Frozen Shadows
The session began with you all at the end of a long hallway. Snow blocked any chance of moving forward, and a pair of dark, ichor-leaking legs could be seen buried at its base. ALT heated its metal body and began to walk through the snow with hopes of melting it. They were successful, but their success also led to something bizarre.
More and more of the shadowy, inky-black ichor poured from the corpses at the bottom of this snow as they were freed. It burst into the hallways you all were in, but you were able to resist its corrupting influence with ease. However, the corpses reanimated in a grotesque, puppet-like fashion as a pair of jesters attacked you.
The encounter was short, but the deadly potential of these creatures was still evident as their swords and chains sapped your strength as they corroded your bodies. Despite all their tricks with teleportation and sneaky shadow maneuvers, you defeated them with ease and the way forward was revealed with some more efforts from ALT. Gila's Tail kept the tiny robot healthy as everyone moved through the snow and into a somewhat busy, elven street. The street was only visible for a brief moment and through the thick steam of the melting snow, but one well-lit building was at the center of your attention: a bakery.
Rest in a Bakery
As the haze and steam cleared, you found yourselves standing in the very bakery you had seen across the street. Large circular and ornate tables dotted the floor along with a reasonable amount of chairs and cozy lighting. Bread, pastries, coffee and other amenities were available, and a masked jester-like elf could be standing behind a counter tidying up and restocking. A kitchen was visible behind them, and they waved to you as you entered their bakery.
They attempted to sign to you, and as some of you ordered or asked what was available, they also provided you a menu. After orders were placed and goods were retrieved, Bobcat led you all to a table with adequate seating so that some well-earned rest could be had. ALT, not content with such niceties, instead started to follow this jester into the kitchen with hopes of getting some answers out of them. Before any knowledge could be gained, however, a commotion began to stir.
The piroshki -or small meat pie- that Ghost had ordered seemed to be looking at him. An eye could be seen within its laminated exterior that moved and fixated on Ghost. In a panic, Ghost through a psychic dagger at the pastry but missed, and an uneasy feeling began to come over him. ALT began to see strange things as well as pieces of flatbread and such started to grow facial features that shifted and moved in unnatural ways. It also reacted to this unpleasant development by lighting the bread on fire. The fire spread quickly through the bakery, though this jester didn't seem to mind a whole lot, and an army of bread and pies began to fall from the shelves with hopes of defeating the lot of you.
Attack of the Killer Piroshki
The most prominent and swiftly dealt with threat were the spirits of contentment that began to form near the jester and around some of the corpses of these baked goods. These spirits were often destroyed the same round that they appeared, and the more dangerous threat ended up being the myriad of different breads and pies that were filling the bakery.
Bobcat lit many of them on fire which proved to be an effective strategy, and the ones that weren't burning and being demolished by other such attacks were charmed by Gila's Tail with some well-incited greed. With the battlefield under control and slowly being cleaned up, Hysteria eventually came to realize what was happening. They made their way to their bedroom, collected their weapons and quickly began moving back to the bakery proper. They were stopped along the way, however, as another spirit of contentment had blocked the hallway.
With ALT's help the last spirit was vanquished, the baked goods were all but defeated, and this final vanquished bit of contentment had fallen into a pile of bread components. Eggs, flour and other such items flowed into the ground and found themselves on one of the tables in the bakery. You all watched between your own tasks while dealing with the few remaining pies and breads to see these components form into a massive, multi-eyed pirog (meat pie).
This immense and well-decorated meal looked to be something you might find at the center of a feast for some holiday, but it was instead hoping to feast on the lot of you. It had several rows of eyes which all began firing lasers in random directions. These lasers were capable of causing you to fall asleep, become afraid of the monster, slow down, decay your body or even kill you out right. One particularly devastating looking laser was just barely avoided by Bobcat as it destroyed a portion of the bakery behind him.
When it wasn't firing laser beams from its eyes, this meat pie would quickly move across the bakery to find smaller piroshki to eat along with anything else small enough for it to swallow. One of its lasers ended up killing Ghost, and while Gila's Tail was able to bring him back, he died yet again and for good. In the end, the pirog was vanquished by Hysteria, and the bakery slowly began to vanish much like the other rooms before it had done.
As it vanished, so too did Ghost, but Bobcat wasted no time in asking Hysteria what exactly was going on here. The best that Hysteria could do with their sign language was portray that it was a "mistake", but also more than a mistake in that they were taking ownership of it. A sense that "this isn't something that they should've done", some regret, perhaps.
Bobcat introduced the group, the bakery continued to fade, and Ghost faded with it.
You found yourself in yet another weird hallway. This one matched the same slimy sandstone as the others, but the main feature that stood out was the addition of several wolves heads. They were arranged so that one head was on your right and three more heads were lined up on your left facing the other head. A wolf pelt also decorated the ground a few feet away.
Additionally, spinning into existence within this hallway was something else that happened! It sort of peeled itself from Hysteria's lingering contentment, from Ghost's scattered essence, and from the air itself. A new ally and one that Hysteria will need to introduce next time: A Jester.
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