The morlock looks Kka up and down. "Hey, you came in like everything's normal and we've seen your beak a million times before. They sat down and showed actual interest, that's the difference. We're not monsters, you know."
Despite the softened tone, you notice you're not offered a glass.
"Anyway, the waste disposal? No, we don't mess around with that. Keeps the place clean, even if it does need continual feeding. We're happy with the normal-sized experiments to the east." He jerks a thumb in the direction where you fought the noise-lizard.
---
The ysoki puts up her hands. "Whoah, 'bub.' The scientists are just doing their jobs. We don't have any beef with them. Except maybe Jafaki. They're a little too happy doing science, if you catch my drift. Seen many a friend sent to their office and never return. Or if they did, got sent straight to the waste disposal afterwards."
Everyone notices that everyone in this room has a glowing rune on their forehead that says "Victor." Some even have multiple layered on top of each other.
Kka crosses her eyes and looks at her beak. "A million times? What? This is my first time here." She uncrosses her eyes. "Not monsters, eh? Tell thaat to my friend Tanji. Oh! Thaat's right! You caan't. Because guys just like you slaughtered her upstairs." She shakes her head at the gruesome memory and barely stops herself from leaping across the counter and cutting the morlock down. Time enough for that later.
Noticing the Victor runes on the bartender's forehead and those of the other patrons, she points to it. "So whaat's the deal with all the Victor runes? He a friend of all you guys?"
"Thanks," he says to the one who complimented his moves. "That song was killer! Where I come from, the music sucks. It's all dark hymns and lamentations, which would be fine if any of them knew how to shred a lute. All the bass but none of the roar, you know what I mean?"
Fuin's eyes cross slightly as he tries to recall who Jafaki is.
Gears are turning slowly (perhaps even more slowly than usual) in his head, and an idea finally clicks into place. "Can you excuse me for a second?"
He moves over to Kvit, who seems to be the only one not mingling, and speaks in low tones so that only the wizard can hear him (hopefully). "Okay so it looks like all these people are here for money from the arena. If we shut down the arena, I think they might all just drift away looking for new work. We might not have to fight any of them. I think we'll probably have to clear the floor below us too for good measure, but I mean, we were planning on doing that anyway. Thoughts?"
The other morlock at the bar finally pipes up. "You win a round in the arena, you get a rune saying you won. You run away, you get a 'loser' brand instead. It's an easy system to keep track of how much everyone won. The scientists make sure to not overdo it too much, but they all test us in different ways. Tentacles, flying enemies, spells, the whole shebam."
"Yeah," one of the card-playing morlocks pipes up, "this place is supposed to weed out the weaklings, but after being in operation for a few hundred years, we're the cream of the crop. Throwing anything stronger against us just means wiping us out. They learned that lesson early on. That monstrosity got sent to the a deeper level of the Vaults. And besides, it's a spectator sport. Seeing us devoured every once in a while is fun, but if that happens every Wealday, it kinda gets boring, you know? You gotta have a fine balance. It needs to seem like we're losing, but with some chance of victory. The audience pays for spectacle, not a ten-second splatterfest."
Kka looks over at Lough after he clarifies the situation. "Ah, thaat Victor. Huh! I guess thaat makes more sense. Hey! Why didn't we get one of those when we killed that last critter?"
Seeing that she wasn't going to be served a drink anytime soon, Kka wanders over to the double doors to the west and after making sure they're clear of traps, opens one of them to have a look at what's on the other side. "I wonder whaat's through here."
Kka checks the double doors to the west, then opens them to find a featureless hallway connecting two more double doors.
Cherry is having a hard time deciding what to do here, but; "Kind of sounds unpleasant," Cherry says to the card playing morlock. "Knowing that it's just a matter of time until you get devoured."
"Eh, it's a living. You work an evening a week, and the rest of the time you're free to do whatever you want. Which is drinking and gambling, in our case."
The morlock finishes his hand and gloats, and the other morlock angrily throws a few coppers in his direction.
"And like he said," the losing morlock continues, "the odds are in our favour. After all these years, we're all that's left. The science-worms know that if they come up with anything too lethal, they'll have to look for more volunteers. We've reached an equilibrium. It's not glamorous, but like he said, it's an easy life, and better than digging in the dirt for scraps. Wanna play a hand with us?"
The morlocks welcome Lough at the table and offer him a cup of booze as well, then start explaining the rules of the game.
