"If it's a ghost of this woman," she suggested while pointing at the improbable corpse, "perhaps we ought to identify who she was. That may shed light on why she haunts her body rather than moving on."
Ethyl begins committing the woman's visage to her memory so as to describe her later.
Iosif sighs as he manages (hopefully) to get up, "It's probably best to avoid beating it into submission with what limited positive energy we have."
Enoch's blue eyes glance up at the ceiling as the Paladin lies in the gross blood washed hallway floor.
Perhaps we shut the door and review our need to enter again?
"No fear of running out of this cantrip." Alvar clarifies to Iosif, but hesitates at Ethyl's reminder. "It's no ghost." They say, rather confidently. "But you're not wrong - looking into whom it was would give us some insight into how to stop it permanently."
Still, their eyes narrow and they unleash several more blasts at the thing, just to test it.
As their last ray of positive energy goes wide, they mutter a curse under their breath. I have to improve my accuracy with this sort of thing.
Alvar's arms swing as their fingers dance through the air, faintly glowing energy lashing into the corpse. The fourth burst of energy causes the corpse to gasp, the hollow sound of a pop echoing in the Dayroom, and the blood ceases to flow. The blood currently existing dries and disintegrates, leaving a strong copper smell in the area as the blood turns to a rust-like dust and fades away. Alvar is correct, the haunt isn't dealt with yet, but the flow of blood won't be a hindrance for some time now, freeing up the passage the party had come from.
Nyarai comes to a similar conclusion as Alvar, knowing that even arcane powered positive energy often won't end a haunt for good. Each haunt requires a set condition to be met to end its effects. Considering how the Dreamlands are involved and have been transforming the inhabitants of the asylum, it would make sense to look into who this woman was and see if she had any fears or other strong emotions that might cause this haunt.
Ethyl's clinical eye memorizes the woman, confident she can recognize her if they dig through records or doctor's notes to see what might have been her condition.
Nyarai stands up and walks into the room, giving everyone else a wide berth, sometimes almost pressing her torso against the walls to avoid physical contact. She starts looking around the corpse for any hints regarding the woman's identity.
Nyarai, with her darkvision, notices through the service hatch in the northern wall of the Dayroom opens into what appears to be a pharmacy of sorts, with cabinets, drawers, and smaller containers being held within. Perhaps a list of medications and/or conditions might be found there?
Enoch groans as he rises from the stained floors. The Tortured Crusader sighs entering the Blood Fountain of the Abyss room. He just stands there glaring at everything.....
"Supplies, perhaps?" Nyarai announces her discovery before heading over to inspect the pharmacy section.
She puts her head through the doorframe to look around first. In case there are any other surprises in the area.
Alvar grunts softly. "That might interest you, Ethyl." They note, indicating Nyarai's discovery. "In the meantime..." They focus their attention on the corpse's features, memorizing them as best they're able, and then scan the room itself. "Someone who either spent a great deal of time in the dayroom, or who died here." They muse aloud. "Something to ask of the other patients when we return."
Ethyl lets Nyarai poke her head through the window with mild interest, "Perhaps we ought to return to the Chapel and Winter. We are all afflicted with minor injuries and I'm sure your magical protections are waning Alvar. I would like to spend some time with the patient records and the library to see if they yield any useful information."
Her curiosity gets the better of her however and she looks over the slyph's shoulder, "Maybe one last room. Medications could prove useful."
Iosif tries to determine what he sees, then agrees with Ethyl. "Given your injuries, I can heal the two of you if we need to keep going. Medications, magical or oteherwise could prove useful, but we definitely do need a rest as well."
Iosif, Ethyl and Nyarai see three figures in a crouched huddle around a lantern, shivering and either swallowing or sticking things into their arms through the service hatch. They mumble incoherently amongst themselves, unaware it seems of your presence in the Dayroom. Drawers, small bottles, and syringes lay scattered across the floor around these three. There is a door just to the west of the service hatch inside.
Alvar notes signs of some kind of struggle around the Dayroom, knocked over tables and chairs, some smattering of blood on the floor and walls, and something scrawled onto . It seems to be the same yellow chalk the Apostles have been using, but instead of the flame design they draw onto their foreheads, it is a lantern.
"I have yet to use most of the spells I have prepared." Alvar remarks. "But if we wish to retreat, I do not mind doing so - especially if we want to spend some time studying the records in the library. I think we ought to at least recover as many as we think are interesting for perusal in the chapel." They indicate their enchanted backpack with their tail.
