Zetty eyes the instruments that Shadow Malice are using, and seeing no oboes or flutes, she borrows a guitar and tries to improvise as best as she can. While she's not completely ineffective with the instrument, she gives off the feel of a beginner.
"Uh, you've all got it! I think. I'll just be over here, practicing."
After some consideration of his options, Bertolt finds a large table, flips it on its side, and carries it over to the stage. "Clear a path, clear a path! Come, see how many it takes to stand against my might! I will shove this table through to the far wall, let us see how many it takes to halt my advance!" He roars boisterously. "Whoever guesses correctly their next round is on me!"
While Zin and Eyenia impress the crowd, Zetty and Bertolt fail to make much of an impression.
”Not bad!” Ryta says. ”But that was just the pre-show. Now it’s time for the ROCK-OFF! Three, two, one—let’s rock!”
Kragala begins to bang on her drums while Gulzash and Nox shred on their lutes. Ryta belts out the lyrics of a high-energy song, the morlocks cheering and raising their fists along with the beat!
At the end of their performance, the band members smirk and hand over their instruments to you. ”Your turn. Let’s see what you’ve got!”
Zetty, somewhat discouraged, nevertheless scurries over to back Vengis' upcoming solo number up with some experimental strumming of the lute she borrowed.
Bella joined in the singing, but tried not to stand out too much, lest she detract from the performance.
Bertolt jollily tapped along but spared the room from his own singing. For now, a few more ales in and they might not be so lucky.
Zetty winces, her darting eyes saying "Please don't put me at the front of the band but if you do, you better be backing me up!!!"
As Zetty takes the lead on the lute, the rest of you accompany her by singing in chorus. The morlocks in the audience listen, enraptured by the experimental chords and meter the gnome plays. By the time the song is complete, they are cheering and applauding.
Ryta looks at her bandmates and shrugs. "Huh. You guys ain't half-bad, actually. You've got the respect of Shadow Malice!" The ysoki offers her hand to Zetty to shake.
Another figure has emerged from the back rooms to witness your performance. The burly urdefhan manager, Vischari, has finally been drawn out. The transparent-skinned woman gives you a nod and a grin.
Murschen, who is rather drunk by this point, immediately sets upon the target of his ire. "Vischari!" he slurs. "You ugly, see-through trollop! You've denied my challenges for too long! It's time you finally fought me!"
Vischari sighs and rolls her eyes. "Ugh. Fine, if only to shut your trap, once and for all!"
The morlocks scurry to the edges of the tavern, clearing a space for the two rivals to face off. They stare each other down...
Zetty not sure if the audience is applauding for her or for everyone but her claps along, before giving the lute back to the band and shaking the ysoki's hand. "I guess it went OK?"
She takes a step back when Murschen and Vischari square off. In the moment of silence before the start of the fight, Zetty can't help but wonder if this whole fight facilitation plan is actually leading to anything good. Murschen and Vischari and some of the skullduggerous people here in the tavern seem like the first relatively reasonable folks the group has met in the Vaults. And now they're going to be at odds with one another.
"Let's make it interesting," Vischari says. "I'll wager the contents of my safe against your magical handwraps."
"Deal!" Murschen says. "Let's do this!"
The skulk drops into the stance of the red ruin, designed to tear away chunks of flesh like a ferocious beast. He rushes at Vischari, clawing at her! The urdefhan growls angrily as she retaliates with her fists. She lands a particularly heavy blow that stuns Murschen, and she capitalizes on his disadvantage by clamping her jaws around his neck. The skulk's flesh turns translucent around the site of the injury as she drinks his blood, draining him and restoring some of her own vitality.
Murschen shakes off the stun and resumes clawing at Vischari, but it's clear his strength is flagging. Vischari lands several more punches, and with the last blow, the skulk goes down, knocked out! The morlocks in the bar cheer her victory as the badly wounded urdefhan raises her hands in triumph. "There. He finally got what he wanted," she remarks, spitting some blood on the tavern floor.
The gory "duel" leaves Zetty too distracted to cheer, but she follows with a "Uh, nice fight! Congrats Vischari, and Murschen, good showing. Wait, can you hear me?" She heads over to see if the skulk is truly KO'd. She doesn't have medical knowledge of any kind, she she just looks to see if the guy seems to just be pretending.
