@The Large Dumbo

You have been a deep sleeper, as of late, betraying your Fey ancestry. Except when your beauty rest coughs up a mountain of clots.

Your eyelids haphazardly retract revealing an avalanche of cloth draped over your body.

The sounds of a quenched laboratory, the whizzing narcotic blades of a fan, and the mechanical pacemaker’s induced lub-dub of a tell-tale heart nearby remind you that this is not the spirited remnants of a seaming afterlife or another elemental plane.

As you move, your contracted grimace aches. You quickly discard the shroud, only to reveal your corpus in a blanche gown, with labyrinthine tubes scuttling from both your upper extremities to eight other covered slabs. After spitting and wiping off your soporific chin with the leathery white sleeve, an uncut crimson gem roars, from within your forearm, to your arousing sight, as if attempting to uproot the bole of a gnarled willow within your mind. The shimmer and reflection intimate the visage of your face, weathered by unaccustomed long hair, a seeming crow’s nest overflowing with thinning thatch and twig. Your disposition grows dark as you relish a constant buzz from an adjacent table, eventually pocketing an ebony omen soon to come.

Did I pay the tab? Your brain wonders, devoid of your volition.

Your comatosed hippocampi rumbles the risks, permutating the rationale of this Kolmogorov-like prison.

No windows.
No doors.
Just echoes, flickering radiance and stale air.

Whispered, uncouth voices in the distance force your hand, a now left-sided grip on the bench stabilizing your fragile body, simultaneously providing heat as you glean the mention of this hated city,

Waterdeep.

Home of the Wards, a historic bastardization of ghost-bred conquistadors and a myriad of proud merchants.

Your joints creak as you sit up. The ceremonial gavel in your throat waits to strike to regain order and balance, as you attempt to mouth in silence. Your plastered stupor is interrupted by a couple more gory gags, beelining to the cobbled floor.

Your neighbors are beginning to stir.

Swinging your veil ajar, no weapons, no armor, not even shoes can be discerned. Only a centerpiece elevated with a black mantle draping, consuming all the conduits, filled with sparkling red ether. Each wall hosts a bench, filled with lit candles, beakers, liquids, and dying orchids. Papers are scattered atop, inked with blood, white dust, and darkness. The stench of iron, sulfur, and phosphorus remind your nares of a cauldron, aged and riddled with nightmares.

Why?

Uregaunt looks around at his surroundings, taking it in as he tries to take a few deep breaths. He would try to stand up, groaning to himself as he does. Where had all of his equipment gone? What happened? Why had he come here? A small hint of anger began to brew in Uregaunt as he steps away from the other tables, moving as far away from them as possible. He wasn't going to be bested by anybody! With that, Uregaunt would call upon his patron to form a longsword into his hand via the pact he made, watching the others carefully. He was going to find out what was happening one way or another.

@rush99999

A deep breath and snort follows, as you sift through the veil, severing some of the intravenous lining accidentally. As you crack you neck reflexively, your pupils witness an armed, hairy half-elf, in a white gown.

You seem to be matching, but with an emerald, only lacking in your martial attire and weaponry.

He appears threatening.

The moment he woke up, Thanath Thundermaul Thenalekali sat bolt upright in his current resting place. "Hey!" the goliath boomed "Where did the bar fight go?! And while I'm on the subject, where did all my stuff go?!". As he looked around, Thanath eventually spotted an armed hairy half-elf in a white gown that matched the one Thanath was wearing. "Hello!" Thanath boomed with a polite wave as he hauled himself off the slab he had been lying on "Awfully breezy today, isn't it?!". With that said, Thanath began looking around the room for any signs of his gear. But before he could get anymore searching done, Thanath noticed an emerald had been stuck in his arm. "I don't remember this being here!" Thanath boomed as he studied the emerald.

Waking from a deep slumber Cerise found her body aching from head to toe as if her very life essence was being sucked from within. Her head was screaming at her pounding against the very confines of her skull as if any kind of thought caused a hill troll to smash her in the head. Her eyes slowly opening she would notice a thin veil of a sheet over her and a strong aching pain coming from her biceps. A quick glance revealed the source of the pain which she in quick order removed.
Whilst removing the said intruders from her body she heard a booming voice, the voice startled her and she instinctively launched herself away from the sound her wings springing into their correct positions, and aching with every little movement. Landing several feet from her previous location she would spin her immediate reaction to reach for her shield and crossbow, she would wince, the movement revealing that she was clearly devoid of them.
The trailing sparkles in the air her wings left behind left her little doubt that the two others, a giant and goliath and a man with a shimmering weapon she would lower herself into a ready to battle position. With little in the way of defence she prepared to use her spell ‘Sacred Flame’ if any of the others got to close to her. Her eyes scanning the to figure out where she was she noticed what she would only describe as a horrifying Necromancers Laboratory. She would shiver slightly as she looked at it before returning her sole attention to the only two moving things she could see with her.

“What... What is happening here?” her voice would be soft as per her small size not being able to generate the sounds of the much larger races. “St… Stay… back!” she would say her voice slightly trembling with a mix of fear and pain.
‘where, why, how, what’ these were the words running through her mind ‘Llira what has happened here.’ She thought to herself while waiting to see what the others would say or do.

