Empirical Gnollage: Installment 104 [https://squirrel.dogphilosophy.net/Installment104.png]
Al stood in the middle of the unfamiliar burning room. He wondered why he felt unconcerned as the unnaturally deep-red flames devoured the rest of the room's contents. He couldn't tell what those contents actually were through the sulfur-scented smoke, but he didn't feel much interest in finding out. This is fine, he thought to himself.
The smoke wasn't actually pleasant but Al noted that it didn't seem to irritate his throat or make him cough. He inhaled deeply through his nose, picking out a few of the more subtle scents under the sulfur. Al smelled burning tallow, meat, and hair, but also wormwood and spices.
A quiet but quick and continuous scratching sound as of a small animal's claws scratching at a door to be let out - or in - reached Al's ears. The smoke parted, and a charred door made from a single wide piece of wood came into view. It was loose, and the persistent scritch-scratch-scritch-scratch of something pawing at it from the other side made it jiggle and thump against the frame.
The thumping was still there as Al awoke, realizing it was someone knocking on their door. Al heard Bote hop down from their cot and walk to open the door.
"Stephen asked me to wake you. It's nearly sunrise, and I am to remind you that the surveyors are leaving an hour after sunrise," the staff-member outside declared in politely quiet tones so as not to awaken anyone that didn't want to be awake yet.
Out of curiousity, Al rolled onto his side and looked down over the edge of his mattress. He saw Gruntle's head just barely poking out from underneath, watching the doorway intently.
"Thank you," Bote replied to their visitor, "I shall ensure we are ready to accompany them at the appointed time. Can you inform us as to where we should be meeting them?"
"They should be gathering at the southern gate," the helpful staff-member answered. He bid them a good day, and headed off to whatever his next chore was.
"If we want to eat before we leave, we should probably start getting ready," Al said, yawning and stretching. "Hopefully this won't be quite as dramatic of a visit to the Lavatio as the last one, but I'm going to take a few minutes to meditate and prepare for anything dangerous that might happen. There's a big bonus riding on none of the work-crew getting hurt."
Some intensive meditation on arcane notes, a selection of meats-on-sticks bought by Wikwocket and Gruntle from a happy food-vendor, some application of bloodsucker-repellant ointment, and some loaded packs later, they were out of the building and on their way to the southern gate. The locals were up and about getting ready for their days, along with a few early-rising visitors as the morning sun burned off the fog that had risen during the night.
More than half a dozen people were gathered by the gate, preparing for the expedition to leave as the adventurers arrived. Four wore the well-polished armor of Hell's Bathtub's guards, along with sheathed short swords. They each carried a spear. One of them was the woman with the crested helmet who seemed to be in charge as she spoke to the other three. A trio composed of two humans and a dwarf wore similar suits of sturdy cloth and soft leather work-clothes and carried a selection of measurement tools. A priestess of Balnea Infernala also waited patiently in golden-yellow robes marked with narrow black trim and a black embroidered symbol that suggested steam rising from a rectangular bath. A slender woman with slightly pointed ears that suggested some recent elven ancestry rounded out the small crowd, wearing the same neat clothing of the staff inside the main Hell's Bathtub facility.
"Oh, good, you made it," said the guard with the crested helmet, looking up at the sound of the approaching adventurers. "Larry, Shelly, you two are with the expedition. Fred will watch the gate."
"But...," Larry the guard began to object, but relented at the stern gaze of his superior. "Yes, ma'am."
"Good, now, everybody, I'm sure you've been told about where you're going and why, so you can probably guess that these are the adventurers that scouted the place for us. Let's see, that's Al, Wikwocket, Bote, and Gruntle," she announced, pointing them out, and then turned to introduce the survey crew. "That's Larry, who I know you've met before, and Shelly, they'll be going along for backup, and that's Heinz, Helen, and Gerald who will be doing that actual surveying, that's Livia who we're bringing because your notes said to bring someone who can speak elvish, and this is Rachel, priestess of our holy Balnea Infernala who will be preparing for the consecration of the Lavatio. Are there any questions?"
Oh, she's good, Al thought to himself, Very efficient.
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"No, ma'am!" he said, reflexively standing to attention.
Gruntle grunted. Al turned to look up at the gnoll.
"There are questions?" he interpreted, getting another grunt of agreement in answer, but nothing else as Gruntle stood there taking no notice of everyone watching him. Al sighed.
"What question do you have?" he asked.
"We hunting?" Gruntle asked back, startling a few of the assembled crew who hadn't expected him to be able to talk.
"If something threatens these people we'll take care of it, if that's what you mean."
