Kayleigh again takes a big swing, smacking the golem with her solidest hit yet!
for
for
Staggering about as it is beset from all sides and flailing uselessly at you the Golem crumples into a foul smelling pile as Kayeigh slams her morningstar down on its head and crushes it!
.
You have the secret door to the north and the passage to the east. Which way?
Kayleigh seems genuinely surprised at the violence she was able to muster to put down the smelly golem. "Milani be praised," she says to no one in particular. Under her breath she adds, "Didn't think I had that in me...."
She does her usual routine, casting detect magic and scanning the room for auras. Then she examines the golem more closely. "Uh...this thing doesn't have any pieces of that tribesman we were sent in here to find, does it?"
.
The Golem still clutches a severed arm that it snatched when it first went berserk. This arm is marked with Shoanti tattoos—it’s another fragment of Gaekhen’s body.
"Nice shot!" Ariadne exclaims, as Kayleigh caves in the foul construct's skull. Sidestepping the falling abomination, she smiles as her friend expresses her thanks to the Goddess of underdogs everywhere.
Her smile quickly fades as the cleric's question draws her eyes to the severed, tattooed arm in the fallen golem's grasp. "Unfortunately it looks like it... not attached to it but.."
Nethen flicks his morningstar towards the floor in an attempt to clean it of the chunks of rotten flesh clinging to the spikes. "I don't know who or what is still down here, but it can't be much worse than that," he mutters as Kayleigh finds the tattooed.
"We should keep that with us," he says as he puts away the morningstar and pulls out his whip as the group heads towards the open passageway.
"We should keep that [the tattooed arm] with us," he says as he puts away the morningstar and pulls out his whip as the group heads towards the open passageway.
"I never got into the body collection business before," quips Vedika.
"All the more reason to put an end to whatever they're doing down here and return what's left to his people." Ariadne says solemnly.
D9 Prisoner Pits
This foul-smelling cavern is bordered on three sides by tenfoot-deep pits. From these pits wafts the rancid smell of excrement and decay. Each pit contains a few heaps of moldy straw, a wooden trough containing filthy water, a few rotting body parts, and a couple of still-living prisoners.
Unfortunately the rooms guard, a revolting Ogre-kin seems to be alert and spots you coming!
Brigita & Vedika may act first!
Vedika lunges foward since her kukri is still in hand.
Brig keeps quiet, not wanting to really breathe around that thing. She follows the others into what looks like a horror show pit where no one ever escapes, just suffers endlessly.
The revolting mass of muscle stirs in the dark gives the blacksmith focus away from imagining life in those pits. As Vedika charges, so does Brig, happy to have a place to put her hammer.
Vedika misses her slice.
Brigita steps up and slams her Earthbreaker hard into its disgusting hide.
It shrieks at Brigita “You go in pit now! Me feed you later. Maybe!”
Swinging a mishapen fist at her.
Hitting her bruisingly.
Nethen, Kayleigh & Araidne may now act. Then back to Vedika & Brigita
Kayleigh hustles forward, but her heavier armor prevents her from getting close enough to attack the big monstrosity. Peering down into the nearby pit, she tells its occupants, "We'll be with you shortly!"
Rushing forward, Ariadne lands a well-aimed blow with her sword, hoping to take the Ogre-kin down quickly.
As the Ogre-kin smashes into her, Brig groans, a mixture of one part pain and nine parts disgust as its disgusting skin makes contact with her. The blacksmith jabs her hammer into the creatures gut, trying to get it away enough for a proper swing.
Ariadne lightly wounds the ugly thing.
Brigita misses.
Nethen & Vedika to act.
Vedika misses, while Nethen slashes deep into its ankle, then pulls hard, tripping the ugly brute.
On its turn Red tries to stand while yelling in anger.
AOO's for those who are next to it, or have a reach weapon.
Better people would feel guilty about slamming down a hammer on the head of a person trying to stand up...
... and maybe that is why Brigita's hammer failed to find its mark.
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Vedika uses the distaction to slip past him and gets flanking.
But misses.
Nethen swings as he rises.
.
Nethen, Ariadne & Kayleigh can act. Then Brigita & Vedika
Wow! Wish I could move like that! thinks Kayleigh as Vedika gracefully and seemingly effortlessly scoots past the ogrekin to flank the beast-man opposite Ariadne. Gulping in anxiety, the young Milanite realizes that she needs to offer that same advantage to Brigita....
Knowing that moving there will almost certainly give the now-upright brute a free swing at her, Kayleigh raises her buckler, says a brief silent prayer to Milani, and moves into flanking position, ready to swing her own weapon at the tough-to-hit beast!
for
With the ogre thing surrounded Nethen decides to try to make it even more vulnerable, again, by sending it crashing to the ground. His whip snaps out through the melee, aiming for the thing's meaty legs.
Ariadne swings again, hoping to take the creature down before it can do any real damage.
Brig sees Kayleigh rush with upraised shield to a better position, one that will help Brig herself. Worry spikes in her, not having fought with others before she realizes was limiting but also she didn't fear for others getting hurt.
Swinging her hammer up, her arms bulging, she is determined to make the risk Kayleigh is taking worth it.
Vedika slashes again from the flanks!
Brigita & Vedika combine to send the revolting thug to the ground dead.
These pits are where Rolth keeps living victims until he finds a need for their bodies (or, at the very least, a need for their body parts).
Each of the three pits currently contains two frightened, malnourished, and
sickly humans, victims who have been imprisoned here for weeks, and the partial remains of a few others.
.