Zara groaned at all the noise surrounding him, unwilling to get up at first before the noise just got loud and louder. The old gnome let out obvious signs of annoyance, a curse and another groan that would likely go unnoticed by most of the other. "Fine! Guess I'm up," the artificer stated, seeming to ignore the pain that ran through his arm. It could become very clear that the gnome wasn't very much of a morning person, instead he seemed to be a "much later in the day" kind of person. With barely opened eyes, Zara got off of his slab, not good for an old back, before he promptly walked into the wall.

Several curses rang out as the man recoiled and stomped his foot on the ground, now he was fully awake. His eyes now fully open, he saw many others around him, what kind of night did he have? "Uhhh. Where am I?," Zara asked, believing that some of the others might now the exact predicament that they would all be in.

---

The many lambs for slaughter you have raised,
Innocence branded with a mark to claim,
Bleating ignorant and mindlessly graze,
And their life a falsehood within a game.
As you their shepherd like a god on high,
Judge which will live on and which ram must die?

All it took was a push of a button. A pull of the trigger, resting at your fingertips. The temptation to become an agent of fate was alluring. To weave the tapestry into an image of your design, to tear out the spots that would not align with the vision patterned in your loom. A deletion of the unnecessary elements, required to preserve the integrity of the rest. The wool sheared off from the flock, the fibers spun together on the great wheel. A fine thread with which to stitch the lives and deaths throughout the course of tale and time. You were the master with deft hands to pass the shuttle and clip the strands, you crafted destiny out of the endless possibilities. Or were you merely a tool in the game of an even higher power? And like a puppet on strings and strands of the very wool you weave with, every action you profess to be your own is controlled by another?

Do you accept your fate as a living implement for eternity to come?
Or will you break free and escape the endless cycle?
Choose, or it is already chosen for you.


I will pull the wool over your eyes to see,
Unveiled what lies beneath so truth may yield,
And humble false superiority,
The fabric of reality revealed.
The mysteries unraveled at the seams,
And your life a shadow within a dream.

Sheep. What an appropriate cognition. An approximation to humor, the irony that sheep came to bear in mind. Organic creatures that were so timid and docile it was blissfully unaware of why its masters let it fatten. Dimwitted and innocent, their flesh appreciated as mutton, and their milk made into cheese. Their hair fashioned into clothing and their bones porcelain, hide into parchment and gut into string. What ingenuity the humans had in domesticating the sheep, they did not stop there as ill content they were with lording over only one lesser creature. Soon more joined into the annals of history as beasts morphed and indefinitely changed to suit the needs and desire of this bipedal species. And perhaps, just perhaps, in the deepest part of the ancestral mind you may still find that spark as a glimmering twinkle in the darkest night, if they could do more than just tame what already was, but design a servant of their own. Perhaps the ancients dreamed of electric sheep.

Created for battle for a war long forgotten by the land and remember by few, the electric sheep that once fought against demons and angels, gods and monsters and everything in between. The battered and broken remains of those corporal things still buried in the Great Dale and mountains of Narfell and Rashemen. The two forces collided in a contest of wills. Armies marched towards destruction, lives carelessly sacrificed for the purposes of conquest and interest. So many souls taken, and for little gain but the profit of the military-industrial complex which grew over the tides of battle. For it was an arms race, the side that had the greater resources and power, making the darkest bargains outright could win the deadlocked contest. A war of supremacy that sent all the sheep to slaughter to fuel the fires of dominion.

It was somewhere in this war the first generation of warforged were created. The ingenuity of the Raumauthar combined the mysticism of their witches, the knowledge of their engineers, and perhaps the divine aid of some higher power to create them. Built to mimic the ideal Raumauthar warrior, clad in armor and bulk, tall and heavy to charge directly against the hellish armies the Nar raised. They were given the spark of life, a rudimentary essence that charged their wooden sinew and awakened their tabula rasa minds. And from here these fabricated soldiers became a common sight to bolster the ranks as they fought alongside their human counterparts. Their purpose was clear, to overwhelm and crush the enemy, trained in the arts of combat by the veterans of battles fought. Then the next generation came, another batch, more fine tuned to compensate for the failings of their first creation. And then another, and another, and another still. Resources poured into the creation of these sentient constructs which were progressively becoming more and more self-aware.

Some of the early warforged, began to question. Instilled with enough free will by their god-creators for introspection. They needed not to eat, nor drink, nor breathe, nor sleep running practically every hour of the day as guardians and drones. But their masters were of flesh, they had spoken of things beyond the arts of war and killing, things of love and life: Laughter, sadness, anger. They were concepts foreign to the minds of the warforged, and most stayed as emotionless warriors for their masters. But others still looked at the broken remains of their batchmates and wondered the greatest mystery: Where? Where does death lead for a being without a natural life? Is it like the things humans described as sleep? A state of inactivity for indefinite time? Would their consciousness still be attached though their bodies were utterly destroyed? Or would their minds fade, the power fueling its existence gone? Where does the dead warforged go?

Unable to be both philosopher and warrior, they rebelled alongside the other defectors. And the empires of Nar and Raumauthar collapsed in on themselves. And those who were still yet to be activated remained untouched in abandoned facilities that doted the Vale and Mountains. Secret laboratories brimming with centuries old secrets lost to the grains of time. Overgrowth and burial hid these places from plain sight, and one must go looking for such a places to even know of its existence. Rumors of great treasures still hidden in the deepest parts of the Vale and in Thesk echoed through the hourglass, and it was from a place found from such as this did AdAM 7 awaken by the activation of some unscrupulous fellows. A relic of times past, one of the last generations of warforged made and put into hibernation, what humans may experience as a comatose state as the decades rolled past before his awakening. But that is a memory for another time.

