Labyrinth 3

The party see that there is something crawling on the wall after they enter a hut to kill the remaining cultists. It shrieks and skulks around to them.

Leoric sees it in the corner of his eye, skulking low. He runs down the corridor and shoots his pistols. Bullets shoot into it but are forced out and tink onto the floor. It is unaffected by another shot.

Tasu dashes across while it lunges at Leoric but he misses as he slides underneath the creature.

Sakiran runs up to it and cleaves into it with her greatsword, then stabs with her parrying dagger quickly. Blood sizzles down its body.

Ezra casts a fireball away from the party but touching the creature. It is slightly singed.

Aria blesses everyone but Ezra, who is out of her range.

Leoric causes it to bleed and boil its blood with more shots.

Tasu just barely misses again. His dagger misses ever so slightly. He cuts it with his left and makes a fierce blow, empowered by Aria's blessing.

Sakiran slices part of its arm off with her parrying dagger, severed and on the floor. It is visibly hurt.

Ezra blights the creature, though it starts to regenerate.

It rakes Sakiran twice with its two claws. She is poisoned and blood falls from her torso.

The creature has disengaged from the fight, and Aria uses Aid to bolster each member of the party.

Leoric loads his pistol with a violent shot and is able to dig into it. It is very very hurt, but still standing.

Tasu runs behind it and tries to shank it with his dagger. Tasu slashes its Achilles tendon, crashing to the ground. then thrusts his dagger into its skull upwards. Its body shrivels up into a mess of black ooze. Sakiran is visibly affected by the poison, looking pale and the mark has turned a sickly green where she was slashed.

Leoric offers her the Apothecary Special. It smells like ammonia, burdock and whiskey. Aria walks up to Sakiran and touches her, curing one of her wounds, though the poison remains. Tasu slams the needle into her thigh. She suddenly has the compulsion to always tell the truth. He then jams a stim into her again. She is still poisoned but is able to carry on.

001 is following them, not saying anything. She is observing what they have done.

They head north and find a locked double door. Tasu picks the lock. It looks dusty but not damaged. Tasu runs ahead to check for anything before the rest of the party follow. It looks like it was a boxed room, rotted cardboard, bits of cleaning equipment and miscellaneous items. Leoric helps 001 walk and looks in the room himself. Ezra follows them when Tasu calls him over to help look within it.

Leoric sees something underneath the junk. It is a small metal container with a few arcane sigils on it buried underneath a few boxes. It is very light. Something metal jingles around in it.

They head west and see that it is relatively bare. There appears to be striking of blades against each other in the room over to the left. The walls are covered in tribal sigils and blood and charcoal. Ritual fetishes have been put on the walls.

One notable feature is a blast door in the south with two keypads. It has been scrawled on with blood sigils.

Tasu asks if he can try something. Leoric invites him to knock himself out. Tasu pushes the door open and holds his mirror around the corner to try and see things. The room is a sparring arena, with two mutated humanoids armed with three swords. Two held in their main arms, and they have another in an extra arm.

They ask what the plan of action is. Tasu and Leoric suggest an ambush and Sakiran laughs at the idea. However, she does hold herself back for an ambush.

She readies her chain to throw Tasu in with a grenade. Sakiran swings but coughs and splutters from the poison. He goes completely off course. She flings him towards the yellow door. Tasu lands correctly but is out of position. He yells at Sakiran and because of the effects of the truth serum she yells at him with a series of expletives. Tasu yells right back and tells her to stop being so truthful. She yells at him again saying he was incredibly stupid to have expected her to throw him when she is thoroughly poisoned. Tasu yells at her saying she could have said no. She yells again saying she wanted to prove herself. Tasu bounces off the wall and dashes towards a cultist. He tries to jam his dagger into it but hurts his hand a little and lets go of the dagger.

A cultist slashes with its swords towards Tasu in fast motions. He is badly injured.

Ezra runs up and conjures a Tidal Wave. Tasu avoids the wave by leaping out of its path. Ezra and Cho-cho point towards him and he feels the embrace of healing raccoon energy. Tasu is attacked again by the cultist, knocking him back slightly. He is clipped again by a third attack.

Aria runs forward and cast Sanctuary on Tasu, so the cultists could no longer attack him.

Leoric fires four shots at him, of which three hit. One hits the wall behind and mortar scatters. It takes the shots and is barely affected as it goes into a bloodfury.

