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The perfectly-set hair of Vengis stands in stark contract to the sick look on his face. Abruptly, he rushes to the corner and vomits.
"Oh--that is--so disgusting--" he manages. Once he composes himself, he says "Zetty, please don't draw anything from this room. It's going to take me a few weeks, and perhaps some stiff ale, to forget it."
Nelfeshnee, hovering with his strange bat-like wings, seems amused. One of his bulging eyes seems fixed on Bella.
Zetty gets a blast of disgusting acid right into her face, just as she's about to cheer the party's victory. The nauseating smell and general experience has her buckled over for minutes as she tries to empty her stomach.
As Eyenia starts offering healing magic, she raises her hand "Thank you Eyenia... lets hope we don't have to fight any more of those. Ever. For any reason." And to Vengis she adds "Ugh, tell me about it. No wonder these morlocks didn't want a portrait - they've got such a messed up aesthetic sense."
Not looking too closely at the corpses, Zetty looks around for any useful items left behind.
Feeling better, Grem takes a look down the natural cavern that the fleshwarp creature came out of.
Bella wasn't about to let Grem go off by himself! She accompanied him to scout out what was ahead.
Aside from the clubs the morlocks were using as weapons, there is nothing of value here.
Bella and Grem scout down the tunnel. Water drips down the walls of this cavern, particularly along a jumble of dangling pallid roots to the south. Beneath them is a large, soggy nest of mud and bones. Based on the smell, this was the grothlut's lair, but there doesn't seem to be anything of interest here now.
To the east, a hole has been clawed in the wall into an abandoned washroom. A door exits the washroom to the east.
After exploring the grothlut's lair, Bella conferred with the party, "I think we should look through that door from the king's 'throne room.'" She examined the door for traps, then opened it.
The north and south walls of this hall have been decorated with a bewildering array of timbers, metal parts, gears, bits of broken weapons, and trash.
Searching the area, Grem discovers four nearly invisible trip lines, each made from a fine cord of morlock hair stretching across the room 1 foot off the ground. They are attached to spike launcher traps that have been hidden in the walls.
Bella firgued she should be able to step over the trigger lines without setting the trap off, but that wouldn't help the others get past the room. "Stand back, I'm going to try to disarm it." Her attempt was very clumsy, immediately setting the trap off, or so she thought.
Bella winced at her fumble fingers. She took a moment to steady her nerves, and tried again; this time she did better.
"OK, it should be safe now!", she reported to the others. She picked her way through the debris to the door at the opposite end of the room and checked it for traps, then opened it a crack.
A desk with a chair sits in the middle of this room, while three empty picture frames hang on the walls. Two morlocks are tinkering with a broken clockwork construct. They are distracted and don't notice Bella peeking through the door.
Grem stays close enough to be able to back up Bella, but far enough not to interfere in her work. He never could keep up with the dancers and acrobats that made up many of the students he worked with, but wasn't really concerned about it. The mountains doesn't move gracefully either, and they last for eons, weathering all storms.
Zetty follows after Bella and Grem, but stays out of their way as they work. She's still shaken up by the encounter with the fleshy horror, even almost an hour later. When Bella reports back on the morlocks and the construct, she whispers "Do you think you can surprise them? Or do we want to go around? We could go one of the other ways from the drake's room if we wanted."
Bella remained optimistic that some of the morlocks might prove reasonable, "I'm going to try talking to them!", she whispered cheerfully. She returned to the door to where the morlocks were working on the construct, and stepped quietly into the room, hoping to catch them off guard. "Hello there, I'm Bella! What are you working on there? It looks fascinating!
"Say, would you folks have an idea why the Gauntlight would have become suddenly active again? It's been causing some of the dead to leave their graves, which has caused quite a bit of bother!"
The morlocks respond to Bella's attempt at diplomacy with hostility!
Before anybody can react, they rush at Bella, clambering on top of each other to swarm the halfling! She takes two heavy blows to the head!
"You are horrible people!", Bella cried. raising her brightly lit rapier and trying to stab one of her assailants. Then she moved to the side to give her allies room to deploy.
Zetty starts scribing, raising an eyebrow at the sight of the morlocks all squeezed together "I don't remember reading about this bit in the book about the Darklands! Who knew morlocks were so comfortable sharing their personal space." Her sketch starts to show two morlocks getting a little cozy with one another.
As she works, she sends a spike from the spike launchers as a telekinetic projectile.
Grem pushes through the door and squats down into his combat stance. "The lady asked you a question," the dwarf rumbles, angrily. "No need to be so rude!
