Random Plots and Places 9: What a crazy, random happenstance!

[Deathkeeper]

Lab Complex

Pat nods with a smile.
"Yeah, you got it right there." she says.
And they'll keep going down the slope at their slow pace. (If nothing happens for a while feel free to go through a few areas, assuming they just keep going)

[KerfuffleMach2]

[Mirror, Mirror]

Darsy

There is, in fact, some drops from the silver liquid around the room - and even back into the hallway - which is easier to notice now that it isn't so dark (and now that Darsy is on the floor instead of the ceiling). There's some drops here, a splash there by the wall, some of it pooling by the curtains (there's also a funny round object there behind the curtain. It won't take much to deduce it's very head-sized).

As just said, there's also more spattered near the door.

If Darsy looks out into the hallway, it becomes more concentrated, with larger silver pools and drops further down. About thirty feet down is the largest pool, where the silver blood - if that's what it is - immediately stops.

Also, fun fact: down there in the hallway, it looks like something was dragged through some of the pools of the liquid, towards the Master Bedroom that Darsy is in right now.

Darsy follows the trail of silver blood with her eyes, taking in the details, and putting the scenario together in her head. The way she see's it, whatever injury that was done to cause the bleeding happened in the hall, where the biggest pool is. That was likely the beheading. Then the body was dragged in here and dumped on the bed, and the head was shoved behind the curtain.

Now, she has no idea why this happened this way. So, the first thing Darsy does is to go and pull back the curtain to look at the head. Might give some more clues.

[Beans]

Lab Complex

Pat nods with a smile.
"Yeah, you got it right there." she says.
And they'll keep going down the slope at their slow pace. (If nothing happens for a while feel free to go through a few areas, assuming they just keep going)

Acanthe comes to a door, but in her discomfort she is getting pretty angry. Bunching up her coils, she hurls her full weight at the door and slams it open, popping a few screws out of the hinges as she hits.
She does the same with the next door, her aggression increasing until they reach a pair of double doors, which she bulls right off their hinges to tumble to the suddenly-carpeted floor of the excecutive suite they've been looking for.

[Deathkeeper]

Lab Complex

Pat looks up in surprise.
"Oh hey, we were looking for this before. Want to find that jerk and beat the snot out of him?" he offers to Acanthe.

[Beans]

Lab Complex

Pat looks up in surprise.
"Oh hey, we were looking for this before. Want to find that jerk and beat the snot out of him?" he offers to Acanthe.

Acanthe nods, fueled by the rage of dozens of irritated eyes. The executive office area is a sort of rotunda, the round central room sporting doors to offices.

She heads for the center door and, finding it locked, starts to hammer away at it.

[Deathkeeper]

Lab Complex

Pat lets her hammer at the door and looks around a bit. Maybe if she finds a bathroom she'll find some eye drops.

[Beans]

Lab Complex

Pat lets her hammer at the door and looks around a bit. Maybe if she finds a bathroom she'll find some eye drops.

There are two bathrooms, helpfully labeled for Men and Women, each on one side of the door. A thorough ransacking of at least one will turn up a small bottle of the much-needed anti-irritants!

Meanwhile, Acanthe breaks down the door to an empty office and starts angrily on the next.

[Deathkeeper]

Lab Complex

Pat goes through the ladies' bathroom and comes back inside.
"Nice job with the door Acanthe. I found some eye drops if you want to take a break." she says, helpfully holding out the bottle.

[Beans]

Lab Complex

Pat goes through the ladies' bathroom and comes back inside.
"Nice job with the door Acanthe. I found some eye drops if you want to take a break." she says, helpfully holding out the bottle.

She nods and smiles gratefully, applying the drops to as many of her extra, irritated eyes as she can. "Thanks..." But soon she's back to work! WHAM.

[Shadowcaller]

[Pyramid of Painful Demise]

"Correction, we'll wait for her and kick the lich's bony ass with her help," Wenomir says. Then he hears the noise the lich makes while busting through the obstacles. He grips his axe and readies himself. "Here it comes."

[Pyramid of Painful Demise]

"But mages usually steal the show." Dena remarks with a smile. "I'll probably stay back though, this isn't really my deal."
So as the lich breaks out Dena is nowhere to be seen unless the lich has magical sight as she's using a camouflage cloak. She hopes that Wenomir is going to draw it's attention while she's going to chuck a holy hand grenade at it.