She returns to the rest of the party and whispers "So, we hopefully satisfied Murschen and a bunch of the rest of these people, so is it time to slip away and continue our exploration?"
Bella checked on the unconscious Murschen to assess his medical condition.
Murschen has been thoroughly knocked out. He has numerous broken bones and contusions. He will likely be in a lot of pain for a long time, but he is alive and will eventually recover.
After check on Murschen, Bella reported to her companions, "He'll recover, but will take some time."
"Great! Alls well that ends well then." Zetty gives a little bow to the assembled crowd. "Alright, we're off. If anyone has any tips or would like to share their wisdom or anything else with us, now's the time. Otherwise, we'll see you all another day, probably!"
Unless Vischari or anyone from the crowd seems like they might step forward, Zetty turns to the others and suggests quietly "Back the way we came then? We've got a place to check that was occupied before."
You return to the sauna where you met Murschen and search the area. You find his treasures stashed under a bench: a gold and emerald ring worth 40 gp, a ruby-encrusted dagger worth 70 gp, and a fine mithral bracelet worth 20 gp.
"Since we got to know them a little, I feel a bit guilty just stealing Murschen's stash. Not a lot, but a little guilty." Zetty quickly casts detect magic to sense if there's anything magical from the items or the room, then turns back to the weird changing rooms with their snarling beasts. From a safe distance, she crouches and tries to see what might be trapped inside.
If the group doesn't come across anything else of interest, Zetty consults on of her sketches to reorient herself on the layout of this floor. "I think we got turned around somewhere. Our undead mummy friend from above said there'd be a lab here somewhere belonging to the seugathi, but I haven't seen anything like that. Maybe we try this way?" She points to the path to the south and west.
Bertolt frowns at the suggestion of thieving from the man. "Were we not on good terms? He is no monster. Foolish perhaps, but that is no reason to rob a man." He scratches his beard in thought, shifting. He had expressed his distaste in it but not so strong as a paladin might, and did not make a physical move to stop his comrades.
The western doors on the arena floor open onto a long corridor that runs north to south. Double doors are set at either end of the hall.
Zetty shrugs to Bertolt "We're on good terms, but he's serving and befriending seugathi willingly - he's far from a good guy. And hey, we got him his match, so we earned it!"
On that note, Zetty is expecting more seugathi soon, so as the group approaches the doors to the south, she sketches out another spell. An inky urdefhan with a bow springs from her page and lands nearby. At Zetty's direction, the phantom archer stands to the back of the group. Once that's done, she nods to Vengis and Bertolt. "South first?"
Bella quickly listened for sounds on the other side of the southern doors, and then opened one side.
The doors open onto a smaller room. The stone walls of this chamber appear to glisten with blood. An iron maiden stands in one corner, while the other corner has a metal table bristling with nails. A bearded devil stands at attention here, holding a saw-toothed glaive. Two fly-bodied devils flit about the chamber. When they see you, though, the trio of devils immediately move to attack!
Bertolt moves forward, shield raised as he bangs on it loudly with his hammer. "COME FOUL DEVILS, AND BREAK YOURSELF AGAINST MINE SHIELD!"
Zetty tries to gauge what these foes are capable of!
Bella waited to follow someone else to enter the room.
Zetty recognizes the fly devils as zebubs. Zebubs serve as Hell's messengers and spies. Their ability to share what they've seen with other creatures makes them especially useful—not only to other devils, but also to mortal conjurers. They can turn invisible and teleport short distances. In combat, they attack with their filthy mandibles.
Zetty quickly readies the group to defend in the face of the first wave of attacks. She first directs her phantom archer to attack, then sketches out an inky wall that briefly rises up in front of Bertolt.
The phantom archer sends arrows made of carefully illustrated bone at the orange zebub.
Eyenia conjures a bolt of divine energy and fires it at the zebub, ”You are fated to return to whence you came!”
Kragga moves up beside Bertolt, casting shield and entering her arcane cascade stance. Eyenia's divine lance zips past the zebub, but Zetty's illusory archer scores a critical hit!