If you're intending to cheat, make me a Deception, Games Lore, or Thievery check to mess with the cards. Or an Acrobatics check, with a much higher DC. If you fail, please also make me a Diplomacy check to see how well you play it off and see how the morlocks take it.
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With some loose change, Lough antes the bare minimum, folds at the first challenge, curses loudly, and generally plays very conservatively a few rounds, not asking questions, just pretending to know. Then, without absolute knowledge that his hand is even that good, he smiles, causing his animate eyebrows to upcurl, and his beard to part for his forked tongue.
He slams his hand on the table, face down. "Anyone care to challenge?" looking from morlock to morlock to morlock "Didn't think so, Bubs" as he grasps the wad of cash in the middle of the table with his imposing metal arm - then the deck itself with his slagged claw "I'll deal. See if you can win your money back. Maybe risk death in a fight like a squiveling worm at the mercy of Science you cannot understand nor fathom. It's, what did you say?: An 'easy life'!" and starts guffawing so loudly he nearly chokes!
The morlocks give Lough a good ribbing as he joins them for a few hands of cards, then suddenly fall silent as Lough reveals the (figurative) ace up his sleeve.
"Unbelievable," one morlock says.
"Indeed. Absolutely unbelievable," the other chimes in. "We've been playing each other for a decade now, and we can read each other perfectly. We're equally matched. Every single night, we end up with exactly the same amount of money we started with. And all of a sudden you walk in and beat us after only a few hands? This is amazing."
The morlocks order an extra bottle of whatever Lough prefers and happily play a few more rounds, genuinely excited to have a challenging opponent.
You do think that if you keep your "lucky streak" up long enough though, they'll start to catch on. If you want to get something out of them, you might wanna do it while they're still happy.
Having cracked opened the western door, Kka looks down the hallway and realizes that the first set of doors on the north wall were the same ones they'd already reached from the other side. "Might make for a shorter escape route if things get ugly in the tavern." She notes the doors at the very end of the hallway and decides that going all the way down there for a look behind those doors was risking her feathery hide just a little too much for comfort. "I'll leave those doors for when the rest of the group finishes carousing and decides to join me so we can get on with the job."
She then glances right towards the northern door behind the bar. She blends into the shadows and waits for when the bartender is next distracted serving drinks. Kka then quietly slips over the bar and checks the door. If all seems well, she cracks it open to see what's on the other side.
Kka slips past the counter into the unknown. No shouts follow her, so she assumes she's unseen.
This dirty kitchen features a lit stove replete with oil stains, gristle, and the strong aroma of smoke. Alcoves to the north contain meat hooks and baskets of fungus.
Three badly battered and beaten bodies hang from meat hooks.
One person is about the size of a halfling, but the big eyes and wild hair indicate he might be closer related to gnomes than halflings, but his skin tone is much greyer than you'd expect from a regular gnome. He is currently unconscious.
The second person has short white hair, long, pointy ears, and a purple skin tone. He's definitely a drow.
The final person has skin the colour of the grey stone behind her. In fact, your eyes practically skip over her form and the only reason your eyes register her presence in the first place is because of the blood all over her body. She's missing her right hand and is barely conscious, murmuring something under her breath.
All three of these have wounds all over their body, and chunks of their flesh seem to have gone missing at random places from their body.
The drow looks up as Kka enters. He waits until Kka closes the door behind her and whispers, "You don't look like you're gonna eat me. Would you mind freeing me? Those worms captured me and are either gonna eat me or turn me into some kind of horrible monster-thing, and honestly, I don't really fancy either option. We can run back to Yldaris and live our lives in peace, away from these freaks. What do ya say? I have a pretty sweet life there; I'm willing to share my spoils with my saviour."
Kka scrunches her beak when she sees the hanging corpses in what appears to be a kitchen of little of interest. She's about to close the door when a movement alerts her to the fact that the corpses were in fact still alive. When the drow looks up at her, she quickly steps in and closes the door behind her. "These poor sods don't look like much of a danger. Maybe they know something that might help us."
When the drow asks Kka to release them, she's immediately suspicious. The drow's offer of spoils is not all that tempting. If they'd ever had anything of value, it was long gone. "Not sure freeing you is going to be all that helpful. The only way out is through the taavern, and you're likely to be spotted and put baack up on those hooks... along with me probaably."
Kka weighs her options. The sight of the poor wretches hanging on hooks brings back memories of Tanji's body sacrificed on an altar; this tips the scales in their favor. She cuts the drow free of his hook and with his help, unhooks the other two. She then uses her medical knowledge to patch them up enough that they can move under their own power.
