1.3 - In Search of Sanity - Never-Ending Nightmare

As you pass beyond the room that once contained the spirit of the Lielan boy, you push through the double doors into a large hall.

This gigantic space might have once been a cafeteria or assembly hall. Now, it’s the village of a savage tribe. Wildly burning braziers stand amid yellow tents and scrap structures. Portions of the western and northern walls have collapsed, but ramshackle barricades have risen to surround them. To the east, two sets of wide stairs climb to the floor above. Around the stairs nearly a dozen bodies hang crucified upon the walls, dried crimson streaks below them, sacks cinched around their heads. Tendrils of yellow mist creep throughout the entire space, wisps endlessly lapping and fondling the bizarre encampment.

These ramshackle slums appear well-occupied by figures moving between tiny hovels built of, and amidst, broken furniture, scavenged sheets, and torn mattresses. While the mist limits your sight, everything seems otherwise peaceful as they men and women go about their tasks.

A few moments after you enter, they start to notice you. It isn't long before a small crowd has gathered, about two dozen people, brandishing mismatched and improvised weapons. They keep their distance, however. While all of the strangers wear some bits of yellow, none of these people are robed like the ones you've ran into previously, nor do any of them look like battle-hardened brutes or glassy-eyed cultists.

A man in a doctor's coat pushes through the crowd before things can naturally escalate and demands the crowd stand down. "Good! More come to gaze beyond, to serve the orpiment! Welcome, friends!" He approaches with open arms and empty hands. As soon as he's close enough, he desperately whispers, "Nod and follow me if you want to live."

Axon nodded to the doctor. He also looked around the large room with his arcane vision, seeking both magic auras and shapeshifters.

As Axon starts to chant and cast his spell to scry magic, the man steps forward a little closer, "Please, I wouldn't do that. These people frighten easily. I'm sure whatever you were doing was benign, but they wouldn't know that." True to his words the people look tense and ready to jump at Axon's beginnings of arcane casting.

Elias immediately nods as the doctor warns them and tries to diffuse the tension by replying loudly and confidently "Indeed we came to gaze beyond, as we hear the orpiment can guide us in this troubled times". Though he is ready to play along given the volatile situation they find themselves in, he has seen one too many doctors in this place to immediately trust this man.

Razhel pulls up her hood and tries to be as inconspicuous as she possibly can. She follows along quietly observing as they go.

The man in the doctor's coat leads you safely through the crowd deeper into the make-shift camp and past the stairs on the eastern wall, towards a large tented-off area in the north-east corner. He leads you inside where about a dozen men and women lie in various states of injury upon beds. Apart from your, him, and his patients, nobody else is in this area and even the mist seems content to linger outside the closed flap of the tent. "I'm afraid I don't have much room for you all to sit. My name's Wren Elbourne and you all look like the exact kind of trouble we need around here. Please - what's going on outside this camp?"
 
 

"Going on?" Razhel repeats Elbourne's question. "You need to be a little more specific Doc."

"This yellow mist surrounds the asylum. The dead are being transformed and coming back to life. Strange beings are leaking through from another realm. Oh...and the cultists are trying to destroy the world as we know it."

Grim tugs at his beard and gives a dark chuckle to Razhel's response to the man. "The way I see it, this Zandulus, his Oripment, and the asshole in our nightmares have all got to go."

"That's out there. What's going on in here, Doctor Elbourne? It seems everyone else has turned to worshiping this madness... so why not you?"

"More specific, yes. Okay. A few days ago this entire place went to hell and I've stuck here with most of these people scared to death of what's going to happen next. I haven't set foot out of this camp since the earthquake, and the riot." He looks more than a little disappointed, "It sounds like that hell has lingered out there, as it has here." He shakes his head, "Dammit."

He looks to Grim, "In that, you and I agree."

"Why not me? Well, I've been allowed a little more autonomy, seeing as nobody else can treat their wounded as I can, but most of the people here are not like those that are in charge, Zandalus, Loomis, and them. Most of these people are just as scared and unsure of the future as I am, forced to go along. You saw the hanged ones near the stairs on the way in, with bags over their heads? Those are the last ones that dared say anything against Zandalus. Hell, some of them just looked at Loomis the wrong way."


 

Elias listens to the doctor's conversation carefully. The man seems to be speaking the truth, but with their recent experiences... you never know what sort of creature, besides human, this might be! "Have you been plagues by the nightmare here as well?" he tries to probe the man for more information, starting with the obvious. They must have been all the way out here!

"Unfortunately yes. I've been in a unique position to talk to many patients about the nightmares, but I've had them myself. Visions of bleak skies, empty cities. Some say they're the dreams Zandalus used to have, that now that they're free of his head they're infecting everyone else. Some say the Tatterman brought them, and he's haunting all our nightmares. Others think they're visions of what's beyond the fog. But who can truly say?"

"Loomis?" Razhel repeats with brows raised. "That's a new name. Guess I'll have to add that one to my shit list."

"So Doc. You've been here since the beginning of this mess, right?" Grim asks to confirm. "Where do we find this Loomis and Zandalus?"

"That's right," Wren replies, "Only arrived here about a week before the shit hit the proverbial fan. One minute I'm starting a dream assignment here, then before I know it, the patients are in charge." He shakes his head at the memory of it. "Yeah, Loomis. Aggra Loomis. She killed nine men in Rozenport about forty years ago. They called them the Bag Lady murders, since she always wrapped up her victim's faces. Apparently she passed between prisons and hospitals, but finally ended up here. She's, what, in her 70's now, but still strong as the devil."

He takes a breath and sullenly points to the ceiling. "They're just upstairs, but between those down here and upstairs, there's an army standing in the way. Even if you were to beat them all, Zandalus himself is still locked away in that maze of fog upstairs." He leans in and lowers his voice. "Seems to me the only way to get out of this place, for all of us, is to get rid of that mist - and I think I have a hint how."

"Alright, Doc. I'll bite." Grim responds to Elborne's declaration. "So, how do we get rid of this mist?"

Wren takes a deep breath, then continues with a nod, "Zandalus calls his most devoted acolytes his oneirogens. Most stay locked away with him upstairs, but at least one watches over the northwestern tower. I think he’s alone, and if the whispers I've heard are true, he's the key to this mist. If you got to him, you could probably wring some of Zandalus’s secrets out of him, maybe even learn how to get rid of this awful mist entirely. Once it’s gone, what you do about Zandalus is up to you." He pauses, then adds, "I think if the mist is gone, I could talk most of the people in the camp here to abandon this folly, knowing they have a route to escape. Especially if they're told you'll take care of the more violent thugs upstairs."