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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 1452274" data-attributes="member: 15470">Episode 14 - The Rat Man Warren, Pt II - Episode 2 of 5In the late afternoon, Miriel wakes up and begins checking the many wounded. She judges that her own wounds are not serious, and turns to Swims with Fishes, who is still unconscious. She prays to Madriel for healing, and his wounds close beneath her touch. The lizard man wakes up. Paks is in pretty good shape, and she wakes up as Miriel examines her. Though her ribs are still broken, the numerous other cuts and gashes she’s received are mostly healed.Paks accompanies the priestess as she examines Telryn, and she asks Miriel to show her how to work the healing. Under Miriel’s instruction, Paks prays to Madriel, and the healing is very different. It carries a feeling more like a ritual, and she can feel the power flowing through her hands. Though it takes longer, it is much more complete than her previous healings have been. When she is finished, Telryn’s wounds are merely pink scars, and he feels completely healthy.They check the other sleepers. Everyone else looks in decent shape, though all of the lizard men are wounded. Nobody is showing signs of disease, which Miriel says is a lucky thing.They look over the watchers last, and when they get to Chuck, Miriel can see instantly that he’s in very bad shape. He seems dizzy and loopy, and though he insists that he’s okay, his wounds have soaked through the bandages Miriel put on him, which are now wet to the touch. When she pulls them off, and removes his armor, it is clear that his wounds are severe. Paks again completes the healing ritual she has learned, but Chuck’s wounds are far beyond her powers, and though she heals him, he is far from well. When she is finished, Miriel points out to her that Chuck is getting some sort of rash on his arm. She’s not sure what it is, but thinks that it may be the beginning of Corpse Blisters, which we would not be able to treat. Stone and Miriel hand out all of their food, and some drinks, to the slaves. The slaves are extremely grateful.“Let’s rest until early evening,” Miriel says, “Another two hours or so. I don’t want to spend the night here.”Stone asks the dwarf, Dorian, to watch down the hole while he naps. Novalia also stands watch until evening.When we awaken, it is early evening. The sun is beginning to set, but the light of her rays still reaches the hilltop, bathing everything in a reddish hue.  Paks and Miriel check in on Chuck. The corpse blisters, brought on by his fight with the dead-eaters, are clearly visible now, and are spreading all over his chest and arms. Paks kneels over him and prays to Madriel, and to Miriel’s astonishment and surprise, the corpse blisters subside at her request.“You truly must be favored by Madriel,” she tells Paks. “Removing such a disease is beyond even my abilities.” The priestess works her healing on Chuck, then. His many wounds require two lengthy attempts, but she is able to close his wounds to slight scars and scabs, and he feels much better when the two have finished.Nobody else needs much more healing, and Paks finishes their tour of the wounded by praying the healing spell upon herself. It works just as well, and she feels much better.Hands of Fire sniffs the air and looks around nervously. “Storm’s coming in,” he warns. Chuck sharpens his sword. “Let’s go finish this.”“We can’t take the slaves with us,” Novalia objects.Miriel suggests, “Hands of Fire and Fists of Fury, you take the slaves to shelter nearby. We’ll go in and finish clearing out this warren.”Dorian, who will be going with the refugees, tells us, “There are still people missing.”“We’ll try to find them,” Paks assures him. Stone gives Telryn a healing potion to carry. Chuck casts magic fang on his snake, a spell which should increase the black viper’s efficiency. Telryn casts mage armor on himself and Miriel. As Hands of Fire leads the slaves away, the rest of us file into the third hut.We head back down the same hole that we went down before, the lone hole in the third hut. Stone and Drinks go first. Chuck’s magical dagger provides some light, while Telryn carries a torch near the back of the party as well. We come into the first small room, which is filled with piles of cloth. There are three ratman bodies there, which Chuck searches, but they have already been looted. The rest of us move towards the room where we found the slaves, then continue towards the large room where the big fight was. We get to the small side room; it smells terrible in here – we see a lot of bowls on the floor and decide it must be a toilet. The bowls have been knocked over in the melee. It’s a gross mess. We continue into the large hall. The bodies are all still here, perhaps twenty of them. Stone, Goldpetal, and the lizard men fan out to watch the various entrances. Chuck steps over to search the albino. “Careful,” Paks says, putting out a hand to restrain him, but he just hands her the glowing dagger and gives the albino a cursory search. “Curses!” he grumbles. “The scimitar is gone.”Telryn searches the priest. “Chuck,” he says, “You might be interested in this. It’s got silver wire and some pieces of jade woven into its fur.”Chuck lights a torch, which he sets in the middle of the room, and comes over to look, while Miriel searches the warriors. They are all wearing silver trinkets. The shaman’s retinue wear gold wire and quartz jewelry dangling from their jaws. Paks bends down to look at the albino. It also has jewelry woven into its fur, this time gold and sapphires. “Telryn,” she motions him over. “Here,” she says, and hands over