1.1 - In Search of Sanity - Prison of the Mind

Grim packs the two empty manacles into his backpack. Then unlocks one of the man's hands and re-locks them both behind his back, while holding on to the manacles between. He looks back to the open doorway and wonders what is taking the others so long to gather up the usable items and join them. "We need to get this doppelganger to the barricade." He says, with a gesture of his chin toward the grotesque creature's corpse on the floor.

He saw the flickering thing in the water and certainly wasn't about to put his hand anywhere near the talking torso. He created another magic hand to scoop up whatever it was.

"Nice to meet you, Loch. I'll see about that meat for you. Do you know what this is?"

Axon deftly scoops the object out of the water and holds it up. It is an enameled pin, still in nice condition. It bears crimson stars surrounding a tower upon a field of purple, black antlers rising from it. An open eye crowns the top of the tower.

The creature, upon seeing it, screeches and writhes as if in deep pain. It wails at the top of its lungs as it thrashes around. Axon and Razhel find it difficult to keep the thing afloat using the pole.

The creature shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.

Grim successfully unlocks the cuffs on the man in the robe and, though he struggles weakly at first indication of being re-cuffed, the man's strength is no match for Grim's determination. He puts up little effort to fight further captivity for now and just mutters quietly to himself, the same words said before, in different combinations.

"What's scaring you, Loch? This? Does this scare you, Loch? What is it?" he asked then moved the pin out of Loch's sight.

The creature continues to thrash madly in the water, refusing to be held aloft any further. Axon gets the sense this creature won't be answering any further questions any time soon.

"Leave him. We can ask more later," he said to Glasses and Dragon Eyes. "Let's go to the others."

If we each grab an arm on the dead shapechanger, we can keep him moving ahead of us.. Elias says to Grim as they get ready to depart the room. This should be the last body that we need to get past the barricade.

"Well, the thing we "met" in our shared vision certainly did not seem keen on granting us any gifts... I was hoping for more. Still, I am a man of my word." he severed a strip of flesh from the corpse's thigh and tossed it to the severed savage without much care, willing to let the creature fish for it.
He cleaned the filth off the tool as he walked with the Meteor Man and the Pugilist to meet up with their companions."May I have a look at that trinket?" he asked.

"Of course," he said then cleansed the signet of mundane filth. ክብር

"Whose signet is it?" he asked Glasses as they moved bodies back to the check point.

"Secrets and mystery are piled to the roof in this place. It seems our hungry laundry fish either belonged to the Ustalavic royal secret police, or somehow managed to get this off of one of them."

"Why did it terrify him so? A reminder of his former life surely couldn't be that traumatizing. Still... Could we use this as leverage somehow? Make whoever's in charge here think one of us is actually a state minder? I don't like lying but we don't have any cards to play beyond dragging in changeling bodies, and we can't do that forever."

He raised an eyebrow at the scheme."I believe it is best to not be so forward with things like that. Have strings saved in your pocket, and pull them when they scream at you to. And besides, we are already under scrutiny and earning their favor. Throwing something as intriguing as this onto the scales as our own, unbidden, would just court more suspicion.

And, truthfully, I wish us to rest."

"Rest would be lovely. We hold onto it and see when and how best to use it. You knew about these minders so you should keep the insignia. Hopefully you can back up any claims we might make with facts."

Razhel lingers as the others move back into the previous room, staring down into the vat. Once they are out of sight, she smacks the ghoul hard with the pole in an attempt to put it out of its misery.

Razhel takes a passing blow at the ghoul with the long pole. The creature is still violently thrashing about in the water, but her sharp eyes catch the right moment and the pole strikes the creature's temple, crushing into its skull and lodging about an inch deep into the thing's brain matter. It's thrashing rips the pole out of her hand and the 10-foot stick rolls around in the water with the creature, the sound of it knocking against the side of the tub is near as loud as the sounds of the water sloshing. After about 10 seconds the creature stops moving entirely, having passed from this world to whatever lies beyond for such monstrosities.

Some time later, the group arrives back at the barricade. They deposit the body of this last doppelganger against the wall near the first two. The previously-imprisoned man is in tow. As before, several guards are at the barricade to receive you. This time, however, Vaustin York is already at the barricade, talking to the men on duty.

He sees you as you approach. "Ho there!" he says, "Well if it isn't a fair sight to see you lot again. Still in one piece, it looks like, and I see clearly that creature's body you brought with you. If anything is going to show you have the minds of friends, then nothing will - as promised we'll allow entry. There are stipulations, though." He motions to the doorway on the western well near you. "We'll unlock the door there to the gatehouse. We'll require you surrender your weapons, at least for now." His eyes scan the manacled man in yellow robes, "And that man will remain with us. He was not part of our deal, but as he is in custody, we'll keep an eye on him until we can be certain he is no threat."

"Come, Winter would like to see you, I'm sure." He gestures to the door and a moment later you hear the sound of a reinforcement being removed from the door.

The Healer gives a sideways glance at the Pugilist when she catches up to the party, having an idea of what was done out of sight, but he'd keep his mouth shut for now. Similarly, he'd let the more personable among them (and that already had rapport with the guards) do the talking for now, being somewhat more at ease with the knowledge that the seemingly-addled prisoner would be kept under watch. He intends to show the pin to Hat and Knight as soon as they get a moment alone, Hat especially for his detective opinion.

He nodded to the guard but couldn't smile with all the emotions and adrenaline running through him. Perhaps now they'd get some answers talking with this group's leader but he doubted any normal beings in this cursed place had all of them.

"We have completed your test." Grim points at the three shapeshifter corpses. "As you requested, but any further stipulations may meet with a reluctance on our part. We've proven ourselves to be true. Though, we can't say the same about you. How do we know you wont ambush us if we surrender our weapons? How do we know you aren't doppelgangers? At least two of these shapeshifters pretended to be patients or doctors of this place. Why not an orderly?"