Oozes Don’t Read

In our previous session, we defeated the Hounds of Tindalos in the upper floor of the library, and now we head downwards as we continue our Strange Aeons game. Myself, Costian, as well as my dead sister Catiana and the rest of our party try to free the Mysterium in Katheer from whatever threat has taken it over.

With the mirror smashed, there are no more Hounds to worry us other than the unconscious one we’d left alive. So we take a breather and check out the meditation room up in the ceiling. It is a spherical chamber that is nice and peaceful, but empty of anything interesting.

Whilst we were investigating that, Sheena wandered off because she was bored, and started opening doors. She only got as far as the first room though, since from her direction there came the sound of books falling off shelves and pages rustling, then screams from her as she fled back to us. I’m not quite certain what she found, but she claimed that the books attacked her.

We finished off the final Hound, as Ray was fiddling with the last of the angel statue heads. We wanted him to wait but he found a way to open the stairs and headed down, telling us to wait for his signal. After some time the stairs closed up, and we waited some more. I was really wanting to check out the other rooms on this floor, just in case there was something else hiding here and I didn’t really want to have it behind us.

After a couple of minutes we decided to open the stairs ourselves, just in time for Ray to come charging back up yelling something about magical traps and oozes. After a short while, the door closes again and it’s agreed we will check behind the doors after all.

Catiana goes around all of them, having a quick check inside to make sure there is nothing nasty or no-one needing our help. The rooms are mostly study rooms though, and empty. There is a hidden room full of clutter – but Catiana decided she wasn’t interested in looking through it, so left it alone. I did think of checking it myself, but she seemed to not want to disturb things since they weren’t ours, and the actual owners of the place weren’t doing us any harm.

After all that, we opened the stairs again and headed down. The stairs came out at a cross roads of passages filled with books, and as we decided what to do something reached out of the wall and touched me with utterly cold, grasping fingers – a wraith. It darted back into the wall before we could do anything, leaving us watching warily in case it came out again.

It darted across the corridor, and I tried to destroy its spirit, but it vanished into another wall before I could kill it. Catiana went incorporeal and darted after it, both of them vanishing from sight.

There are cries of Iä! Iä! Iä! and two tentacular masses of reeking protoplasm oozed around the corner, heading directly for us. Sheena and Gregor try to fight them off, though Ray seems to be unable to do anything against them. I felt my sister take control of my life force – and I felt her pain as she and the wraith fought it out in the walls of the library.

The protoplasmic oozes seem resistant to most weapons, but eventually they go down, and Catiana falls back out of the walls to try and allow Erasmus to heal her. He’s unable to reach her incorporeal form with a spell, but manages to channel healing energy at her. In her weakened state, the wraith having drained most of her health away, she desperately needed that, and it was just enough for her to be able to drive the thing off.

It fled from the library walls, and Gregor and Ray slay it as it tried to race across the corridor. My sister Catiana is not feeling great, but the obvious threats are defeated.

Iä! Iä! Iä!