Stepping up behind Vedika, Ariadne is unable to wade into the fight, instead trying to aim past her as she sends a slender ray of positive energy springing from her hand, targeting one of the skeletons.
Zahur advances beside Brigita.
Ariadne zaps Pink and destroys it.
The Skeletal servants are ordered to attack you and flail uselessly.
Two of the Clerics attack Zahur & Brigita.
Red hits Zahur
Yellow casts a spell on himself.
Orange runs to the door and opens it to flee, most likely to warn the others down here.
The Physicians advance, Blue can't reach anyone this round.
The other two miss.
The party can now act!
Vedika steps into the room and slashes again , trying to finish her enemy.
After her thundering charge, Brid covers her body with her barked arms then turns to help Vedika clear the way in for the others.
Vedika wounds Green again, then Brigita ends his existence.
Zahur, Ariadne & Kayleigh to act.
With limited options, Ariadne steps forward, uttering an arcane incantation and aiming over Vedika's shoulder to blast the fleeing coward in the back with a stunning beam of pure force.
Hearing Ariadne's command and seeing someone fleeing south, Kayleigh casts sound burst into the next room, centering it deep enough that her friends won't get caught in the spell's radius.
Ariadne hits Orange hard, but doesn't stun him. Kayleigh misses completely.
Zahur?
"On it." He replies to Ariadne as he kicks the skeleton in front of him and then steps over its bones. Zahur then spins his hook and lunges forward to deal with the running cultist.
Zahur finds the target rich environment to his liking, smashing Grey easily he steps forward 5' and sinks his hook twice into Orange's back.
Orange slumps to the floor dead, Zahur turns slightly and with a flick of his wrist buries the point of his hook deep into Yellow's temple. Leaving dead with a shocked look stuck on his face.
====================================================
Purple & Teal step 5' to flank Zahur, marking him as dangerous.
.
Blue swings at Brigita
The remaining Skeleton claws at Brigita as well
Red scrambles forward and slashes at Brigita
.
The party can now act. Zahur cleared the floor nicely
The bodies fall in the center with stunning ease as Zahur's hook cleaves a path. Brid remains singularly focused, one at a time, until the deed is done.
Brigita scatters the last Skeleton and moves further into the room.
Next.
Zahur sidesteps to both get away from flanking and to help Vedika with the last priest. He then spins his hook to deal with the other doctors.
Kayleigh scurries into the room, raising her buckler to defend against any attack as she bypasses a cultist to help Brig battle the evil doctors.
for
Vedika takes advantage of Zahur's positioning to try to finish off the foe between them .
Purple twists madly trying to evade Zahur's strikes, but two get through and end him.
Red swings his scythe as Kayleigh clutters past him, but misses, as does she with her attack.
Vedika finds her strike missing Red as well as suddenly everyone can't hit anything.
Ariadne to act.
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.
Red slashes viciously at kayleigh
Teal takes 5' step and swings at Brigita, Blue joins in as well.
.
The party can now act.
.
Vedika finally manages a vicious cut!
Kayleigh cries out in pain as the scythe opens her upper arm, inches above the defense offered by her buckler. In anger, she strikes back, trying for a head shot on her fellow who injured her. Hand-to-hand combat just isn't her thing, though, and after a weak swing she steps cautiously to the south to help Brigita, flanking one of her foes.
for
Ariadne curses as her shot goes awry, unable to properly target an enemy in the chaos.
Vedika wounds Red.
Kayleigh & Ariadne both miss.
Zahur & Brigita to act.
Brig swings her hammer in a downward chop in this brutal mess of bodies and blood.
Zahur sidesteps and again spins his bloodied hook, starting with the doctor closest to escape.
.
Brigita splatters Blue, Kaayleigh ends up nearly wearing the Physician.
Zahur guts Teal, then spins his hook, the first swing misses, but the second ends Red.
Silence falls over the room after several intense rounds of combat.
Examaning the bodies reveals the disturbing fact that the three scythe wielders are all followers of Urgathoa
Treasure:
Footlockers and shelves near each cot hold the sparse—and often disturbing—personal effects of the cult of Urgathoa’s members. A character who spends 1 minute searching the room and succeeds at a DC16 Perception check discovers:
12 bottles of midnight wine worth 14 gp each,
a robe of bones still bearing a human skeleton and a wolf skeleton,
and a rune-etched onyx sculpture of a skull worth 35 gp,
as well as 11 pp, 40 gp, 58 sp, and 160 cp.
What now?
"Cultists! I knew it!" says Vedika. "Not uh... that I know much about cults."
"Do we ransack the room or keep moving? We may not have a lot of time, since the place is on alert."
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Kayleigh gets splattered with blood and gore from Brigita's devastating smash into the cultist they flank. Kayleigh's voice emanates from beneath the physician's mask she wears: "Never thought I'd be thankful to be wearing one of these things! What a smash you gave that fellow, Brigita!"
In answer to Vedika's question, the healer points out, "Hopefully, we'll be able to come back here and loot more thoroughly, but for now...."
Kayleigh again casts detect magic and gives the room a quick scan for emanations.
.
Loot:
Scythe +1 (3),
Breastplate +1 (3),
Potion CLW (12),
Key (3),
Silver unholy symbol of Urgathoa (3)
MW Club (4),
Plaguebringer mask (4),
Healers kit (4).
.
As silence falls, Ariadne finally walks into the room to find herself the only member of the group not covered in blood. Stooping to collect the obvious weapons and gear off the bodies of the fallen, she studies the Urgathoan cultists.