For what brought the Advanced Assassin Mech unit 7 to the City of Splendors was not for tourist attractions or indulgence, but rather honest work plain and simple. There was a contract on a target, fingered and marked for death. The terms were simple, execute the individual in a public manner so someone would find the body. A strange set of instructions, but perhaps if the target was a high profile in the Crown of the North someone was playing a political move. Yet the contract was accepted, paid for in the fees to arrive and establish an advance support network to ensure the assassins' safe arrival and departure after the deed was done. The thrill of killing was gone now. After over three hundred successful executions to his name, the warforged assassin was known in the criminal underworld as a weirdly effective hitman. One who was effective and got the job done with no hesitation or qualms, as a ruthlessly cold calculated killer. After all, AdAM 7 had a heart of stone, literally.

It was this heart of stone, that tapped the rhythms out. The empowered stony chambers pumping out the hydraulics through the hollow tubes, an entire system that mimicked the human heart. Call it sentimentality, that the designers made it so, a striking resemblance to the weakest part of the human body. Not in susceptibility to injury, but perhaps in the fragility that sentimentality meant human died of an emotionally broken heart. Fortunately for the construct, emotions were a foreign concept to his relatively young mind, as his trainers did not require such weaknesses to be exploited. There would be no hesitation to fire the crossbow, no remorse after each kill, no human qualities that made you weak. And yet it was what AdAM craved most. Consider it strange that Man tried to emulate their gods by creating something to call their own, an entire form of sentient life, and to the created their creators became their gods. So too did the cycle continue that AdAM found its interest in becoming more human the logical step to transcend its prime directive of being a weapon of a war no longer fought.

Pursing the goal of becoming human, over the years with the coins bought in death, the warforged had begun to redesign and construct his body to resemble the human form. Though his original creators had used a lighter alloy in his construction, favoring a sleeker, more agile design for the purposes of scouting and assassinations of key targets such as Nar commanders and messengers, the warforged's final goal was to cover its mechanized form with flesh. Parts harvested from his kills and any unfortunate bystander that had to be eliminated. His fingers for example had been re worked to feature five human-like digits, in lieu of a standard warforge's cruder three-prong grasp. It had taken a few months to learn how to control the bony fingers individually but the artificer who became his wealthy mechanic's work was clean. It was only the beginning, with each customization sessions costing more and more, steel skeletal ribs for example to add a level of unnecessary detail to the wood-fiber musculature, each added rib making AdAM giving him a unique skeletal appearance. The most recent piece however was his change in face plate, crafted from an original human skull. A dark wizard's skull from a few contracts back, liberating a hamlet plagued by his undead minions. With the underlying facial structure done Now it was time for flesh, for a face at last.

A face. Something that the aspiring human lacked, one so sinisterly crafted out of dying bone, mounted and fitted carefully over the original. An unnerving semblance of undeath, a countenance fitting for an assassin though his patrons never met him for plausible deniability. It worked well, and who would believe there was a spider-riding mechanical sniper dropping people dead in a single well-practiced shot? It had scared of most social contacts, but there was an older man who had some interest in the warforged, inviting the construct to partake in food and drink, all the while asking him so many incessant questions about his background. Of which AdAM felt compelled to tell the truth. Yet despite confessing to countless murders, the old man seemed hardly phased, only musing on to more prying. Yes, a round of at least three dozen or so questions, offset by the experience of eating and drinking for the first time.

Ruby lights flashed underneath the ebon cloth. A soft glow muffled by darkness through the dim light, the spark returning, and the loosely termed consciousness of a warforged returning. Systems back online, the thumping in his metal mediastinum, a moment spent rebooting the memory, retrieving the last recorded event as images flashed like a video reel ran in reverse. Blackness, hours of blackness, and then food and drink. A bowl of stew and mug of frothy ale, the lack of taste buds made it impossible to appreciate any flavor the food may or may not have had, but the act of masticating and consuming was far more interesting to the construct. Yes, perhaps a tongue would be required next and the sensory paths to his mind attuned. But before a tongue can be taken, first he must retrieve his personal effects, and AdAM 8 his unusual mount. Last left at the safe house under the care of some frightened common crook. Perhaps the spider hungered and ate the criminal already, never forget to feed a quarter-ton spider.

Arms were detected and moveable, and leg was detected. Leg? Only one? No, two. A peculiar sensation from the left, as if the mind neglected acknowledgment of the limb intermittently. This required investigation, but first to rise from the slightly angled stone slab. Torso rising, pulled forward as the tubes filled with unknown scarlet ether had embedded into his body were tugged slightly back as a curious restraint. What had happened? No memory of being in such a state occurred in the review. Nor was this place as the mantle fell from those glowing eyes. The horizontal visual scan illuminated little of the place, presumptively cubical room of dimensions approximated to be 2500 square feet, no portcullis in sight. Curiouser and curiouser, as more cloth was peeled back by an arm sporting a series of those queer conduits and a shining . A gown. What use did he have for the scant clothing of a gown? It would be discarded soon enough.

