Bella checked the door for traps, then waited until everyone was ready, before trying to open the door without those beyond noticing.
Bertolt stacked up behind Bella, ready to intervene should anything go awry.
Anchored shackles and fetters line the north and west walls, and bloodstains obscure the stone floor. At the east and south, two sets of double doors lead out of the room; two steep staircases beside each of them lead further below.
A horrible aberration stands guard here—a deformed mass of misplaced limbs, loose flesh, and bony protrusions. Parts that should be internal are on full display to the world. It lets loose a grotesque gurgle as it begins to shamble forward!
Bertolt charges loudly into the room, mostly wanting to make sure it focuses on him rather than his allies.
Zetty hesitates "Yep, that's another horror terror."
The horrid creature is fully affected by Vengis's spell, its movements slowing to a crawl. Bertolt's weapon bounces harmlessly off the thing's thick hide.
The monster slowly slaps at the dwarf with a tentacle. It hits, the blow causing Bertolt's mind to fill with corrupted images of a ruined life.
Bertolt shoves the creature back with his shield, but his eyes are wide and his pupils dilated. He begins speaking in a scared voice, entirely in dwarfish. "Ool hteups, yhutu hoxu olai lau? E snop onau...E huot E yenn onyools du onau ay..." He cowers behind his shield.
Seeing that the creature is trapped in the grasp of Vengis' slow spell, Zetty scurries into the room, up the stairs, and quickly sets to sketch out a scene of the group stomping on the foe as a team. Almost as an afterthought, she draws and tosses a bottle of lightning in an attempt to debilitate the foe for her allies.
Bella moved around behind the strange creature to flank with Bertolt, and then stabbed with her rapier.
The creature lashes Bella with a tentacle as she moves into flank it. A well-timed dodge allows the halfling to avoid what would have been a critical hit, taking a normal hit instead. The blow leaves her stunned, though, and unable to complete her movement or attack.
Eyenia moves up and fires a divine lance that misses the fleshwarp.
Zetty hurls bottle lightning at the monster, only managing to splash it.
Kragga steps up alongside Bertolt and channels fire into her blade as she slices the monster! Bertolt recovers from the stun and raises his shield, while Vengis misses with a projectile.
The tentacled creature moves very slowly, lashing out at Kragga. It connects, overwhelming the orc's mind!
Bella recovered he wits, and decided she needed to be more careful around this monster. She moved carefully around the creature, taking care to avoid its attacks; she tumbled around to its rear and trust with her rapier
Zetty waits for Bella to attract the massive monster's attention before she casts a true strike. Observing the battlefield from her perch, she telekinetically picks up the tentacle tip that Kragga just lopped off, then slams that tentacle right back into the creature.
Bertolt goes uncharacteristically quiet as he recovers from the mental assault brought on by the monster's tentacle. His shield stays low while he raises the hammer, the crackling electricity reflecting in his eyes and raising his beard hairs as he throws his weight against the monster!
Vengis and Eyenia miss with their spells. Zetty, Bella, and Bertolt all land good hits on the tentacled monster. Though badly injured and still slowed, the creature bites Bertolt with its jagged teeth!
In his anger he left himself vulnerable and took the full brunt of the attack. It did not stop his silent vicious onslaught though.
Bella tried to stabbed the beast twice, almost dropping her weapon, and then offered her best advice on how to best combat the monster.
With the creature flagging, Zetty draws a scroll of soothe just in case and then telekinetically propels a chunk of masonry at its core. "Gosh, this thing is WAY too tough! Is it ever gonna give up?"
You continue your assault. Bertolt lands a powerful blow, then Vengis is finally able to finish off the tentacled horror with a barrage of magic missiles! Its tentacles twitch feebly as it dies.
The hallway on the other side of the south door in this room gently slopes down. The stairs in this room lead down to the dungeon level below this one.
As the creature falls, Bertolt's hammer does not abate. He drops his shield entirely and with two hands brings down his hammer, and with a twists lets loose a shock of electricity throughout the corpse. He breathes heavily, pulling his hammer free from the muck, wide-eyed with a mixture of anger and fear.
"You show him Bertolt!" Zetty cheers as the horrible creature finally falls. She stows her scroll, realizing it won't be needed, at least for now. She takes a quick jaunt to the intersection of the staircases to see if she can get an impression of what lies further downward, then comes back up to rest with the group. "So if my map is right, if we go east from here we'll soon be back in the tavern, and if we go northish, there's another room we haven't explored. Might be our target seugathi, might not. I'm starting to think we missed a lab all the way to the south east." She refocuses while Bella is patching people up.
You head down the hall to the north and investigate the room there. Metal shelves and operating tables hint at this room’s original purpose. Clean bones and bits of rusted metal lie in piles throughout the rest of the room.
A large ooze lazily squelches about the chamber, its color a sickly combination of yellow, orange, and brown hues. It begins to slither towards you as it senses your presence, though it doesn't immediately appear to be hostile...
Bertolt looks down at the ooze, raising his brow in curiosity. He raises his shield but not his hammer. "So uhh...are we in danger?" He asks aloud to the party, keeping his eyes on the ooze.
The lack of immediate hostility gives Zetty a chance to examine and sketch the oozy ooze from a distance. "Judging by the very clean looking bones, probably at least a little bit! It's just slow moving. If you think you can handle it in combat, we could get a better look at the room. But as far as I'm concerned, we could leave it alone too."
