World Tree MUSH

    It's back at The Gaping Maw and the tavern is in full swing tonight. Lether has another flagon to hydrate herself from, sipping now and again.
    She's not wearing her leather armor today, but is actually back in her old set of overalls and an oversized shirt.
    "Where we're going... You don't wanna wear anything nice." She points out.
    She will give the others a chance to change into more expendable clothes if they have them. Because once the party is assembled she finishes her drink and leads out onto the streets of Anchordeep; the cosmopolitan city is a mix of magic and tech, absolutely massive, sporting docks for sea ships and space vessels alike annnnnnnnd...
    Lether leads into an out of the way alley, crouching by a manhole.
    She has a crowbar in her hand.

    "I... didn't bring anything other than my usual," Hyouka admits. Granted, her usual isn't super expensive; it's not far above 'particularly snazzy jogging outfit'. But it's nice enough that she briefly looks a little grim about what might be about to happen. "It's fine, Hyouka," DARGN says. "You have more than enough on hand to replace them. ...again."

    Siiiiigh.

    Ignoring the sinking feeling as her worst fears are confirmed, Hyouka crouches down next to the manhole. "You need help? I'm a cyborg, I could throw that thing like a frisbee."

Neviah went with a pair of jeans, a checkered blouse and a slightly oversized black coat that looks like it's been hanging in someone's closet untouched for a year or two. It's not her usual, but Lether did say to dress like crap.

Into the streets they go. Quietly taking mental notes on buildings they pass, the professor begins to formulate an idea. It's pushed to the back, though, as Lether leads the way down a back alley and to...

...a manhole.

"Bollocks," Neviah mutters as she reaches into her pocket and comes out with a clothespin. She clamps it to her nose in grim anticipation.

"That's our infil? Oh yeah that's just fantastic." Jo kept her voice low and quiet, glancing between the assembled party as she shifted the pack on her back slightly and checked the straps, her carbine giving a slight rattle as she did. As per the gator's advice, she wasn't wearing anything she couldn't throw out. An old pair of jeans paired with a shirt, jacket and rigging that had seen equally far too many trips around the sun. 

 This would have been bad enough if she just had a regular human nose, let alone the far more powerful Jolteon snoot. "Regretting this already. How far are we going to have to go through here?"

    That would be the infil point. Lether drums her fingers on the crowbar as she skulks over the manhole, keeping a weather eye out for the Guard. When it looks like the coast is clear she simply shakes her head to Hyouka, pops the manhole lid and slides it aside with a small grunt of effort. She's not exactly strong enough to frisbee it for forever, but she's not exactly all that weak either!
    No words. She simply drops down into the darkness below.
    Once the others have joined her down the ladder well...
    It's dark. Pitch black aside from the ray of sunlight pouring in from the open hole.
    Lether suddenly turns on a flashlight under her chin.
    "Boo." She whispers dryly.
    THIS part of the sewers is for drainage and storms so it smells more like mildew and wet rather than... Badness.
    But then Lether shines the light on a yellow symbol scrawled on the wall in yellow chalk.
    "Follow the yellow signs in the sewers." She mutters, repeating the words of the rather chatty kenku she terrorized back at the warehouse the other night.
    She shrugs to Joanna. She doesn't know how FAR they go, just to follow the symbols.
    Well after about an hour of following them the drainage gutters and pipes give way to an older stone brick wall part of the sewer that. Um.
    It reeks. Badly.
    I grew up in these sewers." Lether whispers. "Welcome to my humble home. Mi casa es su casa." She mutters sourly, keeping her voice down.
    Once the party comes to a three-way intersection where a ladder leads up into a stone shaft capped by a circular metal cover. One of the familiar chalk symbols is marked on a wall nearby, and floating near the symbol is a spherical, grapefruit-sized creature with a bulging central eye and four stumpy eyestalks. It bares its teeth with a hiss.

Neviah has had some shitty days in her life. This is about to be one of them. Doooown the ladder she goes, into the putrid dark.

On comes the light, and Neviah jumps slightly and sucks in a breath. "Mlast," she mutters to herself through the clothespin, but cuts off before she can say anything else.

On they prowl. By the time they've gotten about ten minutes in, Neviah has torn her shirt at about rib-level and wound the remains of the lower half around her mouth and nose like a makeshift air filter. The clothespin is not helping /that/ much.

