carborundum
Adventurer
Great update! What a battle!
The Gate Pass Irregulars: A War of the Burning Sky Campaign
RangerWickett
Legend
I can't wait for the elevator.
Which I'm sure is 100% safe.
Which I'm sure is 100% safe.
I had been thinking: “Right, so we have a group of devils here in the Chapel; the female was an erinyes; two bone devils and four bearded devils. That’s a very potent force. More importantly, all of them can teleport without hindrance. Fire is irrelevant to them. That means that they will have had the means to search this whole place for weeks. Now either that means that the Torch is in the hands of someone who is too powerful for a force of devils that size or more likely, that the Torch is not here.”
Longhelim answered: “You are missing a third option. That the Torch is here but they just haven’t been able to find it.”
“Yes, that is also a possibility but I think the least likely one; as we have seen, devils are very powerful and have very impressive magical abilities; although I grant you that it is still significant enough that we need to continue our search.”
Something else occurred to me: “We also have to try to work out how they arrived in this place; devils don’t generally just appear on our plane when they want; powerful magic has to be used to bring them here.”
Victor interrupted at this point: “There’s also the possibility that they actually didn’t know about the Torch. Anyway, while all of this is very interesting, it doesn’t change our ultimate aim. We need to rest and then carry on looking; while we are reasonably healthy. Faden, Felix, how are you on spells?”
“Fairly low; I still have a couple of tricks up my sleeve if necessary but not for a fight like the one we’ve just had. Although we have to believe that those devils have to be greatest evil force in this area. If they’re not…….then we really are in over our heads” I replied.
“Same here,” was Felix’s answer. “Most of my healing will be from wands now. Nearly all of my spells have been used.”
John chimed in: “I tell you what. Let’s go outside and see if we can find a place to rest; as we’re going out, I’m going to poke my head into that pair of double doors; you remember the ones from where the singing was coming?”
Longhelim looked at him: “You sure you want to do that? Things could get hairy for you.”
“Oh yes!” John grinned. “If I get into trouble, I’ll scream like a girl!”
With that, we retreated into the initial entry room. As John opened the doors which faced the exit, we saw that the opening beyond, more a hallway, was lined by eight statues of deities, four on each side; we recognized the universal pantheon of our lands. Longhelim’s god was there, as well as John’s and Felix’s. Each statue had a small slot between their feet. Religious music filled the hallway and we could also see murals at the far end of the hallway from where we were. They seemed to be of battles and war. An exit was apparent through a pair of double doors opposite. John sneaked through the hallway, searching carefully and then went through these double doors. As he opened these, we could just about see into a large room. John cast a spell which filled the area with a soft light and that illuminated what had obviously been a chapel, which at some point had been devastated and desecrated. It looked as if the devils worshipped different gods and they had made their opinion very clear as there were various piles of ash and debris scattered throughout, with the wooden remains of pews particularly prominent. There were also two dark curtains hanging on the back wall. Again, John searched the room carefully before disappearing through one of the curtains; there were obviously gaps in the wall behind at least one, probably both.
We settled down to wait.
It took some time but as we previously discussed, we could hear the screaming before we could see John. He was in trouble. I just hoped that it was little trouble as opposed to big trouble. We rushed into the main chapel. As we moved through the hallway of the gods, I noticed that the air was very sweet, as if perfumed; it befuddled me for a moment but the adrenalin must have burned it off because I barely noticed this before I got into the chapel. We burst in just in time to see John racing towards us, being chased by one of the flaming orc skeletons. Felix immediately brandished his holy symbol and almost comically, the thing skidded to a stop and immediately ran back the way it had come from, this time chased ponderously by the armoured forms of Victor and Longhelim. Both warriors disappeared through the purple curtains and then I heard the familiar sounds of Victor’s falchion hitting bone. Since Victor’s sword was wooden, the sound it made when it hit bone was quite different than that being made by a metal sword such as Longhelim’s. The sound didn’t last very long. The two warriors then returned.
A panting John had recovered and was also waiting in the main chapel. He grinned at us:
“Screaming like a girl works!”
Longhelim pursed his lips and looked at John just long enough to make apparent just what he thought of that comment; then he asked: “So, what did you find?”
Totally unabashed, John replied:
“Well, the whole chapel has a corridor running around it with various doors. These doors all lead into bedrooms, kitchens and stuff; basically rooms that double up as living quarters for the priests and servants; I even found a library; or remnants of one. Don’t get excited, Faden, there was nothing left, just shelves; oh, and a secret door. That led into another room which, by my calculations, is right behind this wall.”
He motioned to left wall in the hallway of the gods; we had already found a secret room on the other side opposite wall; it was the one with the four glass offering jars.
John continued:
“Inside, there is a tub made out of gold, that’s full of water; there was also lots of incense and probably something else in the air because it was making me feel dizzy, so I didn’t go in. As for the other rooms, not much there really except that it was in one of those that I found boney over there.”
He motioned towards the direction in which the skeleton had run.
Longhelim looked thoughtful: “Did you give the place a good search?”
“Not really. I gave each room a cursory glance but I didn’t take time to search them. I was looking for enemy initially, as opposed to anything else. I thought it would be best to search them together.”
The paladin agreed: “Right, let’s go. We’ll give the place a good search and then we find a place to rest.”
That was what we did. The rooms were as John had described. He hadn’t mentioned that one of them showed some insane perversions between humans and devils drawn on the walls; I assumed that was the erinye’s room. She had an extraordinarily vivid imagination; or probably fairly normal for a devil. Anyway, the rooms didn’t yield many things except for one, which made up for the rest. Inside a study, we found two scrolls and two wands. The scrolls were incredibly powerful: one not only brought someone back from the dead, but it was an advanced form of the spell. Felix looked at it for a long time and then declared:
“I’ve never seen anything like this. I’m going to have to study it just to see what makes it different from my other spells of this type. I think I know, but I have to make sure……The other spell, well, let’s just say that we’re all going to have a really good breakfast tomorrow; in fact a totally magical breakfast.”
We also had a brief glance into the room with the golden tub. It was a big tub. Short of smashing it and molding it into a lump of gold, that was going to stay there for the time being.
We began to retreat at this point; through the main chapel, the hallway of the gods and finally through the entrance room into the main foyer. There, we could see a positive hive of activity. We had already heard them but we were unprepared at the gnomish and halfling chain that was ferrying various objects into the caravan; anything that could even remotely be of any value. Jorine and her party had obviously also had a successful foray as object after object was deposited into the wagon. They seemed to be coming out from the door beneath the chapel. I was fairly stupefied as I looked at them; when they had called themselves treasure hunters, they were not joking; they were utterly systematic in their hunting; we were amateurs in comparison.
Jorine came up to us: “Did you have a successful rummage? We found a few trinkets. There were a bunch of stables and even some sort of riding track through those doors.”
She pointed at the doors she had initially gone through.
“We met a pair of undead riders on flying black horses which turned out to be difficult to defeat but we managed. We also came across more skeletons, including one which must have been some sort of priest because it was slinging priest spells. That one proved to be almost too tough. They were in a pump room; it seemed to be broken, but I think that if it was fixed, it would control most of the lower floor in this place. We also found a room with a swarm of flying burning insects, so we shut the door on that one straight away.”
She then pointed at two falchions in the wagon.
“Oh, those two are magical; we also found one of these flying stones; the same type that’s flying around your head, Victor.
So, what happened to you?”
We gave an accurate account of what had happened. She was obviously being truthful with us so we reciprocated.
“Oh good! You really couldn’t make that up. So……this arrangement is working for us then.
Right, that main room? The chapel? Sounds like a good place to rest. Then tomorrow, we can repair the pump room and hopefully get the lift working. Oh, sorry, I forgot to tell you. We found a lift going up but I think it’s broken. There was something nasty in the lift room so we just slammed the door for the time being. We’ll deal with it when necessary. We need to repair the pumps before we can look at the lift anyway. Faden, how’s your engineering? You’re a dwarf, you should understand these things.”
