October 28th, 2023
Mare, Ignis 5th, 1194 (Continued)
We continue our search of the premises– finding a library focused on ancient cults and savage rituals, another related to astronomy, astrology, and eldritch knowledge, and a third with books on torture, mental illness, and old gods. Rupman looks genuinely horrified by this asylum.
We clear the ground floor and begin exploring the basement. We find a row of cells, the first of which is empty, containing only blood and filth. The second has a morlock and a small passage that the morlock moves into. The third has a man named Ploog, who asks us for help and says he was captured recently and lobotomized. The fourth has a large emaciated, unconscious man. At the end of the hall we find a room with a chaos beast and kill it. Rupman confirms that it is not what they summoned.
In a laboratory we find a small blue person performing an autopsy on a lunatic. After a quick battle, he surrenders to Graynor, as if he knows Madri must accept. Sigmund uses a spell to communicate with this creature, finding out that he is a derro and wants to return to the undercity. Crove made a deal with the derro to provide him bodies to autopsy in exchange for unmolested travel through the undercity. We try to make a similar deal in exchange for his life. He says he will bring it up to the chief and asks for our names to provide to his chief for our safe passage. Sigmund gives the derro a fake name, Ian Goodfellow. Ty’s not sure why Sigmund gave another name, so she follows his lead and gives the name Mackenzie.
We encounter Crove and kill him. While fighting Crove, it sounds as if something very large is moving towards us. The beast breaks through the ceiling and attacks us. During the fight with the beast, Sigmund casts spiritual weapon, which manifests as a chakram, the favored weapon of Avarra. It’s a horrid battle, but we prevail.
Crove has a holy symbol with the same image as that blood pattern that we saw yesterday. Among his belongings is a crude map of the undercity; it looks as if he was exploring it.
We try to drag the beast out, but it’s too heavy, so we just take the head to show the mayor. Mayor Heggry is happy to hear that we have dealt with his problem and awards us the remainder of our payment. He informs us that Hyve was killed by the beast after we left him in the custody of the guards; that makes Rupman the only surviving member of this group.
Mayor Heggry ponders Rupman’s punishment and we vouch that he was cooperative in our investigation and assisted us. We return his bonded ring and he’ll get his spellbook after Ralzer spends a few days copying some spells from it. We’ll spend a couple days resting and selling loot.