Eventually, they reach someplace even more putrid. As Lether welcomes them all to her home, Neviah bites down to her lip behind her makeshift air filter. "Mwe gan do bedder my you, I thig," she murmurs. The layer of clothing and the nose-pinching pin are doing her legibility no favours.

Soon enough, something hissy is waiting for them. With a sigh, Neviah holds a hand up and flicks her wrist. There's a shimmer in the air as a large, glowing warhammer materializes, seemingly composed of pure magic.

The warhammer attempts to bop the grapefruit critter on what passes for a head. "Shoo," Neviah hisses.

    "Gwuh-?!"

    Hyouka is more than happy to take the lead, given her natural durability. But while she is superhumanly strong, fast, tough, and her senses are supernaturally dark, she does not have light amplification or infrared vision built in. So Lether is actually able to startle her a little. "O-oi, don't scare me like that. I can crack concrete, I'd really rather not hurt you by mistake."

    An hour of sewer walking is not fun in the least, but at least it's mildewy and not poopy, right? "That's..." Hyouka trails off, frowning faintly. That's awful to hear. But it's a little late to help. Instead, she focuses on- "Is that a Beholder?" DARGN chimes in, sounding mildly surprised.

    Hyouka just lifts her arms up, and wordlessly deploys both FISTEAU units, each glowing with the steady flow of fire mana. She doesn't add anything verbal to Neviah's bonk, but the implied threat is obvious.

Jo checked her weapon, the click-clack of a 5.56 round being chambered echoing off the tunnel a little more than she would have liked. It wasn't particularly loud, not really anyway, but her ears still flattened at the noise all the same. "Can't be too careful. So-" she started, her voice similarly lowered as she gave a quick look to her suppressor and made sure it was in fact properly attached "-yellow signs. Got it." 

 The stench was like a wall of rot slamming Joanna in the face; so much so that she could almost feel her eyes burn. Unfortunately with her muzzle and snoot she didn't have as easier a time improvising a mask against it. Truth be told, she had encountered worse, though this was probably still reaching far into the top ten. 

 That Unovan Intelligence Agency burn pit was probably still number one. God only knows what that was. 

 For all she knew it was something like that floating hissing critter. Joanna shouldered her carbine, though held off on firing just yet, ready to squeeze off a burst should it get any funny ideas beyond just making horrible noises.

    Lether already has a shortsword in one hand and a dagger in the other as she creeps through the sewers. Thankfully for the others there is a platform to walk on on either side of a river of...
    You don't want to know what that's a river of.
    Neviah summons a Spiritual Weapon and the magical warhammer kind of... Well it splatters the little Gazer, rendering it a moot point beyond a strangled screech as its head goes splat and its little eyestalks twitch against the door it had been guarding.
    "What the hell was that?" Lether mutters while everyone groups up.
    Poor Jo probably had it the worst down here with her keen sense of smell. But the pokemorph's ears might juuuuust catch the soft whisper of a bow string being pulled taut.
    That's the only warning the group gets when arrows start to fly from two slats in the nearby walls on either side of the putrid river.
    "Gah!" Lether snaps as an arrow grazes her shoulder, tearing her shirt but only nicking her rough scaly hide in a graze. Another is aimed for Neviah and then the archers on either side of the thin slats gear up for another set of shots, aimed for Hyouka and Joanna before Lether shoves open the door to get herself some cover.
    

"Gazer," Neviah mentions through her mixture of muffling. "Brobuhly a sendry."

The Spiritual Weapon vanishes just as quickly as it appeared. None the wiser, Neviah seems like she's about to continue onward, until --

Arrows start flying. Neviah gasps as one of them stings her, tearing across her bicep and leaving a bloody cut behind before glancing away and ricocheting off the wall. With a hiss, she instinctively throws off her jacket and whips it towards the arrow slat, trying to buy the group a few seconds while she backs off after Lether.

As she does, she reaches awkwardly into her pouch of spell components and fishes something out. She utters a few words of power and makes a couple of gestures, letting the spell go. A blooming cloud of fog billows out over the water, expanding to obscure the shooting angles for where she's fairly sure the archers are shooting from.