As they speak, they examine the lantern, musing on its possible meanings. "A lantern typically has a more useful flame than simple fires. More contained, thus useful for controlled illumination. Significant? Perhaps. It's on a door, too, rather than on a forehead. The forehead markings suggest a presumption of enlightenment of some sort, in a very literal way. A lantern could indicate a place where enlightenment can be found..." They trail off, thinking.
Ethyl gently pushes Nyarai out of the way so she can climb through the window. She tries to stay as quiet at possible but she catches her foot as she goes through and tumbles to the ground knocking the breath out of her. Righting herself quickly she perpares for the worst.
Enoch frowns as he maneuvers his way to a curious Nyarai. The Paladin practically bullies his way pass her to be first into the Pharmacy room.
Stopping just inside at the viewing of the Narcotics Anonymous meeting, Enoch turns his blue eyes to the others. He shrugs.
Breaking into a rear smile at Ethyl's depiction of a Ninja wearing a brace of jingle bells, the not in this moment Tortured Crusader awaits her expertise to manifest.....
"Hm... or perhaps a warning. Whatever's beyond this door may be dangerous. Of course, that might mean dangerous to the cultists, and thus notionally aligned with our interests." Alvar glances at their companions. "Or not. We should be wary if we wish to go inside."
Despite Ethyl's graceless entrance, she is the first to respond as the Apostles stir at the disturbance. They reach for their crowbars and stumble to their feet with wordless cries of alarm.
Ethyl's quick reflexes serves her well as she steps closer to the nearest cultist, she appraises them warily, outnumbered and cut off from the rest of the group. She rips and tears flesh.
She yells out, "Quit your babbling Alvar! More cultists."
Recovering quickly, Ethyl tears into the nearest Apostle , before both swing at her. Thankfully for the doctor, whatever they had dosed themselves with keeps them from landing blows. In fact, one falls prone before Enoch and Ethyl on the floor, his crowbar sliding out of his hands.
Nyarai winces visibly as Ethyl pushes her aside to enter the room. She is about to say something, but keeps her mouth closed instead. When another fight breaks out, she steps through the threshold to aid the exploring party.
Protective Luck (Su): The witch can cause fate to twist so that it benefits a creature within 30 feet for 1 round. Whenever that creature is targeted by an effect that requires an attack roll, including weapon attacks, the attacker must roll twice and take the worse result. At 8th level and 16th level, the duration of this hex is extended by 1 round. A witch cannot use this ability on herself. Hexes that affect the fortune hex, such as cackle, also affect protective luck.
Iosif grins as he sees more cultists to demonstrate the power of his weapon to, and he fires, and his slight sadism and greater focus on his weapon is heavily rewarded as his unholy symbol seems to suck in the darkness, and even attracts some of the leftover blood from the haunt towards it as it flickers.
Sensitive to this being not a parley situation, Enoch still jumps a bit when the roaring boom of Iosif's weapon explodes behind him! Placing two hands on his new magical shortsword, the Paladin wades into a Flank with Ethyl with more apparent Yellow cultist!
With a thundrous roar Iosif's musket fires, the bullet glowing with an anti-light and eviscerates entire head, leaving a crimson mist in its place as the cultist's body flies back from the force. Enoch's blow carves a deep bleeding line across the remaining cultist's back as he lies face down on the floor.
Ethyl shows the remaining Apostle in Orpiment no mercy as her bloodlust takes over.
Ethyl indeed shows no mercy, scattering flesh and bone and spraying blood across herself, Enoch, and the vicinity as the last Apostle is torn apart.
As light filters in through the service window into the nurse's station, the state of the room is rather thoroughly ransacked. Broken glass and oily stains cover the floor in the northern half of the room, and very little of value seems to remain.
Enoch frowns at the blood, brains, spleen, visceral splattered across his once white robes.
I really need to learn Prestidigitation.
Enoch begins to search about the hurricane harassed nurses station.
Ethyl watches as the paladin touches perfectly good bandages, tinctures, and other remedies and then promptly ignores them. Rolling her eyes she dutifully follows after the man and collects them.
Upon seeing the note she confers with Alvar outside, showing him the note. She motions towards the corpse, "Mrs. Freeling I presume. Perhaps we should give her her medicine."
"Hm..." Alvar nods their agreement to Ethyl's suggestion. "That seems a good idea. Very likely it will stop the haunt from recurring." They scratch behind one of their horns, thinking, then look around the area. "Should we turn south?" They gesture in the opposite direction of their current heading. "It will bring us closer to the chapel, if we wish to return there."
"AT least I very much hope that's the case," Iosif says as he cleans the blood off of his unholy symbol and face from the sudden case of exploding-head, "it's humiliating slipping over a river of blood."
"Perhaps it is late for medicine." Nyarai looks at the woman with the burst chest in the room.
