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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jon Potter" data-source="post: 453410" data-attributes="member: 2323">[PLAIN][Realms #197] Behind Door Number One[/PLAIN]Finian started to raise his bow as the woman turned, but Ruze put his hand out to stop him. "Hold," the Battleguard hissed in the Archer's ear. "She may not have seen us yet."She did see them, however. And for half-a-second the woman looked at the group, confused. One side of her face, they could see, was studded with puss-filled blisters that seemed to grow out from her hairline toward her lips and left eye. She spied the bow in Finian's hands and the shield in Ledare's and her expression turned immediately to rage.Draelond bounded down the remaining two steps and rushed the woman just as she turned. A look of surprise blossomed on her face and she dropped the robe she was about to don and dashed naked toward the double doors.As Draelond's boots hit the floor he felt a twinge of guilt about attacking what appeared on all accounts, to be a woman. He instantaneously concluded that the severity of the situation merited such drastic action and put the thought out of his mind. If he could get to her before she had a chance to sound an alarm with a shriek, perhaps she could be "persuaded" to give him some information...He thought all this in the two seconds it took him to charge across the vestibule like a rampaging bull - a bull wearing 40 pounds of chain armor! She managed to pull open one of the double doors, filling the vestibule with the sounds of chanting and discordant melodies. Then Draelond's hands lashed outward and slapped down around the woman's head, totally covering her mouth and smashing her nose to a pulp in the process. His momentum drove her backward, away from the doorway. She went limp and collapsed out of his grasp like a broken toy. Blood from her nose and puss from the burst blisters on her face were smeared across the fighter's hands.The others hustled down into the vestibule and Ruze bent down to check the woman's condition while Finian and Ledare took up positions to either side of the open door. Kirnoth hung back, his bow ready and looked for anything that would fit with the prophecies that they had previously read.After a moment, Ruze looked up at Draelond and handed him the hood to the woman's robe. "Wipe your hands," he whispered. "She's got a broken nose and a dislocated jaw, but she'll wake up in a few hours." He stood and added, "She's also got the bubbling pussties. So I'd wipe those hands really well."The double doors opened onto a long, dark room. There were two doors set into the left hand wall, and a massive archway opened in the wall on the right. Torchlight and the cloying smoke of burning incense came from that direction. Maniacal chanting, the unnerving moan of woodwind instruments, and the laborious screams of a woman echoed through the area, coming from the area beyond the archway.Invisibly, Finian poked his head around the edge of the archway. He looked into a scene plucked straight from the pits of hell, itself. Eight fiery braziers stood in shallow alcoves, creating disturbing shadows that danced  upon the cold stone walls like deranged marionettes. A dozen armed guards stood near the walls and in the aisle, watching over pews filled with green-robed worshipers. The aisle ended before a raised stage, atop which lay an enormous altar of black stone and a monstrous tapestry depicting a skeletal woman whose slavering mouth drooled corruption.Atop the altar lay a red-haired woman suffering the pains of childbirth. A figure was pushed forward by several cultists to attend the delivering mother. As the figure glanced back to stare fearfully into the faces of the chanting cultists, Finian recognized the man. It was Rherram, the healer from  Strenchburg Junction who had acted as Finian's defender. The man had clearly been recently beaten.Behind the altar, an imposing figure wearing brown robes and a helmet sculpted in the shape of a rat's skull studied the delivery with great anticipation. Behind the helmeted figure stood a horribly diseased creature, fully eight feet tall with glistening black scales and eyes that burned with bilious green light. The mendicant leaned forward to look over the robed man's shoulder and a look of perverse joy played across its orc-like features.</blockquote>

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