Joanna already had her weapon raised and readied, shouting out a warning to the party as she did her best to duck out of the direct line of fire. Her ears had given her enough advanced warning, an arrow whipping centimetres past them as the *KRAK-KRAKKRAKKRAK* of her carbine rang out in reply. She focused first on the arrowslits further from her, fairly certain that although awkward they could probably still send an arrow her way, then she turned the muzzle on the closer one, pointing the barrel at direct head-height to any would be archer before pulling the trigger while being careful not to expose herself in the process. 

 Suppressed as the weapon was, it was no hollywood silencer, its report still more than loud enough to get Joanna's ears ringing. Still, it was a damn sight quieter than if she had tried to throw her more innate lightning at the problem.

    The gazer is no longer a problem but the arrows certainly are.
    The arrow slits in the wall make getting return fire back at the archers... A difficult endeavor, but the loud noise of the even suppressed carbine does seem to startle the archers enough to make an opening in the withering arrow hail. It's a good thing Neviah summoned that fog cloud, which makes things even more difficult for the archers as the fog blooms into the corridor Lether darted into.
    Which is a good thing.
    There's another arrow slit at the opposite end of the hall but the fog means the archers can't see Lether to shoot her or anyone that follows after her.
    The door at the end of the hall isn't locked and opens to a room to the south full of rusted weapons in a shoddy excuse for an armory, and a path to the north, where a goblin archer is scurrying away as fast as he can.
    Lether hurls a dagger.
    With a meathy WHUNK the blade embeds in the goblin's back and with a wheeze of death it collapses to the floor where a red puddle starts forming beneath it.
    That problem is solved.
    The hall swerves to the east and eventually after a short distance opens into a wider room containing six tattered mattresses where a dark-skinned and dark bearded dwarf is busy trying to barricade the northeast leading door.
    Beside him is a man in all black leather armor who sighs.
    "Mate, you ain't doin' it right." The man says. "Y'gotta plug the gap at the bottom of the door wif some blankets."
    There's a door to the southeast that they aren't attending and they haven't seemed to notice the commotion yet.

Neviah takes advantage of the fog cloud to duck behind the cover of a corner. She grimaces and checks the cut on her arm. It's weeping blood down her bicep, but not in a great quantity - a graze, stinging annoyingly, but not enough to disable or debilitate her. She momentarily debates just healing it and moving on.

A thought brings her up short: She'd rather not ask more from Zehir than she has to right now.

The problem, in any case, is solved, and Neviah emerges from shelter to continue on towards the next room. Leaning in a little, she catches sight of the two goons plugging one of the doors up. She blinks once, then twice, before pausing and shaking her head. With care, she begins to slink into the room, hugging the wall as she tries to get to the southeastern door without being heard.

    In they come to a room where a pair of goons are, apparently, obliviously trying to barricade their bedroom. They're completely unaware, and for a moment, Hyouka considers Neviah's decidedly wise choice of being completely quiet. But she's never been terribly good at stealth, not unless everyone is distra...

    ...distracted...

    Hyouka looks at Neviah. She presses a finger over her own lips in a silent 'stay quiet' gesture. And then she marches over towards one of the mattresses as if she belongs.

    Only once Hyouka has picked up one of those ratty old mattresses does the cyborg speak up. "No, no, the blankets won't do anything, we need mass. Have to keep them out as long as we can. Here, get this one into place, I'll get the rest." She's going to hand the mattress off to the pair of goons, then walk back towards one of the other mattresses. However, she's very carefully watching the duo for that moment where they finally realize something is amiss.

>> SUMMARY[Hyouka Kiyama] >> Hyouka goes full Looney Tunes.

Jo sent a couple more rounds downrange towards the second arrowslit before backing off into the corridor, following the rest. The fog did just as good a job at concealing the target to her as it did her to the archers sure enough, but as long as it made them keep their heads down that was more than good enough for her. 

 She advanced slowly, cautiously checking any corners. Last thing she wanted was something to be jumping out of the shadows at them. She was about to shoot first and ask questions later when she spotted the man in black armour and the dwarf, but then paused. 

 Hyouka had her finger to her lips. 

 Joanna's head tilted slightly, a reflex left over from the base Jolteon species she was engineered from brought to the surface as she tried to figure out just what she was planning.

