Nomen Infernale XL:
General Summary
The false-god worm leaked fluids into the room while Asbjørn, blinded by rage, hacked at the demon. A swift final strike and the creature no longer had enough strength to hold its insides on the inside. a torrent of innards and coelomic fluid spill out from the thrashing beast and a nearby trogolodyte is swept into a rock and broken by the force, the trogolodyte on the wall and attacking Kegho loses its footing and falls backward into the darkness. Riven is also knocked into a cavern wall while Kegho, Asbjørn and Alex sustain very light injuries while being jostled by the wave. An egg sack spills out of the worm and the immature eggs depressurize when exposed to the world too early. The half-human and half-trogolodyte creatures scream in pain and expire. The words of the children when they entered the room become clear "we don't want to become one of them!" Theo calms Asbjørn before heading toward the children. Alex and Kegho search out the missing trogolodyte but his head had been caved in by the fall. In the dim light, they notice a glimmer a little lower than the rest of the floor.
Theo assesses that he has no way to free the children without attempting to smash their manacles and calls for Riven and Alex to join him. Alex sends Elissa to check on the egg pool before he heads toward Theo to free the children.
Elissa heads to the pool with mounting trepidation, but is not alone as Asbjørn follows closely behind her intent on destroying any trait of the Thurismatho. They see transparent eggs with children being slowly consumed by maggots and new, trogolodytic flesh being excreted onto their forms. She mentions that she doesn't have oil on her but with a few well placed flasks they could probably destroy all of the contents of the pool with one swipe of a torch.
Elissa is briefly grateful that her pulse breakfast was relatively mild as Asbjørn slices open one of the eggs and her gorge rises. A child or at least something that clearly once was a child slides out of the now tattered membrane and dies in the fetid spawning pool. The horror of the situation weighs on them and Elissa suggests they get the priests advice before bringing a merciful end to the rest of the mid-metamorphic children.
Theo is loathe to leave the children behind who he tends to with kind words, food and water while Alex and Riven begin working on the locks. Riven is first to succeed and is given a hug by the child she rescues. The contact makes her skin crawl but she accepts that this child is expressing gratitude and receives the hug in the spirit with which it was given, but is relieved when it ends. She works diligently and has freed most of the children before Alex has released one lock. The children eat and drink greedily and Alex cautions them to go slowly lest they make themselves sick. He tells them they will head next to the House of the Snetwa. The children are confused why someone apparently their age would be traveling with a band of warriors.
Kegho realizes that the glimmer is a sizeable treasure hoard and he dives into it to find the bottom.
At the spawning pool, Theo thinks that while it may be difficult an intensive intervention by Lamos may remove the corrupted flesh and restore the human flesh of the children. With great care he scooped up one of the intact egg sacks; his care for the children helping him suppress the revulsion the corrupted forms gave rise to.
Riven climbs a ladder they had spotted, hidden partially in shadow and finds that it leads to an open field. She raises a cairn to mark the location that they might find the entrance again easily, but not draw attention to it and the rest of the party clambers out. Kegho scoops up some gold to help cover incidental costs of care for the children and they head through the fields to the eastern gate of the city.
The Heru guards at the gate are annoyed to see a filthy cleric, two barbarians, a goat-fucking lunatic dressed in wild robes, a Palesian Scout with a dead-eyed stare and a child with a thin mustache dressed all in black followed by emaciated children with raw, red marks around their wrists, but after taking the gate fee and making sure their paperwork was in order they waved them into the city with an admonishment not to cause trouble. The party finds litter-bearers to take them to the Snetwa.
At the House of Snetwa, Theo walks up to the receptionist, putrid, glassine egg in his arms and emaciated children behind him and explains the care needed for the children first before asking to see a specialist for the care of the egg, and the other eggs like it. The receptionist is astounded by the sight and when Theo becomes increasingly frantic about the need for a specialist's attention, a cleric slips out to lead them into a more private space to discuss the case away from the public view. He introduces himself to Theo as Alim and cautions him to be less open about his goings on. He acknowledges corruption under the city, but warns that there is also corruption inside the social machinery of the city and warns him to trust no one--including Alim, himself wholly. He begins asking pointed questions about how they had come in contact with such concentrated miasma, and Alex becomes irrationally irritable demanding that Al-Menefir be called in whom they had already given extensive medical histories to and demanded to know why they're Ar-based Medical Record system (AMR) was not compliant with current expectations for record portability. He was eventually handed a papyrus sack and made to sit into a corner breathing deeply into it while Alim explained the plague of Reshpu that had been beaten back but not fully defeated and that children were often impressed into servitude by the upper echelons of Eknopolis or in the gold fields of Kabaga.
Alim promises to work with those he trusted to heal the child in the egg if possible, and suggested that Theo speak with Quaestor, who he believed to be above corruption.
