Erik Soong's Call of the Netherdeep

"After we stop the screaming, you can try your luck crazy woman." Ylis mutters to herself.

Morgan holds a finger in front of his nose, trying to reassure the woman.
"The only fiend here is my bat... and I assure you, we don't love him."

He smiles.
"Calm down, ma'am. If we don’t die in the next hour, we’ll come back and free you. If the doors open... this is the best way out."

He uses Minor Illusion again to show the way.
"Understood?"

(Persuasion: 22)

A drow woman, clad only in her undergarments, rushes to the closed bar door. She reaches out frantically through the bars to claw at the heroes with a dirty hand.

“I’ll kill you, demon lovers! I’ll get you if it’s the last thing I do! You doom our entire world!” She hisses. The rest in her cell press themselves against the far wall, trying to distance themselves from what they believe is their captors.

Nivi knows all too well that her abrasive style is unlikely to win over the admirably passionate drow prisoner with her misconceptions.

Nevertheless, she can't help herself.  "Not for nothing, we really look like demon lovers to you?  Wouldn't be trying to sneak up if we were, yeah?  Even the bloody bat.  Figure they probably hear us coming by now.  Happen to know how many of them there are past here?"

(Potential help for Morgan or anyone else's Persuasion.)  Nivi also renews her Blade Ward.

She wonders how many of these captives had been "operated upon" in the blood-soaked room they had seen.  Or was that only for Desu's Clasp thugs?

Jacaranda notes that Morgan has this handled and ruffles his hair before giving Ylis shoulder a squeeze, " They're just scared. Like we should be."

" Lets go before they take out the screaming tongue thats guiding us."

No help is needed. Understanding dawns on her and her murderous rage turns to desperation in the span of a heartbeat. She pulls against the bars, trying pointlessly to wrench them apart.

“Please! Get us out of here. They are taking us, eight at a time. They are taking us in that room,” she says while reaching her arm out to point down the hall. A single door lies at the end, looming, ominously, waiting.

“None taken down that way come back alive. Only the people working with the demons do.”

From here, the heroes can see that the next cell down is filled with bodies. Drained husks, really, with a cut across the throat and blood that has soaked their faces.

Arms of living people, having heard the commotion, hiss for help from the third cell down, after the one filled with bodies. In their frantic, very rational need to get free, they are behaving irrationally and becoming increasingly loud. 

Jacaranda looked around to her companions as the noise level rose, " Can we open these extremely quickly?"

" Do any of you know the way out and can lead the others?", she asked the caged folks. " We need to go and rescue those taken!"

Nivi, like the others is eager to get on with it, but she pauses to inspect the entrance to one of the cells to determine whether there is a mundane lock that she might be able to pick with her Thieves' Tools.  If so, she attempts to do so as quickly as she can for all the cells.

(Only if she finds locks she can pick and no one else objects):  "Help me out a second, Tracker.  Sky, Pretty Boy, might need some crowd control soon."

Nivi's Thieves' Tools check (rolled as Sleight of Hand, same +7 bonus) to open any locks:  23, even without help from Frekor.

If the captives are freed, she stands back up from where she had been kneeling with the last lock and glances back grimly at Morgan's Minor Illusion.

"This room right here,"  Nivi points to the spot on the illusory still image.  "Hungry wall paintings and blood-sucking metal circles with blasting magic.  Not so good to free you all just so that room can eat you, yeah?  Far as I know, each one through's got to spill a drop of blood on the metal discs.  Or maybe just wait here til what happens down there, happens?  We six go down fighting, you pretend you're still locked in and jump 'em as they pass by."

The locks are uncomplicated and are designed to hold people stripped of their professional grade larceny tools. The locks click easily under Nivi’s careful hands and the rusty doors swing open with a creak. The people in cells 1 and 3 pile out, some expressing gratitude, one shoving past with little regard for Nivi’s warning and running for the exit.

The drow woman eyes the heroes warily, but takes in the information and herds her fellow captives together so they don’t run off. The idea of waiting to see if you are successful in your confrontation is rejected out of hand, however, and even the drow woman, for all her fight she had earlier, is only just holding herself back from running as hard as she can long enough to get your warning. Once she has it and no other information follows, she nods in faux interest and then urgently nudges her fellow freed people along. 