I was taken aback: “Ummm……..”
But she was already walking away, shouting at Oller about something.
We waited while the Clan finished loading up their wagon and then we all retired to the main chapel.
The gnomes gave the rooms a look and then Jorine approached us:
“That golden tub in the secret room? Are you planning to do anything with it? I mean, by our agreement, at the moment it’s yours; you found it; but if you are just planning to leave it, then we’ll take it.”
Quickly, I said: “No, we have plans for it. In fact, we’ll get it now.”
Longhelim gave me a quick glance but then we went to the secret door and had a quick discussion.
I said: “The only way we can carry that out of here is by making it into a lump of gold. Victor, you’ll have to do that with the hammer. We’ll put a rope around you and you go in and do that.”
The warrior did as we asked. He went in and shouted: “The tub is full of holy water; does anyone want any?”
Everyone filled up various vials, including the gnomes who claimed that holy water was very effective against the skeletons. Then there were several smashing sounds and Victor came out with a lump of gold, which was surprisingly small. I was amazed that such a large tub could be made into something so small. Then again, that was one of the beauties of gold; it was very easy to work.
Then, Jorine cast a spell and a hut appeared; it was sturdy, well made and secure; a very good place to set up camp. Inside, Jorine did something very strange. She cast two more spells. I recognized them; they were the spells which revealed the properties of various magical items. However, she managed to cast them at an extraordinary speed. I made a note to ask how she did that.
I could not do that then because I was very distracted. I had been inspired during our battle with the devils and I was feverishly writing down several formulae for new spells. They were in fact variations on some of my existing spells but more powerful. One of them was my lightning bolt, but I had worked out how it could affect several people. The secondary bolts would not be as powerful but at least they would still hit; I had also worked out how to make my fog cloud even more deadly: I could make it viscous and so thick that it was very difficult for anyone to walk through it; but now I had also worked out how to add a deadly twist and by giving the fog an acidic taint.
I had also been thinking about the two rods which were still hanging motionlessly behind the smashed doors of the chapel. I theorized that if I could cast my own spells of divination magic in the morning, I would be able to work out the command word for each one and appropriate them. I was also still racking my brains as to how Jorine had cast her spells so quickly.
We all woke up the next morning and began our preparations when Jorine approached us:
“We’re planning to go to the pump room now. The only way to go up is to fix the pump and that should get the lift ready to go to the next floor. Once we fix it, we need to break the dam holding the water which should get the pump working.”
I frowned: “What dam?”
She turned to me:
“There’s an underground stream or small river really; someone dammed it; probably to sabotage the lift but really, who knows what’s happened here? Anyway, if your friend with the big hammer could knock the dam down at the right time, then we’ll all be able to get up to the next floor.”
I turned to Victor at this point, who nodded.
Jorine continued: “So, what’re you planning to do?”
I replied: “I want to cast a couple of divination spells on these rods; hopefully, that will tell you the command words or phrases. After that, well we are open to suggestions.”
“Finish clearing out this level. I don’t think there’s much left since the sounds of battle would have drawn pretty much everyone out already; but there is that strange hall with sounds or merriment coming out of it; we didn’t go in but it should be checked out. There are also quite a lot of other rooms to go through.”
I looked at Longhelim and John who both nodded thoughtfully.
“That sounds like a good idea,” said the paladin.
“So that’s settled then,” said Jorine and went back to her clan who promptly all left the chapel; several of them nodded to us in a friendly manner.
I turned to the paladin:
“What room with merriment coming out of it?”
He replied: “Oh, she was telling me last night. They found a pair of double doors; when Oller listened, he said he could hear someone playing music and some sort of celebration. She said that after a little time, they could all hear it; apparently, whoever is having this bash is not being particularly quiet about it.”
“I wonder who could be having a celebration in this place?” asked John.
“It’s bound to be vampires,” I told him; “they heard we were coming so they’re having a party.”
John glared at me and then said: “You don’t have the slightest idea as to how unfunny that is, do you?”
Really, some people had no sense of humour.
Leaving John to mull that over, I took out a pearl and we all marched to the room where rods were still suspended in the air and I began my spell while the others talked quietly among themselves. I soon lost myself in the magic while, paying little attention to the others until I saw Victor approaching the doorway; he was looking at something in the distance. Then John also moved past me and his voice disturbed the quiet:
“There’s enemy coming. Skeletons!”
Longhelim answered: “You are missing a third option. That the Torch is here but they just haven’t been able to find it.”
“Yes, that is also a possibility but I think the least likely one; as we have seen, devils are very powerful and have very impressive magical abilities; although I grant you that it is still significant enough that we need to continue our search.”
Something else occurred to me: “We also have to try to work out how they arrived in this place; devils don’t generally just appear on our plane when they want; powerful magic has to be used to bring them here.”
Victor interrupted at this point: “There’s also the possibility that they actually didn’t know about the Torch. Anyway, while all of this is very interesting, it doesn’t change our ultimate aim. We need to rest and then carry on looking; while we are reasonably healthy. Faden, Felix, how are you on spells?”
“Fairly low; I still have a couple of tricks up my sleeve if necessary but not for a fight like the one we’ve just had. Although we have to believe that those devils have to be greatest evil force in this area. If they’re not…….then we really are in over our heads” I replied.
“Same here,” was Felix’s answer. “Most of my healing will be from wands now. Nearly all of my spells have been used.”
John chimed in: “I tell you what. Let’s go outside and see if we can find a place to rest; as we’re going out, I’m going to poke my head into that pair of double doors; you remember the ones from where the singing was coming?”
Longhelim looked at him: “You sure you want to do that? Things could get hairy for you.”
“Oh yes!” John grinned. “If I get into trouble, I’ll scream like a girl!”
With that, we retreated into the initial entry room. As John opened the doors which faced the exit, we saw that the opening beyond, more a hallway, was lined by eight statues of deities, four on each side; we recognized the universal pantheon of our lands. Longhelim’s god was there, as well as John’s and Felix’s. Each statue had a small slot between their feet. Religious music filled the hallway and we could also see murals at the far end of the hallway from where we were. They seemed to be of battles and war. An exit was apparent through a pair of double doors opposite. John sneaked through the hallway, searching carefully and then went through these double doors. As he opened these, we could just about see into a large room. John cast a spell which filled the area with a soft light and that illuminated what had obviously been a chapel, which at some point had been devastated and desecrated. It looked as if the devils worshipped different gods and they had made their opinion very clear as there were various piles of ash and debris scattered throughout, with the wooden remains of pews particularly prominent. There were also two dark curtains hanging on the back wall. Again, John searched the room carefully before disappearing through one of the curtains; there were obviously gaps in the wall behind at least one, probably both.
We settled down to wait.
It took some time but as we previously discussed, we could hear the screaming before we could see John. He was in trouble. I just hoped that it was little trouble as opposed to big trouble. We rushed into the main chapel. As we moved through the hallway of the gods, I noticed that the air was very sweet, as if perfumed; it befuddled me for a moment but the adrenalin must have burned it off because I barely noticed this before I got into the chapel. We burst in just in time to see John racing towards us, being chased by one of the flaming orc skeletons. Felix immediately brandished his holy symbol and almost comically, the thing skidded to a stop and immediately ran back the way it had come from, this time chased ponderously by the armoured forms of Victor and Longhelim. Both warriors disappeared through the purple curtains and then I heard the familiar sounds of Victor’s falchion hitting bone. Since Victor’s sword was wooden, the sound it made when it hit bone was quite different than that being made by a metal sword such as Longhelim’s. The sound didn’t last very long. The two warriors then returned.
A panting John had recovered and was also waiting in the main chapel. He grinned at us:
“Screaming like a girl works!”
Longhelim pursed his lips and looked at John just long enough to make apparent just what he thought of that comment; then he asked: “So, what did you find?”
