even someone's companion?--before being warped by the magic of the explosion that leveled the town, like a less severe version of what happened to Screamer. It doesn't have any extra limbs or eyes or anything, but that means it might have some of the more extraordinary effects.
Ketra whispers "So it's another one that's been all twisted. The ghouls didn't want to deal with it, I suppose. Wait, how'd it even get in here? Unless... this place was abandoned, so maybe it was living in here?" She shrugs, not quite able to put it all together. "What do you all think, do we try to beat it, try to heal it, or just barricade it back in?"
The room is a mess, smashed furniture and claw marks everywhere, but Garret peeking past her doesn't pick up any magic, and there's nothing that still seems intact inside.
If Garret doesn’t see any other exits from the room, he suggests they close the door and leave the unfortunate creature to its madness.
Ketra hesitates a little more than Garret, her heart going out to this unfortunate beast. She looks to Sanduro, hoping he has a better solution than "lock it back up".
“It looks like it was cared for once, and I doubt the poor creature could not have wandered so far into the tomb by accident.” Sanduro looks sadly at the bear and shakes his head. “I don’t think we can cure it, but I really don’t like leaving it to its misery. I think… I think the kindest thing we could do for it probably would be to put an end to its suffering, free its spirit to rejoin the River of Souls. Scholars can debate whether animal spirits are truly souls, but I don’t have any reason to doubt it.”
He unslings his bow and nocks an arrow. “Garret and I should probably try to save our spells if we want to try to make it out of here before we camp for the night. Maybe Silvia, Jando, and I can take it out from a distance? Well, Silvia and Jando, at least.”
Ketra whispers "That's terrible Sanduro. Poor thing. I could sneak up and try to finish it off, but I wish we didn't have to."
”I would love to save it if we can, but you guys saw how well that worked with the priest of Sarenrae turned bodak,” whispers Garret, willing to support Sanduro’s decision.
Sanduro looks from his friends to the bear, pulls back his bowstring, then relaxes and returns the arrow to his quiver.
“You’re right, Garret. But it isn’t a bodak or any kind of undead. It’s been mutated by the same explosion that affected the town, but it’s alive. Maybe if we shut off whatever’s sustaining the dome it would have a chance to recover?”
The druid pulls out whatever food he has in his pack, presumably his share of the leftovers from the last time the party was able to hunt or forage. He wraps it up loosely in the tattered remnants of his Varisian scarf, its bright colors now faded and stained, and tosses the package into the room - gently, quietly, so as not to wake the beast - before moving to start putting the partially dismantled barricade back into place.
“I can’t stand to leave it to starve, and I’m less convinced than I thought I was that we should put it down to end its pain. Hopefully we’ll find some answers soon and clear away whatever evil miasma is causing all this, and we’ll be able to release it. If it doesn’t recover then, at least we’ll know there’s no chance before we kill it.”
Sanduro’s stomach rumbles a bit and he smiles ruefully. “And in the morning, I’ll ask Pharasma to grant me the magic to create some more nourishing - and filling - meals for us.”
Smiling at Sanduro’s plan, Garret says, ”Nicely done. Let’s put this door and barricade back the way we found it and hope for the best.”
Ketra immediately moves to put the barricade back in place as well. "I don't know about ending its pain. I was hoping you could cure it, but if we can't, then I... I don't know. I'm sort of relieved we're not killing it when there's a chance. But I'm also worried about it breaking out and coming after us before we can do anything." She sighs as she wedges wood back into position. "Maybe Pharasma also knows if we're doing the right thing."
The creature's snuffling starts the very moment Sanduro tosses in the bundle of food, but it doesn't waken in time to prevent you from closing the door and piling up the barricade again. You can hear it growling and grunting on the other side of the door, then the muffled tearing of cloth as it clearly tears into the food.
"Right, on to the next challenge," agrees Garret.