"The faastest way out is through the taavern, but the place is full of morlocks and a spidery creature. If you caan sneak out the western doors without being seen, it should be pretty easy for you to get out of the vaults." Kka describes the path they should take once they exit the tavern through the western doors. "I'll go baack out first and try to create a distraaction so you caan get out without being noticed."
She sneaks back out the door, leaving it slightly cracked and quietly slides over the bar again and tries to engage the bartender and nearest morlock in conversation. "Hey bub, how about a drink? Got anything cool and refreshing?"
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That shady bird!
Lough knows Kka enough now that even though he has no idea what his rogue friend is up to, he knows that something is cooking up. He continues to play his proverbial hand "Ok Bub" taking a hearty swig of whatever they got with his beard "Beginners luck. Or is it!? Let's see if you got money that I can keep taking" he gestures to their coin purses.
The next hand he deals out, and the ones after that, Lough plays by the rules, allowing the morlocks to win all their money back "No quit in these ones!" he elbows Kvit "Shoulda capped off when I had the chip lead"
That should buy ol' Kka some time to get up to whatever shenanigans!
Kka spends a bit to patch up the three wounded prisoners The grey gnome wakes upand quietly unleashes a foul-mouthed tirade. "If those f@~+ing worms think they can mess with me, they've got another thing coming. I'll tear out their tongues and jam them so far up their... whatever it is they poop out of that they'll be tasting their own ass for a month."
He glances at the door Kka came out of several times to make sure no one actually comes in, because you're pretty sure he's so beaten up at the moment, he won't be capable of performing any of his threats anytime soon.
Much less eager to escape is the rock-coloured lady with the missing hand. She's slumped in a corner still mumbling about "the man in coloured rags who takes hands,", while cradling the stump of her right hand with her left.
Before Kka slips back out, the drow halts her by putting a hand on her shoulder. "You sure you don't want to come with us? I could always use a bodyguard in my line of work, and seeing how you compose yourself, I think we work in a very similar line of business. Whatever you're doing in here can't be that profitable, right?"
He tries to flash Kka a smile, the effect somewhat ruined by his bloody lips and missing teeth.
---
Back in front, Lough quickly loses all his earnings and is slowly winning it back again. After a quick look on the table, there's 15 gold coins, 181 silver pieces, a gold tooth worth 5 gold, and bizarrely, a completely intact fossilised tuna skeleton that always tends to get bet first.
"Heh, you win some, you lose some, bud. That's how it goes. Wouldn't be fun otherwise, right? Wanna see if you can get Tony back from me this time?"
The morlock grabs the deck of cards and pushes the fish forward as a bet before he's even seen his cards.
---
Kka distracts the two morlocks at the bar. The bartender frowns at her question, but his professionalism seems to forbid him from denying you a drink. "Plenty of cool and refreshing stuff here. Question is if you're capable of meeting the asking price. Prices tend to go down for friendly faces, if you catch my drift."
Kka puts on a surprised face at the bartender's comment. "Whaaaaat? You saying my faace isn't friendly!? I'll haave you know thaat I haave a whole bunch of friends and they all think I'm the life of the paarty. Why, there's even some morlocks a few levels up thaat will vouch for my friendliness." She continues to do her best to distract them and give the prisoners a chance to escape.
Cherry is mostly staying out of the way and listening. More specifically, they are listening for any kind of rumors or skuttlebut about the things down here.
Kka schmoozes with the barkeep and distracts him long enough for the prisoners to crack open the door, see that he's occupied, and make a dash for the exit. You see them slip through, and the drow raises a hand in thanks and recognition to Kka just before he quietly closes the door again.
---
Meanwhile, Cherry Berry is schmoozing with the bar patrons and seeing what else is roaming these halls.
Sadly, by this point, the band has started playing again, and Cherry Berry has to yell to be heard above the noise, somewhat ruining the atmosphere. The gambling morlocks are busy with Lough, and the spider-creature's too absorbed in its book to pay much attention.
Fuin is already back at the stage headbanging like a maniac.
Kvit tries to stay out of the way with Cherry, being unobtrusive is easy thanks to their smaller size. He tries to stick nearish Lough and Fuìn while Kka is off doing... Whatever mischief she's up to.
Kvit sits down at a table and calmly puts all the evidence together.
