Strange Aeons: In Search of Sanity II [IC - Group #2]

Gaye seems troubled. "The bodies stink to high heaven, but at two weeks, they aren't falling apart, either. My question is ... where would you put them?

"Here's the thing, two scenarios as I see it. One, this is Briarstone Asylum in the here and now. If we get out of this, priestly magic can help families identify bodies that didn't 'turn' into Tribals and Grays; because that's what I think happened, somehow. I really doubt ghouls and gangers air-dropped into this place if this is a real-place, so much as some people were transformed, either before death, or as a result of it. Also, it is forensic evidence, in case someone smarter than us should try to figure out what happened here.

"The other possibility, which can take many forms, is that this isn't the real Briarstone Asylum. It seems like we are operating in two or more possible realities. It seems we are entirely cut off from the rest of the world. Worse, the mystery of the oneirogens ... I forget who made the insight in our (original) group, I think it might have been Jean ... but an oneirogen is a mortal that is transformed because they have a sliver of another dimension placed in them and that person goes mad. The gaseous emission from an oneirogen is from 'elsewhere,' and I think it was Jean - or even Haru - that mentioned that Losandro seemed to have been infected with the Dimension of Dreams. I don't know anything about that place, but what if we are stuck in some type of collective-gestalt dream by some power that has control over such things?

"Yeah, I say if you want to show respect, cover the bodies with rubble as a cairn, but I feel like there is some essence of impermanence here."

Bangs

Bringing a relatively clean sleeve up to cover his nose, Bangs fights through the smell of death boiled over and notices the yellow robes prevelant among the dead. "These yellow robes... do they have some kind of significance that you know of? Many of the bodies have been wearing them, and the people who attacked us before the shift also wore them now that I think back on it. To all be wearing the same outfit... it could be a uniform of some sort?" Bangs ask the group at large.

Zoo relaxes his concentration and slips back into his human form. He wiggles his nose for a moment, glad to be temporarily rid of his dog form's enhanced sense of smell.
"We traveled with a woman that died." Zoo says while trying to avoid looking at Flair. "Shortly after she died, her body vanished. Any idea why one person's body would disappear and another's sticks around?"

"Yes, but she was buried. Perhaps by doing so she was no longer in play?" Flair shakes his head. "Too many questions and not enough answers. I suggest we quickly cover them before heading on; there's not much else we can do."

Björn looks at Gaye oddly as she speaks... Listening to the rest, he then nods and begins gathering rubble and placing it over the corpses.

Bangs

Bangs speeds up the cairn building by summoning his walls of earth and stone and then pushing it over onto the bodies.

Actually, you have to get rubble from the rubble in the hall and the cleaning closet. This room fared remarkably well and, despite the carnage, seems little touched by ruination as with other places.

The bodies covered (a chore, actually) ... what now? Do you explore in the southern-eastern reaches, or do you make sure everyone in the group is on top of what's in the administration areas (per Winter's request)?

Once completed, Björn suggests moving on to the other administration areas and gathers his gear to start heading that way.

Maeni agrees with that idea :

"That should be our start, if we want to keep exploring after that, so will we do."

The party falls back to the admissions hall and then moves into the library.

C8, Central Hallway: This L-shaped hallway runs from a collapsed space in the west to a small waiting area outside the asylum administrator's office.

C9, Conference Room: A once-handsome wood conference table now sits marred by the partially toppled southwest walls. Between heaps of collapsed stone, a closet door hangs open. The bodies of two creatures lie in this room just out of the closet. There is an intense smell of formaldehyde and chemicals. These are the bodies of the defeated pickled punks.

Spoiler: Pickled Punk Visual

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http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QkmZVu8KLt...ickledpunk.jpg

C10, Junior Doctors' Office: Two desks are crammed into this crowded office. More space has been dedicated to filing cabinets, bookshelves, and stacks of loose research than room for occupants. The body of a doctor who was slain by blows to the back of the head is here. Most of the documents and files here are related to mundane asylum duties and unremarkable psychological evaluations. If you try to find anything in these files about yourselves, you will come to naught but frustration.

C11, Ruined Lounge: The ceiling of this room has collapsed, crushing a table and well-worn couch. There is a corpse here that was crushed by the rubble, that was re-covered by the original G2 as a type of cairn.

C12, Ruined Office: This room's sagging ceiling rests largely upon a pair of sturdy bookshelves. A desk and set of chairs skirt the edge of a sizable fissure in the floor. This office belonged to one of Briarstone's resident doctors, but the most violent tremors destroyed it. The body of two dire rats is in here (rotting). G2 originally had fought a more powerful ratling in here, but chased it away. If it is still alive, there is no current sign of it here now.

C13, Doctor Chawaar's Office: This would look like a typical physician's office if it weren't for the preponderance of grotesque anatomical sketches, most depicting traumas and deformities of the head and brain. A sturdy display case stands open and completely empty.

