Miacknian Mun

In the previous episode of Strange Aeons, Catiana was badly drained by a wraith, and several oozes were fought and defeated. This week there are tentacles and people to be rescued, and we question whether we’re just a bunch of murder hobos.

After Catiana changes back to her ectoplasmic form, Erasmus is able to cure her back to health, whilst Sheena and Ray take a scout around the rest of the floor. There is a heavy iron bound door to the west, and the stench of decay coming from a room over the other side, which appears to be empty and in the processing of falling down, the floor covered in bits of ceiling.

We head towards the latter room, and Gregor flies in above the debris, and is swiped by something slimy from out of nowhere. Gregor quickly flees back out, narrowly avoiding more of the ceiling as bits of it are brought crashing down around him.

We quickly organise, with Catiana using her see invisibility and moving into the room. There, just inside the doorway, is a squirming mass of something – countless tentacles on too many stumpy legs, which seems to be the source of the stench. Whilst Catiana blocks the door and tries to punch it, Sheena darts in, and even though she can’t see it, she manages to stab it in somewhere painful. From behind Catiana, Ray tries to cast a spell at it, but it lashes out with a tentacle and stops him. Gregor though takes it down with his holy infused arrows.

Nearby is a sealed up door from behind which we can hear what sounds like praying. Knocking on the door, we get their attention, but they tell us to fuck off. We try to explain that we are here to rescue them, but they don’t believe us and want to be left alone. So Catiana sticks her head through the wall to take a quick look, then pulls it back as a group of library guards all start casting a spell at her.

We decide to leave them be. It’s not as though we can actually get them out of the library until the security systems have been reset anyway. They did look ill though, so I’m not sure how long they will last.

Going back to the iron bound doors, we knock on that and Sheena shouts through to someone behind it. It sounds like a posh Ustalav accent. After some discussion, Sheena manages to get him to open the door. There is the sound of many things being moved, plus him talking to someone else who spoke with a familiar monotone voice and seemed to be doing most of the heavy lifting.

When the door opens, there is a golem looking identical to the ones in the old infirmary in Cassomir. Beyond the golem is rather unsurprisingly the alchemist Miachnian Mun who looks rather the worse for wear. It seemed that Lowls had abandoned him, so I was hoping to be able to get information out of him.

However, completely unprovoked Sheena immediately draws her rapier and stabs him. This was unacceptable to me, and neither myself nor Catiana wanted to step in and help. The rest of the group seemed a bit uncertain about this as well, and apart from Gregor putting an arrow into the Golem Sheena is pretty much by herself. She takes down the Golem and Miachnian Mun surrenders, at which point Erasmus points him to sleep.

Sheena is a bit put out that nobody came to help her, since we knew he’d done bad things previously. I try to point out that he wasn’t actually threatening us, and though he wasn’t entirely defenceless, simply attacking him was wrong. It’s a subtle point of ethics which seems to escape Sheena.

We tie him up and are able to question him about Lowls. Mun refers to Lowls as a complete and utter cunt, which implies that they really didn’t get on towards the end. Lowls apparently has taken the book (by which I assume he means the Necronomicon) and went with it into the Dark Tapestry where THEY dwell. The Dark Tapestry is something I’ve heard mention of before – it is the dark space between worlds, where it is said it’s possible, if you go far enough, you can even visit the stars which are just like the sun but very far away.

He left Miachnian behind when the library alarms went off, and Mun has been trying to survive since then, having made his way back up here and locked himself into this room. He has seen the Elder Lythiin – or at least his corpse, though it has probably been eaten by something now. Apparently there are lots of tentacles in the floors below, as well as other creatures he doesn’t want to talk about.

Ray has a ring of sustenance that he’s currently not using, so we stick that on Mun and leave him tied up here, sealing up the room again so hopefully he will remain safe. If we can get him back to the city, then he can stand trail for any crimes that he’s committed, but until then we don’t intend to kill him unless he gives us reason to.