    Neviah starts sneaking towards the southeast door, that's all well and good while the two are busy with trying to seal up the door to the northeast.
    Hyouka... Seems to have a plan, as she hands off the mattress, the two men take it and shove it against the door only to pause.
    "Hold up a tic..." The man in black says as realization dawns. "You were at the bar when the troll--..."
    By the time that realization does dawn, it's probably too late.
    But they drop the mattress and reach for their weapons. The dwarf has a sawn off shotgun while the man in black reaches for a longsword.
    They're prettymuch at Hyouka's mercy. Ho boy.

Be vewy, vewy quiet. Neviah catches the raised finger and does indeed hush up.

Just as one of the men turns, Neviah blinks in sudden recognition. She opens her mouth to say something but never gets the chance - everyone's reaching for weapons. So does she, reaching for her rifle.

She won't get to it before Hyouka has a chance to do... Hyouka things.

    Hyouka is not anything resembling a schemer, to be sure. But she is, at least, pretty intelligent at a basic level. So, naturally, she clocks the dwarf first, just swinging a superhuman haymaker before he can make that shotgun anything resembling a problem.

    Then she gives the man in black entirely too broad of a smile. "Still want that bar fight?"

    She doesn't wait for an answer.

Joanna wasn't going to give them a chance to reach for weapons. With hers already in hand she sighted in on the armoured man first, firing off two shots center mass, and another one slightly upwards to hit him in the head if those somehow didn't suffice in putting him down. She would have done the same for the dwarf too, but with Hyouka moving in to punch the shorter shotgun toting fella she didn't want to risk hitting her. 

 Instead she moved off to the side. She didn't find too much in the way of cover here, especially not something that would stop a twelve gauge at such close quarters, but she was at least hoping she could get a better angle!

    It goes about as well for these two as would be expected. The duergar goes for his shotgun only to get punched clean through the door to the northeast with a squawk of dismay. The man in black leathers takes two shots center mass with a curse and goes down. Leather armor isn't exactly going to stop two bullets and the third shot domes him, so the criminal won't be getting up.
    Considering the door to the northeast has a gray ooze with the skeletal remains of several goblins floating in it and it's already slimily slinking towards the dwarf someone may want to pull him out of there. Or they can just leave him. It's no skin off Lether's teeth.
    So onto the southeast.
    Another hall leads into a much larger chamber, Threadbare curtains hang on the east wall of a long hall, in the middle of which a muscular half-orc in dingy robes stands with his foot on the chest of a male human with wavy red-blond hair. Fire burns around the orc's clenched fist, and his victim cries and squirms helplessly beneath him. Seated on a raised platform to the south is a nightmarish figure wearing black robes. It has large white eyes and rubbery purple skin, with four tentacles encircling its inhuman mouth. It cradles and gently caresses what looks like a disembodied brain with feet.
    That's disgusting.
    "That's disgusting." Lether says under her breath.

Aaaaand there goes the fight. "That went about how I expected," Neviah concedes, folding her arms across her midsection.

She's close enough to the southeastern door that she's probably close enough to push it open first. Rifle in hand, she prowls her way down the hallway until they reach the mouth of that much larger chamber. The professor leans past the door with purses lips, taking stock of what there is to be seen in there.

Oh, there are things to be seen, alright. Suppressing a stab of revulsion, Neviah withdraws back into the corridor and looks over her shoulder. "Mind flayer," she whispers. "And a half-orc. The mind flayer is more dangerous." Turning back, she begins to prepare a spell, but a thought soon occurs to her - a sibilant, poisonous thought that comes from somewhere else.

                you are weak. delicate.

Neviah cringes a little and lets the idea of a spell drop in favour of hoisting her rifle. Lining up a shot, she squints down the barrel, then fires, attempting to put the round square in the middle of the mind flayer's head.

    Fortunately, it doesn't take much time for Hyouka to drag the dwarf to safety. She does give the sap from the bar a bit of a grimace as she passes by, though. Three shots, jeez.

    The faux elf also catches up quickly enough, falling into step behind Neviah and moving with a quick step. When the woman leans out to scout, Hyouka waits quietly, listening for the verdict. "I see. What exactly is-" However, DARGN cuts across, her voice tense, unusually hostile. "Kill it, Hyouka. It's an abomination. Don't assume the bullet will be enough."

