Blaze, are you okay? Is there a healer among us?
She is clumsily trying to bandage the centaur's wounds (how does her body function at all? as a horse or as a human? - Shandi feels a prick of scientific curiosity, too, in addition to a sincere desire to help) and looks at the crumbling armor, after what adds
That's not a warforged for sure. Some vile magic animated this... pile of scrap metal
Blaze feels a surge of satisfaction as their foe tumbles apart in a heap of scrap and rust. Pawing gently at the remains with one foot, she sees that Shandi is correct - there was nothing living within the metal. Humans do weird things with magic.
The centaur stands still as Shandi tried to bandage her head. For a moment she is again mesmerized by her magnificent earrings. However, it soon becomes apparent that despite her enthusiasm for the job, Shandi was no medic. At least there was no more blood getting in her eyes.
Hearing the foal continuing to cry, Blaze moves to the door and listens carefully.
"I have healing magics, if needed," Redemption mentioned as he scanned the area, looking for which of the various entrances was the most likely to take them to the child.
Malaya reaches out and gently brushes her fingers across Blaze's forehead. Glowing light trails from her fingers and seals the wound. "I am a healer, although I can only cast this spell twice in a day. It is good that you know healing magic as well, warforged."
As soon as Blaze is healed Malaya starts moving towards the sound of crying. Listening at both southern doors she tries to make out where the sound is coming from.
With combined efforts, somehow, they had managed to fell the suit of armor that had suddenly sprang to life and attack them. She had moved to the hapless scrap of remaining metal and kicked it with her foot, "Take that ya bucket of bolts, who be scary now, that's who!" she taunts it with a smirk.
As the now-familiar sensation of Malaya's healing washes away her headache and knit her flesh, Blaze murmurs a prayer of thanks to Hala. The healers in her herd prayed to warrior gods, and their healing always came with pain, and a slight sense of shame for having been injured in the first place. Hala was a gentle god, and Blaze liked her.
She watches Velspira taunt the defeated foe. It was crumpled, burned, tinged with frost, scorched, dented and slashed. I almost feel sorry for it. It never had a chance. Turning to the group, she says, "There was a lot of magic flying about! Fire, ice, electricity, light, disappearing thorny whips...I've never seen so much magic. Is this common with your peoples?" Her tail swishes, betraying her surprise at being surrounded by so many mages.
Blaze looks at the tall Warforged creature, and asks, "Do you have a name? I don't know what to call you."
"A name?" The tall druid paused for a moment. "I am afraid that whatever designation I have had in the past is lost to me. My former captors referred to me as 'Thing'. I disliked the title, and a fellow prisoner called me his Redemption, after a promise made. So I have taken the name the Redemption of the Azure Flames. Since that is somewhat cumbersome, Redemption will serve, I think."
Redemption... How beautiful... Shandi is lost in thought for a while. Apparently, we're all here... what, from different worlds? It seems to me that I haven't woken up yet, although it's all too real and clear for sleep. Well, if we're all strangers here, then I'll say this, Blaze - where I come from, magic is part of culture and life. It permeates absolutely everything. We subdued the elementals and created trains, and even ships flying through the air and much more. And yet... we have created a monstrous war that is literally devouring our continent. Great power was given to people without great responsibility. She sighs. Okay, let's save this child already. Or die. Or wake up.
"Beautiful..." Redemption murmured, considering. After a moment, they added, "I'm afraid I cannot sleep or dream, so only the first two are the first two are options for me. I'd prefer the first, if possible."
The air on this floor is more stale and dust and cobwebs are frequent.
What the hell is going on here? This crying seems to come from another place... And these bas-reliefs, just look at this...
"If the crying is moving then either something is moving the child, one is faking a cry to lure us into a trap, or the whole situation is a trap. Regardless, I suspect the best thing to do is continue forwards." Redemption looked at the relief, suspecting it was the later option.
"Yes" Sven agrees. "If we don't find the baby, we'll find other thing. But better than being here just standing."
Blaze looked around at the dusty, cobwebby room. She looked for footprints in the dust, or areas that were clear due to feet passing through.
Not sure where the crying was coming from, she retrieved her lantern, then opened the double doors to look in that room.
Malaya stares at Redemption as they talk about their captors. "I don't remember my original name either. I chose Malaya after the heroine in a story. Redemption is another good name to choose." Shaking her head, (now is not the best time to get lost in memories), she looks around the room and her brows knit together. "Why would anyone have decorated with such morbid images? I am beginning to believe the house is indeed the monster."
With no other leads she follows the sound of crying (and Blaze) through the double doors.
The tiefling didn't need to see to know that reliefs were as creepy as they were, a shiver growing up her spine as things seemed to get worse and worse for keeping up the good will to try and not just cut and leave, "This all has to be a trick right, some mage's illusion, we can't be in some old, haunted house or something... right... right," futilely asking for an answer she didn't believe she would receive as she tried to stay close to the others.
"I am limited in experience," Redemption responded, "But I see no reason yet why this couldn't be real. In fact, I rather hope it is. The power of a mage able to create such a solid, tactile illusion with smell and sensation is more concerning to me than a simple undead with a grudge." Only the strongest of the Fey could make such a complete illusion, from Redemption's experience, but they tended not to touch metal. That armour suggested it wasn't one of his pursuers, at the least.
