In reply to Selvin Larst (msg # 49):

"Josephine is...I guess she's in charge.  More like she's the most powerful one here.  And she gets first choice at the meat.

"Unless you see your merchant here...and it sounds like he hasn't been dead long enough to be with me...he's with Josephine.  She studies the point of death.  So he could still be alive.

"I recall her getting some still breathing meat about a week ago.  So if he was in that batch, he could still be alive."

He shrugs.  "She's very methodical and slow in her research."

All this was too much for Lucky.  It sounded to him that they also just kill people here as well as just prepare them for their final resting place.  Lucky was ready to go find this Josephine.

In reply to Lucky Six-Fingers (msg # 51):

So...heading east?

Zuni bristled upon hearing wha the drummer had said.  Meat?  Studies the point of Death?  The more the drummer spoke, the more she wanted to run her blade through him.  Growing up on the streets, Zuni was used to a certain level of depravity but this place was sorely testing her limits.

Visibly fighting to keep her hand off of her sword hilt, Zuni started to march off in the direction that the drummer had indicated.  Staying too much longer was going to result in her doing something probably stupid but satisfying.

In reply to The Dealer (msg # 52):

Yes!

Selvin shook his head slightly. Then he addressed the drummer. "Thank you for...the information." Silently he added "and oversharing". He glanced back at his companions, "We will continue on an' see if we can find Josephine. Have a day."

And he headed east, not too quickly, but not slowly either.

In reply to Selvin Larst (msg # 55):

The drummer seems amused at Zuni's moral dilemma.  But he doesn't say anything and none of the dancers lunge at any of you as you cross the room.

Past the door, the hall turns back into more or less cavern trails.  You quickly come to an intersection.

To the south you can smell what you can smell incense.  It's very sweet and heavy.

To the north, the hall comes to a short stair that descends downwards.  You cannot hear or see anything past that.

Please see the map.  South will take you to D9.  North to D11.  Assuming nothing has changed since Izzy and Selvin were here.

Selvin paused when they reached the intersection, a frown furrowing his brow as he looked both ways. "Hmm." He gave a shrug. "Well he said north so....I guess north."

And with that, Selvin turned and headed north, down the stairs.

In reply to Selvin Larst (msg # 57):

You guys...so focused.

The stairs lead to a short hall ending in a pile of bodies and a door.

The door is wooden, painted bright red.  There are black symbols painted on it.  Some of you can decipher them as Abyssal language.  THIS BETTER BE IMPORTANT is what the symbols basically say.

The bodies are heaped along both sides of the hallway, leaving only a small path up to the door.  None of the bodies are moving and they all seem to have large chunks missing.  Limbs.  Heads.  Torsos.  All the best bits.

The door radiates magic.  Those of you who are good with such things can tell it is heavily trapped.  It looks like there is some kind of magic set to go off when the door is opened.  The red paint looks like it is laced with some kind of contact poison.  And there is a dart style trap hidden among the bodies right beside the door, designed to fire at the back of whoever steps on a pressure plate right in front of the latch.

In other words, whoever is inside doesn't want to be disturbed.

"Well now, how rude!  Shall we just yell?  I don't want to just wait around for the traps to be taken down."  Lucky said, hoping they felt the same.  Course if not, he should be able to disarm the traps... or at least try.

Selvin looked at the door for a long moment. Then he looked at all the bodies with various missing pieces for a long moment. Then he glanced at Lucky. "Sure. We can try yellin' first. If you're gonna give the door a try, just give us a warnin' so we can step back, yeah?"

He grinned impudently.

Zuni looked at the piles of bodies on both sides of the hallway and huffed derisively.  "Oh for the love of..." she muttered shaking her head slowly.  How could anyone want to work much less live in a place like this?  The bodies, the constant stench of death...the plain constant presence of dead things.  "I've seen death, lived with death, dealt with dealt death, but this is too much death.  I am not liking this place.  Maybe I need a few drinks to deal with this place.  Anyone see any booze?"

Pausing only long enough to realize that she wasn't going to be able to drink her feelings away at the moment, Zuni sighed.  "Fine, let's get this over with. HEY!  YOU BEHIND THE DOOR OPEN UP!  WE GOT BUSINESS WITH JOSEPHINE!"
This message was last edited by the player at 19:21, Sat 02 Oct 2021.

"Trust me, not our favorite adventure," Izzick said, covering his mouth and nose with his scarf. Zuni had one thing right - too much death all around him. It was sickening. To think he'd once woken up here as a potential future body. Still as they decided to try the diplomatic method first, he held back, waiting to see if they got an answer from Josephine behind the door.

In reply to Izzick (msg # 62):

There's a moment after the zenithal Zuni shouts where everything is quiet.

And then you hear a giggle.  A couple of them actually.