"Hunting," Gruntle agreed, and took off his pack. He set it down on the ground, opened it, and reached inside.
Al hastened to intervene when he saw Gruntle pull out the bottle of pink Blütenblattgeruch. "No, no, no, that won't be necessary!"
"Good for hunting," Gruntle insisted, giving Al an uncomfortably direct stare. "Hides scent."
Al forced himself to stare back. "I will apply it, then, so you get the right amount," he said after a moment. The gnoll accepted this with a grunt and held the bottle out. Al took it and tried to ignore the disbelieving chuckles from the survey crew as he opened an arcane gateway to the quasi-elemental plane of flowers - or at least that's what removing the cap on the bottle smelled like - and reached up to very carefully rub a small drop of the extremely concentrated perfume behind the gnoll's ears and down his spine. Even that amount made for a strong scent, but at least he smelled like someone wearing mildly strong perfume instead of being a violent olfactory assault. Al capped the bottle as tightly as he could and handed it back to the gnoll. Gruntle sniffed a few times, grunted, and put the bottle back in his pack.
"Any other questions?" asked the guard in the crested helmet as she suppressed a smirk. Nobody spoke up, so she nodded to Fred to unlock and open the gate, and the expedition got properly underway.
Al suggested that Gruntle lead, offering that he'd be in position to do the killing if something showed up to threaten everyone. Wikwocket joined him, clambering up to sit on top of Gruntle's pack. Al and Bote took up the rear of the group. Al felt some sympathy for poor Larry, so he said nothing when he saw the guard surreptitiously take out a polished metal mirror to check for the adventurer's reflections.
"Actually," Heinz, the dwarven surveyor, finally asked after they'd walked for a while, "I did have a question. Will he stay like that the whole time?" He pointed to the floral-scented gnoll walking at the front, watching and listening hopefully for anything that might need violence applied to it.
"I would hope so," Al answered. "I'm not sure he'd be as good in a fight if he didn't."
"Oh? Do you think we may be in danger? We were told you had eliminated dangerous creatures from the ruins."
"We did, but there's no door or gate to keep things out, so something could have gotten in since we left. We could also run into something from the swamp on the way. I hope not, but we wanted to come along just in case."
The rest of the expedition began to warm up to the adventurers as Al described for them what they'd found inside the Lavatio - minus the zombie-making undead spider. Al's description of Cleodora caused some concern, though.
"You understand that the divine goddess is unlikely to abide the restless dead profaning her holy domain," Rachel, the priestess, reminded them.
"If it is the fate willed by the divine that Cleodora's soul must move on to its rest, then that is how it must be," Bote replied, "but I would not make assumptions. Cleodora's honest efforts to make the Lavatio a cleaner and more fitting place for Balnea Infernala may be praiseworthy in her sight."
"I just hope she'll talk to me," Livia interjected. "I can speak and read elvish but I've got an accent."
Wikwocket took over the storytelling for the remainder of the journey, regaling everyone with a tastefully embellished recounting of their quests so far.
"Wait, so, when is he not like that?" Larry asked after Wikwocket had finished her retelling of their visit to Darius' tomb, nodding towards Gruntle. "Even werewolves don't stay the same shape all the time...do they?"
"Uh... well, we don't like to talk about it much but... he's kind of stuck like that right now, because of some demon's curse," Al hedged, falling back on the hastily-constructed technically-true explanation he'd concocted for Lady FitzWayne. Larry's eyes widened.
"Oh! Yeah, that would explain it. So I guess you're doing the adventuring thing to look for a way to lift the curse?"
"Not now, no," Al said. "I think he's more comfortable being what he is now than he'd be as anything else."
They arrived at their destination not long after this. Al managed to notice and point out the overgrown remains of building foundations that were a trip hazard before he tripped over any this time. He guided everyone back to the middle of the site, where they all gathered around the steps leading down into the ground and to the entrance of the Lavatio itself.
"All right, how about this, the four of us will go down there first to make sure nothing dangerous has moved in," Al suggested, "Then you all can follow us. There's probably nothing..."
Gruntle's ears twitched, and he slid his shield down to his hand and unhooked his flail, startling the survey crew besides Larry and Shelly into backing away.
"What is it?" Al asked Gruntle as he worked to pull Purgatio free from its sheathe. "Do you hear something?"
Before Gruntle could answer, a terrible shriek came echoing out from somewhere inside. This was joined by a cacophony of higher-pitched incoherent shouting that got louder as the shouters approached quickly. Despite not being able to tell what the shouters might be trying to say, Al groaned because he could tell what it sounded like.
Al was getting very tired of dealing with goblins.