    Hyouka is caught enough by surprise that she starts moving without any further argument. Past Neviah and out the door, deploying the FISTEAU and flooding both units with fire mana on the way. With her speed, she can cross the distance in half a heartbeat, and she's going to start swinging superhuman fire-imbued punches as soon as she's in reach, even if it looks like Neviah's shot did the job.

>> SUMMARY[Hyouka Kiyama] >> DARGN has a very rare moment of telling Hyouka what to do. Specifically: 'Punch the mind flayer until it stops moving'.

Joanna briefly weighed putting a bullet through the downed dwarf's head too, just to make sure, though the gigantic slime creature seemed dead set on making that call for her. 

 No war crimes today. 

 Probably. 

 Jo hadn't read any of Lovecraft's works, truth be told she wasn't really a big reader, though even she was fairly certain that this creature was probably lifted from one of them somewhere. Her instincts were telling her to shoot the 'squid head', but, then she noticed the half-orc. He had a hostage, but standing there like that made for a fairly clear shot. 

 She tried to do the exact same that she dealt the man in black armour, two quick shots centre mass, one to the dome if they didn't do the job. 

 KRAKKRAK-CLICK. 

 Her gun ran dry, clicking empty after the first two shots. 

 Cursing under her breath, she reached for a new magazine, her focus now shifting to the mindflayer!

    And the team opens hostilities. This is all well and good; Mindflayers are no joke and Neviah takes an opening shot. The report of her rifle echoes through the chamber and Hyouka rushes in at the behest of DARGN to finish the job.
    The illithid rises from his seat and makes a snarling gurgling noise of pain and rage as the initial opening shot grazes his skull; the brain with legs leaps out of his hands...
    And the Intellect Devourer lunges at Hyouka to protect its master, claws flailing before it emits a psionic screech, an assault on the very brain and senses as it tries to stun the cyborg.
    Joanna takes aim and fires at the half-orc who jerks, one shot slamming him in the gut before he manages to raise a hand and summon a magical shield that causes the second shot to spang off and ricochet away.
    He's hurt bad though and collapses to his knees, taken out of the fight. And that's when a dagger is flung from the shadows, skewering the Intellect Devourer.
    The Mindflayer now without its pet and with Hyouka bearing down on it moves to try and get to the next room. That's when the illithid tries to stun the party with a psionic blast to cover its escape.

That's not something Neviah was expecting. As the brain jumps at Hyouka, it occurs to her in a flash that she may know a lot about the creatures of Faerun, but she doesn't know /everything./ "Look out!" she exclaims.

It might be too late. Lether, at least, is there to deal with it. Grimacing, Neviah rolls out past the doorway and brings her rifle to bear on the mindflayer - but as she does, the creature unleashes the attack she was afraid of. Raising her arms to block wouldn't do any good.

Psychic pain screams through Neviah's cerebellum. She squeezes her eyes closed and clenches her teeth, instinctively bracing herself, but her mind is already working to make sense of the wildly fluctuating sensory input roiling through her awareness. She's fairly sure for a moment that she can hear colour and see smells - but through it all, she retains enough awareness to focus on a spot in the air in front of her. It is a spot that looks suspiciously like a mind flayer's head, which she's training her rifle on near-automatically.

The bark of a firearm echoes from the room's walls, jolting Neviah out of the wave of psychic pain as she attempts to put another shot in the illithid's skull.

    Hyouka staggers a bit under the rippling psionic screech, but manages to keep going. She's about to swing a counterattack when a thrown dagger takes it out of the fight, so instead she just nods in the general direction she thinks Lether probably is, and then continues right onward.

    But before the woman can get in arm's reach of her target, the Mindflayer unleashes a Mind Blast. It catches her directly, and she's completely unprepared for it, resulting in the cyborg stumbling mid-run and falling to the ground, skidding to a stop with her momentum. "Gugh-!" Immediately, DARGN is trying to rouse her from her stupor, voice urgent. "Hyouka! Hyouka, focus. You need to focus, get on your feet."

Joanna could hear the mindflayer, the invasion into her head screeching and buzzing like a swarm of unnatural insects tearing at the walls of her mind. 

 Training took over. 

 Jo went through the movements she had drilled thousands of times over. Empty mag ejected, it hadn't even hit the floor by the time she was pulling out a second, and hadn't yet even come to a full rest before she was racking the charging handle. 

