The zombie has scarcely found its footing again when Hekau's ray of positive energy blasts through its shoulder, taking an arm with it. Still, it refuses to fall. As it raises one of its blades to deliver a vicious killing strike to Shesik, another clutch bomb throw from Tyn explodes against it, spraying healing energies in every direction. The twisted necromantic forces keeping the zombie going unravel in the face of this final insult, and it crashes to the ground, unmoving.
"And that's that! Until the damned thing gets up again, apparently." Xaerai moves over and gently helps Shesik back to her feet. "Easy, easy now. Let Tyn look you over." Once the ranger is handed off, the dwarf turns her attention to the rest of the room, wary of any new and unpleasant surprises.
4 masterwork shortswords
2 javelins
A magical cloak
40gp
Zelvin gapes in astonishment. "Reckon it couldn't heal up from our last meeting," he says a bit sheepishly. "Lucky thing!"
Groaning as Xaerai helps her up, Shesik limps over to the nearest wall and leans against it. "Ow, that thing hits like a giant. Guess I got lucky last time around. Glad we managed to get out."
As she waits for Tyn's ministrations, she looks over the room.
Hekau nods to Tyn. "Expertly done. Your abilities against such creatures are as formidable as promised."
"I also have the ability to heal, although it will expend a considerable amount of my magical energies."
"Perhaps we can find a chest or container in which to place the creature's remains, so that if it reanimates it poses no danger to us."
Hekau will look around the room for such a container.
Hekau will cast Detect Magic and attempt to identify the cloak.
Tyn moves over to Shesik, his first move is to use the blessing of his deity to start the healing process-as well as take his medicine for not dispatching the menace before it could deliver it's massive attack upon her. As he lays his healing touch upon the changeling, his head rocks back as if he was socked in the jaw.
"A fitting consequence for not landing better shot on that abomination! And yet you had to take the brunt of it..."
He sighs and shakes his head as he feels a minimal amount of divine essence channel through him. He then offers up extracts to supplement...
And another...
He looks at his subpar job, shakes his head again and mixes CLW in his last two slots.
Zelvin looks almost frantically through the room, searching for evidence that Khonnor Baine came this way and somehow avoided the four-armed monster.
Waving off further assistance, Shesik thanks the tiefling alchemist. ”Thanks, I’m good for now. Don’t waste ’em.” Standing up straight and stretching, she looks up her companion’s horned visage. ”Next time I’ll wait ‘til after the first volley at least.”
Watching Zelvin search for signs of his father’s passage, she attempts to lift his spirits. ”Master Kyte said your father defeated this thing on his first trip down here. Maybe it was still regenerating when he came through the second time. We don’t know how fast this one repairs itself.” With that she spends a few minutes looking for signs of Khonnir’s passage.
"Let me help, Zelvin. What are we looking for?"
[/ooc]Taking 10 to aid.[/ooc]
A thorough search of the room turns up little, unfortunately. It does not appear that Khonnir's party passed through here, and the only thing to show for the time and effort is another of the keycards. It is notable only for its color: black, rather than the brown keycards you have in your collection.
Tyn takes a look at the symbols.
"Aha!" cries Zelvin. "Another strange key-plate. Didn't we encounter another door back in the caverns? Maybe this new device will let us open it?"
"Scrawled rubbish-no doubt honoring an inferior deity!"
Tyn rips out a page of his formula book and begins to write. Calmly and carefully in Celestial initially, his message transitions into a jaunty infernal scrawl:
THE FATHER OF INVENTION WILL TEAR YOUR HEATHEN SOULS ASUNDER IN AN ACIDIC HURRICANE!
He slams the paper down on the table.
"Let's find the door that other fan-dangled card of yours opens!"
Just in case, takes a quick look around to make sure nothing has hidden itself from plain sight.
Hekau will also take a look at the religious symbols.
"There is a door east from the hallway here," Hekau notes. "Let us proceed this way if we have healed sufficiently. Shesik, if you remain injured, I might suggest that Xaerai take the lead for the immediate future."
Content to leave the mystery of the symbols be for now and eager to move deeper into the facility before the zombie...woke up? Resurrected? Xaerai moves to the door, signaling her readiness to continue.
