After helping to bandage up the dog, william takes a step back and watches Syed. "Please Syed, let me help you in any way that I can." the undertaker says as he moves to assist him in any way that he can.

Syed flicks two fingers, beckoning. “Yes—here.” He slides aside to make space at the table, chin indicating a scatter of blades and glassware. “If Haley consents, take the syringes and watertight vials—line them there." He palms a scalpel, then pauses, eyeing William’s bandaged hands. A quick, grateful nod—rare, but unmistakable. “Good. With me, then.”

Eren looks slighted when Sparkles pass them on by with nothing more than a shrug. They don't hold it against you though, by the look of it, when they slouch their shoulders a bit and step aside.

A big sigh. Haley sits up from a kneel in the viscera of the gibberer. She stares down at her hands and hooves before bringing them up to her face and setting her chin upon it. Tear mark stain her face as she looks forward. Shifting her weight to one side before letting out a groan, realizing a flying piece of shrapnel must have greatly bruised her abdomen, she then sits back down again. Her hands mix in the goop of the monsters bowels- flesh- whatever. It (dark red blood; "sticky," she notes in a small whisper) doesn't slide off down the sides of her hands when she lifts it up again to inspect it, moving her hand side to side like a seesaw, then setting her hand back down again into the sludgy mess. 

When Sparkles comes to her side, she doesn't flinch, doesn't move, doesn't say anything for a good 30 seconds. Instead, she lies down into the darkening puddle, running a blood-covered finger through her hair, pushing a stray strand to the side. It leaves a long looking trail of red across her face. Despite the apparent sloppiness of the motion, you notice she is careful not to bring her hands near her mouth or any other orifice. 

"I-" Haley starts after a minute of solitude in the puddle. "I don't know." She grimaces, showing (surprisingly sharp) teeth. It's the first time she looks at you since lying there. Sighing, recognizing her misplaced anger, she settles for staring at the walls again. 

"Clearly, it didn't work," she says bitingly. Her eyes squint forward; her hand claws at the viscera, blood oozes from the pierced marks she made. She sighs again. Her tone mellows down after. "Look at you." She waves flippantly in your direction. "It didn't... work."

At the tail end of the word, she slightly sits up. The wereraven to the left of her stirs in his 'sleep'. "Okay," she says to no one in particular. Sighing once more, she slowly lifts herself up from the floor.

"The tools," Haley murmurs, only halfway through getting up, "are in the basement." She repeats the information, of which the revelation of it leaves little to guess that it would take her quite some time to get down those steps into the basement. She looks up at Sparkles, goat ears folded down the side of her head. "Yes, mo- ma'm." She addresses to Sparkles despite it clearly being Syed who ordered it.

Whoever is willing to go to the basement to get the supplies, Haley is the one leading it. She is determined to go with you despite the pain it would cause herself. Unfortunately for you, it takes her 2 and half minutes to go down the short ladder. This wastes a total of 6 minutes (from all the healing and everything else you did above ground) out of your 10 to collect the animus before it disappears. 

Once you reach the cellar, Haley sighs as she shuffles around in the dark, hooves crunching under mulch and broken wood. The sound of scuttling has her turning her head towards the corner of the shelf formerly filled with the jars of pickles.

A centipede, much like the ones you fought earlier, crouches low, back up like a cat arching. It hasn't seemed to want to fight yet, but as Haley points out, it's right next to the place where she kept all the tools. You don't know how many might be nearby it. As they always say: when you see one roach, there are hundreds more you don't.

"I- I'm going to sit down," Haley tells you, hand on the wall as she moves towards the opposite corner, "I would like to be with my brother." She looks down at the disturbed dirt and scowls before leaning against the sacks of flour right behind her.

You either have to be really careful with the shelf (DEXTERITY CHECK) or good with animals (ANIMAL HANDLING) to not start a fight with those things. 

"To think wes was just eating cupcakes," Eren drawls, sighing. They shuffle over to where the wereraven is laying. "I have a potion if anybod needs it," they announce, holding one up. From their pocket, they take out another one and down it. "****," they curse at the pain from healing, muttering it under their breath as they clutch their leg. 

Kolette spies the centipede and shivers a little. Those things can pack a wallop if there are more of them.

She starts to make calming sounds and moves to get the supplies.

Animal Handling 22 

((WOW THAT IS A GREAT ROLL!))

The centipede as if anticipating your movements goes to clack with its mandibles, a warning. Yet when you continue with your calming sounds, its clicks grow softer and soon scuttle out the way as you move to reach for supplies. You hear the scuttling of a thousand legs or more between the walls. You truly dodged one there.