[Deathkeeper]

Lab Complex

Pat nods and takes a step back, letting Acanthe smash things for as long as she wants until they find something promising or something else happens.

[5a Violista]

[Mirror, Mirror]
Darsy

The head looks like a normal beheaded head, if you've ever seen one. Not that I've ever seen one that still had its flesh on it (the ones that I've seen were always still attached to their bodies, but I think I can imagine what it looks like). Facial expression is stuck in shock. Eyes wide open.

Speaking of the eyes, there's something really strange about them. They have no features or anything - no color, no nothing; just plain silvery mirrors in the place of eyes. Other clues she can figure out is that the cut was very clean, almost like by a guillotine.


Card

As Card descends down the passageway and the stairs there, he reaches a lower floor. Luckily, there are no mirrors in this entire passageway: no reflective surfaces at all. It's kind-of nice, considering everything that has been going on around mirrors. There's a branching out hallway on the first floor. However, the stairs continue to go down, should he choose to continue descending into the darkness. There's two more floors, actually, further down. If he wants, he can keep on going down to the bottom, which also has thin branching out hallways that go to those floors.

[ThePhantom]

Mirror Mirror -Card

Hmm, well, she did fall through the floor, so going down below should be a good idea. Card continues to the bottom of this passageway, then heads to the area that would be under the entrance hall. Hopefully there will be some clue there.

[Beans]

Lab Complex

Pat nods and takes a step back, letting Acanthe smash things for as long as she wants until they find something promising or something else happens.

WHAM.
Gone is the door, and this time they're right on the money! Lounging in a desk chair behind a sleek glass desk is that jerk robot guy, who promptly falls over in surprise.

"OH MAN WHAT THE HELL HOW ARE YOU TWO ALIVE AND HERE AND WITH YOUR USUAL BUTTS." He picks himself up, shear-hand snipping. "THIS IS GULLCRAP."

[Deathkeeper]

Office

Pat puts her hands on her hips and puts on a confidant look.
"Dude, you just told the scientists to do science and then walked out. They just stared at us for a while, so we walked out. As for how we got back, that's for you to figure out probably never. Although they are NOT our usual ones, Acanthe has eyes all over the place now! Not that it matters, because you're an asshat and I'm giving her permission to smash you to pieces and/or eat you. Buh-bye!" she says cheerily, waving a hand to signal Acanthe to SEARCH AND DESTROY, except skipping the search part!

[Beans]

[Office Showdown]

Acanthe charges, flipping the desk over on top of the robot jerk with a clunk. She punches his head until it ruptures, dozens of pairs of shutter-shades and old Busta Rhymes tapes spewing out like brains, but way less gross.

"YOU CAN'T KILL ME! I HAVE A CLAW HAND AND A NORMAL HAND!" His damaged voicebox buzzes and stutters before Acanthe eats it.

"... What are we going to do with all these sunglasses?"

[Deathkeeper]

Office Post-showdown

Pat grimaces. "You know, I had your iron stomach and I'm still not sure how you can eat that sort of thing. I guess I'd need your chompers too to wrap my head around it." she looks down. "Just incinerate them. Let's just look for his keys and stuff so we can dismantle this whole place. And maybe loot his money stash if he has one. I'd love to have the cash you'd need to have so many factories spring into place. And maybe we can ask the scientists to fix your tail before we send them home." she says, rummaging through the stuff in the office.

[KerfuffleMach2]

Mirror, Mirror

Darsy doesn't seem too bothered by the fact that she's holding a severed head in her hands. And examining it closely.

The eyes were weird. She didn't remember Ms. Martinez looking like that before.

After finding out all she can from it, Darsy sets the head back where it was and heads back to the hall. She wants to get a closer look at that big pool of blood out there.

[UncleWolf]

Spoiler

Show

House in the Countryside

Needs leans right into the photograph, rubbing his kitty face all over it. Best familiarize himself with the boy's appearance as much as he can. Whatever the kid is going through, it could do a lot to change the way one looks, though, so it's best not to be too obsessed with finding an exact match.

Target confirmed.

House in the Countryside

The Mother slides in through the door, closing it shut behind her and immediately busies herself about the room, pulling blinds and arranging anything loose on the tables and counters present into easily counted groups. She's surprisingly quick at the activity, completing it in under a minute unless the clutter is quite pronounced.