" Lets go!", Randa insisted pushing forward toward the door....

" We kick or you wanna use those picks again? Or maybe its open...."

She stepped back and slightly to the side aiming above head height at the door and anything beyond it........at least some of the demons had to be tall....

Nivi shakes her head at the prisoners' (mostly) mad rush to flee headlong.  Can't blame 'em, I guess.  Kind of like how I ran from my dear family.

Before it comes to the final door at he far end, she signals for the others to stand back a bit, muttering and gesturing briefly.  (invisible Mage Hand as a bonus action).  The two locks she had picked seem to float rapidly to the door of the room containing the drained husks.  That door closes, seemingly on its own, and (if possible), both locks attach and click shut.  "Rather not have the dead ones come out at us," she mutters as a terse explanation.

She then studies the final door.  Does it seem locked?  If so, she does attempt to pick it, but not manually herself.  Rather, with the invisible Mage Hand taking implements from the Thieves' Tools in her pack and using them at the door while she and the party stand back fifteen feet (assuming everyone listens to her admonition).  Pausing just before finishing, she renews Blade Ward on herself and looks at the others as if to ask, ready?

"Ready? I was born ready... then I changed my mind growing up..."

He smiles faintly. From his pockets, he pulls out a worn deck of tarot cards... the closest thing he has to a holy symbol. Without looking, he draws one.
"The Hierophant."

For a brief moment, his thoughts drift to his mother, who gave him the deck... the closest thing he has to a prayer.

Then he raises the card and channels its power. He casts Bless (2nd level) on Nivi, Sky, Jacaranda, and himself.

(Wild Magic Surge: 6, no surge)
(Recharge Tides of Chaos + roll on the Wild Magic Surge: 54 - "You can take one extra action on this turn." 🤷)

OOC: I can't cover everyone with Bless, sorry. Let me know if someone else would benefit more. IMO: Nivi is a good choice to increase the chance of landing precious sneak attacks, Morgan to help maintain concentration, the others... not sure.

"Ylis gives a serious look and nods." then she nods. She makes sure the lights are topped off (Light and Shillelagh). 

"Don't worry Frekor, I got you. Unless we need something serious." the bunny girl's fingers glow and she whispers a prayer to the Moonweaver. A cascade of faerie dust settles on Frekor and herself casting Bless.

Quote from Wysperra >>

"Ylis gives a serious look and nods." then she nods. She makes sure the lights are topped off (Light and Shillelagh). 

"Don't worry Randa, I got you. Unless we need something serious." the bunny girl's fingers glow and she whispers a prayer to the Moonweaver. A cascade of faerie dust settles on Randa and herself casting Bless.

OOC: we covered Randa twice and we missed Frekor ;-)

Ooc: i did actually miss that! Changing to Frekor

Quote from Tybard >>

 

Nivi's Thieves' Tools check (rolled as Sleight of Hand, same +7 bonus) to open any locks:  23, even without help from Frekor.

 

 (OOC: Sorry for missing the post, I had to go to sleep early because I did a 42km run today, I'm alive and well.)

Frekor helped Nivi as best as he could.

Quote from TeethAgatha >>

Quote from Wysperra >>

"Ylis gives a serious look and nods." then she nods. She makes sure the lights are topped off (Light and Shillelagh). 

"Don't worry Randa, I got you. Unless we need something serious." the bunny girl's fingers glow and she whispers a prayer to the Moonweaver. A cascade of faerie dust settles on Randa and herself casting Bless.

OOC: we covered Randa twice and we missed Frekor ;-)

 (OOC: True, I knew Ylis didn't like Frekor....I'm kidding)

Frekor stays behind Nivi, waiting for her to signal that the door is open.

-I think when we enter the room, it should be me and Sky first, followed by Jaracanda and while Ylis and Morgan enter YOU enter with them as hidden as posible. Maybe you can find a good location hidden enough to deal with whoever is in the other side.- says the ranger to the rouge.

Sky nods to Frekor, indicating he is fine with going first.

