As you sleep through what seems a rather long rest you are woken by the creaking the sounds in the catacombs that echo throughout the halls. Nothing rings louder than faint chanting in your mind that brings you back to reality. Was it a dream? Did you hear the chanting? You aren't sure. You don't hear it now.

OOC: Gain four hours worth of PP. Any fatigue on anyone is restored also.

Despite her wishes, Lirian has fallen sleep for a while. The lowering of adrenaline in her bloodstream, along with the fatigue of the combat have been too much for her to overcome. The faint chant awoke her, taking back to reality as a fall to a pit.

“Oh, damn, I fell slept” she thought, enraged with herself for so. “And what’s that chant? Has the ceremony they told about begun?” A sense of urgency came to her, afraid they might be late.

“Did you hear this chant or I have dreamt it?” she asked to the others.

With all the commotion Piper slowly woke up.  She stretched and rubbed her eyes and looked around somewhat bleary.

"Are we getting going?"  She asked no one in particular.

"Yes, let's get going" Hunter said. "Lead on,Noble Mouse, I'll follow."

OOC: Nothing you can identify gives you any ideas of where the chanting is coming from or if the chanting was real. You aren't sure the nature of the chanting.

"Lead on. We'll deal with the chants whan we deal with the chanters, and I think this place will lead us to them by design."

Aeress rose, assembled her kit and hoisted her spear again, falling in line.

“They told about a ceremony…” Lirian said. “I’m afraid this chants may be from it, so we should be aware to see if we can hear them again and they lead us to where de ceremony is made. It would be glad to avoid it…”

This said, she readied herself and took her place to keep exploring. “Where to go now?” she asked, to no one specifically

With the decision made, Piper urged Mosii to head out.

ooc: Not sure if the map is up to date and we're in room 9.  If that is the case then I suppose we'll head east down the hall and then north.  If room 9 was an earlier room and we did go north to get where we are now, and there's no where else to go in this area, then I guess we'll head back to follow the eastern hallway just north of room 5.

"I always wanted to be a Dominican monk. But I never got the chants" Hunter said straight faced.

Exiting out the room with the remains of the rat spider creature you go down the hall in search of more answers trying to deciding to continue down the hall you make your way all the way to the end and then turn which leads into a huge room that has no door. The first think the strikes you walking into the area itself is the smell of death. Inside of the room there is no lights except that of a tank of some sort that is in the back corner of the room. It's a huge metal tank that your torch light bounces off of but you can't make out the contents from where you are.

As your light touches the ground you find a number of bodies on the floor. Elves, Dwarves, Humans, Goblins, and Infernals all dead. Their bodies twisted into some sort of misformed shape. Limbs snapped around in directions which you know they should not be. Taping any of the bodies leaves you to believe they are in a mummified state but the life of these creatures has long passed.

Quentin first checks that these are not fresh, then proceeds to guesstimate their age, the predominant cause of death, whether they seem to have been infected and whether they were twisted dead or alive. The dogs meanwhile stay wary, sniffing the air.

21:28, Today: Secret Roll: Quentin Fox rolled 5,1 using 1d8,1d6, rerolling max with rolls of 5,1.  Healing.

Lirian looked at the many corpses there. “The mouselings already warned us they also used other races, but this clearly is mass murder…” she said. Then she seemed to be thinking for a moment.

“Something doesn’t fir here…” she thought on loud, again sharing her thoughts. “They say to venerate Teknos, but those ritual deaths and sacrifices don’t fit with someone looking for technology, they are more about an evil god. Technology doesn’t use to need the power you may obtain with sacrifices or mass murder, doesn’t it?” she asked to Hunter, as he was more tech inclined than herself.

“The other explanation is those are experimenting subjects…” she added, having second thoughts about what she had said. “If so, be careful” she warned Quentin “They may have toxins or diseases…”

The smell inside of the room is so strong the dogs refuse to enter. Even with Quentin's commands, too much death has spooked them.

For once Piper's curiosity did not lead her to boldly forge ahead.

While a part of her was morbidly curious regarding the metal tank it was tempered by the surroundings enough that she would be fine if that particular object was left a mystery as to its contents or purpose.

"The rat spider monster was feeding off others without eating them.  Perhaps whatever secrets this Teknos gave them can be fueled by such things.  Or it may have not been a sacrifice in that sense, but an amusement for whatever was here.  Cruelty may have been the point."

Aeress went from mummified corpse to mummified corpse, wondering if there was some detail they hadn't picked up on yet.  She doubted it, but she would try.

Hunter looked discomforted by Liriams words. "I have heard some rabid bleeding hearts say so, indeed almost exactly those words, in my father's hall. But not like this. He was referring to slavery and workers being crushed by giant machines, of children slaving in the dark in coal mines. Patently the chap was a mad quack, technology will improve the world not make it worse, but disquieting thoughts nonetheless."