"Well that confirms my theory. Cultists of Urgathoa working to spread death and disease throughout the city. What's most unsettling is that they're working with the Grey Maidens, which means the Queen is in league with them, and at least partially responsible for the plague that's tearing the city apart." Even muffled by the mask, the anger is clear in Ariadne's voice. "The rot runs incredibly deep here."
Brig gives a slightly embarrassed smile to Kayleigh, having never been comfortable at receiving praise, then nods to Ari's words. "So we end them." her embarrassment replaced with steel resolve.
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Kayleigh's not sure who informed her about the monstrous goddess Urgathoa and her twisted cult-like following during her formative years spent at the Pantheon of Many, but that info--paired with Ariadne's words--causes many of the pieces of the puzzle that is the blood veil plague fall neatly into place. The one crucial piece that remains out-of-place in the young healer's mind is: WHY would Queen Ileosa do such a thing to her own subjects?
Another thought hits her with the force of one of Brigita's earthbreaker slams, and Kayleigh voices it to the others: "If Urgathoa and her minions are involved in all this, then maybe the old king's death was actually...murder."
"Do not overthink it, Kayleigh. People kill each other all the time, and most of the time I think gods aren't involved. I do think she killed the King, but I don't see how she'd need the goddess's help for that."
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Ariadne's expression is not noticable behind the mask, but her sudden stillness makes it clear to her friends that her mind is working feverishly.
"Kill the king....quell the riots, convincing key people that you have what it takes to rule. Surround yourself with loyalists....replace the existing order with your own forces....create a crisis...use the opportunity to seize tighter control while pretending to provide a solution. Create scapegoats like the wererats to give people an enemy to blame...all the while looking like the savior." she mutters, trailng off with realization.
She tilts her head, an oddly burdlike gesture with the plagedoctor mask on, turning to look at Kayliegh. "I think you have the right of it. We're in the middle of an actual coup...a really dirty, ruthless one."
The entrances to the next room are not trapped or locked.
G4 The Princess’s Bacchanal
Behind thick panes of glass, fragments and even whole bodies of the living dead line the walls and floor of this chamber.
Their rotting faces sneer and broken fingers claw at each other as the shattered forms twitch in vain, their splintered appendages grasping hopelessly.
Yet rather than some massive, nightmarish grave, this horror show seems instead to be a stomach-churning attempt at art.
Exits South and East. What are you doing now?
.
"Eww! I don't want to know what this abhorrent mess is supposed to mean!" comes the hollow voice of Darth Kayleigh from within her mask.
"We, uh, should make sure that there's no release mechanism to let these undead out, or we could wind up having to cut our way through them while heading back through here."
Vedika's suggestion sounds like a really good idea, so Kayleigh grants her Milani's blessing as often as needed while she looks for such a control. In between castings, Kayleigh looks around some herself. Try as she might, the healer can't help but stare at the monstrous display time and again rather than hunt for a control mechanism.
(+1 vs. traps)
Vedika checks the restraints (from safely out of reach) to make sure there's no simple pin or release that could let them all out.
The glass is thick and sturdy with no release mechanism, and anyway the undead are too feeble to break out. It's a macabre display nothing more.
What now?
Before the group proceeds further, Kayleigh takes a moment to heal Zahur a bit. Then, finally using one of her pearls of power, recalls the CLW spell to cast it upon herself.
Brig goes rigid at the other's theories. Theories that sound way too plausible. "If we can see that, Croft must as well." she does not voice the other possibility, that Croft is part of it. The respect the woman has gained from Brig makes her hope it is not the case.
When Vedika tells them the undead are not a threat, Brig promises "We'll release them once we are done with this."
Taking a moment while Kayliegh administers some much needed healing Ariadfne considers Brig's conjecture. "I think it likely that she suspects something isn't right with the Maidens and Plague Doctors, especially since it seems like she and the loyal members of the old guard are being shut out of things, and needed us to look into it since she is likely being too closely watched."
="South seems as good a direction as any." she agrees, rolling her wrist, sword in hand.
.
You open the door to reveal even more horror.
G5 Operating Room
Eight unpleasant-looking beds stand here. Their sharp iron frames are threaded with worn manacles and stained leather straps. Several are occupied by obviously unwilling patients; all are bound and in various states of consciousness, and their combined moans murmur throughout the room.
Between them stand several small tables strewn with goresoaked pans, flasks of mysterious fluids, and all manner of cruel-looking cutting instruments. A sizable brown-crimson stain covers much of the eastern wall, as if all the blood from a body once held there had exploded forth in a single violent eruption.
The room also contains two more Physicians, two more Cultists, a Mage stands at the back of the room attended by two Zombies.
You have one round of surprise on them. What are you doing?
Trusting the others would soon follow him, Zahur charges into the room.
Vedika licks another shuriken and wings it at the mage in the back.
Brig takes the other doorway, rushing in to slam her hammer in the nearest enemy's gut.
Kayleigh follows Brig into the room, wincing at the carnage her friend causes with but a single swing of her mighty weapon.
Trying to use Brigita's fighting skill as an inspiration and blueprint for how it's down, Kayleigh targets another doctor with her morningstar.
for
Zahur introduces himself to Yellow with a hook under the chin that kills him instantly.
Vedika flicks a shuriken at the oddly familiar looking mage, it hits and he curses foully.
Brigita splatters Purple.
Ariadne? Is anyone going to make that Knowledge Religion roll?
"I'm no expert on the undead, but those look like plague zombies to me!" Kayleigh shouts to the others. "They explode and spread disease when they're destroyed!"