Strange Aeons / In Search of Sanity pt. 12 / Eire the 6th, 3592 CE / 11-5-19

The party has opened the door to a ruined office and been confronted with more ratlings and their pet dire rats. The leader appears to be one the other refers to as "Ramby," and is distuinguishable by his disfigured eye and the pouches he wears. As he demands recompense for the two ratlings slain by the party in the library, Yew counters with claims of his own as Haskell attempts to mediate. Ramby tells them that the fissure running through the center of the cramped office is a portal to the Dreamlands, and that more of his brethren may be joining him soon. The party backs away from the confrontation, closing the door behind them. Esp recalls that the Dreamlands are a mysterious dimension of both great beauty and great terror, which may be reached most easily through dreams, like a form of astral projection, but could be reached physically, if one found a place where the membrane between the worlds had grown thin. However, she notes, that unlike travelling there mentally, harm that results to a person's physical form in the Dreamlands can be permanent and deadly. Hemlock also has some knowledge of the Dreamlands, from his lore on the legendary city of Carcosa, which may perhaps be a portal to the Dreamlands. The party backtracks to another room off of the L-shaped hallway. The next door opens into another cramped office, this one occupied by a pair of desks, slumped over which are the lifeless forms of two of the Asylum's doctors. Each bears strange wounds on their legs and the back of their heads. The party also notes that whatever has been leaving the trail of slime had entered this room. Searching the room reveals surgical tools, as well as a yew wand, squirreled away by one of the doctors with note indicating it may have been confiscated from a practitioner of faith named "Lantz." Returning to the library, Haskell uses the surgeon's tools to treat the boils that have been forming on Hemlock since the battle with the mass of hungry flesh. The next door leads to a conference room. The trail of slime ends at a closet on the opposite side. Cautiously opening the door, Rorgrim finds the body of another doctor, cradling specimen jars. When he attempts to move the body out of the closet, a jar comes hurtling at him from above, even as one of the specimens seemingly springs to life, latching onto his hand. It appears something has caused two pickled fetuses from among the specimens to become undead creatures with a strange affectation for their fellow pickled body parts. After the party dispatches the two disgusting creatures, they find flasks of alchemists' fire in the dead doctor's coat pockets, indicating that perhaps she had come to burn all of the specimens before they overcame her. Hemlock also takes the coat itself, seeing a possible use for it in the future as a disguise. Having destroyed the source of the slime trail, the party follows it back up the hallway to office of the dead doctor. It appears from her notes that her name was Anya Chaur, and that she had been doing some advanced work in organ studies. Haskell keeps the notes, thinking they may have some use in the future. The last door off the hallway leads to a ruined lounged, buried under rubble from the disaster that shook Stonebriar Asylum. Though Haskell sees a hand sticking out from the rubble, he decides that little good will come from attempting to extricate the corpse, based on previous bad experiences with undead creatures in the asylum. The party finally reaches the ornate door at the end of the hallway. It opens into a spacious office, apparently that of the Asylum's director, Eileen Lozando. However, the party's attention is immediate drawn to the horrifying figure sitting frozen in a pool of her own blood at the center of the room, as strangely colored mists pour forth from a mouth frozen in a silent scream.