At Ethyl's prescription for the rest of the haunt, Enoch begins scrambling for fallen pills like a hmjunkie in a crack house. Although, the Paladin actually does administrators them to the actual patient.
Enoch takes up a handful of random pills and shuffles back out of the service window. As the corpse's mouth is already gaping, the paladin merely has to tilt his hand and let the pills fall into her mouth. A moment of silence passes, but then the body relaxes and the hole in her chest peels away like old paint. She is still as decomposed as before, but the haunt is defeated.
Tilting her head, Nyarai continues looking at the woman while Enoch administers the medicine and the process that comes straight afterwards forces her jaw to drop.
"Well, nobody said I can't be wrong. Well done?"
Ethyl muses, "It's logical in a way. Because reality is merging with the dimension of dreams people's worst nightmares are being made manifeste. The note, I suspect, is a memo about how the staff were speaking in passing about Mrs. Freeling's heart exploding. Normally this is preposterous, barring magical ritual, but the source of that rumor must have been a heart condition. For which she was likely being treated. Mrs. Freeling being a lay person takes the nurses at their word and then her treatment stops due to, well, everything. Her pysche experiences traumatic fear about her heart literally exploding and it is made manifest. The cure is her normal medicine. Why any medicine worked rather than the specific one is a mystery. "
Ethyl motions back the way they came, "Let's rest and recuperate before venturing further."
"Still hard to believe you weren't staff here with talk like that," Iosif adds as he speaks to Ethyl.
Ethyl reflects back on her only episodic memory of treating a young woman. "I believe I would have fit in with the doctors here, despite their reckless administrator. But I suspect the pay was better working for Count Lowls."
Alvar's lips quirk, and they nod their agreement with Ethyl. "I believe Ethyl's analysis is correct. Dream-logic certainly seems to apply here, in its own illogical way. Although, I believe haunts often have their own logic, which sometimes coincides with such strangeness."
Still, they offer a smile to Nyarai. "It's not an easy thing to wrap one's mind around, I'll concede. Still, I think, given practice, we'll manage." They pause. "Of course, by that point, we'll probably be done with this whole Dreamlands intrusion." Or lost forever here. Or dead.
Enoch stands back up. The Paladin seems distracted from the conversation.
Probably best to clear out any potential remaining cultists, crazies, creatures prior to the further investigation of those records and restful sleep in the chapel.
Enoch lifts his sword ready to further explore....
Turning to the southern hall, the party sees two doors along the western side of the hall, with a room and further halls further south. The nearest door bears a plague reading "Communal Ward". The lower door - if inspected - bears a twin plague, though that one is hanging on one nail rather than secured by both as is.
"We should be careful." Alvar says softly. "'Communal Ward' seems like it's going to be a place where there might be a lot of open space... possibly haunts or cultists."
Ethyl follows along with the rest of the group not wanting to brave the asylum by herself. She approached the nearest door and listened for any thing that might be lurking within. If she heard anything she warned the group before carefully opening the door.
Approaching and placing her ear to the door, Ethyl at first hears nothing, but then as moments pass she hears the sounds of wood rattling on stone or tile. Her forgotten past calls up images of a bed frame holding an unruly patient from the rhythm of the muffled sounds.
Ethyl rushes through the door across the laboratory floor to tighten the bonds on a flailing specimen lashed to an operating table. A morbid looking individual ensures the gag is in place before putting his spindly weight on the writhing corpse.
"I still can't believe we managed to smuggle a Gillamoor zombie out of Isger, Ethyl." The man's spindly frame barely managed to weight down the starving undead.
"Any risk will be worth it if we can be the ones to cure the Gillamoor Plague." The table continued to rattle as the two youths secured the specimen, freezing when the sound of approaching footsteps outside the door caused them to freeze.
By instinct Ethyl spun around, finding herself with her new companions in the hallway. Another lost memory?
Enoch approaches the door in which Ethyl seems intimate and opens it....
Ethyl spins around and finds her face to face with Enoch, "Leldro?!" She shakes her head clearing the vision from her brain.
She mutters, mildly annoyed at the distraction and lack context surrounding the sudden memory, "Intrusive thoughts, no matter."
As Enoch opens the door she warns, "Something is in there."
Chipped white paint peels from the battered frames of a row of identical beds. Dingy white curtains separate each bed, but offer only the illusion of privacy. Enoch opens the door to this room, unmuffling the heavy breathing and shuffling of someone at the southern most bed, unseen due to the curtain and the party's angle.
"N-no" They can hear. "Leave me ... alone ... no ..."
A man's voice, in distress, is heard slurred, as if speaking in his sleep.
Iosif listens in closer.