Totally unabashed, John replied:
“Well, the whole chapel has a corridor running around it with various doors. These doors all lead into bedrooms, kitchens and stuff; basically rooms that double up as living quarters for the priests and servants; I even found a library; or remnants of one. Don’t get excited, Faden, there was nothing left, just shelves; oh, and a secret door. That led into another room which, by my calculations, is right behind this wall.”
He motioned to left wall in the hallway of the gods; we had already found a secret room on the other side opposite wall; it was the one with the four glass offering jars.
John continued:
“Inside, there is a tub made out of gold, that’s full of water; there was also lots of incense and probably something else in the air because it was making me feel dizzy, so I didn’t go in. As for the other rooms, not much there really except that it was in one of those that I found boney over there.”
He motioned towards the direction in which the skeleton had run.
Longhelim looked thoughtful: “Did you give the place a good search?”
“Not really. I gave each room a cursory glance but I didn’t take time to search them. I was looking for enemy initially, as opposed to anything else. I thought it would be best to search them together.”
The paladin agreed: “Right, let’s go. We’ll give the place a good search and then we find a place to rest.”
That was what we did. The rooms were as John had described. He hadn’t mentioned that one of them showed some insane perversions between humans and devils drawn on the walls; I assumed that was the erinye’s room. She had an extraordinarily vivid imagination; or probably fairly normal for a devil. Anyway, the rooms didn’t yield many things except for one, which made up for the rest. Inside a study, we found two scrolls and two wands. The scrolls were incredibly powerful: one not only brought someone back from the dead, but it was an advanced form of the spell. Felix looked at it for a long time and then declared:
“I’ve never seen anything like this. I’m going to have to study it just to see what makes it different from my other spells of this type. I think I know, but I have to make sure……The other spell, well, let’s just say that we’re all going to have a really good breakfast tomorrow; in fact a totally magical breakfast.”
We also had a brief glance into the room with the golden tub. It was a big tub. Short of smashing it and molding it into a lump of gold, that was going to stay there for the time being.
We began to retreat at this point; through the main chapel, the hallway of the gods and finally through the entrance room into the main foyer. There, we could see a positive hive of activity. We had already heard them but we were unprepared at the gnomish and halfling chain that was ferrying various objects into the caravan; anything that could even remotely be of any value. Jorine and her party had obviously also had a successful foray as object after object was deposited into the wagon. They seemed to be coming out from the door beneath the chapel. I was fairly stupefied as I looked at them; when they had called themselves treasure hunters, they were not joking; they were utterly systematic in their hunting; we were amateurs in comparison.
Jorine came up to us: “Did you have a successful rummage? We found a few trinkets. There were a bunch of stables and even some sort of riding track through those doors.”
She pointed at the doors she had initially gone through.
“We met a pair of undead riders on flying black horses which turned out to be difficult to defeat but we managed. We also came across more skeletons, including one which must have been some sort of priest because it was slinging priest spells. That one proved to be almost too tough. They were in a pump room; it seemed to be broken, but I think that if it was fixed, it would control most of the lower floor in this place. We also found a room with a swarm of flying burning insects, so we shut the door on that one straight away.”
She then pointed at two falchions in the wagon.
“Oh, those two are magical; we also found one of these flying stones; the same type that’s flying around your head, Victor.
So, what happened to you?”
We gave an accurate account of what had happened. She was obviously being truthful with us so we reciprocated.
“Oh good! You really couldn’t make that up. So……this arrangement is working for us then.
Right, that main room? The chapel? Sounds like a good place to rest. Then tomorrow, we can repair the pump room and hopefully get the lift working. Oh, sorry, I forgot to tell you. We found a lift going up but I think it’s broken. There was something nasty in the lift room so we just slammed the door for the time being. We’ll deal with it when necessary. We need to repair the pumps before we can look at the lift anyway. Faden, how’s your engineering? You’re a dwarf, you should understand these things.”
I was taken aback: “Ummm……..”
But she was already walking away, shouting at Oller about something.
We waited while the Clan finished loading up their wagon and then we all retired to the main chapel.
The gnomes gave the rooms a look and then Jorine approached us:
“That golden tub in the secret room? Are you planning to do anything with it? I mean, by our agreement, at the moment it’s yours; you found it; but if you are just planning to leave it, then we’ll take it.”
Quickly, I said: “No, we have plans for it. In fact, we’ll get it now.”
Longhelim gave me a quick glance but then we went to the secret door and had a quick discussion.
I said: “The only way we can carry that out of here is by making it into a lump of gold. Victor, you’ll have to do that with the hammer. We’ll put a rope around you and you go in and do that.”
The warrior did as we asked. He went in and shouted: “The tub is full of holy water; does anyone want any?”
Everyone filled up various vials, including the gnomes who claimed that holy water was very effective against the skeletons. Then there were several smashing sounds and Victor came out with a lump of gold, which was surprisingly small. I was amazed that such a large tub could be made into something so small. Then again, that was one of the beauties of gold; it was very easy to work.
Then, Jorine cast a spell and a hut appeared; it was sturdy, well made and secure; a very good place to set up camp. Inside, Jorine did something very strange. She cast two more spells. I recognized them; they were the spells which revealed the properties of various magical items. However, she managed to cast them at an extraordinary speed. I made a note to ask how she did that.
I could not do that then because I was very distracted. I had been inspired during our battle with the devils and I was feverishly writing down several formulae for new spells. They were in fact variations on some of my existing spells but more powerful. One of them was my lightning bolt, but I had worked out how it could affect several people. The secondary bolts would not be as powerful but at least they would still hit; I had also worked out how to make my fog cloud even more deadly: I could make it viscous and so thick that it was very difficult for anyone to walk through it; but now I had also worked out how to add a deadly twist and by giving the fog an acidic taint.
I had also been thinking about the two rods which were still hanging motionlessly behind the smashed doors of the chapel. I theorized that if I could cast my own spells of divination magic in the morning, I would be able to work out the command word for each one and appropriate them. I was also still racking my brains as to how Jorine had cast her spells so quickly.
We all woke up the next morning and began our preparations when Jorine approached us:
“We’re planning to go to the pump room now. The only way to go up is to fix the pump and that should get the lift ready to go to the next floor. Once we fix it, we need to break the dam holding the water which should get the pump working.”
I frowned: “What dam?”
She turned to me:
“There’s an underground stream or small river really; someone dammed it; probably to sabotage the lift but really, who knows what’s happened here? Anyway, if your friend with the big hammer could knock the dam down at the right time, then we’ll all be able to get up to the next floor.”
I turned to Victor at this point, who nodded.
Jorine continued: “So, what’re you planning to do?”
I replied: “I want to cast a couple of divination spells on these rods; hopefully, that will tell you the command words or phrases. After that, well we are open to suggestions.”
“Finish clearing out this level. I don’t think there’s much left since the sounds of battle would have drawn pretty much everyone out already; but there is that strange hall with sounds or merriment coming out of it; we didn’t go in but it should be checked out. There are also quite a lot of other rooms to go through.”
I looked at Longhelim and John who both nodded thoughtfully.
“That sounds like a good idea,” said the paladin.
“So that’s settled then,” said Jorine and went back to her clan who promptly all left the chapel; several of them nodded to us in a friendly manner.
I turned to the paladin:
“What room with merriment coming out of it?”
He replied: “Oh, she was telling me last night. They found a pair of double doors; when Oller listened, he said he could hear someone playing music and some sort of celebration. She said that after a little time, they could all hear it; apparently, whoever is having this bash is not being particularly quiet about it.”
“I wonder who could be having a celebration in this place?” asked John.
“It’s bound to be vampires,” I told him; “they heard we were coming so they’re having a party.”
John glared at me and then said: “You don’t have the slightest idea as to how unfunny that is, do you?”
Really, some people had no sense of humour.
Leaving John to mull that over, I took out a pearl and we all marched to the room where rods were still suspended in the air and I began my spell while the others talked quietly among themselves. I soon lost myself in the magic while, paying little attention to the others until I saw Victor approaching the doorway; he was looking at something in the distance. Then John also moved past me and his voice disturbed the quiet:
“There’s enemy coming. Skeletons!”