Any character who spends 5 minutes looking through the desk drawers finds that the notes belong to a Doctor Arosh Chawaar, who pursued new treatments for hydrocephalus. May of these notes bear marginalia from the doctor's sister, Doctor Anya Chawaar of Katheer. The sum of Arosh's research is compiled in a worn, rust-colored notebook that the party took back to the sanctuary with their treasure, since it seemed valuable. It would take reminding someone to look through them once back at the sanctuary to get anything noteworthy from these ... notes.

C14, Administrator Losandro's Office: Yellow fog roils against the cathedral-like windows of this opulent, two-story office. The ground floor features overstuffed furnishings, elegant side tables, and an altarlike desk of dark marble. A delicate spiral staircase and balcony of dark iron rises to a lofty library overhead. Both floors' fixtures frame the lake of blood spread across the room's center where lies the body of a woman whose head has been caved in by a large, blunt object - the body of the ill-fated Administrator Eliege Losandro, who had turned into a non-combative oneirogen but had been put out of her/its misery by G2. Of note, however, is that no sparkling, multicolored mist (or any mist or fog, for that matter) exists in the room now. (When G2 arrived, the oneirogen was pumping out not yellow mist, but mist of all manner of sparkling hues.)

The office of Briarstone's administrator combines the features of a psychologist's office and a queen's lounge. While dedicated to her work, Losandro still made herself and her favorite aides comfortable with Count Lowls' excessive donations. Rich appointments in soothingly dark shades once left office visitors with an impression of Losandro's even-temperedness and good taste. Now, the place bears the gruesome evidence of its owner's reckless experiments with reality-warping magic.

Though the pool of blood here belongs to Losandro, her office has fared little better than she has. G2 found significant intel here, and it would take a trip back to the sanctuary for G2's new arrivals to parse through it. (So, if you want to do so, you have to prod me in-game.)

When G2 succeeded here and got all of the treasure and intel they could, they did NOT open/ explore the southern door to the east.

So, now what?

Björn looks to the southern door to the east, looks back at the group and then heads towards it intent on opening it...

The party gets into formation, with Björn still forgoing his shield (ostensibly to do more damage by wielding his longsword two-handed). Corbin opens the door ...

This hall is dark and empty except for the smashed remains of lanterns on the ground. Six doors branch from here.

The door you opened is the northern door to the west, so you are at the western limits of the hallway. What is your intention?

Spoiler: Map

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https://orig00.deviantart.net/4732/f...31-dcjwk4s.png

Björn turns back to the group. "We will do a left/right approach. Opening the door on the left, clearing the space while somone watches the entrance, then cross the hall to the right. Rinse and repeat..." He then tips his head to the side in confusion, wondering where that phrase came from... and then begins to cautiously make his way towards the first door.

The party gets into 5'-wide setup and moves east until you get to the first N-S facing sets of doors. With Björn's recommendation of left/ right, given that you are facing east, that means the northern door will be checked first. Corbin can switch with Björn to listen at the door. Because of the way the passageway works with this door's facing, the person opening the door is the door-guard. So, in this instance, Corbin can't open the door and have Björn as the bulwark. Still, Corbin listens and he does thinks he hears a quiet voice on the other side (that is all the information he can gleam ... no other definition or parameter of that voice).

Who is going to be the breech-guard ... Björn (with his armor), or Corbin? (GM recommends the former, but hey....)

Björn will be the breech guard.

Björn, with his sword in his "off hand" (whatever that means to him, no mechanical penalties), opens the door and looks in as Corbin is to his right (east) and Zoo in small dog form is to his left (west).

Björn opens the door, and a person with a crowbar is on the other side, waiting. But Corbin (undoubtedly) warned him that was someone was there, so he is not surprised. At the same time, the door further down the hall (also on the north side) opens.

Begin Round One ...

R1T22: Gaye moves into the gap between Bangs and Maeni, rapier in hand.

R1T20: Bangs, what do you do? Both northern doors are open. You have nobody to target right now. You know someone had to have opened the door farther to the east, but you don't know/ can't see AO1 and don't know somebody is right there.

Spoiler: C16, Personal Effects & Storage

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https://img00.deviantart.net/6445/i/...31-dcjz9ln.png

Bangs

"Who's there?" Bangs shouts as he sees the door down the hall open from within. Bangs focuses on his power and raises an earthen berm before the doorway to block the unknown entity.

Spoiler: OOC

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Free action: Speak
Standard Action: Kinetic Cover on the far doorway which opened to block the doorway. Wall has AC 5, 4 HP. Blocks LoS and LoE.

R1T20: "Who's there?" Bangs shouts as he sees the door down the hall open from within. Bangs focuses on his power and raises an earthen berm before the doorway to block the unknown entity.

