1.2 - In Search of Sanity - The Dead Don't Dream

Elias tries to intervene in the cultists attack against Razhel but is not quick enough.

As her head rings, Razhel is able to get her arm around the man's neck and squeezes. His body goes limp after several moments; he appears to still be alive, but is clearly unconscious.

"Cuff him, the bastard. We probably won't get anything coherent out of him but still..."

He left the stronger ones to deal with the cultist while he went to Iosef.

"Are you alright?"

"I'm...ok," the elf says, straightening his glasses and dusting off his robes. "Thank you."

He looks to Grim as the cuffs are placed, now effortlessly, on the cultist. "What should we do with him?" he asks the others.

After making sure Iosef is okay, Elias glances over at the captive. We could take him back to the others...see what they want to do.

"Let's check out these two rooms the cultists were rummaging through before we begin looking for a way back." Grim suggests, crossing the hallway into the open doorway that the third cultist appeared from. "The last captive we brought back to the others, killed a man. I suspect it will be the same, should this one escape his bindings."

"I should hope they would not be so dull as to release him from his bindings, after what happened to that poor man last time," Iosef suggests, "But whose to say. A fair number of them were mental patients until recently."

Razhel stands over the bound cultist and looks around. "Give me a reason." She says directed at the cultist.

The robed man laughs maniacally and spits towards Razhel's face - his aim and gusto are about as effective as his earlier-fighting aptitude, however, and the phlegm falls short and to the side. He continues to laugh, as if the whole thing was the funniest thing he's seen all day.

Grim enters the room across the hallway and gives it a look over to see if there is anything within that might need further investigation.

While determining what, if anything more than leaving him to his fate, they wish to do with the cuffed man in the yellow robes, the group investigates more closely the rooms to the north and south of them.

The room to the north contains racks of clutter and junk. It appears it may have been a storage area to hold the personal effects of the patients at the asylum, as hundreds of items lay about. The room has been ransacked, however, and there doesn't appear to be much left of any value or benefit to your group.Even the bodies of the two fallen Apostles hold little of value. They both wear simple, padded armor. The crowbar could come in handy and might be worth taking with you.

When you enter the room to the south, you see the handles of dozens of drawers frowning from the faces of numerous matching cabinets. Many of the drawers are open and their contents - volumes' worth of stray parchments - blanket the floor. A quick survey of the contents of these papers reveal this to be where they must have housed a majority of the records for all the patients in the asylum. A door stands along the western wall of this records room, locked.

Grim stares at the piles of documents scattered about the floor for a minute, then clears his mind and moves over to the door in the west wall. Checking and finding the door is locked, he glances over his shoulder, tugs at his beard, and then tugs out his slim case full of thieves' tools. Carefully, he attempts to pick the lock.

With a knowing grin, as the tumbler clicks into place, Grim opens the door.

Grim opens the door effortlessly. The walls of this crowded room are covered by filing cabinets, except for one space where a battered old painting of a somber, towering structure hangs. Unlike the room before, the filing cabinets are all closed; if the lock wasn't enough, the appearance of this room indicates none of the chaos of the uprising has touched this area.

Grim takes note of the neat, but crowded, space and the filing cabinets covering all save the one spot where the painting hangs. He frowns. 'Why would someone put this painting in here..in a locked room..and take up space, where clearly another cabinet would have been more reasonable?'

Squeezing in between the cabinets, he gets closer to the painting and studies it. Then, attempts to lift it and remove it from the wall.

"Excellent work, Hat. Be with you in a bit," he encouraged as he first looked around the ransacked room, their prisoner, and the dead cultists with both his normal and supernatural senses.

አስማትን ፈልግ።

Grim lifts the painting and quickly finds a small brass latch. Pulling it opens a panel revealing a hollow within the wall. Inside, after a quick perusal, Grim realizes he's found Administrator Losandro's extensive records on a veriety of interesting psychological cases he's observed and treated over the years with the case of Ulver Zandalus being most extensive. Included appears to be a rather extensive dossier on the man, whom, it's clear, was of particular interest to the Adminstrator.

In addition to the paperwork, Grim finds a tiny lockbox that is securely fastened shut, and a sword in a crimson scabbard. The pommel is sculpted in the shape of a cardinal and an etched gold band bears the name Red Destiny.Treasure Found:
- Lockbox (locked)
- Dossier on Zandalus (anyone may take a few minutes to read and learn its contents)
- Red Destiny (short sword)

----

In the room to the north, Axon glances among the collection of items, most of it junk. Were it not for his arcane senses, he would never have spotted the slight magical auras of three vials of liquid, tied together with a violet ribbon. Two contain a silvery, thick liquid, the other a dull green oil.

Treasure Found:
- 2 vials of thick silver liquid (magic, DC 20 Spellcraft to identify)
- 1 vial of dull green oil (magic, DC 17 Spellcraft to dentify)

Placing the painting to one side, on the floor, Grim takes the scabbarded sword and girds it to his belt, the attempts to uses his tools to open the locked box. Finding the box more a challenge than the door lock, he tucks it under one arm and snatches up the dossier on this Zandalus person and the stack of other files hidden in the hollow.

Razhel keeps the bound cultist off his feet, while others search the two rooms. She notices the papers scattered about the floor of the southern office. "Anything in there?" She calls in after the man with the hat, in a voice only as loud as she dares, in hopes of not drawing more cultists to their position.

"What have we here?" he pondered as he inspected the philters.