 Her head screamed at her, the screeching intensifying further and further yet the Jolteon's focus remained. 

 She shouldered her weapon, sighted in on the Illithid's odd aquatic looking head, and squeezed down the trigger, her lips curled back into a snarl and muzzleflash glinting off of her rather pointy pearly whites. 

 Presuming the creature was finally down, she paused, stared at it, then with nothing better coming to mind and still catching her breath... 

 "Fuck you, squidward!"

    With the Intellect Devourer dead the Mindflayer is really trying to escape this fight. The half-orc is on his knees trying to crawl away...
    The Illithid does not get far. While DARGN has Hyouka doing her best to get back on her feet, Lether is staggering and trying to pull the cyborg back up and out of range of further reprisal while wiping blood from her own nose.
    But... Joanna and Neviah rally through the psychic onslaught.
    It's good that they do as they bring their weapons to bear. Two rounds neatly impact the illithid's skull at almost the same moment, splattering its purple head like a ripe pumpkin as its body collapses to the floor, tentacles twitching with the last vestiges of life.
    That just leaves the orc and his prisoner. 
    Lether has a dagger in her hand, ready to throw but the orc wizard raises a hand in defeat.
    "Fuck me..." He chokes. "Take the blighter, he's not even the man I wanted..."
    Yeah he learned that too late.
    Lether looks to Neviah and Jo.
    They have guns.
    "Hey so. It ain't a war crime if it ain't war time." She points out sagaciously in her own way of saying 'I am fine if we off this orc'.

Neviah gives her head a vigorous shake, clearing it of the last vestiges of the illithid's spell. Her ears still ring with psychic aftereffect. Wincing, she makes her way forward, feeding another bullet into her rifle.

The half-orc is the only one left, and he's raising his hands in defeat. Neviah glances down at Floon, then over at Lether, then back at Hyouka and Joanna.

She scowls and raises her rifle, butt to her shoulder. "Fuck you is right," she says flatly before squeezing the trigger. She's attempting to put the bullet squarely between his eyes from virtually point-blank range.

It's not the condition of Floon that's put her in this mood. Behind her consciousness, something venomous watches with anticipation - and as she pulls the trigger, contentment.

Joanna kept her carbine trained on the orc, one ear flicking towards Lether. "Technically there are still rules but-" The shot rang out before Jo could finish that comment on the letter of the law. She blinked a couple times, slowly lowering her weapon. "-well. There goes any chance of getting any information out of him." 

 Truth be told, Jo wasn't exactly the type to let this guy just walk either, he was clearly a magic user and throughout her time on the tree she'd learned pretty quick that you can't exactly disarm them too easily, at least without taking that word more literally. "Well, we got what we came here for, right? This the guy?"

    Hyouka is scrambled enough that by the time she's getting back to her feet, Neviah is already pulling the trigger, and by the time the magitech cyborg can actually parse the situation, it's pretty much all settled, so there's not much about it all she can see but the aftermath. She looks between Neviah, Lether, and Joanna, then the dead half-orc and the equally dead mindflayer, and the net result is that she gives the squid-head a deep scowl. "Good. That was awful." DARGN offers a dry, "There's a reason I told you to end it. That isn't even the worst part about those things."

    With the half-orc dead, Lether blinks as she looks at Joanna. Sideways.
    It's a nictitating membrane; a feature of crocodilians (and some birds) to protect their eyes when underwater.
    "We already know a fair bit." She points out. "We'll fill you in on the way out." She shrugs before prodding the dead Mindflayer.
    "So what was that thing, anyway?"
    Floon is barely conscious, bloody, tortured and unhappy about it. But he'll live, so it's just a matter of getting him back on his feet and out of the sewers- which is much easier after the group discovers a secret path in the hideout that leads into the cellar of a shop on the Dock Ward.
    Behind the Mindflayer's throne is an unlocked chest with TWO potions of healing, and coinage worth about 26 gold.
    Might be best to let Floon have those potions on the way back to the tavern.

    ... Some time later ...

    BACK at said tavern and probably after everyone has had a good bath, a VERY grateful Volo sits down at the group's table.
    "I confess that I have but few coins to spare. But never let it be said that Volo reneges on a promise. Allow me to present something much more valuable." He holds out a scroll tube. "The deed to a remarkable property here in Waterdeep! We'll need a magistrate to witness the transfer of ownership. I'll arrange a meeting with one after you've inspected the estate and deemed it satisfactory."
    Lether stares at him.
    "... You're giving us a house?"

