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The sudden and inexplicable appearance of beastly monsters stops Termia before she's finished chastising Alec. "Student Alec Gracekin, your punishment will be decided at a later time and place."
The soldier positions herself in the middle of the room, giving her polearm ample space to swing around.
"Monsters, you are trespassing on private property! Leave immediately, or we will use lethal force!" she commands the snouted humanoids.
When they show no sign of remorse or withdrawing, Termia actualizes her threat.
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"Oh, bother. Little piggies should run all the way home, where it's safe." She can barely count all four creatures, with only two of them standing out.
She draws her whip and reaches over to Areeza.
"I can make your >Magic Weapon< shine a bit brighter, Areeza."
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"What? Where pigsie-things come from?" Zug cries out in alarm. But then, the pig-creatures bring a song to his mind. A song that deserves to be sung and accompanied on a cowbell.
"Day of judgement, gods are calling
On their knees, the war pigs crawling
Begging mercy for their sins
Demons laughing, spread their wings"
Foolish pig creatures appear in a room full of soul-stealing things. Zug reaches out with his telekinetic spell and throws a book (yuck!) at the green pig.
The little creature quivers in fear before Termia and Yakuthiel cut it down. As it falls to the carpet, its form evaporates into foul-smelling smoke. Issil lends Areeza her strength while Zug goes on an energetic rampage against books the other pig-creatures.
Round 1! Bold may act!
Termia
Issil
Vander
Zug
Yakuthiel
Areeza (Magic Weapon)
Red (Frightened 1, -21)
Blue
Yellow
Green
One of the piggly-creatures uses the bookcase to shield itself from Vander's storm, but the other is battered by books and given several papercuts.
Her allies' magic surrounding her, Areeza rushes into the fray!
Her first swing strikes true, but with little force behind the blade. The second makes up for it with effort, but is too slow to catch the little creature.
The wounded pig-headed creature to the south screeches with anger and... disgust? It leaps into the air and clumsily soars on ratty wings between the bookshelves towards Yakuthiel...
...and removes any doubt as to its feelings about getting hit by spewing a frankly incredible amount of vomit over Yakuthiel, Termia, and even Issil! Its companion flies up the other aisle and starts screaming and scratching at the mangy fur covering its arms. Termia acts without hesitation at the sight of something conjuring magic...
...but can't bring her blade to bear before slippery oil starts pooling at her feet and spreads rapidly across the ground! The last gremlin flies into Areeza's face and tries to bite the goblin's nose!
The bite itself isn't very painful - but with the creature right in front of her eyes, Areeza can't help but notice a handful of lice abandoning the creature's mangy fur and trying to make a new home on her scalp!
Round 2! Bold may act!
Termia (Fortitude save, Reflex save or Acrobatics check)
Issil (Fortitude save)
Vander (Round 1 clarification needed)
Zug (Reflex save or Acrobatics check)
Yakuthiel (Fortitude save)
Areeza (-4, Magic Weapon, Reflex save or Acrobatics check, Reflex save)
Red (-21)
Blue (-17)
Yellow
Green (-7)
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Termia braces herself against the incoming shower of vomit by adjusting her stance, but this change in her footwork compromises her balance as a pool of oil appears beneath her feet. The soldier quickly gets back on her feet, glaring at the repulsive pest, shouting: "This is your final warning!"
In addition to the verbal warning, Termia issues a physical warning, delivered via her polearm.
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Issil sends a ball of flame at the Yellow piggie thing Areeza is fighting.
"You ruined my favorite dress, little piggy. You're going to pay for that." She gives Yellow an >Intimidating Glare<.
I mean, she has several favorite dresses, but this was one of them!
Termia cuts down one of the gremlins with extreme prejudice, causing it to dissipate into foul-smelling smoke. Issil glares at its companion still in Areeza's face, but can't put her fire close enough to catch it without harming the goblin below.
Round 2! Bold may act!
Termia
Issil
Vander
Zug (Reflex save or Acrobatics check)
Yakuthiel (Fortitude save)
Areeza (-4, Magic Weapon, Reflex save or Acrobatics check, Reflex save)
Red (-21)
Blue (-17)
Yellow (-28ish)
Green (-7, Frightened 2)
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Zug is used to performing at taverns late at night. So having the ground under his feet covered in vomit, beer or oils is no news to him. Like a true artist, he doesn’t even break his rhythm with this interruption.
At the same time he keeps throwing books at the pig creatures. Sooner or later he must hit one.
Stones and books fly across the room, knocking the pig-creature with vomit still clinging to its lips to the floor to vanish in a puff of equally-disgusting smoke.