The zebubs fly up to attack Kragga and Bertolt, but both warriors fend off their snapping mandibles. The barbazu takes advantage of his glaive's reach to slice at Bertolt, scoring a critical hit!
Zetty delivers a bold stroke of her pen that sends a wave of magical ink up into the air. In a flash, the ink turns into an aegis of holy light, shining down on the devils to drive fear into their hearts. While the devils are reeling, she sustains her phantom archer.
The phantom archer fires at the most injured looking zebub.
Bella moves up behind Bertolt and tried to heal his wounds.
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Bertolt interposes his hammer between himself and the mandibles, easily keeping them off him. His eyes watched the larger devil behind them. But even he was not ready for the speed of the glaive as it came down. His shield came up, and with a horrendous wrench of metal it takes an edge of the horrible wound inflicted on Bertolt. He snarls but does not falter, and instead of pushing back against the weapon he wraps his shield arm around it and pulls it straight down to try to strip the weapon away!
Bertolt slams his shield and hammer into the zebub in front of Kragga, hoping that one can be focused down quickly to shatter the enemy defenses.
His hammer was clumsily swung, but his shield edge came straight for the mouth of the flying little devil.
Bella tried to stop Berlolt"s bleeding.
Eyenia steps forward, placing a hand on Bertolt's shoulder and channels healing energy into him.
Bertolt disarms the barbazu of its glaive as he blocks with his shield! Vengis fires a trio of scorching rays. Only one hits a zebub, but unfortunately, the devil is immune to fire! Bertolt takes out that flylike fiend with a critical hit from his shield!
Eyenia lays hands on Bertolt to heal him, overcoming the infernal wound. Bella tries to help stop the bleeding, but is unsuccessful. Zetty's fear spell leaves the zebub shaken, but the barbazu resists its effects.
Kragga channels negative energy through her blade and attacks the remaining zebub, effortlessly slicing it in half!
The barbazu declines to retrieve its glaive. Instead, it steps forward to attack Bertolt with its claw and wriggling beard.
"Down to one." Zetty inspires her allies with a flourish of her pen, then focuses on her phantom archer to sustain it, before pondering the nature of the remaining devil, trying to remember if there's anything the group will need to know to defeat it.
Bella moved forward and tried to stab the remaining devil; then she struck again and nimbly stepped to the side.
Vengis blasts the barbazu with magic missiles. Zetty's illusory archer lands two hits, then Bertolt and Bella move to flank the bearded devil. Together, they are able to finish it off! With the fight over, Bella stops Bertolt's bleeding, allowing him to be healed normally once more.
The weapon racks in this room hold two +1 glaives, a bloodletting kukri, a standard-grade cold iron shield, and three moderate acid flasks.
Zetty finishes a sketch of a zebub bouncing on a pogo stick, then heads carefully on into the room. "I wonder why they were here? More souls to fight in the arenas? Or just to guard this armory...?" She looks over the items, helping with identifying them if no one else does, before passing most on to the stronger members of the group. She does stop at the alchemical flasks and asks "Anyone mind if I take a couple? They're a bit more potent than the ones I can brew up."
Once Bertolt is feeling better, Zetty comments "We still haven't found those seugathi, other than the single one we killed. Did we somehow get turned around and go down one too many floors? Or are they around the next corner? If you're all still feeling mostly okay, let's check that room on the other end of the t-intersection." Once she gets there, she'll carefully inspect the door and listen in to see if she can hear anything going on on the other side.
Bella attended to the remainer of Bertolt's wounds.
Once she was finished, she folloed Zetty and listened at the door
"Well done all! Well fought indeed, if I am taking the worst of these fiend's assault and we all come out alive we are fortunate indeed!"
"I say we continue on this floor, sweeping it in it's entirety. Let us leave no stone unturned."
Zetty can hear grumbling, groaning, and what sounds like something leathery scraping across the floor beyond the doors to the next room...
Zetty beckons the others over and whispers "Groaning and scraping, so it's probably a purple worm with indigestion. Or a seugathi and prisoner." She heads back up the corridor, takes out her scroll of animus mine, and sets up the mental trap to protect her if someone or something tries to mess with her mind.
She heads back afterward, letting the others make their preparations for the next room.