She's very practiced at it, doesn't do much else when left to herself.

Only after she's done does she remove the mass of cloth from around her head, "I may not perish by sunlight's first kiss, but it does not make it any more pleasant to feel his lips. Was there anything unusual around where the boy was last known? Impressions in the soil, smells, a sense of foreboding?" She glances over the photo once, even in the shaded room her eyes adapt and know his face. The face of the one that could have been hers. For a moment, her own gaunt, pale features fill and twist into something close. In the instant before her ingrained instinct is reigned in, her face could pass as the boy's mother to a stranger, a familial resemblance built in the blink of an eye.

And then it passes, and her face is the same elongated, tapering pale slice of flesh that it was when she first revealed it. Dark circles beneath yellow eyes and bruised, tooth-worried lips are the only colour on her otherwise alabaster features.

She stares intently, unblinking at Vigil, waiting for his reply.

House in the Countryside



Wes takes out his VerySmartPhone and takes a picture of the picture, if no one stops him. "What is his name?"

House in the Countryside

"Kirby. Though whenever he wears that shirt he likes being called Froggy. You can guess why." Vigil points out with a shrug as he begins dishing out the food. "There's something quite odd, yes, though eat before I take you to see it. I suppose I ought to tell you why he vanished in the first place." He says with a sigh before sitting down, staring at the table. "His brother passed a couple months back and it hit us all hard. Very hard. We've all been struggling to cope, but he...his grief did something else. It opened a doorway. One that's still open right in the backyard. We know he went through, but we can't go through ourselves or it'll shut. We're acting as his grounding wire. One of us awake at all times to keep the doorway open, the other asleep to rest and recover his strength."

[happyturtle]

House in the Countryside

Wes will dig into the food, once it's served, with the typical appetite of a 16 year old. "What happens if it closes and we're on the other side?"

[Earl of Purple]

Pyramid of Painful Demise

From what I understood, the lich had to break down two doors to leave the pyramid; that was the first door he's broken down. He has to work on the next one yet.

As for magical sight, it would probably be better for Dena if she chose not to rely solely on magical concealment; liches are normally powerful wizards, capable of keeping various forms of magical sight up for long periods if not permanently.

[5a Violista]

[Mirror, Mirror]
Darsy

The "blood" is, of course not actually blood. It's that same silvery liquid. Actually, it doesn't even smell like blood. If Darsy were insane enough to taste it, it wouldn't taste like blood, either. (It would taste horrible, though; what else would you expect from some random liquid found pouring out of someone's neck?)

There aren't really any other clues. Something that looks like Harley was beheaded right there, and then dragged through the hallway into that room Darsy just left. Not much else to it.

Of course, there still is that door in this hallway that's slightly cracked open, whereas pretty much all the other doors are snug shut. But, honestly, it was probably a draft that caused it to open; what else could possibly make a door open like that?


Card

Below the entrance hall is also a large room. It looks significantly less fancy than the entrance hall. It, actually, looks like it used to be an area for the servants to scurry around from room to room, taking care of everything behind the scenes. It's a fairly ugly stone room; after all, guests weren't expected to come in here.

There's also graffiti on the walls, the pillars, the ceiling, the floor, the tabletops...on everything. No mirrors, though - thankfully. The graffiti is full of occult messages or symbols, half-finished demon summoning circles, papers with curses written on them, and so on. It seems this room also has a story to tell.

[KerfuffleMach2]

Mirror, Mirror

What else, indeed...

Having nothing else to go on at the moment, Darsy heads for the open door, her fists bathed in light again. Just in case.

[Slii Arhem]

Spoiler

Show

House in the Countryside

"Kirby. Though whenever he wears that shirt he likes being called Froggy. You can guess why." Vigil points out with a shrug as he begins dishing out the food. "There's something quite odd, yes, though eat before I take you to see it. I suppose I ought to tell you why he vanished in the first place." He says with a sigh before sitting down, staring at the table. "His brother passed a couple months back and it hit us all hard. Very hard. We've all been struggling to cope, but he...his grief did something else. It opened a doorway. One that's still open right in the backyard. We know he went through, but we can't go through ourselves or it'll shut. We're acting as his grounding wire. One of us awake at all times to keep the doorway open, the other asleep to rest and recover his strength."

House in the Countryside

Wes will dig into the food, once it's served, with the typical appetite of a 16 year old. "What happens if it closes and we're on the other side?"