Yakuthiel endures the vomit, then cuts at the last creature near where Areeza's face should be. The paladin's face is conveniently missing from the area, having made acquaintance with the slippery floor with such impact that any lice that might have been on her nose have been dislodged and are now squirming helplessly on their backs in the grease.
And with one final puff of noxious smoke, the last creature vanishes.
Before silence can settle back into the library, however, a loud whooshing sound fills the air - accompanied by several clinks and a thump. Four identical bottles of ruby-red liquid are rolling around on the previously-empty tabletop, as are two polished crystals . In the middle of the mysterious motion is a book - a romance novel, judging by the cover, but otherwise unremarkable save for its sudden appearance.
Unremarkable, that is, until it suddenly flips open! Pages flop back and forth a few times, as if turned by an ungraceful hand.
Alec beats a hasty retreat back into the common room, eyes wide after witnessing vestiges of the battle. "It's, uh, probably just more romance novels in there anyway," he stammers as he leaves the room, closing the double doors behind him.
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"Activate, failsafe, bring, each, focus, to, Armeline's, chamber, restore, reality" Issil speedreads the book as it flips in front of her. "Did anyone else see that?"
"Areeza, your arm..." She squints through the smoke. "Do you need my help?"
"Wait, Armeline. That sounds like a name. And we still need the focuses, correct? A pitcher of water, a steel shield, and a large lodestone. I don't see the water or lodestone here..."
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"Yakuthiel's makes sense. After we collect the items, we'll bring it to the Venture-Captain's chamber." Issil lets out a puff of smoke from her ears. "Sorry, I tend to let off a lot of smoke when I'm stressed."
"Once we finish recovering, let's push through the door and see what mischief the children got into. We have the shield, we still need the water and the lodestone."
While Areeza recovers from her bite, the rest of the Pathfinders confer and plot their next moves.
Their plan set, the Pathfinders head back to the main room and begin enacting the first step - communicating what needs to be done to the students.
Termia does indeed find a qualifying pitcher in the kitchen, but when she goes to pick it up her hands pass right through without resistance - much like everything else in the room. A sink nearby likewise proves invulnerable to the guardswoman's attempts at interaction. The pot that had previously flown through the ceiling remains out of sight.
The students watch excitedly as Issil and Vander explain the plan. Vim keeps trying to anticipate what comes next, but Geltra and Hari reign in their excitable classmate and fill in missing bits of context. Tels holds the practice shield by the rim and keeps the rest of the students quiet while Alec runs to the kitchen, swipes the pitcher off the counter, dunks it in the sink, and races back to the common room. The five student leaders turn to the game table and give a combination of nods, salutes, or hands over chests. Or in Vim's case, all of the above. It's clear though that these are still children - easily excited, easily startled, easily distracted.
"But... where is the captain's room?" Hali scratches their head and looks around the common room. "I haven't seen any rooms that look like they would be fit for a venture-captain - has anyone else?" Only low murmurs and shaking heads answer them.
Issil finds a pantry, filled with sacks of dry ingredients and jars of preserves. Everything is neat, orderly, and clearly labeled. Tacked to the other side of the door is a resupply list, with one section labeled "Recurring" and the other "One-Off".
Zug finds a smaller library. The shelves are filled with even more books - though these seem to be more like binders of documents rather than the bound novels outside. Each shelf is labeled, but with some kind of encoded script that doesn't seem terribly interesting to the goblin.
"What about upstairs?" Vim suggests in the common room. "If I were a venture-captain, that's where I'd want my office!"
Issil finds a quiet courtyard, open to the emerald sky above. A cobblestone pathway winds its way between carefully-tended topiaries and past a burbling fountain. Following the path to the other side, she pushes through the door to emerge in what appears to be a well-stocked armory. Weapon racks and suits of armor on display stands line the walls of the room. Several weapons are laid out on the tables in the middle of the room, along with whetstones and oil cloths.
Areeza ascends the staircase to the upper floor. There, she find the environment decidedly more chaotic than below - shifting patterns in the carpet constantly change colors, strange smells of ocean, swamp, and desert all mix together, and odd noises of all types ring through the air in a nearly-silent cacophony. Closed doors lines the outer walls of both landings.
"It might be dangerous though - we should wait for one of the chaperones to tell us it's okay to go up there," Tels cautions in the common room.
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"No lodestones here. Good." She doubles back to the common room. "I think the first floor is clear. Let's head upstairs."
She moves up the stairs until she can see Areeza. "This floor is... interesting. Explains the strange creatures we've dealt with recently." She slowly moves Northeast. "Let's try this door first. Maybe we'll see the lodestone in here."