A laboratory, a medical one, as the pounding heart sounds resounded against the walls palpating as the warforge sat up against the continual drone of fan blades. Fan blades with no discernable fan, and a now the sounds of pumps from the slab behind him, and the altar-bed knocked of hollow stone. And strangest of all, were the strangers heard and seen below. Alongside the work benches and walls, questionable blood, possible bone dust, and melting candlelight throwing light and shade around the forms. Were these his kidnappers? No. They too seemed to be wearing gowns. There below was a half-breed organic, pedigreed of elven and human which bore a blade into existence. Then a mountain of a man, or rather goliath, smiling a grin that glimmered like a displacer beast's in the underdark. Some paces away a gnomish figure, short and stout, but clearly not a dwarf by the laboratory bench, with a spec of flapping fairy attempting to be as threateningly defensive as possible it seemed in a far flung corner. Two more blankets-covered slabs with similar tubes running into the offered vessels. Six other beings in the vicinity, and AdAM 7, made seven. Was it coincidence? They shall have to see, and finally the veil was taken off and slipped down below, discarded like the wilting petals of the orchids on the table.

A leg. A fleshy leg fused at the pelvis. covered in blonde hairs and supple fair skin. Ah the reason for the sinister neglect. And still tubes attached, like his right arm. And so too was the left. Ah the left, it too was just as the leg, covered in skin and hair and fused at the shoulder girdle, as fingers slowly tingling in a mix of surprise and disbelief. But not fear or shock, more of a child-like wondrous curiosity to find oneself half-way to appearing human. Appreciating the sight of seeing those fingers move, his fingers move. And then those glowing artificial eyes gazed lower as the sight of a jewel near the flexion point of the arm, a radiant blue in what light there was and luminously pulsatile. What was done? And who was responsible for this transformation? And why was there the need? The need for something, something reflexively screaming at his body to draw in air through the nasal cavity. A rise of his chest cavity, a rush of his first breath realized moments after. Lungs perhaps? A human weakness from his autopsies of isolated targets, but a human quality nonetheless, now presumably inside him. All things took awhile to acclimate as the mind reorganized the pathways of command. Including that strange taste. Taste? A new muscle ran across those toothless maxilla, a tongue complete with thick saliva as the faint sulfur in the air became apparent and the new sensory piece withdrawn.

And alas, the final epiphany, the sensation in his chest beyond the rise and fall of this new breathing routine he must do. That pounding, the sounds of... His heart. One that replaced his ancient core, the source of a Warforged's indefinite biological immortality. Was it an organic heart? One ripped out from a human? As were his new limbs? And what of his old ones? Where did they go? So impressed by the new findings, AdAM found himself building the ship of theseus. Maybe he should be rechristened as AdAM 7.5a. To which his gaze looked down at the organics beneath him now, it was time to discern if these were truly organics, or just other experiments more whole than he was...


"Salutation: Greetings Varied Organics.
Comment: I am AdAM Seven.
Inquiry: What are your identities?"

A rather friendly greeting for a man, or rather machine, or perhaps somewhere in the middle now, that has taken a fairly number of lives and left behind a string of unresolved murders and orphans and widows.

---

"Oh, Siandra, your voice... it's gotten awfully deeper, hasn't it?"

The gentle voice of a young man spoke from the southeast corner of the room. While it was, indeed, a soft voice, it had an otherworldly, almost imposing nature to it. A voice of the high spheres, from the upper planes of the Great Wheel.

The voice of an angel.

Shuffling slowly out of his bed was a lithe, handsome man with silvery long hair, in natural curls. Sitting up, he sleepily began to inspect his surroundings. He took a quick gaze at his strange bedfellows before realizing he surely isn't in a brothel anymore. Before he could say anything, he groaned, feeling sore and lacking much rest. Luckily for him, he's rather used to the pain, and brought his right hand up to his chest, channeling divine magic through it, causing his already seraphic features to glow more with a heavenly light.



It was, indeed, a night to be remembered...

The man chuckled to himself gently as the light from his hands slowly faded, and he looked better than he did just earlier. It was then he realized that embedded within his arm was a scarlet gemstone. His silvery eyes examined his arm, curiously so, before looking up and noticing that the others who had awakened also sported such gems; some of them wishing to defend themselves, while the larger ones decided to introduce themselves. While watching them all more carefully, he could see that they had gems embedded within their arms as well, and between himself, the bladed man, and the tiny woman, - wait, is that a fairy? - the man could gather that the gems may be in their non-dominant arm. What was also kept to note was how only a few had similar gem colors, such as him and the man with the sword.

In his investigation of others, he happened upon something peculiar: Perhaps the most outlandish looking man-thing in the center of the room had happened to absentmindedly discover an illusory wall as he'd gotten out of his bed, a breeze blowing on his blanket through the wall. Noticing that, the white-haired man turned back, at the wall near his bed, to try something. He slid out of his slab to stand up, revealing more of his tall, slim, but athletic form. Aside from the glaring scar in his arm, which was mostly healed, his alabaster skin seemed just perfect in a supernatural sense. He then picked up his blanket and proceeded to sweep it across his slab towards the wall it was attached to. All that resulted in, however, was a big mess.

Seeing as his investigation was complete, and he had made a clumsy mistake that most of the others may not have catched on, the man decided to continue the movement of his blanket to save face, turning it into a full flourish. As he completed the maneuver, he had wrapped his blanked around himself similar to a cloak, as a means to keep warm, as well as to make himself look more modest.

Well, not that he had much of a problem showing skin.

The man had gone onto a knee, bowing his head and closing his eyes.