House in the Countryside

"Every time a door closes, you punch a window in the wall." The Mother replies to Wes absently as she tears her bacon into small strips, ordering each into piles of prime numbered amounts and then shifting one piece from each pile to the pile to its left, only eating the first pile's first piece and shoving the rest of her plate over for Needscat to finish off.

"Any more than that and rivers of filth flow forth. The third worst curse of my existence." She confides in a stage whisper to the cat.

[Morty]

[Pyramid of Painful Demise]

Wenomir continues to wait. He's keeping himself in plan sight, ready to charge the lich at a moment's notice.

[Shadowcaller]

Pyramid of Painful Demise

Dena knows how to conceal herself within a desert but that required you to bury yourself in the sand so not very good for attacking. The drow can set a armed and ready holy handgrenade at the entrance however to detonate it when the lich emerges. She moves so she's behind the entrance, close but not close enough to be caught in the blast radius of her own bomb. Perhaps she could ambush the lich from behind while Wenomir takes the front.

As a final preparation she sets Violet to create an illusion of the rogue herself around the drone. This would throw the lich of mark. Violet will while masquerading as Dena also scan the lich for enchantments and so fourth.

[Earl of Purple]

Pyramid of Painful Demise

The door slowly crumbles as the lich transmutes the stone into sand; it's too dry to keep its shape and just slumps downwards into a small sand dune. The sand keeps its colour, however; it's sand made from the black granite of the pyramid (note: I can't recall the pyramid's actual make up, so assume the two rocks match).

The lich then strides over the sand dune. He is obviously a tiefling; a pair of curling horns erupt from his forehead. His skin is pulled tight across his bones, and has a faded reddish orange colour. His empty eyesockets are lit by tiny blue flames serving as his eyes, and he is clad in a dark blue silk robe. A mithril sickle is at his waist. He will bow to Wenomir. "Thank you, Warrior, for freeing this one from the prison its treacherous apprentices did so ungratefully seal it. If there is but a single task this one may perform for thee, Warrior, do but name it and shall it be within the not-inconsiderable arcane power possessed by the one before you, it shall be done- and with alacrity and the necessary amount of needful skill." The undead tiefling's speech is archaic and slightly stilted; it's clearly not used to modern speech.

There are several powerful arcane defences surrounding the lich's frame, including a two-metre aura centred on the lich designed to slow down any living creature within it and a potent electrical ward cast on the robes; any metal object touching the cloth will channel the electricity into any creature touching it. In addition it has a necklace that absorbs hostile magic and releases it as necromantic energy that will heal the lich. There is a passive enchantment that enables the lich to partially see through illusions; he not only knows where Dena is, but also that she is magically concealed, and that Violet is currently masquerading as the drow through illusion.

[Morty]

[Pyramid of Painful Demise]

Alright, so it doesn't immediately attack. That's... good, maybe. Wenomir doesn't relax, though.

"For now, please tell me how you wound up in that casket and what you plan on doing now that you're free," he says.

[Beans]

Office Post-showdown

Pat grimaces. "You know, I had your iron stomach and I'm still not sure how you can eat that sort of thing. I guess I'd need your chompers too to wrap my head around it." she looks down. "Just incinerate them. Let's just look for his keys and stuff so we can dismantle this whole place. And maybe loot his money stash if he has one. I'd love to have the cash you'd need to have so many factories spring into place. And maybe we can ask the scientists to fix your tail before we send them home." she says, rummaging through the stuff in the office.

Rooting through his robocorpse, she finds a glowing pink sort of vial and crushes it, the energy starting to dribble over her and slowly fix her. "I'll see if he has more so we can fix your shoulder..."
She sighs and shoves all the refuse into the trash can, then starts rooting through his desk drawers. He has a table and a few filing cabinets as well!
Acanthe finds money in the form of many, many, many rolls of quarters. In fact, basically all this guy has is rolls of quarters and shutter shades.

[Deathkeeper]

Office

"What about my- oh" she says, having never noticed the fluff on her shoulder.
She sighs at the quarters. Sheesh. She takes a roll or two, though. Should be good for a couple of bucks.
"All right, better go tell the workers to pack up and go home, preferably taking these eyesore factories with them." she says once they're done.
This is weird. Compared to the last adventure, she seems to have made it out rather quickly and without much trouble besides the ten minutes of leglessness.
Huh.