"Bumps and bruises, nothing more, but for now I'm willing to watch our rear." Giving her shoulder a rub and a stretch, with a muffled grunt Shesik straightens and follows the others out of the strange room. "Y'know, there doesn't seem to be another path from here. Perhaps Khonnir put this things corpse in here to keep it out of the way knowing it might revive."
A quick bit of experimentation confirms that, not only does your new black card open the remaining door, your collection of brown cards you have amassed thus far does not. The passageway beyond is a partly collapsed tunnel, impassable to the north, with another set of doors to the east. These, in turn, open to reveal a large chamber with a floor tiled with a strange material. A large metal desk with blinking lights and strange glowing panels sits atop a raised area on the east side of this room near a circular table. Two couches covered with black material sit to the south next to a pair of black metal pillars.
Splatters of dried blood stain the floor and walls near a pair of doors to the north, while here and there patches of rust-red mold and fungus cling to the southern wall. The room itself is brightly lit by glowing panels on the ceiling.
Scanning left and right, Xaerai emerges from cover in the doorway cautiously. "Another set of doors to the left, hallway curves to the right. I don't see any doors that way but I'm going to follow it a short distance to be sure."
As Xaerai scouts to the south Shesik takes a moment to examine the collapsed rubble.
Hekau is curious, but not reckless. He will only venture into the room alongside other party members.
He will first look at the rust-red mold and fungus (presumably Dungeoneering), wary of danger.
He then examines the large metal desk with blinking lights and strange glowing panels, trying to ascertain its function.
Finally, Hekau will look at the dried blood, trying to gauge how long it has been there and if it appears human.
Tyn joins the inspection of the mold-making sure it isn.t something that needs to be quickly annihilated in a righteous splash!
As for the blood, you have insufficient data. There are many species with red blood, though humans are certainly the most common.
The desk appears to have had many panes of glass set into its surface, though most are cracked and dim. Others glow and flicker seemingly at random. Occasionally you see bits of scrambled Androffan script, along with images of strange creatures: one you recognize as a living specimen of the skeletons you battled in the underground desert, while another appears to be a hairless blue lion covered in dozens of waving tentacles.
Behind the desk, you find a door that leads to a supply closet, which opens at the touch of your black key card. Inside are a number of lockers, most of which contain only smashed junk. However, you find a few interesting things: one handheld device that seems to emit a bright beam of light, along with three batteries and 26 silverdisks.
Of particular interest is a small box held inside one of the lockers. It refuses to open, the only clue being a white panel on the top. A quick shake tells you there are some items rattling around inside.
"That naughty little patch of ick down there is Russet Mold. I wouldn't venture anywhere close to it, unless it is your lifelong dream of martyring yourself to spawn a couple of vegepygmies. A bit of acid or alcohol will clean it right up. As it is not impeding our progress at the moment, I think I should hold off-lest I burn a possible life-saving resource...?"
Zelvin looks anxiously at the apparently-human blood. "That looks like the remains of a fight. If Mr. Khonnir was part of it, he may have been captured or-- Brigh forbid-- killed. Can we follow the blood trail and see?"
"Tyn, I would recommend destroying the mold. I do concede that it might prove advantageous to lure a foe into that area, but I do not believe the mold would harm either constructs or undead - our most likely foes.
It is possible that the mold is also present in the room beyond those doors, so even if you destroy the mold on this side, we should be cautious opening those doors in the future.
But for now, we need not go that way. I believe that Zelvin is correct that we should follow the blood trail."
The door opens to a scene of carnage. Bloodstains mar the floor and walls of this hallway, while scorch marks and smears of ash on the walls evidence some sort of altercation having taken place in this area relatively recently. Four tangled mounds of metal and other materials lie further up the hall, surrounded by strangely colored stains.
One thing stands out, though it takes a second to dawn on you: there are no bodies.
"Yes, Zelvin, we can and will. If your father's alive, we'll find and free him." Checking her pistol again, Xaerai takes point. As the door opens to a corpse-less scene of bloody battle, the dwarf swears under breath. "That's too much blood for anyone to survive without powerful magic--several someones, I'd wager. So...where did they go?"