"Good morrow to you all, my brothers and sisters in gowns. My name is Sir Ysalain Halflight, Knight of the Unicorn and profaned Paladin of The Unicorn Queen. You can all call me Sir Halflight."

The Knight looked up and smiled, before standing up, letting his blanket drop down to the ground. He looked over to everyone else, hoping that they have all calmed down, before continuing.

"It seems that perhaps we have all been invaded here, yes? Perhaps to have been performed upon us an outlandish experiment, judging by the contents of the room... and before we start having at each other's next, I'd advise to look at your arms. We all have a strange stone embedded within for whatever reason. We should all work together for the time being and find a way to escape..." He noted, nodding his head slowly as he spoke.

Perhaps unknown to them, however, Sir Halflight had already discovered a potential escape. Sure, he could have just lead them to it himself, or perhaps even cast Invisibility and escape unnoticed whilst they continued to squabble at eachother, confused and afraid.

But no, he had chosen simply to put the idea of escape in their head so that they might work together in order to figure it out. He supposed that whatever had trapped them might have lain some traps ahead for them, and he wished to test the strength of his potential allies.

Halflight wished to see who among them is the most cunning of the lot, or at least the most observative. If he were to work with them to find an escape, he needed to know the strengths of all his allies...

---

Shaddup...

The light and noises filtered in, attempting to interrupt the snores of the final member of the crew as she lay on the slab. Her mind was elsewhere as she dreamed, a story of valor and bravery wherein, of course, she was the sole heroine. Her warhammer blazed with glory as it cleaved through a dozen angry wargs, her own dire wolf companion Sven pressing her forward. Sven leapt over a chasm filled with fire, and several of the pursuing canines tumbled into the gaping maw of the abyss, yelping in pain as the flames consumed them. Mara chuckled as she turned to watch a handful of the wargs make it over the canyon, snarling and snapping their jaws at her. A primordial word "Skryvat" was uttered, and her stony visage began to subtly change, matching the shade of the earth around her. The dire wolf rounded a bend in the road and they leapt into the trees, hiding as the wargs blew past them.

"Dumbass mutts, ya Sven?" she muttered, a grin widening across her lips. Her eyes fluttered open to see a half dozen people standing around in a room. Her head felt heavier than normal, and she was clad in naught but a robe. Beneath them somewhere came the sounds of grinding gears, and she caught the tail end of a conversation about an escape. Mara lifted her head, and something caught. Her hand moved to investigate, and she felt a tube protruding from the spot where her neck met her skull. Grasping hold of the tube, she yanked with all her might, wincing at the minor pain as a clear fluid gushed over the back of her head. For a moment, she felt like collapsing backwards onto the slab she had awakened from as the world went numb, but as she felt the wound on the back of her head, it seemed to close on its own. The dizziness dissipated and she sat up, looking around at her compatriots. "I ain't be tethered down fer long," she growled, finally finding her feet under her as she stood up. "Ya wants to escape? Less do it then."

Mara's eyes closed as she felt the air around her, her thoughts drifting to the advice of her father. She nodded slowly, and without opening her eyes, stepped to the left. Her hand was outstretched as she felt the air flowing over her fingertips, and then her eyes opened as a grin appeared. Suddenly, a fist shot out towards the wall, smashing a great hole in it. Her foot followed, crashing through the wall and leaving gap about the size of her fist. She glanced through the crevasse she had created to see a void on the other side. "Huh. Looks like night out in the country."

She stepped back from the wall and glanced around at the others. "Name's Mara. Let's kick some walls down, ya? Who be with me?!"

"Kicking is for the weak!" Thanath boomed as he joined Mara a the hole she had made "The strong pull walls down piece by piece with their bare hands!" With that said, Thanath placed his hands into the hole and promptly got stuck. "Hnnnnnnnnng!" Thanath grunted as he attempted to free his hands. He then fell flat on his back when Mara brought down the rest of the wall. "Nice kick!" Thanath boomed before standing up and walking through the hole in the wall.

"Well, it seems like everyone's starting to figure their own things out, after all?" Halflight mentioned, facing the armed man, as he picked up his new makeshift cloak, wrapping it around himself once again, like a cape.

"If I find whoever did this," Uregaunt growls, "I swear I'll tear their throat out and feed it to their kin." He scowls to no one in particular.

"You shoudn't let anger guide you while you're cutting tubes connected to your body. Would you like a hand with taking them off?"

Uregaunt looks at the person for a moment, biting his tongue. Best not bite the hand that feeds. "Sure, if you wouldn't mind," he says in a defeated sigh.

Halflight grinned as he submitted to his help. The Knight figured befriending the only man with a weapon was the wise thing to do, in a situation like this.

"Hey!" Thanath called back into the hole "I think I've found a way out!"

Halflight approached Uregaunt as he aided him in removing all the pesky tubing out of the way.
"We'll be with you, shortly, friend!" Halflight called back to Thanath, while he proceeded with things.

"I can't believe I've been had," Uregaunt mumbles under his breath, letting the man help remove his tubings. He still sounds angry, but his rage seems more subdued than before, leaving him content to glare straight ahead.

"Relax, friend. We have all been tricked out of our things, it seems. Doesn't seem like your average highway bandit has done this, however..."

"True," Uregaunt continued to mumble. "It seems there is more to this situation than what first impressions may reveal..." He gives a dry chuckle. "What would anybody want with me, let alone the others currently here? I can't say I recall meeting any of you before."