a bone scroll tube which she found on the albino.Chuck takes the time to cut all the jewelry from the ratmen’s fur. He detaches five pieces of jade, seven sapphires, and sixteen pieces of quartz. Telryn opens the scroll tube and finds a scroll within. He looks at it, but shakes his head. “It’s in ratman writing,” he says. “I’ll need to study it later.” He puts it in his pack. We start down the corridor to the south, into unexplored territory. Miriel, one of the last to leave, grabs Chuck’s torch from the middle of the room. Stone leads us about twenty feet down the corridor, where we come to another large room, about thirty feet across. There are two exits to the left and one to the right. There are four huge bowls of brass on wooden stands, forming the corners of a square in the middle of a room. There are worn rugs on the floor. Stone steps into the room, motioning for Drinks to wait at the opening.Stone pokes at the rugs with the ten-foot pole, lifting them up. There’s just mud flooring underneath. He walks up to one of the brass bowls and looks inside. He sees a mixture of blood and excrement and mud. He pokes it with his dagger and it swirls. “It looks like a ritual took place here,” he says, motioning the rest of us to come into the room.Stone moves to the first corridor to the left and looks down it. Chuck looks down the next one to the left. Drinks looks out to the right. He just sees a corridor, but Stone and Chuck see that the corridors open up into two different rooms. In his, about five feet away, Stone sees lots of mats on the floor, a bookshelf, some hangings on the walls, and all sorts of murals. The room is about thirty feet around. He tells Paks what he sees, “I see a big room, with books. Telryn will want to see it.”Miriel comes into the room with the bowls and sketches a symbol of Madriel on the wall near Chuck. “Let’s go this way,” Paks says, gesturing to the corridor as Stone heads down it. Goldpetal, Drinks, and Novalia stay in the previous room, watching down the adjoining corridors.Stone steps into the room, and finds it unoccupied. There are two exits, one to the right and one straight ahead. When Chuck arrives with the glowing dagger, we can see that there are two or three sleeping mats. There are several bookshelves, with many books on the shelves. The murals depict suffering figures, rats chewing their way through tunnels of flesh, and various religious symbols. Stone goes to the corridor to the right. Looking down it, with his excellent night vision, he sees a twenty by ten room, which he thinks probably joins up with the corridor Goldpetal is watching. There are exits to the right and left. Paks motions Miriel and Telryn to come up.Goldpetal, still looking down one of the corridors from the room with the brass bowls, can see the room at the end by the light of Miriel’s torch, which is coming down Stone’s passage. It has with several shallow pits and eight stone blocks with chains and iron loops. Stone walks into the room, and waves at Goldpetal. Goldpetal comes in, collapsing our perimeter to cover the only other exit from that room. Looking out from the room with the bookshelves and murals, Chuck sees what looks like a very large room, about twenty feet down the corridor. He can see some tapestries on the walls. Stone comes back to Chuck. Telryn starts searching the library. “This look’s like priest’s quarters,” he says. Paks asks Miriel and Novalia to search as well, then motions in the lizard men. Stone begins walking off down Chuck’s corridor, towards the larger chamber.Stone walks down the corridor towards the larger chamber Chuck had seen. Chuck follows him, with Miriel third in line, ignoring Paks’ request. Stone can see several tapestries and a chest in the large room. There are more bookshelves, and a pile of skulls in the corner. As Stone steps into the room, four wolf-sized rats attack him. “Found ’em!” Stone calls. One of them bites him, but the others miss. He feels weaker, as though the bite has sapped his strength. Behind the rats, he can see a large ratman priest, against the left wall, who appears to be casting a spell.Chuck shouts, “Wolf-rats!” as Telryn and Paks run down the corridor behind Miriel.Stone tumbles past the wolf-rats to attack the priest. The wolf-rats snap at him, but miss. One leaps in the air, but falls awkwardly, landing on its side. Stone tries to punch the priest, but his roll came up just short. Paks pushes past everyone else, stepping through the wolf-rats. She stabs a wolf-rat as she goes past, wounding it. Paks stands back-to-back with Stone, between him and the wolf-rats. Chuck steps into the room, with Goldpetal directly behind him, scimitar drawn.  The priest casts his spell, and suddenly a swarm of centipedes appears around Chuck. He screams, and steps out of the centipedes, swinging at the wolf-rats with Paks’ longsword and his magical dagger. He wounds the injured one further, catching it with the tip of the sword, but it is still fighting. One of the wolf-rats bites Chuck, while two of them bite Paks, but whatever the weakness Stone experienced, neither of the humans feels. The bites are ferocious, however.The priest pulls out a red pearl with his left hand, points at Stone, calls out “Stone” and mumbles something else. Stone feels waves of pain racking his body. While the priest is concentrated on the half-orc, the viper attacks the priest and bites it on the foot. Miriel steps back out of the way of the corridor entrance, and prays to Madriel to bless everyone. Telryn casts a quick cantrip, and a ray of cold shoots from his finger, dispersing the swarm of centipedes.  