R1T18: Haru, you are the only person who - because of space - is still in the administrator's office. Do you do anything, or delay?

Spoiler: Battle Map

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https://img00.deviantart.net/9dd3/i/...31-dck1pfa.png

Haru delays ...

R1T17: Zoo you are currently concentrating on small dog form (claws, darkvision). What do you do?

Zoo ceases concentration on his canine shape and calls forth a patch of grabbing vines to the north-east of AO1.

"Drop your weapon. We don't want to fight, but we're damn good at it!"

Spoiler: Combat

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Free Action: Drop concentration
Standard Action: Spend a spell point to use Grow Plants on the intersection North-east of AO1's square, add the Entangle effect from the plantlife package, and maintain concentration on it.

Fort save vs sickened: [roll0]

R1T17: Zoo ceases concentration on his canine shape and calls forth a patch of grabbing ivy vines to the north-east of AO1. "Drop your weapon. We don't want to fight, but we're damn good at it!"

R1T14: Corbin, weirdness abounds. I'm pretty sure you've never seen Zoo do more than change shape, but this guy and Bangs are like druids, practically. A berm of ice earth blocks the opening to the east, and just inside the room where you see here, there is a field of grasping ivy plants. What do you do?

Spoiler: Battle Map

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https://img00.deviantart.net/654d/i/...31-dck3eoj.png

Corbin tenses up for a fight...

Spoiler: OOC

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Delay until Ao1 or 2 show aggressive action.

R1T13: AO1 swings his crowbar at Björn, but the writhing ivy makes things difficult. AO1 then (unhindered by the vines) moves out of sight further into the room towards the east.

R1T10: Maeni, you are well back in the line. What do you do?

Corbin, AO1 showed aggressive action and you are delaying? Do you do anything now?

With a low rumbling voice, Maeni utters some words as her scales glitters for a second, while you all feel invigorated.

"That's the best I can do from here, make it count !"

Spoiler: OOC

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Casting Bless, 1 minute duration.

Every ally within 50 feet of me (so everyone) gets +1 to attack and saves against fear.

R1T10: With a low rumbling voice, Maeni utters some words as her scales glitters for a second, while you all feel invigorated. "That's the best I can do from here, make it count!"

Spoiler: ALCON

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Remember, I am the one who adds the bonus in ... please don't add it into your rolls.

R1T7: Björn, Maeni's spell is making you feel pretty good, but your target is no longer in view, and a 10' x 10' field of writhing ivy is in front of you. What do you do?

Corbin delaying ...

Readying his shield, Björn will step forward into the room looking for his prey...

R1T7: Readying his shield, Björn steps forward into the room looking for his prey. As soon as he steps in, he finds the ivy easily wraps around his ankles and shins and he is entangled and unable to move further.

Spoiler: Björn

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Good call readying the shield. You are entangled. Though that normally allows you to move, the nature of Zoo's magic is such that you are rooted (pun intended) to the spot. You are not paralyzed though, and you can still do actions you can perform in place (other than moving your legs about).

R1T5: Bangs' temporary berm is smashed down by another yellow-robed man who then enters the hallway and engages Corbin.

Corbin, you are now being threatened, and you are delaying. Do you act?

R1T4: Flair, do you do anything?

Spoiler: Battle Map

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https://img00.deviantart.net/868c/i/...31-dckbj0d.png

Gaye on deck, Bangs in the hole ...

Flair pulls the crossbow to his shoulder and takes careful aim, though he didn't let loose his shot.

Spoiler: OOC

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Spend 2 move actions to Martial Flexibility into Precise Shot and Point-Blank Shot.

R1T4: Flair pulls the crossbow to his shoulder and takes careful aim, though he doesn't loose his shot. He senses a greater awareness of the area than normal, but he still finds his aim frustrated by AO2's proximity to the clawed tengu.

Spoiler: Flair

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You have to be a 6th-level brawler to be able to get two feats from martial flexibility at the same time. You currently have Point Blank Shot, but not Precise Shot.

End Round One, Begin Round 2 ...

R2T22: Gaye moves forward to where Björn was previously, and moving right into the room where he is stuck now. She didn't know quite what to expect, and now she is stuck as well. "Dammit, Zoo! Drop your ivy!"

R2T20: Bangs, your berm - though now destroyed - did its job. Had it not been there, AO2 would not have wasted time with it and could have attacked Corbin sooner. What do you do?

Corbin, you are now being threatened, and you are delaying. Do you act? Haru, you are also delaying...

Spoiler

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https://img00.deviantart.net/8dda/i/...31-dckbo38.png

Zoo on deck, AO1 in the hole ...

Bangs

Seeing Corbin engaged in melee with another of those yellow robed attackers, Bangs does not hesitate to bestow Corbin with extra vitality.

Spoiler: Ooc

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Manifesting Vigor on Corbin spending 2 pp to give 10 THP.