Zetty surmises that the ooze's somewhat docile behavior means someone or something feeds it regularly. Offering it something to eat may prevent it from attacking you.
Bertolt purses his lips down, and puts his hammer away to instead replace it with a couple strips of jerky from his rations. Judging by the bones in the area it is used to a protein heavy diet. He slowly moves forward and lowers himself to a knee, gently tossing out the rations a couple feet in front of him towards the ooze. "No need to fight mine friend. We are here to rid this place of monsters, and a creature that wants naught but sustenance is no monster."
The ooze slithers over the jerky and absorbs it into its body, squelching off to a corner to digest the meal. You are able to search through the detritus in the room. Amid the jumble of items scoured clean by the ooze's acid is a chain shirt, a steel shield, three daggers, a pick, several caltrops, professional fishing tackle, a spyglass, 14 pitons, and 30 feet of chain.
Zetty scurries through the room, peeking into the piles of junk but finding little of particular use. She pulses a couple of detect magic spells out to determine if any of the gear is magical, picking it up if it is. Once she's back at the entrance, she closes the door behind her. "Agreed Vengis! We can go back through the tavern and check that door to the east of it. Then, if there isn't anything too interesting, we should continue to the east to where that red teleportation circle was. Just south of the red circle was a set of doors, if I remember right."
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The rooms off the Warped Brew tavern lead to various kitchens, offices, and storage rooms. There's nothing here for you unless you're willing to risk the wrath of the owner Vischari and her staff by stealing from them.
You return to the far southeast portion of this level. A small storage closet holds cluttered tools, scraps of wood, and furniture. A search reveals some treasures hidden among the trash: an emerald grasshopper, a hand of the mage, an iron cube, and two ichthyosis mutagens.
Finally, you come to a long hallway that ends at a pair of double doors. Books, glass bottles emitting smoke, and clumps of slime fill the shelves that cover the high walls of this chamber. The southern area displays the dissected remains of several creatures, pinned to a wall like rare and unusual specimens. The head of a morlock, somehow kept alive through some mechanical means with tubes and wires connecting to its body, screams a constant hoarse note.
The seugathi's leader, Jafaki, is in this laboratory, along with a drider assistant.
"Interlopers!" Jafaki says in a telepathic shriek. "How many of our operations have you already disrupted here? No matter. Once I have defeated you, you will make excellent candidates for experimentation!"
Jafaki quickly uses an innate spell, levitating up near the ceiling 25 feet off the ground. The drider likewise climbs up to the ceiling with its spiderlike legs, then launches a bead of fire towards you that explodes into a massive fireball!
Zetty weathers the fireball, though she loses a few pages of parchment from her writing slate in the process. Sweeping the instant ashes away, she takes a moment to swallow nervously, then rushes into the room. As she does, she rapidly sketches, ink flying up into the air to create the vision of a noble paladin raising her sword.
While the enemies are off-guard, she draws and tosses a moderate acid flask up at the drider.
Bella advised the others about the best way to fight the ooze. Then she took out her sling and loaded it.
Bertolt was unprepared for the scorching assault. He responds by drawing a light hammer on his belt, flinging it forward at the creature that threw the spell at him!
Eyenia's unable to avoid the fireball but she manages not be caught totally off guard by it. Rather singed, she summons forth a starknife made from spectral force and directs it at Jafaki.
Bella oved in and shot at the thing climbing the wall.
Bertolt's hammer whizzes harmlessly past the spider monster. Zetty splatters it with acid that clings to its flesh. Bella notices the monster has relatively slow reflexes and communicates that fact to the others as she hurls a sling bullet that misses the mark.
Eyenia's searing light likewise fails to get past Jafaki's defenses. The seugathi partially resists Vengis's spell, but he is still shaken by it.
"I'll help you reach them!" Kragga calls to Bertolt. The orc casts a spell of enlargement, causing Bertolt to grow to incredible size! Kragga then enters her arcane cascade stance.
Jafaki tries to cripple Bertolt with a spell of confusion. Meanwhile, the drider returns the favor to Zetty, blasting her with an acid arrow.
Bella tried to shoot the spider monster again, advising, "It doesn't have the best refelxes,so try to take advantage of that!"
Zetty shakes, but the acid from the acid arrow clings to her and sizzles uncomfortably. She quickly draws the second of the two moderate acid flasks on her person and flings it upward at the seugathi.
With acid dripping off of her, Zetty quickly sketches out a rough caricature of herself, then surrounds it in a vaguely blobby outline. With a swirl of ink, she disappears, and is replaced by a black pudding!
Eyenia's starlight starknife misses again. She then tries to shoot a lance of holy power at the drider but can't hit her target.
Bertolt turns on Kragga, drawing his storm hammer and hitting the orc once before his confusion wears off. Bella and Vengis both hit the drider, the sorcerer's spell doing far more damage than the halfling's sling bullet. Zetty hurls acid at Jafaki but the flask falls short. The gnome then transforms herself into an ooze! Eyenia misses with her spells. Knowing that Bertolt will likely continue to remain a target, Kragga protects him with a blur spell before raising a shield for herself.
Jafaki targets Vengis with a phantasmal killer spell, then the drider launches a trio of magic missiles at him!
Zetty, or rather the goopy black blob of ink that's taken her place, globs her way up the side of the wall and into the face of the drider. She raises one long pseudopod and wildly swings it toward the monster.