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Merithina takes a deep breath.

"There were six of us, originally. I am a traveling merchant, and the other five were my bodyguards. The roads are not always safe these days, you see. We were captured by those strange green men while on the road, not far from here. They took us alive and brought us down here, bound and gagged. They took Thuskar away to another room. I don't know where, or if he's still alive. They put Ulster and myself in these cages. The other three they put in the grinder, there in the center of the room...they were still alive at the time," she explains, a shudder in her voice as she remembers their screams.

Listening to the Woman talk, Jerrard remains silent, "That must have been quite awful, I suspected as much, yet hearing it out loud is rather more concerning.."

He echo's Locky's question, "I agree with Locky, did you hear the word, even an idea might help?" He rubs his chin slowly, remaining extremely calm.

"The Cages are a combination of plant and magic, thus whoever made them is a magic user, a powerful one too. No doubt a Renegade.. I see the reason I am here, the Concave have an interest in this."

Locky gives a caring glance, her voice relaxed, that sort "Merithina , we need you to be brave, we will get you out, I promise." She puts her hand to the cage.

"No, I didn't hear the word clearly," she says. "But it didn't sound like a Common word. Or any language I've ever heard before, and I know quite a few."

Having no idea what they could do about the cages, Babushka decides to keep watch at the entrance of the cave, so that they won't be surprised if more podmen or their master arrive.

"Magic, I was magic, it has to be.. Well this is new, we can't leave them here." Locky leaves Merithina with the rest of the group and goes to the other cages. "Ulster?" She asks, leaning close to the cage the man is in. "Are you ok?"

She too has no idea how to deal with either, she had heard some wizards had the power over locks.. But Obviously Jerrard didn't have that power.

Her eyes go to the next cavern, "We should go to investigate that room." She grins, "Someone should stay with Merithina and Ulster here.."

Jerrard gives Locky a strange look, agreeing silently, "Yes, we should check that cavern, and watch over our new friends."

"I will stay, if you wish, take our new friend here." He motions to Elvenoff, he goes back to talking with Merithina, obviously taken with her voice, Caron, would not be impressed, but the balance was out of tilt.

When Locky, Elvenoff and Shay (with his hovering companion) have left the cavern, Babushka abandons her post for a moment and walks over to Jerrard.
She talks softly: "We haven't yet tried to use fire on the cages. If we do, we should start with the empty one. If it bursts into flame, it would wound the person trapped inside. But maybe it burns slowly, or at least we can burn a hole into it.

When the others come back, bring Shay's companion to me so it can't overhear what you're talking."

That said, Babushka resumes her post by the tunnel entrance.

Locky finds that the second cage has a grumpy, uncommunicative dwarf in it. The dwarf does not seem to speak Common or any other language Locky knows; rather he just grumbles gibberish.

The third cage is empty. The fourth cage is the one with Ulster. "I'm here," he says. "I've been listening to the whole thing, just didn't have anything to really add."

When Shay, Locky, and Elvenoff enter the pod chamber, they find ten pods hanging from the ceiling. Two contain resting podmen, while the rest only hold the same disgusting fishy slime at the bottom that they encountered before. There are no other exits here, nor anything else noteworthy that they can see.

Locky looking at the Pods Locky leans over to Shay, "Let us not tell Jerrard about these, I fear he will try to attack them, they are fine as they are." Stepping close to the pod she takes a few moments to inspect the contents..

"Elvenoff," She ushers him over, her little hands giving a little wave. "The creatures are grown, although I'm not sure how" She shudders thinking of the Grinder, her innocent brain slowly realising what was happening.

"We can't open those cages can we?" She asks Shay, keeping her voice low, "I want to, Merithina sounds nice, and to be honest, I really dont think leaving them is an option.. "

Shay nods to the kender. "Looks like our only option might be to find out the command word, although I doubt the podmen will willingly give it up. If they can even talk. I suppose one of us could stay behind to watch over them, while the rest try and find the command word, or another way of opening those cages."

Jerrard walks over to Babuskha, "Burn them? Interesting idea, I agree that we should try the empty one first." He rubs his chin, getting close to the Gnome.

"I was also considering finding a way to kill these things, naturally."

Using his plant lore he looks for a way to kill the plant, and how it might react to fire.

1d20=7

Having never encountered something like this before, Jerrard couldn't be sure. However, he realizes that if the fungus does catch fire, the intense heat would likely harm the prisoners inside, even if the flames themselves never touched them.

"Will you burn the empty cage, then? If it only tells us we can't burn the occupied ones, at least it won't be usable any more."

With that, Babushka turns back to her post, than stops and goes back to Jerrard. "You know what, I just remembered there is a tunnel on the upper level that we haven't explored, somewhere behind the mad trees. Perhaps something useful is hidden in there?"

(ooc: the podmen have no mouth, they certainly can't speak!)

Elvenoff moves over to an empty pod and investigates it thoroughly with his blade tip so that he may learn all he can about this process of development, but this investigation ends when he hears Locky calling and motioning for him to come to her.

“Yes?” his tone low but not quite a whisper. He ponders upon her question and realizes that he had no answers to how this was being done. “I an at a lost myself on how these are things are being produced, but I know that the captives are being used as feed.” his face holding a grim look upon it.

He looks upon Locky for a moment, pondering over her question and shaking his head in agreement to her statement. “No, we cant leave them here.” He looks back over to the growing creature’s pod thinking when Shay’s statement gave him an idea, “Hey, has anyone tried to see if the floating head talked? Maybe it knows how to open the cages or knows the command word that does open them or it may even know how this process is being done so that we can stop this atrocity now and forever.” he looks to each one awaiting for their input.