[Frekor to Nivi]:  "... YOU enter with them as hidden as possible. Maybe you can find a good location hidden enough to deal with whoever is in the other side."

"Sneaky sure.  I'll give it a shot Tracker.  But can't hide behind air.  From Pretty Boy's picture, didn't see a lot of cover in that room."

She grins as she feels Morgan's Blessing settle on her, pressing back against the hinge-side wall of the corridor fifteen feet from the door so as to be harder to see from the other side, and ready to open the door with her invisible Mage Hand, counting off with her fingers:

3... 2... 1...

Ylis looks at everybody standing around and begins to move forward to kick the door in!

Then the door opens by itself! She gasps in surprise, "Poop." and takes up a fighting stance. 

Nivi closes the gates to the cells with the bodies. The rusty hinges squeal as the Invisible Mage Hand pulls the gate closed. A sullen click is heard as the locking latch reengages, trapping the murdered people inside.

The door ahead has no lock, nor is it trapped. There is no door knob or crank to open the door. A simple bar welded to the door itself serves as the means to open it. The Mage Hand pulls on it gently, but the door is heavy iron and while frequently used, as evidenced by the shine at the corners of the doorframe where the imperfectly fit door rubs against the frame. It takes a moment of pulling, but the Mage Hand offers just enough pulling power to slowly pull the door from its resting place.

As the group approaches the door, Sky detects the presence of Fiends again. He senses one, then two, then nine. Then once again, inexplicably, the number drops to five. Sky’s eyes water as his extra sense stings, as if biting into an onion. He senses again the desecrated ground, now directly before him on the other side of the door. Taskhand Thelyss screams again, more angry than in pain this time. Nivi just barely gets the sense of Conjuration, Necromantic, and Transmutation magics. Separately, she detects several pockets of Illusion magic.

Ylis’ Light arcs through the crack in the door into the massive room, announcing their presence. Any attempts at stealth, obviously, would be a waste of time at this point.

As the heroes peer into the room, they see that their door opens to a raised platform with ritualistic markings along the floors, walls, and even the ceiling. The markings offer a dim red glow and pulse, as if with a heartbeat. The smell of blood is so thick, the heroes can taste it by smell alone.

Down the stairs, in the center of the expansive space, eight people are placed upside down on an inclined table, opposite of some Fiends positioned similarly around a circular ritual pattern in the center of the room. Four people are dying, their throats having been cut, blood draining from their bodies in heavy spurts. Four Fiends are already dead, having similar cuts across their throats. Their bodies already beginning to liquify.

Four more people watch in horror and whimper as a cloaked figure, a woman by the look of it, edges up to them with her ceremonial knife. Four Fiends hang and wait, their necks exposed with their raised chins.

The blood that pools runs into the center of the circle, then is drawn up by the same massive, three horned Fiend that the party had seen before. It spins the blood in the air, mixing the mortal blood and fiendish ichor and infusing it with abominable magics. From there, it directs the changed solution into a single vial: four lives for one magical essence.

Its massive, needle toothed maw hangs open and without moving a raspy voice spills forth from it: “They are here.”

Desu spins in place to look up at the door with the light blasting through it. The captives sob hopefully and from a dark, shadowy place on a raised platform at the opposite end of the room from the heroes, Taskhand Thelyss grunts in exhausted relief. Dark shadows play across his captive body, but it is fairly obvious, without seeing the details from this distance, that he has been tortured. Flayed really. That torture, however, seems to pale in comparison to him being forced to witness his people being sacrificed in some unholy ritual.

DM: At this point, I would say Randa has a clean shot to Desu.

Regardless, Desu martials her minions, silently pointing in three general directions, then to the door. She then trades the ceremonial dagger for a far more vicious-looking one.

DM: The moment anyone attacks, everyone roll Initiative. If anyone has something they want to do before that, speak now, while the fiends still permit you to keep your tongue. Sorry for any errors. Been working on this all morning.

Nivi has no more words for the situation.

Initiative if needed:  5 (Nat. 1)

(Also, she does not notice anything from Detect Magic as she had already dropped concentration on it to concentrate on Blade Ward now.)