Drinks with Orcs runs down the hall towards the sound of fighting. Red Scale, Novalia, and Swims With Fishes all wait, watching their respective corridors in rooms behind us.Stone, enraged by the pain, aims a flurry of blows against the priest. One punch hits the priest, hard, and the priest shakes its head as though to clear it. The ratman steps back and drinks a potion. The priest’s fur begins to harden and turn a dark brown, as his skin turns into bark. The viper bites the priest again, but it can’t penetrate the thick bark.  Paks, Goldpetal, and Chuck continue to battle the wolf-rats, but only Chuck manages to connect. He further wounds the injured one, which is moving slowly though it still fights on. Drinks with Orcs charges out of the corridor and smashes one of the wolf-rats with a great overhand blow, injuring it badly. One of the others bites Drinks with Orcs, while the injured one attacks Paks weakly. It looks very surprised when she blocks it with the invisible barrier of the ‘shield’ ring.Another of the wolf-rats leaps on Goldpetal, biting him and clawing him. He throws it to the ground, and as it lies stunned briefly, he and Chuck both swing swords at it. Both hit it, hard, and the wolf-rat looks near death. Somehow, it struggles to its feet and faces Goldpetal, snarling.The fourth wolf-rat takes advantage of Chuck’s momentary distraction, biting and clawing him. The young swordsman cries out, “Healing!” Telryn, behind him, steps into the room, and hands Chuck the healing potion.Stone continues to advance on the priest, who retreats before his flurry of blows. None of Stone’s punches seem to connect hard enough to bruise through the barkskin. The priest continues to fall back, and drinks another potion. His mouth grows huge and he gets warts on his face – he looks as if he has half turned into a giant frog. The viper bites the priest again, and although this time it looks like he’s punctured the skin, his poison doesn’t seem to be killing the priest. Paks swings the bastard sword, two handed, at the wounded wolf-rat, and finishes it off. Goldpetal chops at the weakened one in front of him and slices its belly open. Chuck attacks the remaining two wolf-rats with his dagger and sword and hits both, killing the injured one with his dagger and wounding the last wolf-rat with the longsword.Swims with Fishes rushes into the room and attacks the wolf-rat, but he falls as he tries to stop on the bloodied floor. The wolf-rat bites him as he hits the ground, and his club skids across the floor to the far side of the room. Before anyone can react, the wolf-rat leaps on the prone lizard man, biting and clawing at him until Swims with Fishes unconscious. Goldpetal wounds it with his scimitar and it turns on him.Drinks with Orcs rushes past the last wolf-rat to charge at the priest. He smashes at it with the great club, but the priest ducks and Drinks knocks a chunk of rock off the wall behind it. Telryn casts a magic missile at the priest, and his twin bolts of magical energy burn its flesh.Stone grabs the priest and attempts to grapple it. The priest tries to bite him, but the half-orc holds its snarling jaws away with one hand. They are locked in a grip for a brief moment, but then the priest throws the half-orc off. Paks takes advantage of Stone’s attack to slip around behind the priest, and she hits it from behind. The fine bastard sword cuts deeply through the barkskin to wound it.  The priest pulls out the glowing scimitar that we saw the albino use before. Paks shouts “Beware!” just as it attacks Stone, and he steps back just in time. The priest’s tongue whips out, like that of the frog he resembles, and tries to grab Stone. Though startled, the young monk dodges gracefully, and the tongue whips past him.Chuck drinks his potion of healing and moves behind the wolf-rat, which whirls to face him. Between them, he and Goldpetal have driven it back off of Swims with Fishes, and Miriel darts out into the room to pull him back towards the safety of the corridor. Red Scale runs towards the room to see what’s going on. With everyone but her now in the room with the priest, Novalia retreats toward the fighting, guarding the room behind us from the end of the corridor. Drinks with Orcs swings his club against the priest, but again he misses. Between them, Stone, Drinks, and Paks have the priest backed up against the wall, and it has nowhere to retreat to. Telryn casts a ray of frost at the priest, further wounding it. Stone punches him, a hard blow, and the priest fights like the cornered rat that it is.Paks attacks the priest with the bastard sword, but she misses, overextending herself. The priest hits her with the scimitar. As when the albino hit her, she feels a deep evil malice from the sword itself, but the priest is shocked to see that it has no effect on her other than to injure her. “Goldpetal!” she yells out, “Healing!”  The wolf-rat bites at Chuck, but as it does, Goldpetal attacks from behind, slicing it deeply with his scimitar. When it whirls to face him, Chuck deals a killing blow, bringing the fine longsword down through its back, severing its spine. The priest’s tongue whips out towards Paks and grabs her. She is wrapped in a sticky tongue, and it begins to pull her towards the priest’s mouth. Drinks with Orcs swings his club at the priest, but misses. Finally, Red Scale reaches the priest, and with a single two-handed blow from his great club, he brains it over the head. The priest’s eyes roll back in its head, and the tongue goes limp, releasing Paks. With its last gasps of breath it utters, “Chern... is... coming...” Stone stomps on the dying priest’s head, crushing it, and silence reigns.</blockquote>

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