"They do, in fact, extract your brain," Neviah tosses in with a nod. "Better to kill them and be done with it."

She leaves the potions to Floon and does her best to provide a little healing in her own right. Floon's taken a lot of damage, of course, and she does what she can to deal with it through the tools available to a cleric. This time, at least, Zehir seems to let her good intentions pass without comment.

Soon enough, they're back at the tavern. Neviah took the opportunity to throw herself at the nearest bath and change into her flashier half-armour-half-capelet ensemble, flashy or not. Volo, after all, has something for them.

"A house?" she echoes with a quick blink.

Then she pauses - and she snaps her fingers. "I /knew/ it! Then this city /was/ Waterdeep! The Crown of the North, once one of the mightiest cities in all Faerun!"

Joanna was all too happy getting the chance to change and wash all the gunk out of her fur. She wasn't too sure what to do with that outfit either, she figured burning it would probably be the best course of action. She took a little longer to rejoin the party and sit down tankard of something beer-y in hand, her fuzz still somewhat floofed up. She looked over the scroll giving it a bit of a side-eye as she took a looooong and in her mind very well deserved sip. 

 "No money, but, an entire house. What's the catch here?"

    Hyouka sits with a large mug of ale, absently swirling it as she listens. There's a glance between Lether, Neviah and Joanna, and then back at Volo. "I'm with them, this sounds..."

    DARGN speaks up, her tone dry. "Even if it's haunted, halfway to condemned, or a health hazard, you can at least raze the structure and sell the land. I would recommend taking it."

    Volo looks ready to sweat under the scrutiny, but it's Lether who snatches the scroll tube.
    "... Never had a house before." She mutters before looking to Neviah.
    TThat deduction makes sense considering the paintings previously found, so she just blinks sideways at that. It's a revelation the former professor can write about in a peer reviewed paper that--
    Wait. She gave up that life to serve Zehir. Whoops.
    Volo raises a finger though, "It's not quite a health hazard nor condemned but Trollskull Manor is a bit of a fix up case at the moment."
    "Ah." Lether says. "So it's haunted."
    "--And it does have a slight poltergeist problem." Volo does admit.
    "What my buddy Volo means is," Says a recovering Floon with a smarmy grin, "That he's working on getting royalties for his new book, 'Volo's Guide to Monsters' and he's paying with the house-- and the fee to have the estate transferred over to y'all."

Whoops.

Neviah presses her lips together and gives Lether a look, then nods firmly. "We'll inspect it," she assures. "Lether, I'll come along. If we can deal with the poltergeist issue, perhaps there will be enough of a house there that it can be fixed up. Besides, you deserve a good place to live."

"Well-" Joanna took another, definitely *much* needed sip. She'd actually made it a goal relatively recently to give the alcohol up, but, crawling through a sewer and shooting a brain eating squidward were more than mitigating circumstances enough to give in to old habits again. She'd have probably lit up a cig too, if she wasn't unsure about what the policy was here in regards to smoking indoors. 

 Best not to risk getting thrown out. 

 "So the thing going bump in the night is either the building rotting through or a ghost. Sure." 

 Another sip. 

 "You know what, I've seen worse. I can probably make myself at least somewhat useful if you want a hand fixing it up."

    Durnan doesn't seem to have issue with people smoking in the Maw. But now it's Lether's turn to take a sip from her flagon as she stares Volo down with a look that says 'I still might eat you, old man'.
    Vlolo however puts on a winsome smile.
    "I purchased the house in my bid to start my next book, 'Volo's Guide to Spirits and Spectres'." He admits. "... It's mainly about the alcoholic variety of spirits."
    "... So you bought a haunted house to write a book about booze." Lether croaks.
    A sweating Volo laughs her off, "Now now, I'm sure you'll all find a way to deal with the poltergeist. Ahah hah~. ... But yes I will pay the Estate Transfer Tax as well. So the house is as good as yours."
    "Cool." Lether says, now that she is landed gentry. She looks to the others.
    "I want to make it into an indoor movie theater."
    That's not going to happen.