I was still in the middle of the room but Longhelim had stormed onto the balcony. I just about glimpsed one of those horrible orc skeletons; there was also another group: these were wearing breastplates and wielding two short swords. This was a new type but they were still haloed by coruscating fire like all the others we had seen so far. I only had a chance to glimpse them as Felix brandished his holy symbol and two of these new skeletons immediately burst into shards. Almost immediately after, Drudge ran past everyone and jumped off the balcony; it was truly spectacular as he shot two arrows from his bow at the same time; one of them even struck its target.
Longhelim was shouting: “At least two more orc skeletons here.”
Victor was still in the doorway and preparing to go out to the balcony when a new and far more sinister foe made an appearance. A shrouded, horrible figure drifted through the wall. It was large and superficially resembled a brutish ogre but its tattered clothing, incorporeal nature and red, malevolent eyes betrayed its true nature.
Felix shouted: “That’s a wraith….an ogre wraith?” he sounded disbelieving and then groaned as the wraith tapped him lightly; judging by the priest’s reaction, he may as well have pole axed him. Felix staggered backwards, desperately trying to get away. Then events became even more unfortunate as John, also scrambling away from it in any manner he could, was clobbered by another light brush from the creature’s arm and lost most of his vitality; I could see it in his movements, which became very sluggish. The wraith just stood there, floating. It didn’t quite grin but it may as well have.
Then, just to make things even better, a wall of flame appeared across the doorway, blocking our view onto the balcony and to both Longhelim and Drudge. It also caused several of us to burn as we had not cast our spell for fire protection yet; no one more so than Victor, who grimaced in pain but kept stoically silent.
Despite the vicinity of the flame wall, the warrior moved up to the wraith, hoping to take it by some surprise but the creature reached out again and hit the warrior; fortunately, Victor was made of sterner stuff and managed to get a swipe at the creature. The Living Blade swept through the wraith and seemed to catch in its body, eliciting the first reaction from it, a slight recoiling.
I tried throwing a few spells at it but to no avail. It was a formidable opponent; why it had chosen to make its appearance now was a mystery but we could have really done with the help of the gnomes at this moment.
There were still sounds of combat from the outside but it was not possible to see how Drudge or Longhelim were doing; we, on the other hand, were doing quite badly. I cast my spell of force missiles into it and they obviously hurt it but it was concentrating its blows on Victor. The warrior was standing up against it but he wouldn’t last long; the wraith was only brushing him lightly but it was having the effect of making the warrior more listless, sluggish and desperate. His swings were becoming wilder and more erratic.
Suddenly, Longhelim emerged through the wall of flame; he was burned quite badly as he did so but managed to join Victor on the front, swinging wildly and scoring a hit on the creature. This was fortunate as the paladin was obviously using his holy power boost his combat ability against this formidable enemy. Although it recoiled from the paladin, it continued to tap Victor and at that point the warrior collapsed, bursting into flames. I blanched; that meant Victor must have been in a very bad state. Thankfully, as he was toppling over, Felix, who had moved just behind him, managed to catch his body and infuse it with the magic he had been holding on his hand. This healed the warrior who gamely swiped at the wraith three times in quick succession from the floor; unfortunately, the falchion passed through the ogre’s form harmlessly each time.
During all this time, the wall of flame was still burning us; John had managed to get out of harm’s way; we couldn’t tell what was happening to Drudge.
Then Longhelim shouted, desperately: “Faden, do something, anything!”
I shouted back:” I can hit him with lightning, but it’ll get you as well!”
“Do it!”
Speed was the key here so I stepped up and gritting my teeth against the pain of the heat from the wall, I cast my bolt of lightning through Longhelim and into the wraith; it burst into a cloud of foul smelling dust and disappeared. Longhelim was almost fully caught in its path but managed to dodge out of the way just at the last moment. He was still hurt but finally the wraith was gone and not a moment too soon as one of the orc skeletons came through the wall of flame; Longhelim confronted it but in our weakened state, it could be very dangerous.
A moment later, Drudge came hurtling through the wall, also badly burned and hurt; at that moment, I cast my invisible wall across the doorway. This served a two-fold purpose: it would shield us from the heat and it would give us time to cast some much needed defensive spells, chief amongst them being our protections against fire.
We were able to do this, and cast various other spells which would help us against the remaining skeletons. Once ready, I negated the spell and the single skeleton lasted briefly against Longhelim, whose weapon had been made truly destructive to undead, courtesy of Felix. Then, we waited for the other skeletons to return and thankfully we were able to deal with them quite swiftly.
Cautiously we approached the entrance and Drudge began looking at the floor. He was gone for a few moments and then returned:
“From the tracks I’ve seen, that group came from outside; I have no idea where the wraith came from but the skeletons left a trail through the main doorway in the bear’s maw.”
John said: “We should seal that somehow. Felix, do you still have your spell which produces a wall made of stone?”
“Yes; where do you want me to put it?”
“Behind the adamantine door; I’ll lock it and then you can put your wall across it.”
So, that was what happened and then we retired to the chapel again. John then sent one of his magical messenger tokens to Jorine, to explain what had happened to us and why we were not exploring the rest of the castle. Then, Felix decided to accelerate his prayers; it would exhaust him but John, Victor and he actually needed his spells desperately; they had all been very badly affected by the deadly powers of the wraith.
Thankfully, nothing happened during that period. I managed to divine the command word of one of the rods and Felix sprinkled a small pinch of diamond of dust over the three affected group members while chanting softly. Thank all the gods, Felix’s powerful prayers managed to counter the evil malady which was affecting them and they were able to shake off their listlessness and lethargy; if the magic had not worked, it would have made the exploration of the castle almost impossible.
Thus strengthened, we began to talk about out next course of action. Jorine and her clan were working in the pump room and at some point, we had to go and break a dam. This obstruction was in the area which they described as a riding track; from what they described, the river ran through there and they had told us that that was the location of the dam. Before this though, we decided to explore further into the complex.
We decided to enter through the double doors at ground level in the main entrance chamber. These opened into a very memorable space; marble statues lined the walls and a worn carpet lay on the floor; originally, it must have been some grand reception area. There was also a pair of doors on the wall to the south, or our right and another door to our left, or the north. A last pair of double doors were situated opposite our entrance way but these were raised to another level; a set of curved steps led up to them. Beyond was the as-yet unknown room mentioned by the gnomes as emitting the noise of merrymaking and where I had speculated that vampires were celebrating our arrival.
First, we rolled up the carpet, just to make sure there were no nasty surprises or openings underneath; then, we decided to leave the doors with the noise for the time being and explore the area to the south.
John approached the first door, which opened into another corridor, stretching to our left; another door was immediately in front of us, on the other side of the corridor. We opened it and it led into yet another corridor, this time with three doors. John again went inside and examined each door. He did not hear anything behind two of them but there was the sound of buzzing behind third. We were not sure just what that meant.
“An undead swarm?” I mused.
Felix shook his head: “I’ve never heard of such a thing; but who can tell in this place.”
So, we decided to leave that door initially and to open the first door we could see geographically, as it was opposite the door we had just opened; or at least, try to open it; unfortunately, it was locked. First John and then Drudge tried to pick it open but the lock defeated them, so Victor had to go forward with his hammer. It only took two or three blows with it and the door was shattered; then the creature in the room struck.
It was impossible for me to see exactly what happened but one moment Victor was there and the next moment he collapsed. Then the enemy emerged from the doorway and it was truly horrible; a hairless, humanoid creature with tentacles coming out of its sides. It also had protruding ribs which seemed to accentuate a cavity where its stomach should have been; the most awful thing was that that cavity now held a miniature version of Victor, screaming silently within this unearthly prison. Somehow, this thing had imprisoned part of Victor within itself.