◆ Step
◆ Mountain Stance
◆ Flurry of Blows
Eyenia steps forward and reaches around the corner, shooting a blast of glittering light at the two morlocks.
The morlock shriek as Vengis electrocutes them and Eyenia burns them. Bella blinds them with her rapier before stabbing one, then Grem and Zetty combine their efforts to finish one off.
The other morlock swings its club at Grem, but he parries its attacks!
Bella prayed for divine protection and moved back into the fray,stabbing at the remaining enemy.
Zetty pumps a fist as Grem blocks and parries "Wow! We're getting good!" She raises up another spike from the spike launchers and sends it spinning end over end at the remaining morlock.
Grem takes another step, further into the room, and slams his fist and feet down on their target.
◆ Step
◆ Flurry of Blows
◆ Parry
Pelted by projectiles, punched, and stabbed, the second morlock falls! With the threats neutralized, you can examine the broken clockwork they were tinkering with.
"Excuse me while I fix myself up again,", Bella said to her friends, taking out some bandages.
While Grem has some basic understanding on it's value, he doesn't move to tinker with it, instead just examining the device as a whole. "What would such a thing be for?" he rumbles out loud.
Immediately noticing the artistic value in the gear, Zetty grabs her alchemical tools and carefully pries the piece loose with a pair of forceps. "Wow!" She holds the gear up to whatever light there is. "No wonder they were trying to open it. Makes you wonder where this clockwork came from though. We didn't see any upstairs, and I can't imagine a lot of morlocks making something like this." She wrinkles her nose. "Mmmm, maybe that's unfair putting them all in a bucket like that. Who knows. There could be super artistic morlocks out there."
Once she has the gear out, she places it on a cloth and starts sketching it out to capture all the details while Bella is recovering.
Once she was fully healed, Bella checked the southwestern door, to make sure it led to an area that she'd already explored from the other side. Then she moved to the eastern door, carefully opened it and looked through.
Zetty joins Bella once the halfling is looking healed up. She murmurs "I hope we can find someone who wants to talk soon. All these murder-locks might have known something about the Gauntlight, but they were just so busy trying to kill us."
The vigilant Grem responds to Zetty's concerns, "Many creatures of the world work in this way. Few choose the path of enlightenment, falling back on baser instincts."
Eyenia nods sadly, "Some are blinded to the true path, barred from it's light. In those cases, the mercy of oblivion is all we can give them."
The door opens onto a hall lined with several doors. Each of these leads to a ruined bedroom with nothing of interest.
Bella quietly creeps down the hall and looks around the corner. This large open area is a filthy mess, even beyond the collapse to the south that clogs part of the room with rubble. Half-eaten fish, cat-sized beetles, and bits of waterfowl lie strewn about in a tangle amid gnawed bones of larger creatures.
Four small, lanky morlocks are present here, fiddling with a partially ruined ballista. Spotting Bella creeping, the miniature morlocks snarl and hiss, reaching for daggers on their belts!
Grem places himself in front of Bella, and gets ready for the incoming assault.
◆ Stride
◆ Mountain Stance
◆ Parry
Bella moved up beside Grem and prayed for divine protection. "Fear the light!", she taunted the Morlocks, brandishing her glowing rapier.
The morlocks prove quite nimble, dodging Vengis’s lightning. Bella fails to demoralize her foe. The morlocks swarm over each other as they rush Grem and Bella. Two of them stab the dwarf, but Bella’s shield protects her from harm.
Bella decided to focus on one of the Morlocks in front of Grem, hoping to help her friend take one done quickly. "We've already killed your King! Flee now!"
Zetty has to hurry to catch up with the rest of the party already engaging with another group of morlocks. As she strides into the room, she moves to the back to get out of peoples' way. She starts sketching the scene with all the scavengers, a frown growing on her face. She calls out to the closest morlock "Hey! Hey you! Give up, so we can chat rather than punch you in the face!"
Grem lets out a sharp "Hiyaa!" before attacking the creatures in front of him.
◆ Ki Strike (Flurry of Blows)
Eyenia fires a ray of searing moonlight at the morlock as unseen wind whips her hair and her body grows lighter and more insubstantial.
Zetty begins her performance, and Eyenia blasts one of the morlocks with a moonbeam. Grem bashes the wounded one with his staff, switching targets as it falls and pummeling another one twice more. Vengis takes that morlock down with his lightning and wounds another one.
The two remaining morlocks attack Grem and Bella! Both take a light hit.
Bella scrambled around behind the morlocks and attacked one of the semi-feral humanoids from the rear.
Seeing Bella's strategy, Grem turns to target the same creature, looking to clear the room quickly.
◆ Flurry of Blows