- There are (at least) two teleport circles active. One in the common room up above, one in a fighting pit/observarion area.
- Those circles had some kind of extra effect, tagging teleporters with some kind of brand.
- All the contestants here have admitted to fighting multiple times, and getting a winner's brand every single time.
- Kka commented earlier that you haven't received a brand yet. Whether that's because it was an unofficial match, of because you didn't use the teleporter, that's for you to decide.
- You've seen no other teleport circles active. You've found several sleeping ones, but they didn't have the branding effect, either.
It would be possible to connect the dormant circles to these ones, but you'd have to override their basic functions to do so.
After a while, Cherry Berry gently inquires again after other bar patrons.
The spider-creature, who's been silently reading her book until now, finally drops her book, and reveals it to have very graphic illustrations of very erotic subject matter.
"Well, I had to kick Murschen out of the tavern a long while ago for causing a scene. Kept egging everyone on to start a bar brawl, but I ain't having it. We get beaten up enough in the arena as it is, this is supposed to be our time for rest. He's probably still skulking around here somewhere, so if you see him, don't get caught in his schemes. He doesn't fight fair anyways."
She picks up her book again and leafs through it, looking for more smutty pictures.
With the prisoners hopefully now free and safely on their way to the surface, Kka scans the room again and her eyes fall on the southwestern door. She quietly and stealthily makes her way to the door and looks it over. When no one is looking, she cracks it open and has a look behind it.
Kka sneaks away again. Whether she's successful or the patrons just don't care is unclear.
She opens the door and finds a set of stairs leading up to the previous level.
Kka sees the stairs and a quick perusal of her mental map tells her it leads to the room upstairs with the two ghost brothers they helped on their way to the Boneyard. She carefully closes the door and after sneaking across the room, she makes her way silently onto the stage while the band takes a break, and checks the door in the back.
Kka slips back into the tavern and goes backstage when the band is on a break.
Stands for music, a folded velvet curtain, and the wooden cutout of a tree clutter this small space.
The velvet curtain is worth 10 gold pieces Kka thinks, but it's very bulky to carry around. She wouldn't be able to smuggle it around unnoticed.
Wrapped in the curtain is a cloak that's in too pristine a condition to be anything other than magical, though Kka has no idea what its properties are.
Kka examines the lavish curtain but decides that it would be impractical to take it with her. On the other hand, the cloak she finds therein fits very nicely into her backpack. "I'll have Cherry or Kvit look it over when we get a chance."
Finding nothing else of interest or value in the little room, she moves on to the northern door to see what lies beyond.
Kka makes her way north.
Oversized furniture, certainly intended for rooms larger than this one, has been jammed into this small room. An acrid smell, like burning paint, fills the air.
The smell comes from a hookah, with dents and cracks everywhere. It's a minor miracle that it's still functional. Looks like whoever uses this thing is pretty rough on it.
After a quick search, Kka finds nothing of value and loses interest. Batting away the acrid smoke, she scrunches her beak in disgust. "Time to move on." She heads for the next door north. "Let's see what's behind this one."
Cherry is continuing to talk to the people in the bar. Cherry is checking in with everyone in their party to see if they need anything.
Kka continues creeping north.
Placed against the east wall, a disgusting buffet table holds a buffet of smelly fried morsels, gloppy dipping sauce, and spiny mushrooms.
A placard on the door to the south (the one you're currently standing in) says "Performers Only."
Kvit sits around uncomfortably, not sure what to do and afraid of being found out as "an adventurer" any moment. Their group has killed dozens of denizens down here already. Though, based on the victor/loser runes, maybe they wouldn't care if the losers were offed. He's especially nervous as he spies Kka sneaking around occasionally, waiting for some repercussions from it.
He idly flips through his personal spellbook, keeping the other book, The Threshold of Knowledge secured away. He stops and goes back a page and taps a long thin finger on the page and glances towards the band. He might not be able to help, but maybe he can make a distraction.
He goes over to where the band is taking a break. "Hey, uh, do you guys want to try some special effects on your next set? I could give you a rocking backdrop. Volcano, Storm, Dragon's Lair, stuff like that. Could be cool."
The xulgath's eyes go wide at Kvit's suggestion. "That sounds amazing! A visual representation of our music would be awesome." His body odour is nauseating enough, but when he gets close, you smell his breath, and it's even worse. It's like a dead fart, somehow. Anyway, he shoves some papers in Kvit's hands.