While the rest are talking, Sven goes and gives a try at the double doors from where the cries are coming.
The double doors have dusty panes of stained glass set into them. Designs in the glass resemble windmills. The dusty cobweb-filled master bedroom has burgundy drapes covering the windows. The air is stale, and the room is dark.
Furnishings include a four-poster bed with embroidered curtains and tattered gossamer veils, a matching pair of empty wardrobes, a vanity with a wood-framed mirror and jewelry box, and a padded chair. A rotting tiger-skin rug lies on the floor in front of the fireplace, which has a dust-covered portrait of Gustav and Elisabeth Durst hanging above it. A web-filled parlor in the southwest corner contains a table and two chairs. Resting on the dusty tablecloth is an empty porcelain bowl and a matching jug.
A door facing the foot of the bed has a full-length mirror mounted on it.
A door in the parlor leads to an outside balcony.
There is a dumbwaiter in the corner of the west wall that has a button on the wall next to it.
Shandi goes to the balcony and opens it. Only the damn fog! Nothing is visible except it... She calls out to the children. To her surprise, they respond. As she closes the balcony, Shandi mutters something about how Redemption's worst suspicions about a powerful magician may be true...
Blaze shakes her head, pawing at the ground in confusion and frustration. "What is going on? I heard the infant, but this room surely hasn't been used in a long time!"
Hearing another cry, Blaze opened the mirrored door, expecting to find the child, but finding only a closet, and a child's toy. Picking it up, she slipped it into a pouch, in case the child wanted it when they finally retrieved it. Assuming there was actually a child to retrieve.
"Uhmmm... Let's have a look at this..." Even comments when he sees the box Blaze has just found.
Sven takes a quick look at the jewels sand puts them back into the box.
"We should keep them. Maybe they're some kind of key, or maybe they're enchanted. Or maybe they're worth some money." He wouldn't normally steal like that, but in this case he suspects he's not going to have a friendly relationship with the house owners anyways.
Malaya frowns at the baby rattle in the closet. "Were the parents using this closet as a nursery? Either way Blaze is right, no one has been here for a long time." Hearing Shandi call out to the children and a muffled response, she joins her on the balcony.
"Rose? Where exactly is your brother? We hear him crying but cannot find him."
Velspira rushed to the window besides Malaya, shouting down towards the kids, "Hey you little runts, what kind a house you'se got that's all creepy like this!" she says, utterly blunt in her delivery, "This be some sort of creep house!"
"It would seem that we're dealing with the spirits of the past rather than requiring to save those in the flesh," Redemption suggested as they looked around, "Perhaps including those outside. Although I'm not sure it changes the challenge - whether in the spirit or in the flesh these children need aid."
Blaze pawed one hoof on the ground in alarm. "Spirit children?! Were they not flesh and blood? Did anybody touch them?" She remembered offering the children a ride on her back, and that they refused, but she didn't try to make physical contact with them.
Remembering that the children said their brother was on the 3rd floor, Blaze tried the double doors to the north, hoping to find another staircase.
"He is in the nursery last I saw him." Rose yells back. "Sounds like the devil lady is mad.She reminds me of mean miss murdok." The boy whispers, but his voice travels in the mist.
Shandi walks in the door across from double doors. Opening it, she sees a bathroom that could be called cozy, if not for the general atmosphere of desolation and despondency. What did you say, Redemption? Are you not sure if this house is a monster? Heh. Clearly, this house is not for living people...
"I never touched the children." Malaya tries to remember if anyone else had but cannot. "If they are spirits perhaps we can help put them to rest." With Shandi checking one room, she goes to the other. "A storage room. I don't see anything strange here. Can anyone unlock the other door?"
"I can try."
Sven brings out his lockpicking devices and tries steadily, putting his ear against the door to listen to the mechanism.
Blaze watches the bearded human take some absolutely tiny tools and set about opening the locked door. She could understand locking the door that allows entry into the house, but why lock doors within it? If you don't trust the people you're living with, why live with them? Humans are weird, she decides, not for the first time.
The door opens to reveal what could only be a nursery. It contains one of the cages that humans put their young in. So weird! Malaya had explained that it was because their foals couldn't walk at birth, they couldn't barely even move on purpose, so they needed someplace to keep them safe. Centaurs didn't even put enemies in cages.
Letting the smaller humans go in first, Blaze kept her greataxe in hand and guarded the balcony. But so far, there was no sign of a monster.
EDIT: Wasn't there a secret door out here too?
"Reasonably sure the house is but a house, yes. I make no guarantees." The warforged lumbered behind the others, continuing the search.
The door to the south unlocks.
You guys hear the baby rattle in Blaze's possession start to rattle.
For a moment Blaze froze, her hooves still, as she heard a snake rattle its warning. A long second later, she realized the sound was coming from a pocket on her vest. Her heart racing, she slowly looked down, expecting to see a viper staring at her with slitted eyes. Instead, she saw something roundish vibrating in a pouch.