She cautiously steps into the room, peering closely at the piles of scrap in case they aren't as inactive as they seem.
Tyn nod to Hekau,
"Yes, yes-more likely that it would cause misfortune than be a boon to us- a wise calculation!"
Tyn moves to within the edge of his normal range and throws a bomb at the mold.
Cautiously approaching the bloody stairway, Shesik ponders the carnage. ”Someone, or something, survived this fight to carry off any bodies. Or simply to limp away. Yeah, it’s a lot of blood, but you’d be surprised how much blood a fight can throw around when there’s healing magic in use.”
Hoping Xaerai will keep an eye on the mechanical mounds to be sure they stay inactive, she focuses on the trails of blood looking for any identifying signs.
Hekau will examine the tangled mounds of metal, trying to identify what they had been before they were destroyed.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The arc of Tyn's bomb is a sight to behold. Its arc is perfect, its rotation sublime. It impacts perfectly against the center of the stationary patch of mold, with droplets of acid splashing in just the right pattern to burn away more distant pockets and nothing else. It's quite possibly the greatest throw any of you have ever seen.
You know that they are quite vulnerable to electrical attacks, and have injectors on their claws that can deliver potent toxins to their victims that leave them weakened and groggy. They're also capable of limited repair, of themselves and other machines.
With a soft whistle Shesik frowns over the darkening stains. ”Unfortunately, it looks like no-one walked away from this fight. Something with only four toes came in and dragged all the bodies down the hall. There’s no telling if they were still alive or not. And we have no idea what may be waiting on the other side of that door.”
Zelvin frowns. "Well, if this blood could be Mr. Khonnir's, we have to follow it, don't we?" He scratches his chin. "But nothing wrong with being ready for a fight."
"These robots are medical drones. While they can in theory heal patients, they can also inject toxins that would have a weakening effect. It is possible that such injections might have been used to capture Khonnir Baine and his team.
Such drones can repair other drones or themselves to a limited extent, but I believe these ones are too severely damaged to initiate self-repair.
They are vulnerable to electricity, should we encounter more of them."
Hekau is ready to follow Shesik. He can use Open/Close on a door if needed, or Mage Hand to tap a keycard to a door. He also has two Vanish spells left.
Straightening from the piles of scrapped medical drones, Xaerai sets her jaw. "We're losing time. Let's move."
"Well, at least I know I could hit the broad side of a barn...yeah let's go!"
You follow the bloodstains through the next door and into another chamber, where a long table with various unusual stones and dirt samples heaped on it sits along the southern wall, while to the north a line of metal desks with glowing panels and buttons are placed next to a large humming device. The heart of this device seems to be some sort of flickering sphere of reddish brown mud or dirt. Dust covers much of this room, save for a strangely clean swath between the doors, which leads to the strange humming device. The bloodstains in this room also seem to have been almost completely cleared away as well.
"Lotta dust, and not much blood...this place makes no damn sense," Xaerai cautiously steps into the room, and when nothing immediately attacks she gives the flickering mud-sphere a curious once-over before shaking her head. "Time enough for that later," she says to herself before movign to examine the other doorway.
Hekau examines the humming device and the flickering sphere.
He is likely unfamiliar with the device's purpose.
"Zelvin, could you examine this device? Its function eludes me."
Stalking carefully into the room, Shesik’s mismatched eyes take in the scene. She spends a moment looking at the dirt and rocks before also examining the humming machine. ”What a strange choice to clean up the blood, but not the dust. Maybe the dust is more recent?” She sounds unconvinced.
Xaerai's search of the room turns up a number of functioning panels, filled with Androffan text, along with a small metal box hidden under one of the tables. Inside it are what appear to be three wide-barreled pistols, though made of a strange orange material you've not seen before.
As Hekau and Shesik puzzle over the device, each of you suddenly feels a sudden pressure in the back of your minds, accompanied by a voice.
"Who are you?" it asks.
"I am Hekau," the android responds.
"Who are you?"
There's a pause.
"I don't know. Where did you come from?"