Sakiran pulls Aria away from the fight. Then she stabs into it with her parrying dagger, tearing into it while it is on the floor.

Tasu immediately gets himself out of the situation, jumping up with his armour's thrusters.

The cultist on the floor gets back up and tries to attack Sakiran. Only one of its attacks hits and cuts her.

Ezra makes the earth explode upwards. One of the cultists falls over again. He then uses his Raccoon powers to heal Tasu once again with a word.

A cultist roars as he cannot hit anything.

Aria blesses Sakiran, Ezra and Leoric then moves out of Leoric's way.

Leoric fires two shots at the very bloodied cultist and is able to kill it with a well placed headshot.

He fires his other two into the other cultist.

Sakiran connected with her parrying dagger, then tried to swing her greatsword but it gets caught underneath the cultist's shoulder blade. She wrenches it free.

Tasu deals a devastating blow, bloodying it very badly. It looks like it may drop at any moment. He tries to kick it right in the crotch, but it swings out of the way.

Ezra causes frost to appear on it, but it quickly dissipates without consequence. He then embues his staff with magic and strikes it down successfully.

The party look around the room. They find that it has been used as a sparring arena with several racks of rusted swords. The weapons they were using were made of a long, silver blue metal and corroded near the hilt. On them, they find 85 rands total. They also find a box holding knick knacks. They are worth about 100 rands. They don't find much more of value. The door does have a sliding bar on it that they could use to barricade themselves in.

They open the yellow blast doors and turrets are there, but they are deactivated and pointed towards the other end of the corridor. The corridor is full of green-black liquid from two broken containment tubes. Four others are intact, but they are all cloudy and blackened green and cannot be seen into. The lights have been blown out by an electrical surge.

Tasu asks Leoric if he could scavenge the bullets from the turrets. They unscrew the boxes and salvage ammo. They each look at containment tubes. There are large figures in them, very wide and tall floating in the fluid. The umbilicals are still attached to them by the spine. The console reads "subject deceased, species: Orruk". Leoric's said "subject 2, deceased. species orruk." It is ripped and flushed down. The glass is stained. Sakiran purges the other also. They flush them all.

Ezra sees the door has many warning signs with "classified clearance only" but it is not locked. This is one of the containment breaches. He opens the door.

They see a massive container in the centre of the room. The liquid inside is clear. A massive orc is attached by umbilicals. He seems half cybernetic. Around the sides there are consoles, tubes at the side of the room have purple wispiness inside them. Around the back are tables going around the side.

Ezra examines the room and sees it looks like a scientific lab. It doesn't seem like there any open threats other than the creature in the container. Aria does not know what it is. 001 is also clueless.

Tasu hides and succeeds in hiding from the orc creature. He goes over to the computer console. They have readouts of the subject's health. It is still alive and stable. It reads that this was an experiment by Dr Ardelle.

Dr Ardelle

Research note date 42/13/10283

We have succeeded in creating artificial souls, the souls last but a few moments but the reactions are fascinating, the dragonline system rejects them! However the experiment is not a whole loss, I have a theory that may solve our problem and not cost elven lives. There was a species on the homeworld called “orc” fast breeding brutes with short lives. They were exterminated millenia ago, however some of our species still hold some cross breaded DNA, I have begun reconstructing the DNA of this race. If I can implant these artificial souls into bodies and have them breed I theorise we will be able to create souls that the dragonline can use.

Tasu comes back and Ezra burns the metal on its body, with bubbles rising as the water boils. Blood seeps into the liquid. A small klaxon starts from the console to the left. Silver liquid is released into the water and it knits the wounds back together. It is not yet awake, however. Tasu tries to deactivate the console with the klaxon ringing. There was a malfunction in the cybernetics. He is digging into the options trying to find an option to turn off the klaxon, though it does not work.

Spirits are being fed towards the huge orc into the container. When he is rummaging around, he finds parts on the table looking like they were used to fix Altarnie machinery. He motions towards Tasu then walks away.

Leoric finds a robotic part but cannot figure out what it is yet.

The klaxons are now disabled. Aria was curious and wandered over to Leoric. Sakiran followed urgently.

Aria walks back off over Ezra. Leoric asks Sakiran what she thinks. She says she thinks they shouldn't mess with it. He told her that he thought she wanted to purge everything. She said now that she has Aria, she doesn't want to die anymore. They walk out of the room and close the door.