He coughed, amd hastened to change the subject back to the matter at hand. "If I might opine, I doubt those bodies are mummified, at least, not in the way of some desert kings I heard of once. I suggest that they are fairly recent, human bodies that have had the life force sucked out of them so that their whole bodies shriveled up like dried apples. Like the Spider king was doing with Piper's poor kin."

"Perhaps they twisted like that out of sheer agony. Or perhaps here was where foul magical experiments were done to them, blending Man with Machine such as the Spider Rat. Or experimentation with drugs amd potions."

"But I would wager that that tank yonder contains their life essence,  stored like some kind of horrific battery. I want to destroy it."

OOC could Hunter make some kind of a bomb out of his gunpowder?

"An interesting hypothesis. These were indeed subject to many injections... or was those punctures used to drain them instead... I think those were injections, voluntary and painful, but we have no time to do proper analysis, so that's all I can tell."

As Hunter expresses a desire to destroy the tank, Quentin considers what would happen if a gun bullet hit the lower part of the tank. Namely:
1. Would it be enough to create a hole?
2. If there was a hole and the content started to pour out, where would it go and on what timescale (like, a drain or wide cracks in the floor or, on the contrary, a solid stone floor; would the content, flowing out of a small hole, reach the bodies; how long the whole process could be expected to take etc.)

OOC: You can make a bomb with repair. Don't fail. You can throw a bomb with athletics. Don't fail. :)

IC: The tank itself looks of decent size and weight. By looking at the tank itself you can see the that the metal that wraps around the tank holds the liquid in. An area of glass keeps the liquid from spilling out to on the floor but even at this point you aren't sure what the liquid would do. If busted it would cover the floor and the bodies pretty quickly. Searching around the room itself, you find no direct holes on the floor other than cracks that would help drain it from the room meaning as soon as it hits the floor it's going to spread out very, very quickly depending on the viscosity.

Lirian covered her nose to try to avoid the smell and looked at the room. Again, she seemed concerned. “Beware with this liquid” she warned the others. “I guess we should take samples for you and Lord Stonecroft to analyze” she said to Quentin “but it occurs to me that it could be somehow the ”life essence” of those poor people, and, tell me fool if you so wish, but I’m afraid if spilled over the corpses they might return to some mockery of life” she shared her thoughts and fears with the others.

“I once was told a living being needs body, soul and mind. If you only have two of them, there are problems. If only soul and mind, it’s a ghost, if only body and mind, it’s soulless, and so a monster, and if only body and soul, a kind of a zombie, someone without will”^{note 1} she said. “I don’t want to know what can happen if those bodies are revived by this liquid, but I’m pretty sure it would not be good…”

This said, Lyrian left the room, remaining close enough as to support her comrades if needed.


OOC: note 1: in fact this is taken from a film I saw many years ago. I remember little about it, but the plot was about a magnate that is frozen in cryogenics, and when revived the soul was no longer on him, being only body and soul. He was a true callous psycopath without any empathy nor any other virtue related to the soul…

EDIT: just to be clear:

1. the word "Zombie" is used here on the sense of th Voodoo, like the 1943 film I walked with a zombie, not in the sense of the monsters depicted in The walking dead
   
2. Not intending to start a metaphysical debate here, just this film (I cannot remember even the name) shocked me, and I ever thought this could make a good adventure plot...

This message was last edited by the player at 11:51, Fri 17 May.

"Give me a piece of paper" he said to Lirian and Quentin.

Rummaging through Jenkins' bag, he pulled out a rusty can. He half filled it with gunpowder and then squashed the top half mostly flat.

Looking around, he took the proffered piece of paper and placed it on the ground. He poured a trail of powder across the paper and then rolled it up, carefully folding in the ends.

Shoving this rough fuse into the can, he then continued squashing the can around it, bending the top over and crimping it.

Taking this Crude Explosive over to the tank, he jammed it between a leg and the tank itself, attempting to fix it so the force of the explosion would cause a blast rather than fire the can forward like a rocket.

"Well, here goes! Stand clear!" he said with a grin, lit the end of the match and then ran for the door.

14:25, Today: Hunter Gallagher rolled 15 using 2d6, rerolling max with rolls of (6+5)11,4.  Repair. –
This message was last edited by the player at 04:13, Fri 17 May.

Piper didn't even wait for Hunter to give the signal.

As soon as it became clear what he was up to, she spurred Mosii to head out the door and down the hall.

Quentin is not sure that blowing up the tank is a sound idea, but the arguments against it were already aired, so he just gets himself and the dogs out and to the nearest intersection, where he gets ready to retreat further south.

“whatever you are going to do, do it quickly” Lirian pressed. “I’m afraid those chants we heard can be the ceremony, and we should interrupt ir or we will be facing greater problems”

Then she turned to Quentin “Have you taken samples of this liquid to analyze? Something tells me it can be important…”

What was in motion could not be stopped.  Aeress pushed and pressed others back, or tried to, because it turned out to be unnecessary because everyone had more sense than a mustard seed.

It was not wise, but it was too late to protest.