As it stepped out, it immediately lashed out with a wave of black miasma, inimical to all life, hurting all of us. It was the same power the skeletons had used against us but far more intense and on a much greater scale and range. Longhelim stepped forward and slashed it with his sword; Drudge began his usual barrage and Felix attempted to send it back to its pit. That failed miserably; both the warriors hit it and it did recoil a little, but then leapt forward to attack once more; I stepped forward and cast a black ray out of my hand which struck it squarely in its chest; the ray almost bounced off but then sank into its torso. The creature sagged visibly and flinched; then it retreated back into the room. Thank the gods that worked! It should have been badly weakened!
The enemy was followed up ruthlessly by Longhelim and Drudge, both of whom struck it again; but it wasn’t finished either and cast a spell; it was the same spell as I had cast at it but this time it was aimed at Drudge; the ranger dodged skillfully and then used his uncanny acrobatics to move into its lair. Of course, being Drudge, he also shot it as he was doing a summersault through the air. Longhelim, in a more orthodox style, followed up and hit it with his sword; it retaliated by casting the same spell again, the weakening ray and this time it hit Longhelim who suddenly began to find it difficult to lift his sword, never mind actually harming this creature. As the paladin swung, his sword barely penetrated its unnaturally hard skin; he was just slapping it.
I had moved to the door and as I was watching the fight, I could see Victor’s miniature face contorting inside this thing; a thought struck me:
“Longhelim, we have no idea what will happen to Victor if this creature is slain now!”
John shouted back: “We can’t worry about now.”
Yet another black ray shot out of its hand and this time it struck Drudge, who promptly collapsed, finding his equipment too heavy to support. He promptly began squirming on the floor, loosening the straps of his backpack and quiver to divest himself of what he could; gamely, he tried to get ready to shoot from the floor. It was noticeable that the creature was not attacking anyone with its claws as it must have also been enfeebled. Thankfully, both Drudge and Longhelim had already hurt it badly. As Longhelim continued to slap it feebly with his sword, Drudge was doing more good with his cold infused arrows. Then disaster struck and Longhelim collapsed fell at its feet, exhausted and unable to carry on the fight; he was too weak and his equipment was too heavy for his magically induced weakness.
The situation was dire: our two remaining warriors were crawling at the feet of this thing while the last of our warriors was in miniature form, trapped in its chest. I had one spell of force missiles left; quickly, I cast it and again this creature proved highly resistant to my magic; but, I managed to force it through and finally it collapsed, a viscous black drool oozing out of its mouth.
As it did, Victor’s body shuddered and began to breathe. Then his eyes fluttered open and he groaned. Felix began to move to everyone and checked them thoroughly.
“Longhelim and Drudge should be all right in a little while. It’s that spell you use so often, Faden. It’s very effective but the weakness doesn’t last long.”
Then he moved to Victor. He poked and prodded and asked several questions. Victor didn’t say much but as he rose he did speak:
“I don’t feel right; whatever that thing did, I feel weaker; as if part of me is still in it or somewhere.”
Felix frowned: “I may be able to help you but after I have prayed for my next set of spells.”
Victor looked at him: “This feels wrong; the creatures here are very powerful and we are just about scraping through them; Felix, are you sure you’ll be able to do something about this later?”
The priest examined him again and said: “Part of your essence, your very being, has not been returned to you. That thing, whatever it was, took it and possessed it for a time but it doesn’t have it now, so I can use my prayers and magic to return it to you. There is a miracle which will do this and I promise that I will ask for it as soon as I can.”
Victor sighed and nodded.
While the others were still incapacitated by their weakness, John and I were examining the room we had entered; it contained a platform with chains in each corner that led upwards into a shaft; recessed into the lift platform was also a set of gears which were worked by a handle which could be placed in various positions. There was also what looked like some sort of little lid or covering to a container inside the platform.
Then I slapped myself mentally on the head as I remembered Jorine telling us that they had found the lift to the upper floor but that it was broken; I also remembered them saying that there was something very nasty in the lift room and they had closed and locked the door behind them. We should have remembered; as this was coming back to me, I also remembered the gnomes saying something about buzzing behind a door although I couldn’t remember the specifics.
John was still examining the gears and then said in an awed voice:
“This is one big castle!”
I looked down and saw what he meant. Apart from the position where it was now, the lever had eight other positions where it could be anchored; these were labeled A-H; both John and I immediately realised what that meant: eight more floors! And we hadn’t even explored this one fully! And we had roughly a week to do it? Yes, we had really set ourselves an ambitious timetable!
Longhelim was shouting: “At least two more orc skeletons here.”
Victor was still in the doorway and preparing to go out to the balcony when a new and far more sinister foe made an appearance. A shrouded, horrible figure drifted through the wall. It was large and superficially resembled a brutish ogre but its tattered clothing, incorporeal nature and red, malevolent eyes betrayed its true nature.
Felix shouted: “That’s a wraith….an ogre wraith?” he sounded disbelieving and then groaned as the wraith tapped him lightly; judging by the priest’s reaction, he may as well have pole axed him. Felix staggered backwards, desperately trying to get away. Then events became even more unfortunate as John, also scrambling away from it in any manner he could, was clobbered by another light brush from the creature’s arm and lost most of his vitality; I could see it in his movements, which became very sluggish. The wraith just stood there, floating. It didn’t quite grin but it may as well have.
Then, just to make things even better, a wall of flame appeared across the doorway, blocking our view onto the balcony and to both Longhelim and Drudge. It also caused several of us to burn as we had not cast our spell for fire protection yet; no one more so than Victor, who grimaced in pain but kept stoically silent.
Despite the vicinity of the flame wall, the warrior moved up to the wraith, hoping to take it by some surprise but the creature reached out again and hit the warrior; fortunately, Victor was made of sterner stuff and managed to get a swipe at the creature. The Living Blade swept through the wraith and seemed to catch in its body, eliciting the first reaction from it, a slight recoiling.
I tried throwing a few spells at it but to no avail. It was a formidable opponent; why it had chosen to make its appearance now was a mystery but we could have really done with the help of the gnomes at this moment.
There were still sounds of combat from the outside but it was not possible to see how Drudge or Longhelim were doing; we, on the other hand, were doing quite badly. I cast my spell of force missiles into it and they obviously hurt it but it was concentrating its blows on Victor. The warrior was standing up against it but he wouldn’t last long; the wraith was only brushing him lightly but it was having the effect of making the warrior more listless, sluggish and desperate. His swings were becoming wilder and more erratic.
Suddenly, Longhelim emerged through the wall of flame; he was burned quite badly as he did so but managed to join Victor on the front, swinging wildly and scoring a hit on the creature. This was fortunate as the paladin was obviously using his holy power boost his combat ability against this formidable enemy. Although it recoiled from the paladin, it continued to tap Victor and at that point the warrior collapsed, bursting into flames. I blanched; that meant Victor must have been in a very bad state. Thankfully, as he was toppling over, Felix, who had moved just behind him, managed to catch his body and infuse it with the magic he had been holding on his hand. This healed the warrior who gamely swiped at the wraith three times in quick succession from the floor; unfortunately, the falchion passed through the ogre’s form harmlessly each time.
During all this time, the wall of flame was still burning us; John had managed to get out of harm’s way; we couldn’t tell what was happening to Drudge.
Then Longhelim shouted, desperately: “Faden, do something, anything!”
I shouted back:” I can hit him with lightning, but it’ll get you as well!”
“Do it!”
Speed was the key here so I stepped up and gritting my teeth against the pain of the heat from the wall, I cast my bolt of lightning through Longhelim and into the wraith; it burst into a cloud of foul smelling dust and disappeared. Longhelim was almost fully caught in its path but managed to dodge out of the way just at the last moment. He was still hurt but finally the wraith was gone and not a moment too soon as one of the orc skeletons came through the wall of flame; Longhelim confronted it but in our weakened state, it could be very dangerous.
A moment later, Drudge came hurtling through the wall, also badly burned and hurt; at that moment, I cast my invisible wall across the doorway. This served a two-fold purpose: it would shield us from the heat and it would give us time to cast some much needed defensive spells, chief amongst them being our protections against fire.