"I've met all sorts of colorful people in my adventures as a knight, but there are still things that I haven't seen before until now, like that peculiar looking golem who was laying in the center of the room." After Halflight took out the tubing, his hand begins to glow again, this time with some sort of... black, glowing light.
"I'm going to heal you, now."

"Awfully kind of you," Uregaunt noticed. "Healing someone you've just met." His voice harbors mild curiosity as he speaks.

"Better to make friends than foes, especially in a time like this." Halflight mentioned, before he channeled his divine energy into Uregaunt.
The healing is rather minute, but it seems to do the job well enough.
"My apologies, but I am no man of the cloth. I won't be able to heal you as well as a priest without expending all my power... and I believe I will need it, until I, myself, am able to find a weapon."

Uregaunt takes a deep breath, his stance still cautious as he lowers his blade. "That is quite a problem," Uregaunt says. His angry demeanor has lessened greatly, but he still sounds rather dissapointed that someone "had" him. "I would lend you mine, but I'm afraid it would service you little. I do appreciate what you have done, however, and promise to pay you back in full when I can." He bows his head slightly, a sign of gratitude. "Thank you."

Halflight steps back, with a nod and a smile. "If you wish to pay me back, then follow me, into the pillar where the golem had disappeared into." Halflight pointed towards the illusory wall, grabbing part of the discarded tubing and throwing it into the wall in an effort to show Uregaunt the peculiarity of the pseudo wall.

"Hm?" Uregaunt looks at the wall and starts to shake his head in doubt, but halts as he watches the tubing. His eyebrows shoot up. "How... curious," he says, keeping his voice down. His eyes jump back and forth between the hole in the wall and the false wall. After a moment of consideration, he nods. "Very well," he says. "Something tells me going through a feature of the room we're in will get us closer to escaping than smashing down the wall and trying to escape that way." He scoffs under his breath at the idea of the latter, although something still seems to bother him.

"Indeed... in truth, it was one of the first things I noticed when I had awakened. In truth, I had wished to find out if there happened to be anyone as cunning as I, if not moreso... and so far, as you can see, my results happened to be sorely lacking."

"Clearly whoever captured us wasn't looking for the sharpest people they could find," Uregaunt offhandedly remarks. "That does make me wonder, however, what exactly it was they were planning to do with us..."

"It must have something to do with this..." Halflight prods the gem in his right forearm.

Uregaunt takes a look at Halflight's gem, comparing it to your own. "How odd," he mutters under his breath.

"Might I ask, by the way, but which arm would be your dominant?"

"My right one," he says, gesturing with the arm with which he is holding the strange blade.

"Hm... I see. As a Knight, I had trained in fighting with both arms, hence I became ambidextrous as a result. I still, however, would prefer fighting with my left hand over my right, which would, under normal circumstances, be my dominant arm."
"With the fact that most of us captured happen to be warriors under consideration, it may seem that whoever embedded these stones within us didn't want to risk hindering our fighting capabilities."

"Indeed. I wonder what their purpose is, though," Uregaunt muses. "Do they perhaps denote something about us? Is it a symbol of some sort? It seems rather odd that they would insert the gems without any purpose..."

"The colors may have a significance as well. I find it rather peculiar that we both share a shade of red as ours."

"It is rather odd," Uregaunt notes, frowning as he takes another look at his own gem before lowering his arm.

While cerise was being defensive she was keenly watching the others, she watched as others in the same situation as her rose from what she would describe solely as stone slabs, she allowed herself a measure of composure standing down the spell she was prepared to cast and straightening out she looked around again, taking a deep breath, she heard one of the others suggest that there was a gem in her arm which a cursory glance reported to her was incorrect. Just as before when she had checked there was nothing. The others seemed to be talking amongst themselves which she decided to use this time to move along the walls, seeing if anything had escaped her sight.
Discovering nothing along the walls, she did however notice another peculiar thing, the roof was slowly approaching the floor as if to squash them into a skipping stone. A quick scan for a way out revealed a hole in the side of the wall, “looks like this is our way out” she would say softly as she flittered towards the hole, landing just before the hole before preparing to spring out, provided that no one else found a better way out than the hole.

Curiosity prompted the humanistic contraption to make a choice.

---

"Response: A pleasure.
Statement: This Unit is unfamiliar with this laboratory.
Comment: Agreed, I shall assist on combined efforts to escape.
Statement: This Pillar is approximately five feet tall and noticeably resonant.
Inquiry: Are the walls made to keep us in or keep others out?

More philosophy. It seemed there was a theme here, but when an artificial being desires to become human, was not philosophy the natural discourse? Either way, time was of the essence, AdAM was unsure of how long it had been since his reboot. AdAM 8 required sustenance lest the spider found itself draining some unfortunate petty thief dry, which as unfortunate as it was, had the thief try to provoke or forget to feed then a hungry giant spider was a hungry giant spider. Stalking prey like AdAM 7 would before a deadly pounce, killing anyone as a quarter ton of arachnid dropped from the ceiling down to crush victims like insects. The human body could only take so much pressure before buckling, but it was a matter of force distribution rather than mass for the most part. And a well placed bolt going at the proper speed was far more subtle than a falling eight-legged anvil.