"Here's the lyrics to our next song, 'Swimming In A Lake Of Agony.' Try and see if you can match the mood. I'm thinking waterfalls of blood and exploding corpses, but that's just me. Do whatever feels right, ya know?"
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Lough tries not to look in the direction Kka snuck to...
...What's taking so long! Hope she didn't go and get herself killed...
...he throws the remainder of his cards on the table, having lost back all the money he gained, breaking himself even "F this game" and turns to Kvit "Entertain me, Rat!" keeping his con going, he slurs at his friend "I want a goddess-damned volcano!"
Rising from his chair, he goes over and pushes Fuin in an aggressively-friendly-moshy way!
Fuin, having banged himself halfway to a concussion, flops onto a barstool. "Beer," he pants. "Damn, those guys know how to party..."
Kka eyes the remains of the meal on the buffet table with unfeigned disgust. "Ugh! These guys will eat just about anything." Holding her beak to avoid breathing in any more of the foul stench than necessary, she makes her way to the next door to the north. "They sure like their doors around here. Maybe this one has something actually interesting behind it."
Kvit takes the lyrics and scans the pages, unsurprised at the "mood" but slightly more surprised that the screaming music actually had words to it. He nods, "I'll see what I can do. Lasts an hour, so you will have plenty of time."
He'd never seen waterfalls of blood, but in the last few... Weeks? Has it only been weeks since they've been delving into this horrible place? He shakes his head and tries to concentrate on the task at hand. He recalls all of the horrible things they've seen so far, from the blood mist on the ground floor to the terrible fleshblobs and undead. He channels all of it into an image of a lake of blood, the stage rising up from it as a black stone plateau. The back wall will become a cliff face made up of black stone and skulls. Waterfalls of blood fall from the top into the lake, sending up a cloud of red mist...
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Hero Point to Kvit for an awesome idea!
Kvit conjures up a backdrop to the performers, and the entire bar is in awe at the scene before them. The band gets extra into the spirit of their music and produces a wall of sound that drowns out any noise.
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Meanwhile, Kka continues to explore on her own. A sudden blast of music starts up, even audible through the thick walls. She opens the door, and it leads to a hallway. One door clearly leads back to the bar, while another leads to a different room. She opens that one.
This messy office features a battered wooden desk with paperwork and ink stains scattered over its surface. The only exit is a door to the south.
Behind the desk sits a woman with see-through blue skin, her intestines and bones clearly visible. She looks up as Kka opens the door and a blast of music echoes through the office.
"You have one chance to explain why you're here uninvited and bringing that racket of music with you before I gut you and serve you as stew," she yells over the din of the music.
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Kka freezes momentarily when she spots the gruesome figure sitting behind a desk. When the figure spots her at the door and yells at her, Kka isn't sure what to do. "Oops. I guess that was one door too many. Not sure how I'm going to play this." Diplomacy was not her best suit; instead, Kka decides on Intimidation and transforms herself into a Kkaren.
With a sneer on her face, Kka stands up straight and rails against the woman. "Are you the maanager of this terrible excuse for a taavern? If so, I'd like to lodge a complaint against one of your staaff. The baartender refused to serve me despite several sternly worded requests. I find this behaviour reprehensible and demaand that you either instruct him to serve me a drink or fire him on the spot. I will not accept anything less."
Having said her piece, Kka doesn't wait for a reaction. Instead, she turns on her hoof and heads back to the bar where she seats herself at a table to await the delivery of her drink. She picks a table close to the exit in case the blue-skinned woman's reaction requires a quick getaway.
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Kka makes a huff at the woman behind the desk and immediately leaves. She can just see the surprised face of the lady before she closes the door behind her. She gets back to the bar and isn't followed. A few minutes later, the woman comes out of her office, says something to the bartender, and he slides a drink of some kind towards Kka. The woman, still with a nonplussed look on her face, glances at Kka and the rest of the party, and retreats back to her office.
When the bartender finally serves her a drink, Kka says imperiously, "About time." Inside though, she gives out a long mental sigh. "That was close. I need a drink." She eyeballs the liquid in the glass suspiciously, but takes a sip. It's terrible stuff, but it does contain a modicum of alcohol, so she finishes it off.
Once her nerves are settled, she remembers that there were a couple of doors she hadn't looked behind in the room with the prisoners. She decides not to leave any loose ends, so after making sure that no one was looking over at her, Kka once again sneaks into the back room.
Once there, she checks out the door at the end of the longish hallway heading north.
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