We were able to do this, and cast various other spells which would help us against the remaining skeletons. Once ready, I negated the spell and the single skeleton lasted briefly against Longhelim, whose weapon had been made truly destructive to undead, courtesy of Felix. Then, we waited for the other skeletons to return and thankfully we were able to deal with them quite swiftly.
Cautiously we approached the entrance and Drudge began looking at the floor. He was gone for a few moments and then returned:
“From the tracks I’ve seen, that group came from outside; I have no idea where the wraith came from but the skeletons left a trail through the main doorway in the bear’s maw.”
John said: “We should seal that somehow. Felix, do you still have your spell which produces a wall made of stone?”
“Yes; where do you want me to put it?”
“Behind the adamantine door; I’ll lock it and then you can put your wall across it.”
So, that was what happened and then we retired to the chapel again. John then sent one of his magical messenger tokens to Jorine, to explain what had happened to us and why we were not exploring the rest of the castle. Then, Felix decided to accelerate his prayers; it would exhaust him but John, Victor and he actually needed his spells desperately; they had all been very badly affected by the deadly powers of the wraith.
Thankfully, nothing happened during that period. I managed to divine the command word of one of the rods and Felix sprinkled a small pinch of diamond of dust over the three affected group members while chanting softly. Thank all the gods, Felix’s powerful prayers managed to counter the evil malady which was affecting them and they were able to shake off their listlessness and lethargy; if the magic had not worked, it would have made the exploration of the castle almost impossible.
Thus strengthened, we began to talk about out next course of action. Jorine and her clan were working in the pump room and at some point, we had to go and break a dam. This obstruction was in the area which they described as a riding track; from what they described, the river ran through there and they had told us that that was the location of the dam. Before this though, we decided to explore further into the complex.
We decided to enter through the double doors at ground level in the main entrance chamber. These opened into a very memorable space; marble statues lined the walls and a worn carpet lay on the floor; originally, it must have been some grand reception area. There was also a pair of doors on the wall to the south, or our right and another door to our left, or the north. A last pair of double doors were situated opposite our entrance way but these were raised to another level; a set of curved steps led up to them. Beyond was the as-yet unknown room mentioned by the gnomes as emitting the noise of merrymaking and where I had speculated that vampires were celebrating our arrival.
First, we rolled up the carpet, just to make sure there were no nasty surprises or openings underneath; then, we decided to leave the doors with the noise for the time being and explore the area to the south.
John approached the first door, which opened into another corridor, stretching to our left; another door was immediately in front of us, on the other side of the corridor. We opened it and it led into yet another corridor, this time with three doors. John again went inside and examined each door. He did not hear anything behind two of them but there was the sound of buzzing behind third. We were not sure just what that meant.
“An undead swarm?” I mused.
Felix shook his head: “I’ve never heard of such a thing; but who can tell in this place.”
So, we decided to leave that door initially and to open the first door we could see geographically, as it was opposite the door we had just opened; or at least, try to open it; unfortunately, it was locked. First John and then Drudge tried to pick it open but the lock defeated them, so Victor had to go forward with his hammer. It only took two or three blows with it and the door was shattered; then the creature in the room struck.
It was impossible for me to see exactly what happened but one moment Victor was there and the next moment he collapsed. Then the enemy emerged from the doorway and it was truly horrible; a hairless, humanoid creature with tentacles coming out of its sides. It also had protruding ribs which seemed to accentuate a cavity where its stomach should have been; the most awful thing was that that cavity now held a miniature version of Victor, screaming silently within this unearthly prison. Somehow, this thing had imprisoned part of Victor within itself.
As it stepped out, it immediately lashed out with a wave of black miasma, inimical to all life, hurting all of us. It was the same power the skeletons had used against us but far more intense and on a much greater scale and range. Longhelim stepped forward and slashed it with his sword; Drudge began his usual barrage and Felix attempted to send it back to its pit. That failed miserably; both the warriors hit it and it did recoil a little, but then leapt forward to attack once more; I stepped forward and cast a black ray out of my hand which struck it squarely in its chest; the ray almost bounced off but then sank into its torso. The creature sagged visibly and flinched; then it retreated back into the room. Thank the gods that worked! It should have been badly weakened!
The enemy was followed up ruthlessly by Longhelim and Drudge, both of whom struck it again; but it wasn’t finished either and cast a spell; it was the same spell as I had cast at it but this time it was aimed at Drudge; the ranger dodged skillfully and then used his uncanny acrobatics to move into its lair. Of course, being Drudge, he also shot it as he was doing a summersault through the air. Longhelim, in a more orthodox style, followed up and hit it with his sword; it retaliated by casting the same spell again, the weakening ray and this time it hit Longhelim who suddenly began to find it difficult to lift his sword, never mind actually harming this creature. As the paladin swung, his sword barely penetrated its unnaturally hard skin; he was just slapping it.
I had moved to the door and as I was watching the fight, I could see Victor’s miniature face contorting inside this thing; a thought struck me:
“Longhelim, we have no idea what will happen to Victor if this creature is slain now!”
John shouted back: “We can’t worry about now.”
Yet another black ray shot out of its hand and this time it struck Drudge, who promptly collapsed, finding his equipment too heavy to support. He promptly began squirming on the floor, loosening the straps of his backpack and quiver to divest himself of what he could; gamely, he tried to get ready to shoot from the floor. It was noticeable that the creature was not attacking anyone with its claws as it must have also been enfeebled. Thankfully, both Drudge and Longhelim had already hurt it badly. As Longhelim continued to slap it feebly with his sword, Drudge was doing more good with his cold infused arrows. Then disaster struck and Longhelim collapsed fell at its feet, exhausted and unable to carry on the fight; he was too weak and his equipment was too heavy for his magically induced weakness.
The situation was dire: our two remaining warriors were crawling at the feet of this thing while the last of our warriors was in miniature form, trapped in its chest. I had one spell of force missiles left; quickly, I cast it and again this creature proved highly resistant to my magic; but, I managed to force it through and finally it collapsed, a viscous black drool oozing out of its mouth.
As it did, Victor’s body shuddered and began to breathe. Then his eyes fluttered open and he groaned. Felix began to move to everyone and checked them thoroughly.
“Longhelim and Drudge should be all right in a little while. It’s that spell you use so often, Faden. It’s very effective but the weakness doesn’t last long.”
Then he moved to Victor. He poked and prodded and asked several questions. Victor didn’t say much but as he rose he did speak:
“I don’t feel right; whatever that thing did, I feel weaker; as if part of me is still in it or somewhere.”
Felix frowned: “I may be able to help you but after I have prayed for my next set of spells.”
Victor looked at him: “This feels wrong; the creatures here are very powerful and we are just about scraping through them; Felix, are you sure you’ll be able to do something about this later?”
The priest examined him again and said: “Part of your essence, your very being, has not been returned to you. That thing, whatever it was, took it and possessed it for a time but it doesn’t have it now, so I can use my prayers and magic to return it to you. There is a miracle which will do this and I promise that I will ask for it as soon as I can.”
Victor sighed and nodded.
While the others were still incapacitated by their weakness, John and I were examining the room we had entered; it contained a platform with chains in each corner that led upwards into a shaft; recessed into the lift platform was also a set of gears which were worked by a handle which could be placed in various positions. There was also what looked like some sort of little lid or covering to a container inside the platform.
Then I slapped myself mentally on the head as I remembered Jorine telling us that they had found the lift to the upper floor but that it was broken; I also remembered them saying that there was something very nasty in the lift room and they had closed and locked the door behind them. We should have remembered; as this was coming back to me, I also remembered the gnomes saying something about buzzing behind a door although I couldn’t remember the specifics.
John was still examining the gears and then said in an awed voice:
“This is one big castle!”
I looked down and saw what he meant. Apart from the position where it was now, the lever had eight other positions where it could be anchored; these were labeled A-H; both John and I immediately realised what that meant: eight more floors! And we hadn’t even explored this one fully! And we had roughly a week to do it? Yes, we had really set ourselves an ambitious timetable!