Inside the shelf as you scour through things, you find the tools you need: skinning knives, a cleaver, syringes, a hammer, scissors, scalpels, a bone saw, hooks, as well as a vials, watertight containers (the jars), binding reagents, and wrappings.

Some were hanging behind the shelf (a precarious position), others packed into a box that at first glance seemed filled with centipede droppings, which you just come to realize were eggs. Surprisingly, they were not from the centipedes, but you now recognize as coming from silverfish. Most likely they had been eating them just before you came in based on the yellowish ooze leaking out of them. 

Haley murmurs something you can't quite hear before shifting her position beside the sack. 

You currently have 2 minutes and 26 seconds left before the animus runs out of the creature.

Kolette takes her leave of centipede hotel and carries the supplies upstairs to the party.

Sparkles isn't quite sure what to say to Haley when she says 'Clearly it didn't work...look at you'. Perhaps she's mistaking her avian features for corruption, or there really is still some lingering evil inside of her. For now, Sparkles opts to believe the former, and won't consider the alternative unless/until concerning symptoms start to show themselves. Worry wouldn't be a particularly useful companion in Drakkenheim. Instead, she simply steps aside silently to let Haley process all of the events by herself, and scans the room. Her eyes linger on the body of the raven-man sprawled out on the floor. She's half inclined to poke him with her foot to wake him, until she remembers the moan that she heard outside by the door. In her daze, she forgot about Starry. Moving to the door, she puts a hand to the doorknob, but then stops herself from opening. Answering the first sound outside lead to Ludwig's arrival, then after that the Mouther burst in, so she really isn't sure if she can trust what's outside anymore. However, she doesn't want to leave Starry out there in the cold, probably shivering away in fear. She turns her head to Syed, who she sees as a good leader, and then gives a nod of acknowledgement to the door and the whining to see what his verdict on the matter is.

(Apologies, I had to meet a deadline for work and couldn't keep up posting for a few days.)

Syed folds into the work, the world narrowing to lantern light and laid-out corpse. He clears a board with one sweep of his forearm, making space for vials, a syringe, and starts to chalk two swift cut-lines over cooling flesh. At steady intervals he pulses terse thoughts toward the ladder: “Hurry. Two minutes… ninety seconds… bring the watertight jars first.” A gloved thumb tests tissue give; the other hand taps a glass ampoule against his wrist to keep count—tick, tick—a metronome against panic.

Sparkles’ nod at the door tugs his gaze up. A thin sigh fogs his mask. “Bad timing,” he sends, dry as flint. “Animus window is closing.” A beat, then concession edged with caution: “All right—crack the door, slow. Do not leave earshot. If anything breathes wrong, you step back and bar it. Call once.”

He angles his body to keep both the corpse and the threshold in view, tail curling tight around a forceps. Another crisp ping of thought rolls downstairs—gentler this time, but urgent all the same: “Tools to my hand, now. We’re down to moments.”

Sparkles nods silently; clearly her attention had been misplaced at this moment, but her curiosity and love for Starry had overridden her patience and rational thinking. Slowly, she cracks open the door as Syed instructed and peeks through see what’s there, a hand still on the knob to slam it shut quickly if need be. 

Kolette leaves behind centipede motel and arrives just in time to hand Syed the supplies he needed. 

The corpse of the creature is strewn out, like a hide of leather across the wooden floor.  It contorts and bubbles at parts as if releasing built up acidic gas, one trapped under the mound of rotting flesh. It smells just as foul. 

Syed knows these bursts of gas to be the latent magical energy, now escaping the body. He recognizes it to be one of an Aberration: Saccharinely sweet. Though the smell could be really just the effects of decomposition setting in. 

Like a surgeon at work, Syed's movements are swift and precise. He cuts open two slits across the cooling flesh. Drawing a needle under the flesh, the rattatosk hooks up each one of the vials through a tube. Syed pulls on the plunger at the end of the vials each time, the vacuum created drawing the acidic ooze before it evaporates into thin air.

At the end of the ten minutes it took to work through the vials, you manage to hold up two vials worth of glowing blue sludge. You know it won't last long in that bottle though.

 Syed has collected Abberation Animus from the Gibbering Mouther!

Each person may also take one (1) component from the corpse for a team total of 4 components, now down to 3 since Syed already collected one.

The following are the types of categories that can be collected:

Fluid: Monster Blood, Contaminated Ichor, Acidic Bile.
Organs: Eyes, Heart, Brain, Guts, Flesh.
Bones: (None for this since it is a mix of the Gibbering Mouther and Bloated Dreg)
Hair: (None)
Hide: Skin.
Dust: Aberrant Dust. 