Iorghil low on spells and with little offensive ability volunteers to take the rescued prisoners back to the watch where they can be treated and tell their stories.
Loot:
Studded leather +1.
One last area to deal with. What are you doing now?
Before Iorghil escorts the former prisoners to safety, she tells everyone to huddle up and then channels positive energy. Afterward, she reminds Iorghil about the acid-spewing trap and tells him to be careful. She also casts create water, assuming that the former captives may well be dehydrated.
Brid lowers herself in the pit without hesitation, helping lift up each of the prisoners with as much care as she can. Not knowing what to say that would help them at all, the blacksmith stays quiet as she helps.
By the time she pulls herself out of the pit again, her hands are clenched with the desire to break the man who did this to these people.
"You want me to go back with Iorghil and see if I can disable that trap, then return here? Or should I stick with the team?"
"It would probably be safer for them. We'll wait for you before coming on. In their condition, even healed, it wouldn't do to rescue them, only to have them killed by acid." Ariadne replies, after having helped the prisoners out.
After Ariadne speaks, Kayleigh does some quick math in her head. "I'll go with them, just in case something catastrophic happens," she announces, figuring that Ariadne, Nethen, and Brigita can hold their own should danger come upon them. Still, she whispers to Ariadne, "Don't get into any fights while we're gone--we'll be back before you know it!"
"I'll do my best." she replies with a grin.
You easily disarm the trap and Iorghil vanishes with the freed captives.
What now?
Brig sits, and spends a few minutes wiping the blood and skin off her hammer, her mind lost in a darkening worry, about how monsters are everywhere, eager to hurt others more than sense should allow.
Before she knows it the others are back and she jumps up "Ready?" she asks with growling enthusiasm.
Kayleigh gives Brigita a quick nod and waits for everyone to proceed before falling into her role as party rearguard.
"Yes. Let's put an end to this madness and the monster responsible for all this." Ariadne says with a grim expression.
"Agreed," says Nethen as he looks around in horror and disgust. "Anyone responsible for things like this deserves no mercy."
D10 Library
Two wide, freestanding bookshelves furnish this room. The shelves are filled with row upon row of carefully arranged tomes and scrolls.
Treasure: The books and scrolls are mostly treatises on necromancy or the art of crafting golems, but there’s also a surprisingly large number of books about diseases and plagues here as well.
Any character attempting a Knowledge check on these topics while using these books as resources gains a +2 circumstance bonus on the check.
The collection of books as a whole is worth 300 gp.
Of more portable interest are two magic scrolls wedged between the pages of a thick picture book on humanoid anatomy—these are a scroll of identify and a scroll of command undead
D11 Stitchery
The nauseating mixture of decay and strange chemicals fills the air of this large room. Glinting saws, pliers, long stitching needles, and other surgical equipment are organized on shelves and benches along the walls. A sturdy wooden table in the center of the room supports a large humanoid shape—a thing stitched together from a patchwork of dozens of different bodies. The thing would stand nearly seven feet tall if it rose.
This chamber is Rolth’s workshop, the place where he assembles the bodies of his constructs. He has built several carrion golems over the years (most
of which he has sold to interested parties or uses to guard other hideouts), but the nearly completed flesh golem body strapped to the table is his first attempt at such a creature.
The head stitched to the body is strangely small for its massive frame—a head crowned with brown hair and bearing a distinctive scar upon the left cheek. This is, of course, Gaekhen’s head.
D12 Rolth’s Room
This chamber holds a large four-poster bed and a simple writing desk, along with a full-length mirror propped up against one earthen wall
Rolth uses this room to rest and relax as the need takes him, so he doesn’t
have to abandon his laboratory between long sessions of work on a project. He has other laboratories elsewhere in Korvosa—as a result, he keeps little of value here.
Treasure: Sitting on the desk is a curious but broken knife with a key-shaped blade.
The broken blade itself is of sufficient quality to count as the masterwork component for forging a dagger, and is thus worth 300 gp. The weapon
is similar to the one you found in Gaedren’s lair.
A successful DC 20 Perception check reveals a hidden niche in the wall behind the mirror. The niche is mostly empty—Rolth keeps his spellbooks here only when he’s within the Dead Warren—but a few items of value remain, including a set of masterwork thieves’ tools, a pearl and silver snuffbox
worth 250 gp that contains a single dose of dust of disappearance, and a sustaining spoon.
One room to go and you can hear movement from it. What are you doing?
A detect magic spell from the healer helps to find and identify the magical scrolls. That's all she discovers, however.
Brig's eyes had widened at the thick picture book of human anatomy. "this was banned in all noteworthy countries, other than Geb." the alchemist's voice filled with awed wonder and she slips the book into her pack. And apparently, the desire to read it later is on her mind when she should be focusing on looking around.
At the final door, with the movement behind it, her head comes back into readiness. Monsters are here, that hurt people, and need to be put down. She considers, for a moment, taking her potion of enlarge person, but she is unsure how big the next room is and doesn't want to impede the movements of her companions.
.
"When we're done here we'll need to take Gaekhen's head." Ariadne says grimly.
Searching diligently throughout the room, Ariadne notices an odd misalignment of the mirror on the wall, that one of the others first brings to her attention. Moving it aside she notices a section of brick that shifts with a soft click as she presses it.
"These should all be burned," Nethen says as he looks over the books on necromancy. "The knowledge in these books is too horrific."
Hearing noise through the wooden door on the other side of the bedroom Nethen signals to the others for quiet as he approaches the door to try and discern who or what might be moving around beyond.
Kayleigh finishes her looting and silently drops into her familiar role as the party's rearguard, ready to proceed.