"...shhh.  Shh.  They'll hear..."

"...oh man.  I am soooo stoned..."

"Shutupshutupshutup.  Check this out."

You hear someone clear their throat.  And then in a high falsetto, some guy calls out, "Who issss it?"

Whoever it is on the other side of the door starts laughing in earnest.

"Ha...shut up...Ha...".  Falsetto again.  "I'm in the baaaaathtub."

"You have got to be kidding me!  We can hear the both of you now either open the door or we will be forced to come through ourselves."  Lucky could inkt shake his head at the attempt of disguise.

Selvin said quietly to Lucky, "Well, hang on now, if it's just two guys an' Josephine isn't in the air, I don't necessarily wanna 'em t'open the door, you know?" Several images flashed through his mind and he violently shoved them aside.

But then he stayed quiet and waited to see what the response would be from inside the room.

There's a long moment of silence.

Then...

"Dude. Harsh buzz kill."

A sigh.  "Hold on.  Hold on."

There's a moment longer.  Than you hear some clicking like locks unlocking.

Then the door cracks open.

"C'mon in," says an exasperated sounding voice.

No one comes out.  They seem to want you to walk forward and open up the door.

Selvin waited. The door opened but only a crack. "Oh man." He chuckled and then spoke loud enough for those inside to hear, "They're gonna be sorry if that doesn't disarm the traps." He shook his head.

He and Zac pushed the door open and stepped inside, barring something happening.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:52, Tue 05 Oct 2021.

In reply to Selvin Larst (msg # 67):

We are in area D11 folks

The room beyond seems to be another 'operating' theater, though this time there's only one body on the table.

The body is large.  You'd guess an ogre.  Quite dead too.

Sitting on a stool beside it and standing at the end of the table are two robed figures. The hoods of the robes are pulled up.  With the only light coming from a few candles that have been melted into the necks of empty wine bottles, it's hard to see the details, but you are very certain they aren't human.

For one thing, their hands have no nails.  The four fingers end in long, thin, sharp looking nails.

The skin on their arms is the wrong color.  Kind of a pasty grayish brown.

And while you can't see under the hoods, you can't miss the tentacles that spill out from inside each one.  They hang out like the beard of a man who's been out in the woods for a long time.

The two robes regard you.  "Hey!  Joey!" the standing one finally yells.

From a passage that heads to the east you can hear a high, thin, reedy voice call back, "What? Damnit!  I'm in the middle of someone!"

She doesn't sound happy.

Standing Robes gestures to the eastern hallway.  "You wanted to talk to Josephine, right?"

Selvin tried not to let his reaction show as he saw, or rather didn't see much of, the robed figures. What he saw was more than enough. However, dealing with summoned creatures from other planes, and his best friend being an strangely-malleable symbiote from another dimension...he couldn't really by the first one to throw stones so to speak.

He gave a slow nod. "Yup."

And he began to walk past them towards the other voice. Carefully. Keeping his distance, but not looking like he was keeping his distance. Flying casually.

Lucky definitely didn't like this place.  The dead all over and all these weird people working on and in them was pretty gross.

Sure, Lucky had seen enough dead people on the wrong side of his kukri's but that was different, or so he thought to himself at that moment.  When he heard the reedy voice from the east and then saw Selvin step off that way with nothing happening, Lucky followed close behind.

In reply to Lucky Six-Fingers (msg # 70):

The two hoods don't seem to follow.

The room at the end of the hall has two large tables, each stained black with dried blood.  The corpse of a wolf is on one and a woman on the other.

Chained to the northern wall are eight people:  five humans, two gnomes, and a dwarf.

Standing in the midst of all this is another robed figure.  This one is tall and thin.  Again, the hood hides the face, and thick gloves cover the hands.  But you can see a little bit of flesh on the writsts.  It's bluish gray and leathery looking.

The hood swivels in your direction.  "What?  Who the hell are you? You're not my usual body snatchers."

Selvin grimaced and it took all his self-control (which is more than most people might think he had) to restrain himself from freeing people or killing the necromancers. But he did. He spoke in a low tone and his words were a touch faster than normal.

"We're here t'see a guest hidin' out down here. Fella named Thaddeus." He held up his hands to show no weapons and was quick to add, "Don't mean him or any o'you any harm. Just wanna have a conversation." He jerked a thumb back the way they'd come. "Someone else said we should talk t'you.

Zuni stiffened as she took in the room.  "Just point us to Thaddeus and we be on our way and leave you to...whatever this is."

Izzick continued to keep his nose covered but even as he looked around he hoped diplomacy would get them through this. "We're not exactly looking to make any new enemies, that's for sure." The half orc tried to keep an eye on the two robed figures, not quite sure what to make of the not-so-human body snatchers. "Hopefully, you can point us to where we need to go to meet up with him."