The room did not reveal anything else bar another lever set next to the door. We left it alone as we were in no shape to deal with any other pleasant surprises that this room could throw at us. John then cast a new spell onto a pebble; suddenly, the whole room brightened, as if we were experiencing a sunny day, rather than the Stygian gloom that seemed to be so prevalent in this castle. This new light revealed the ceiling of the shaft, although ceiling would have been a misnomer. A silvery, rippled surface of an indeterminate nature could be seen spreading across the shaft, quite a distance upwards. We couldn’t make out any further detail from this distance, but it was certainly not natural. Still, while interesting, at this point, we still had a large section of this first floor to explore and we decided to leave it for the moment.
We left this room and retreated to the corridor. The closest door was hiding the buzzing entity. Then suddenly, I remembered what the gnomes had told us. They had opened this door, glanced inside the room and then closed it immediately. They said that they had seen some red insects, similar to wasps inside. As we contemplated this, something was surfacing at the back of my mind and I began remembering:
“Hell wasps! That’s what those things are. They’re in the Codex of Infernal Insects; by Plutocrius. They come from Hell; nasty things; they have a hive mind and they can invade creatures or bodies and control them. Highly poisonous; you can’t hurt them with weapons. Plutocrius didn’t say how they could be defeated. He did say that they were horrible creatures. Too small for weapons; the only way I can think of is with damaging spells which affect an area. I have one of those; my acidic cloud? They may be resistant to acid though; Plutocrius didn’t specify but it could work.”
Everyone was staring at me. Then John asked:
“You mean there’s a whole book written on infernal insects? And you’ve read it?”
“Well, it’s a very thin book; Plutocrius moved on to other things; said infernal insects were too dangerous. He then wrote the authoritative tome on the mountain goats of the northern Gate Pass Range. I haven’t read that one.”
I was surprised. Plutocrius was the classic work in its field; surely everyone had read it? Well, to be fair, his was the only work in this field. Infernal insects were fairly rare on our plane. They tended to stay in one of the hells.
Longhelim cleared his throat, breaking my train of thought:
“This is very useful, Faden. Anyone have any ideas how to deal with these swarms apart from melting them with acid?”
John thought and then replied:
“I have a spell which would allow me to see what is beyond the door. It doesn’t see very well in the dark though.”
Felix had the answer to that one:
“We’ll do what the gnomes did. Someone open the door for a moment and I will cast a spell which will emit illuminate the room and that’ll allow you to look through your seeing spell.”
This sequence was enacted and then John began casting his spell. This took quite some time. I knew that spell but it had been quite some time since I had cast it myself and I had forgotten quite how complicated it was. Finally John was done and he began to report:
“There are empty holes in this room; probably baths; it looks like some sort of bathroom; really big though. There are also two really strange creatures chained to the far wall. They have a bunch of legs that seem to be coming out of their necks; and they’re red. They’ve got heads like particularly nasty dogs and very big teeth. Ah, what’s this? Oh, never mind. Looks like some golden coloured water at the bottom of the baths. Lots and lots of these wasps though. Definitely look as if they would form into swarms; two I reckon; nesting in the pools; bunch of bones in the pool as well; probably skeletons. What do you want to bet that they animate if we enter. All the other bones did. Oh, and there’s a door on the far side of the room.”
I turned to Longhelim:
“So, several skeletons, two unknown red creatures with lots of legs and very large teeth and two swarms of hell wasps; the wasps are able to animate undead as well. Acid?”
He nodded:
“Acid.”
This time we enacted the same sequence except that as soon as the door was opened, I cast my spell. The acidic fog covered the whole room. John continued concentrating on his spell and when the fog cleared, he said the following:
“The chained creatures are gone, melted. The liquid gold stuff at the bottom of the pools is gone; the wasps are still flying around and they are buzzing all of over the place; I think they are pretty angry.”
That was disappointing. I was hoping that the wasps would have perished under the acid.
Longhelim just said:
“Never mind. You’ll just have to do it again after you learn the spell once more.”
“Would have been useful to get them out of the way today. We could have checked that last door then,” I groused.
We looked at the last door in the corridor.
“The gnomes said that one led through a corridor and ultimately ended in the pump room. Shall we go and see how they’re doing?” I asked.
Longhelim shook his head:
“No time. We should get on with the rest of the castle.”
So, we retreated back on ourselves, back into the previous corridor which led into darkness, with a sharp turn to the left. We moved carefully, looking for traps.
We did not make any attempt at stealth. We had a daylight spell which announced our presence to all and sundry. This light revealed the corridor carrying on but there was also a turn to the right. Victor moved to the corner and then poked his head around quickly, just to see what was there.
He returned the whispered:
“Long, empty corridor; double file only; lots of doors on either side.”
We decided to explore this new corridor. So we moved up, formed into our usual marching order and then Victor and John both advanced to the first doors. The former to listen at them and the latter to check them for traps; ever since he had received the gift of the earring from the Masters of the Two Winds, Victor’s hearing was phenomenal and he was using it to great effect; this time though he was not able to hear anything.
As we were advancing slowly down the corridor, checking each door, our progress was interrupted by something enormous roaring and lurching at us down the corridor. I say lurching because it was too huge to fit into the space properly and its progress was being hampered by its own size; it was either so angry or insane that it was willing to even hurt or trap itself in a space that was too small for its huge bulk.
I had never seen anything like it before. Its head was oval and it had short but very powerful legs that were propelling it forward, leaving blackened smears on the corridor walls; it also had an enormous maw with many, many teeth and it was doing its best to reach us. It was undead and had the usual fiery glow around it so it was probably healed by fire in the same manner as everything else in here.
Just as our new visitor was introducing itself, the doors we had been checking began to open and skeletons poured out of them. These were armed with swords but they began to use bursts of black miasma which were just as painful as swords. Thankfully, as a multitude of them reached our ranks, Felix summoned his holy power and a group of them burst into shards.
Both Victor and Longhelim waded their way through a couple of skeletons before confronting this lurching creature which promptly took a massive bite out of the paladin. Victor was using his defensive style of swordplay. I was at the rear at this point and several of the skeletons took advantage of my relative isolation as they began to stick their swords through me. I had to run past Drudge, who was shooting arrows here, there and everywhere, but not before I took several very deep slashes. After that, I cast my spell of speed at the group which cheered the warriors up no end.
Felix used his power yet again and more skeletons were destroyed pretty much putting paid to the lot of them but the other creature was still there. Although both Victor and Longhelim were hitting it again and again, neither of their weapons seemed to be penetrating as deeply as they should have been. It was also still taking huge bites out of Longhelim.
Thankfully, there was only one of it and it was being hampered badly by its size in the corridor so the two warriors finally prevailed, driving their swords through it. They then proceeded to chop it up, opening up a pathway for the rest of us into the latter part of the corridor. As they were doing so, they made a strange discovery; the creature was wearing some sort of belt! Very odd! John immediately put it on and began to act in an effeminate way, alluding to a legendary and infamous belt which changed the sex of the wearer but after fooling around for a few moments, he said that he felt stronger. In a more serious tone, he said:
“Drudge should wear this. It would allow him to take full advantage of his bow since he cannot wear gauntlets that enhance his strength the way you two can,” he motioned to Victor and Longhelim. “His gauntlets enhance his speed and agility.”
It was a good point and the belt was given to Drudge; as soon as he put it on, it settled snugly around his waist, visibly adjusting to his size.
Once we had healed up, we carried on down this corridor to find a crude cave at the end of it. It looked like the lair of the strange creature that had attacked us. We searched it thoroughly but it proved to be empty. Then we began to search the rooms from which the skeletons had appeared. These proved to be more lucrative. There were various objects there that could have been valuable; some obviously so, others may or may not have been; amongst the former were various bits of jewelry and personal objects such as quills with nibs of precious metals; amongst the latter were a couple of miniature images of people and a book of bad poetry. John, our resident expert, was of the opinion:
“Take it all!”