Issil carefully pushes through the door...
...but instead of seeing a room on the other side like she would expect, she finds herself back on the balcony overlooking the common room!
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"Now, now, it's not that bad once you adjust to the..."
Issil returns to the balcony.
"...spontaneity. Perhaps you have a point, Termia."
She thinks for a bit. "Maybe we cannot access the rooms, here. But the students in the other realm can. Vim seemed eager. Maybe we can ask her to come upstairs and open the doors for us."
If the team agrees, Issil will return downstairs to ask Vim to check the upstairs, and describe what she sees when she checks on the doors.
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Issil's unusual movement causes Termia to raise an eyebrow. "Enough with the parlor tricks, colleague. Please take this mission seriously." A short moment later the soldier seems to have a moment of realization. "Please excuse my earlier statement. That seems to have been some kind of a side effect of this confounding phenomenon."
She ponders Issil's suggestion for a moment, but ultimately agrees. "If a student can access these rooms in a way that we can not, we cannot guarantee the safety of the student in question in case something goes wrong. Still, it is a suspicion worth testing. Proceed."
Vim is more than happy to come upstairs when Issil asks. She doesn't comment on the strangeness of the environment, but she shivers frequently as if experiencing a sudden chill. Carefully she walks to the door in question, then grasps the latch and opens it to reveal...
...a simple bedroom. A neatly-made bed takes up most of the room, with a standard footlocker for personal belongings at its foot and a book partially-tucked underneath one of its pillow. Nothing seems out of place or out of the ordinary inside.
The other student leaders cautiously ascend the staircase as Vim opens another door, then another, then another. Each reveals a simple bedchamber on the other side, though the larger room to the northeast seems to have been set up to receive guests rather than house a permanent resident.
Finally, there is only one door remaining. Pathfinders and students line up, prepared for the worst. Tels nods to Vim, who nods back and waits for a signal from the nearby lamp to open the door. She pushes the heavy wooden door open to expose a well-furnished room, with a large bed covered in fine linens, a sleeping man, and a ghostly serpentine creature wrapped tightly around his body with its head plunged inside head of the man - who on second glace is recognizable as Professor Thandmere Krelsun. The creature's long tail hangs down over the side of the bed, passing through a strange "ripple" in the air. When it emerges from the distortion, it appears much more substantial than the rest of the creature. It dances idly back and forth, but seems to perk up when the doors open.
Additionally, a sturdy table surrounded by three chairs sits in the room's northeast corner. A chest of drawers displays several eye-catching curious atop it, including a mirror with a gilded frame, a mother-of-pearl box holding what appears to be talcum powder, and a polished lodestone more than a foot across. Two lamps in wall scones light the room, and a thick carpet woven with a wayfinder patterns lays on the floor. The room itself is quite disorienting to look at - shimmering images of the bed dance across the floor, loose papers float through the air in slow processions, and the walls ripple like a pond's surface with each breath Termia and Yakuthiel take. The pile of the carpet grows six inches deep in the course of a second, and then subsides back to normal just as quickly.
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"That's... not exactly the kind of bedtime hospitality I strive for." Issil peers through the smoke.
"Something tells me we have to loosen that snake from the professor. And the lodestone is over there!"
She holds her whip at the ready. "Anyone have any bright ideas that don't involve fire? Not that I'd be opposed, but I do like challenging you."
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Zug follows the others through the investigation of the floor. Then as the final door revel it's secret he stands staring at the sight.
"Me think.." the goblin begins, sniffing and wrinking his nose. His sense of the occult things tell him something here. "...this is source of all strangeness in this place."
He looks at the shimmering images and rippling air, trying to figure out the sight. "Me think we need be inside strange room to do anything. Outside not work."
And without giving it another thought, the goblin hops inside.
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As the chamber's doors open and the group gets a glimpse of the strange sights within, Termia glares at the serpent holding professor Thandmere captive, with apparent hatred and disgust.
She grasps her polearm. "Roger that." As instructed, she marches into the room, her eyes locked in on the serpent.
"Serpentine creature! Your crimes are too numerous to account! Release that man immediately, and we may show leniency in your sentence. If you resist, you face immediate summary execution."
As Zug crosses the threshold of the room, the tail stands at attention and starts swishing in a way that could be interpreted as dangerous.
The Pathfinders are professional problem-solvers and spring into action - but the students are more hesitant. "Wha- What do we do?" Vim asks uncertainly. Her red eyes dance back and forth across the room, looking for some sign of communication from the chaperones.
Round 1! Bold may act!
Yakuthiel
Termia
Issil
Vander
Tail
Areeza
Zug