Chapter 2: Friendly Fractal Fruit Farmers

[Prime32]

"If we haven't seen them, could someone be organising the ghouls for some purpose? Maybe whoever sent those crows?"

[Solo]

"Don't seem to be much point in it to me. This isn't a highly important place, you'd get more bodies attacking a village, and you'd have to plane shift in and out, which means you're powerful enough to do at least that. Unless there's more to this place than what we were told?"

[Kuroimaken]

"You're both overestimating the size of a typical village and underestimating the kingdom's regular defenses, Fistbeard." Matsuko points out. "I won't go into much detail, but let's just say orcs nowadays only raid villages if they have a serious death wish."

[skydragonknight]

"Were zere any construct laborers? Maybe a Modron accountant? If someone is immune and zey say what happened, zen zey would know more than us, non?"

[Risada]

Ghiktibur looks for a moment at Matsuko due to her comment, then speaks.

"Does this place has any sort of emergency shelter? Maybe we could try looking into it... Did you guys get anything of the sort from the computers here?"

[Kuroimaken]

"Standard procedure for emergencies is to evacuate the premises and notify the system. Since this is all information we're uncovering only now, that means nobody managed to escape or notify proper authority. Again... this is a low-priority facility. Nobody expects it to be attacked in any way, shape or form."

[PhaedrusXY]

"Let's try to get into the director's quarters, and see if we find anything there. After all, it seems he did resist turning longer than the others..."

[Kuroimaken]

"We won't find any survivors there. We found the director unconscious right here." She gestures about the room. "That means he wasn't even conscious when he got here, otherwise he and Ghiktibur wouldn't even have needed to barricade the door - they'd just go into the director's quarters. It also means he didn't pass the information along. Anyone who took refuge there would need to somehow hack the passage open, and that'd leave clues as to their arrival. Since the barricade WAS here and the two of them were unconscious when we came in, we can safely assume no one else came in after they set the barricade up."

Matsuko sighs for a moment and ponders, "Kyx, do you think this infection could have turned animals into undead? Ghasts are usually humanoid, aren't they?"

[skydragonknight]

"Zat is easy to test." Paul says. "Ze disease is supernatural, non? As in Detect Magic can tell if ze animal has been infected."

He starts pulling thing out of his pockets. until he pulls out a chick. "We will test on zis one. Hold while I make Bonemeal." he said, giving the chick to Kyx.

Chopping off the director's foot, he mixes ingredients and within a minute or two has a fun, bite-sized snack for small animals (Patent Pending). He force-feeds the chick three pieces to be sure.

[spoiler]Disease: "When a character is injured by a contaminated attack, touches an item smeared with diseased matter, or consumes disease-tainted food or drink, he must make an immediate Fortitude saving throw."

Fortitude (1d20+2=19, 1d20+2=15, 1d20+2=3)
Success on the third one for sure, unless animals are immune.[/spoiler]

[VennDygrem]

Talon makes a sighing gesture and turns to Paul. "Actually, even if it comes from a magical source, it would need to be of overwhelming strength to leave a trace more than a day after the magic was invoked. And if it's that strong, well... there may be little we can do against the source."

[skydragonknight]

Paul simply shrugs. "Either way, at least we know zat ze ghouls can be de-feeted."

[Kuroimaken]

"Not necessarily. It could be magically bred in origin but not in nature. As in not the product of a single spell, but that of a ritual. We'd be able to find it then." Matsuko points out.

The chick is dead within minutes of swallowing the food. At the very least, it looks as though the contaminated food is extremely toxic for a critter that small. However, it does have traces of necromantic magic, which slowly spread through the chick's body... only to go dormant.

"I think it only kills animals, but doesn't reanimate them. That means we have a clue where to search next: the barn."

[The_Mad_Linguist]

In that case, we should head there immediately.  Though we should probably decapitate that chick, just to be sure.

[Flay Crimsonwind]

"Let's move as quickly as possible. Like we've figured, this place was barricaded for a reason; they probably would have heard those crows exploding, and they'd come to the most obvious place first. if they didn't find enough remains. We should be quick." He didn't like staying here in the first place, and felt worse after loudly killing a creature that provided an idea of the problems ahead. This was all too loud; they needed to start moving, staying in one place for as short a time as possible.

[Solo]

"Alright, barn it is. Shall I take point?"

[Risada]

"Very well... let's go check the barn out. Maybe we can find other members from the first group as well..."

[Kuroimaken]

"We are in agreement then. Let's move." Matsuko led the group outside.

[PhaedrusXY]

"I think it might be too soon to say it doesn't reanimate them. We know there is at least some delay between death and the onset of reanimation. The chick might still come back as a ghoul at some point. We should take it with us to check on it periodically. This might give is a better idea of how long it takes it to reanimate a corpse after they've died.

I'll take it, since I have nothing to fear from infection."

With that, Kyx picks up the chick corpse and heads towards the exit with the others.

On the way he says, "Maybe I should turn us all invisible before we head out, in case the noise we've made has drawn a crowd of ghouls outside..."

Unless someone objects, he draws a scroll of Circle of Invisibility as the group prepares to leave. "Make sure you stay near the rest of the team. If you wander off, the spell will fail and you'll be revealed."

[skydragonknight]

Paul stays with the group, leaving the dead chick in the hands of Kyx. Hopefully the animals would be okay. It would be a shame if all the good ingredients were spoiled.

[spoiler]Just got a part-time job offer. Shitty hours, shitty pay. Gladly took it.[/spoiler]

[Kuroimaken]

There seems to be no problem getting out of the building. Or walking to the barn, which wasn't that far, all things considered. As with... pretty much everything related to Douglas Farm, the inside was bigger than the outside.

Everything looks normal at first glance. The animals are all in their pens, coops, stys and other assorted holding places. They don't even seem particularly disturbed by everyone's entrance, despite the fact that Ghiktibur is essentially covered in undead blood.