((Sorry this took so long!! I will DM Sparkles what she sees tomorrow.))

Kolette collects some aberrant dust in a pouch.

She has a look of revulsion on her face but knows these things might be useful in the future.

Syed lifts the twin vials, blue sludge ghosting light across his whiskers. A thin nod to William—rare gratitude, plain as day. “Good pull. Thank you.” He sets the vials in a makeshift cradle of folded oilcloth and twine, then taps the glass with a claw—tik… tik—measuring the fade.

“We’ll need a proper vessel. These won’t hold long.” His gaze slips to William. “You still have the geode Haley lent you? If so, bring it here—I believe I can seat the animus inside.”

He glances over the ruin of flesh, already sorting possibilities with a chalk-mark and a scalpel’s spine. “If not, I can fashion a stopgap: cured strip of its hide for the lining, plus two more components—say, a handful of the dust you collected, Kolette, and an eye—to temper and bind. Crude, but serviceable.” He steadies the vials with one palm and waits, tail coiled tight around the twine.

William pulls out the geode but does not immediatly hand the jar to Syed. "This is a magical jar... I don't know that it is wise to open it... " He says with concern. "the magic of the jar is helping to prevent the shard from corrupting the things around us.... like us..." He adds gesturing to the group. 

"I'll help collect whatever parts of the creature are useful... I hate wasting things... especially meat." He grins behind his bandages before collecting some acidic bile in a glass vial.

Sparkles whips her head back round the door and interrupts the harvesting to shout with a sense of urgency 'I've found Starry! There's now an overturned wagon with a corpse melted into it outside, and I think that's where the mouther came from! There's another tentacle pinning Starry down,  I don't know how animate it is but we should act quick, he's in a rough state!' She neglects to mention the scattered feathers about the wagon that infer Ludwig had gotten into an altercation around it; time is of the essence, and at this moment in time trying to piece together how the unconscious wereraven was involved isn't necessary. 

[Full Description from DM if anyone's interested:

Kolette rushes to the aid of the elk. She tries to blast the tentacle off with a Guiding Bolt

Pew! Attack: 10 Damage: 18

((Ohhhh~ the mystery of the jar))

((to open or not to open~ that is the question))

Kolette attempts to collect the aberrant dust from the mouther. It's like trying to sweep together dust particles, the dust doesn't stay in one place for too long! Eventually Kolette does manage to collect a bag full of the reddish-green dust particles. 

So too does William, grasping at the meat with his hands, he manages to fill up three vials full of the deep yellow liquid. The faint smell of bile still permeates through the bag.

Now that you've harvested items, here's what you can do:

Items harvested from a creature can be used to create magical items. These items can be learned through Recipes.

Characters can learn Recipes in three main ways: Finding Schematics, Purchasing Schematics, or through Research.

• Schematics - Schematics can be found throughout the world. They can be purchased from shops, learned through by a master craftperson, or found within Drakkenheim itself.
• Research - During a Long Rest, a character can examine a number of Components equal to their Intelligence modifier (minimum one Component). Once they finish a Long Rest, the character learns the Recipe for one magic item the studied Component can be used to create. Since some monster Components can be used to create a variety of different items, an individual Component can be studied multiple times.

Eren lifts their head up from what they were doing when Sparkles mentions that Starry is okay. They don't prod further, given the atmosphere, and continues to just silently lean against the wall.

A quick glance over at the wereraven shows that Ludwig is very much still unconscious. 

After Sparkles indicates where the tentacle is, Kolette rushes into action. She raises an arm at the tentacle, which slightly raises off the pinned elk like a octopus to salt at the threat. The tentacle can do nothing more before sending off a blast of energy is sent its way, completely eviscerating it before it can do anything more to move. The elk bellows beneath the charred wreckage, squirming and crying under its massive weight.

Starry trashes its head, bucking at it with its hind legs, scrambling to get on all fours instead of just its side. Using one antler as leverage, it stands up with one final push, pushing the tentacle off its back. It is now freed of the tentacle thanks to your help. With a huff and a puff, Starry's body collapses back down with a whine, legs buckling. You hear it now, its strangled cries, it sounds... human.

With the coast clear, Sparkles rushes over and strokes the back of Starry's neck, putting as much magical energy into him as she can to try and cure his wounds as she did before. (Healing Hands 2d4: 7) She wonders if the more human sounding cries is just her noticing it more now that she's aware he wasn't always an elk, or if the cries actually do sound more human than before, and the curse he's under is wearing off somehow.