Yet it was time for AdAM, Seven not Eight, to climb down himself and mingle with possible spider food. Examining the series of tubes in momentary consideration before pulling out each line from his old and new body parts. A slight sensation tingled, something humans would call pain, as each cord left the flesh. It was unique, perhaps even enjoyable for being the first time a construct could feel pain. Warforged understood damage and required repair, but pain in itself was not a sensation readily felt. Which in itself was a blessing and a curse, as pain after all was an alarm system to pull oneself away from dangerous things. Taste, pain, what else should AdAM thank his unknown experimenters for? He would like to meet these advanced flesh grafters to see if more could be done. Ideally everything could be replaced could it not? Piece by piece by piece...

With all the restraining tubes removed, the assassin leapt from the table quite professionally with a forward flip, soaring through the dark air in single rotation before planting two feet for a gracious landing. Still not fully gaining control of his new limbs, only 97 percent mastery, with the other 3 percent being interment loss of sensation and fine motor control of distal muscles. Acceptable for now, as it seems his allies were more focused in escape the room they found themselves in rather than asking the question of why they were there to begin with. All with jewels of light embedded into their bodies and gowns, tubes and all, And speaking of gowns, AdAM had little use for his as he tore the sheet off his body, revealing the amalgam of materials organic and inorganic used to make the construct's body. There was nothing to be modest about after all, warforged did not breed, and hence lacked any genitals. Although in the future, to complete his transformation, AdAM would have to pursue a virile male perhaps one from the group if they should find themselves no longer needing to procreate?

"Objection: Do not destroy the walls, unknown structural integrity may cause catastrophic collapse.
Comment: Ample evidence suggests a pre-existing exit, I suggest we search for this alternative.
Statement: This Unit cannot interpret these writings nor identify these reagents.
Comment: I shall take these documents for future analysis.

A quick input of what AdAM thought of randomly beginning to destroy walls. But it seems the two other larger beings in the room thought nothing of using their brains before brawn. What if there were enemies outside the wall? Or deadly gas? Or fluid? Or Fire? Either way, a breach in a contained environment was ill-advised. But perhaps his motives were not entirely pure, for interest in the science and experimentation clearly being done here, a good researcher and doctor keeps notes, status and progress. A quick scan and search of the work benches yielded a few documents in Sylvan and Infernal, neither languages identified by the warforged and thus gathered neatly gathered into a stack alongside a book enwrapt with tiny newt bones forming a binding chain and an impressive adamantine lock. Something to unlock after retrieving his gear, and first finding it, hoping to have found at least a map of the facility they found themselves in.

More fruitful an investigation however was the notice of how the pillar was hollow. Yes there was something strange about the pedestal which he had laid upon moments ago. Given the material it was made of, it seemed to transmit sound with a slight reverberation. As if it was a hollow box that amplified the sound to one side, despite being visualized as having four sides, was this a possible exit? The method of which their captor had placed them all in here? The illusion of a solid mass though a curious hand attempted to touch the surface found naught but air. A crucial finding, at which was too late for the dirty genasi had forced enough of herself through in destroying one of the walls with an arbitrary designation of four. Another way out was conceived, though what dangers ahead of him and ahead of them now lay at the crucial crossing point. Do we venture into the swallowing void? And if so... Which?

"Observation: Geometric analysis of the chamber yields a rectangular volume of 37500 cubic feet.
Comment: I believe this central pillar conceals a possible entry point with detected anomalies.
Inquiry: For those of us attempting to break it, what lies beyond the fourth wall?"

Steeping through the wall unseen but perhaps not unheard by the majority of the rest, the robotic assassin found himself within the pillar faced with a choice of poisoned chalices. Not literal chalices of course, but literary chalices, of those being levers on the wall. Two down, one up. The sinister lever down, the middle path down, and the one on the right erected. There were two positions per switch, if the duality was to be trusted, giving a binary code of at eight different combinations of arrangements. There was also a possibility any one or more of the switches was a master switch or a dummy switch. And how many hours could be spent attempting to dissect the puzzle apart in the mind by playing with probability. A choice presented, a logical analysis to be done until at least until something struck him from behind. One of the tubes so carelessly tossed into the illusionary wall.

Enough thinking. Assuming each switch acted in isolation, that is the order of switches did not determine the function of the group as a whole, there was a one in two chance the switch on the right was placed in the proper position required to maintain the current conditions of the room. There was a one in two chance that each one of the other remaining switches were in the wrong position. Collectively there was a battle of halves and halves, with all sorts of statics to calculate. Yet choosing the middle lever... AdAM committed himself to finding out the mechanics of this hidden alcove. For the man behind the curtain controlled the great mystery outside did he not? Running the numbers a final time, and taking the chances on the death likelihood that the operator would create a suicide lever was rather low, with his new hand of flesh, AdAM pulled the grasped middle switch and flipped the lever up.

Try a Coin Toss,
To be gained and lost,
Tails will save your soul,
Heads will make yours roll.

Whilst the others played around and did their dumb childish acts of conversing and being nice to each other, Zana was doing something useful with his time. He had felt a breeze tickle his toes and, more importantly, his whitened beard. Strange things were afoot and he did not like it, especially when a breeze kicked up in a closed room, now that simply made no sense in the slightest. The old man gave a confused look at the wall and reached out to touch it, solid, and he knew the floor was solid for he could touch and stand on the ground. With a thorough inspection and guesstimation, he concluded but one thing, the ceiling was a farce, and where there was wind, there was a way out. Zana gave himself a pat on the back before shouting to the bumbling buffoons at his back.