"Ifreann naofa!" she cursed, fumbling with the pouch opening. "I'm not doing that!" She managed to shake the cursed rattle free, and it fell to the floor.
Rearing up on her hind legs, she intended to smash the enchanted rattle into dust.
"It's fine," Redemption said, reaching down and picking it up. "It may be that we need to destroy it, to help with whatever is happening here, but for now I will carry it." Spectres and ghosts had no real impact on the warforged. He wasn't really sure how they differed to normal people, bar the flesh.
Malaya jumps when the rattle starts to, well, rattle. After a second she realizes what's making the noise and calms down. "A crib. It seems we've found the nursery." Moving inside, she slowly removes the black shroud from the top of the crib.
As Malaya peels back the shroud and Blaze is about to break the noisy rattle, a shadowy figure emerges from the wall and takes a swing at Malaya. it misses and howls in anger.
Round 1
Redemption 15
Malaya 14
Blaze 11
Sven 8
Shandi 4+
Specter 4-
Velspira 3
Since the hit-and-run tactics went so well with the living armor, Sven decides it's time for a second test.
I knew it! - Shandi screams, than with a complex gesture of her fingers creates a fiery ray that flies into a terrible shadow and retreats away, allowing the melee fighters to hold the blow.
Blaze was on edge, even though Redemption now held the rattling rattle. When the shadowy figure emerged from the wall, she swung at it on instinct.
Malaya drops the shroud in shock as she instinctively ducks away from this new threat. Once she sees the shadowy figure she clutches her amulet and sends bursts of light towards it.
"Hala protects me." Rather than move away, she defiantly stares the creature down. Better it attack her than someone less armored.
Redemption looks around in mild confusion, wondering why the ghost was angry and why the others seemed intent on attacking, but assumed they knew something the warforged didn't. Moving up to assist, Redemption once more charged their staff with energy and thrust it at the spectre.
Round 1
Redemption 15 Delivers a powerful strike to the shadowy figure
Malaya 14 The figure writhes in pain and a howl fills the air that surprises the party.
Blaze 11 Blaze's axe meets resistance and does less damage than her enormous axe normally would, but she was expecting that.
Sven 8 Sven' attack causes the shadow to dissipate.
The strange baby rattle stops making noise.
Shandi 4+ Flames hit the ground where the Spectre was.
Specter 4-
Velspira 3
The crib is empty. The portrait that shown the image of the man, woman and infant now only shows a portrait of a man with an angry scowling expression.
Still wondering if this had been the wise move, Redemption pointed. "Another hidden door. Are these common in houses like these?"
[dice=Perception]1d20+7
Still wondering if this had been the wise move, Redemption pointed. "Another hidden door. Are these common in houses like these?"
Blaze shrugged, her shoulder moving expressively. "Not in centaur homes. Why hide a door in your own house? Why lock a door in your house? Why have doors in a house at all?"
Looking around, she said, "Are we going up now?" These stairs were even narrower, and she didn't like them. However, she didn't like not going first either.
Before she could even act, the strange ghostly specter had already disappeared after several brutal attacks from her compatriots, "By Shar's moonlit grace, that was a damned ghost or whatever and you slew the thing like it wasn't a thing to be fearin'," she says, not even hiding her particular sort of religious affiliation.
"People hide things all the time, I bet you centaur folk got plenty, just too damned big for somethin' like a secret door and all," she responds to Blaze, waiting for someone else other than just the centaur before they head to this next room.
Sven looks at the family canvas for some time, puzzled.
"Isn't it strange that the two children outside are not in the picture?" he asks out loud, more to himself than his companions. Since the question has no immediate answer, though, he procceeds to check the hidden door Blaze just discovered.
"It goes back to the hidden door we left behind. Two birds in one shot."
He then follows Blaze, relieved that the fierce warrior goes with the party.
We will find and destroy the evil that occupied this house. We will find and destroy it. We'll find it and destroy it. I swear it... We'll find it and destroy it...
Shandi mumbles these words under her breath softly and a little monotonously over and over again. Her fists are clenched so that her knuckles turn white, she looks forward from under her brows and her eyes shine with determination, anger and despair in equal measure.
She follows Sven...
...and while mumbling to herself she does not notice anything unusual.
Malaya blinks in surprise as the ghost disappears almost immediately. "I do not know who you were in life ghost, but I hope you can find peace now. May I have the rattle?" Once it's in her hand, she carefully sets it down inside the crib. "Perhaps that is what you were looking for."
Redraping the shroud over the crib, she tilts her head and listens intently. "The children are asking if we've found their brother." She looks down at the crib again. "Have we? The children said Walter was in the nursery, but I don't see an infant here. Living or dead. Please wait one moment; I wish to explain that to them before we press on."
She returns to the balcony and leans over the edge. "We found the nursery, but there's no sign of your brother inside so we're still looking." After waiting a few seconds to see if the children respond, she heads back to the nursery and the new secret door. "Let's see what's upstairs." Unlike her usual position near the front however, she falls back to stay near Shandi. "You are correct; we will find and destroy the evil in this place. Now breathe with me. Deep breaths, in and out..."