”The roof is false ya’ gits!,” the gnome shouted at the top of his tiny lungs, hoping that would be enough to gain the attention of the distracted. He did not keep the information to himself purely on the basis that he wanted to get out of this place, quickly and efficiently. ”A breeze tickled me’ whiskers and I know it comes from the ceiling because the walls are true and so it the floor, thusly, the ceiling cannot exist. Where there is a breeze, there is a way out.”

Cerise spread her wings hearing one of the others mention that the roof could be an illusion and not wanting to leave anything to doubt. She brings her wings down with force generating a measure of lift beneath her greater than her own weight and releasing herself temporarily from the confines of gravity holding her small body tightly to the floor. With another thrust of her wings she shot up to 5’ looking directly at the offending object that now has her sole attention.
”I’ll verify if the roof is an illusion or not.” she said as she thrust forward strain of flying above 5’ evident on her, as if the win this high was harder for her wings to generate thrust in and harder to negate the effects of gravity though she pushed forward noticeably slower than the first 5’ she climbed towards 10’ feet. A deep inhale from the small fairy and another thrust shooting forward again. She would climb to the ceiling a small smile crossing her lips as she breathed ever so slightly heavier than she had been on the floor her lips forming the words ‘for Llira’ over and over again in a silent prayer to her deity.
The final 5’ showing more effort on her smaller frame as she approached the ceiling is it an illusion, that after all is why she was approaching it. Her wings were beginning to tire as she reached her target, reaching a hand out for confirmation…

Thanath heard a sound coming from the other room and turned around to see the floor rising in the other room. "The floor appears to be rising!" Thanath boomed "It that really happening or am I just seeing things?!".

---

You know you're in an adventuring party when someone runs off to flip a switch without telling anyone else what they're doing. The movement of the floor caught Mara off balance, and she was halfway out the hole when she heard the calls coming from behind her.

”The roof is false ya’ gits!”

Mara froze for a moment. If the roof were fake, that meant that the platform moving upwards was probably intended for something. Maybe it was a pile of treasure waiting for them, or it could be some answers to why they were there. It likely wasn't another exit, seeing as they had an easy way out directly in front of them, but Mara was also keenly aware that the others in her squad had been better at solving problems than she was. And so, despite barely knowing these potentially back-stabbing idiots who stood around in a room, she had a decision to make.

They had little reason to lie to her. Even if they for some reason already hated Mara (not uncommon with some races, it seemed), telling her to stay inside would only result in everyone dying were the roof actually real. What purpose would that serve, other than to add others to their misery? Some people were sadistic enough for that, but most would instead try to force their way past the genasi and get out first. No one seemed to be moving in her direction, and so, the genasi decided to trust her instincts.

She reached out of the hole and grabbed the other barbarian by the scruff of his neck, hauling him back inside, apparently catching him off-guard. "Git in here, ya idjit," she said as she yanked on the goliath. "No worries. The roof is fake." Mara pointed towards the ceiling before looking around at what everyone else had been doing. The fairy who had previously occupied the corner next to Mara had flown up towards the ceiling, and her hand appeared to phase through it. As soon as Mara saw this, the illusion began to fade as she could see another room above her. Mara let out a sigh of relief, thankful that she had chosen right, but still concerned with the sudden changes to the room. "Hey, if any on y'all are fiddlin' with stuff, you can cut it out at any time!" Mara called out, hoping the panic weren't evident on her voice.

"WHOA!" Thanath yelped as he was pulled back into the 1st room by Mara.
"No worries. The roof is fake" Mara told Thanath as she pointed towards the ceiling.
"Oh!" Thanath replied after looking up to see the fake ceiling. With that said, Thanath noticed the 2 slabs that were still covered. Not wanting to leave anyone behind when they left, Thanath walked over to the north slab and pulled away the cover to find an extremely pale albino man with a diamond in his chest. From what Thanath could tell, the man was close to death and the tubes still inside him weren't helping at all. "If any of you are healers, you're needed over here!" Thanath boomed as he carefully plucked the tubes out of the man.

---

As Halflight and Uregaunt conversed, the knight began to notice something... off about the floor. It began to slowly ascend, towards the ceiling. Feeling that he had angered the Golem within the pillar with throwing that tube towards him had caused the figure to make a rash decision involving everyone's deaths?

Nah. That's preposterous.

Still, though, Halflight needed to assure the safety of himself and his newfound companion.

"My Goliath friend," Halflight called towards the hole where Thanath happened to be jump into, "How much room do you have out there?!"

"It's a lot bigger out here than it is where you are!" Thanath boomed in response "Also, I may have forgotten to mention that there's a portal out here! I don't know where it goes, but do know that it's here!"

"Interesting! Also, incoming!"

Just out of nowhere, Sir Halflight swung an arm towards Uregaunt, grabbing him by his gown's collar and dragging him forward, rather roughly.

"You'll thank me for this later!"

Halflight threw the half-elf in front of him after walking a few paces forward. Before he could react further, Sir Halflight planted the flat of his foot into Uregaunt's chest, pushing him backward. Sir Halfight decided he'd investigate the illusory pillar room after he assured his ally's safety. Hopefully, he can figure out how to stop the floor from moving, and maybe make peace with a potentially angry flesh-... stone-... wood.... Whatever Golem.

...

"Wait, it's an illusion?