We had to take out one of the suits of half plate from Victor’s magical bag, before we could that; I hoped it would be worth it.
Once we had finished there, we carried on up the corridor, going to the next door. As usual, Victor listened and he motioned us to hold still. He obviously heard something. Then he returned and whispered:
“Some odd noise, like something scraping on metal; can’t really tell what it is but it’s definitely movement.”
So we arranged ourselves in battle formation and John’s invisible friend opened the door – to find a skeleton sweeping the floor with a broom, creating the odd scraping noise; we also just caught a glimpse of another skeleton slipping into a door opposite the one we had just opened into a corridor.
The sweeping skeleton did not seem hostile but we still kept a wary eye on it as we slipped across the corridor into the door opposite. It just kept sweeping. The corridor turned right into the darkness. As we entered into the door after the first skeleton, we entered into a store room with a collection of burnt out crates strewn over the floor. There was also a set of stairs leading out of the room onto a level above this; as well as some sort of small lift, probably a dumb waiter.
Longhelim said:
“This looks like a set of servant’s stairs to the main room above; the place where the party is. That dumb waiter must be for up there as well.”
The skeleton was there but it was ignoring us, so we reciprocated. We didn’t feel like going up to the party room yet so we went back to the corridor. There was another door just to our left; after taking the usual precautions, we opened the door to find it full of skeletons; they looked like the former servants of the castle and they seemed to be engaged in some sort activity associated with those tasks. Whatever had happened here had condemned these poor wretches to the same fate as everyone else.
This place really was The Castle of the Walking Dead.
Shaking our heads, we gently closed the door and left them, with Felix muttering:
“We have to do something about them when we return.”
Then we continued down the corridor. As he went along, John used his wand and suddenly stopped dead, whispering in his excitement:
“There’s a secret door just there, to our right.”
Then he went through a complicated routine, pressing three spots on the stone simultaneously, which released a spring and a door swung silently open. Curious, we all crowded behind John, to see a narrow corridor leading into the darkness. John went into it, with us keeping an eye on events but it was disappointing. The corridor ran along the back of the back of the rooms which we had investigated previously and which had yielded that collection of strange of eclectic objects. The walls of the corridor had a set of spy holes into each room. Further investigation revealed nothing else.
“Well, that was disappointing,” John was saying, as he closed the door; “I was hoping it would lead somewhere more interesting; instead, it looks as if the walls really did have eyes in this place.”
“Well, now they don’t need any eyes; they can just rely on the undead that float through the walls instead,” snorted Felix.
I was looking around: “As to that, this place is the last known location of Drakus Coaltongue. I’m just waiting for his ghost to turn up. I bet he can float through walls as well now.”
Everyone looked at me, speechless.
“I really wish you hadn’t said that,” snapped John as he turned around and began to check the corridor again, very, very carefully; I noticed that he was glancing at the walls apprehensively far more often than normal.
We then continued down the corridor which led to one final door at the end. We opened it with the usual precautions and it revealed a cistern. It was empty and clean; not surprising considering the bodily needs of the majority of the current inhabitants of the castle. Further investigation down it led to the river which we had seen previously and which obviously powered nearly everything in this place.
It reminded us that we had promised the gnomes that we would break the dam soon. As we were getting very low on spells by this point, we decided that we should break the dam and then attempt to rest again.
The gnomes had told us that the river was dammed somewhere at the racing track. We had directions how to get there. We had to go through the stables, which were dark and smelly; mostly of flame and nastier stuff. There was also a large pipe on the ceiling which finished at a spigot. There was no wall at the back and we could see that the room opened out into an enormous space; although the gnomes had been here recently but we still employed caution as we carefully pointed John’s powerful light spell into it. As Jorine had described, this area looked to be part of a natural cave except for the floor. As we stepped in, we saw a track of beaten earth under our feet; with John in the lead, we followed it around; it was a rough oval shape and seemed to follow the outer edge of the cave. We glanced into the centre and there we could see the remains of stalagmites jutting up from the floor, giving us an indication of the type of cave that it must have been before it became a horse track.
Approximately half way through, we came across the river and following it, we found the dam. Victor took out his hammer and warned:
“Stand back!”
Then he began to smash the dam beneath him while standing on air courtesy of Felix’s spell. It didn’t take long for Victor smash it and the water surged along the tunnel towards the pump room. Once that had been done, we decided to retire back to the chapel.
Jorine’s magical hut was still there so we decided to avail ourselves of its hospitality.
We left this room and retreated to the corridor. The closest door was hiding the buzzing entity. Then suddenly, I remembered what the gnomes had told us. They had opened this door, glanced inside the room and then closed it immediately. They said that they had seen some red insects, similar to wasps inside. As we contemplated this, something was surfacing at the back of my mind and I began remembering:
“Hell wasps! That’s what those things are. They’re in the Codex of Infernal Insects; by Plutocrius. They come from Hell; nasty things; they have a hive mind and they can invade creatures or bodies and control them. Highly poisonous; you can’t hurt them with weapons. Plutocrius didn’t say how they could be defeated. He did say that they were horrible creatures. Too small for weapons; the only way I can think of is with damaging spells which affect an area. I have one of those; my acidic cloud? They may be resistant to acid though; Plutocrius didn’t specify but it could work.”
Everyone was staring at me. Then John asked:
“You mean there’s a whole book written on infernal insects? And you’ve read it?”
“Well, it’s a very thin book; Plutocrius moved on to other things; said infernal insects were too dangerous. He then wrote the authoritative tome on the mountain goats of the northern Gate Pass Range. I haven’t read that one.”
I was surprised. Plutocrius was the classic work in its field; surely everyone had read it? Well, to be fair, his was the only work in this field. Infernal insects were fairly rare on our plane. They tended to stay in one of the hells.
Longhelim cleared his throat, breaking my train of thought:
“This is very useful, Faden. Anyone have any ideas how to deal with these swarms apart from melting them with acid?”
John thought and then replied:
“I have a spell which would allow me to see what is beyond the door. It doesn’t see very well in the dark though.”
Felix had the answer to that one:
“We’ll do what the gnomes did. Someone open the door for a moment and I will cast a spell which will emit illuminate the room and that’ll allow you to look through your seeing spell.”
This sequence was enacted and then John began casting his spell. This took quite some time. I knew that spell but it had been quite some time since I had cast it myself and I had forgotten quite how complicated it was. Finally John was done and he began to report:
“There are empty holes in this room; probably baths; it looks like some sort of bathroom; really big though. There are also two really strange creatures chained to the far wall. They have a bunch of legs that seem to be coming out of their necks; and they’re red. They’ve got heads like particularly nasty dogs and very big teeth. Ah, what’s this? Oh, never mind. Looks like some golden coloured water at the bottom of the baths. Lots and lots of these wasps though. Definitely look as if they would form into swarms; two I reckon; nesting in the pools; bunch of bones in the pool as well; probably skeletons. What do you want to bet that they animate if we enter. All the other bones did. Oh, and there’s a door on the far side of the room.”
I turned to Longhelim:
“So, several skeletons, two unknown red creatures with lots of legs and very large teeth and two swarms of hell wasps; the wasps are able to animate undead as well. Acid?”
He nodded:
“Acid.”
This time we enacted the same sequence except that as soon as the door was opened, I cast my spell. The acidic fog covered the whole room. John continued concentrating on his spell and when the fog cleared, he said the following:
“The chained creatures are gone, melted. The liquid gold stuff at the bottom of the pools is gone; the wasps are still flying around and they are buzzing all of over the place; I think they are pretty angry.”
That was disappointing. I was hoping that the wasps would have perished under the acid.
Longhelim just said:
“Never mind. You’ll just have to do it again after you learn the spell once more.”
“Would have been useful to get them out of the way today. We could have checked that last door then,” I groused.
We looked at the last door in the corridor.
“The gnomes said that one led through a corridor and ultimately ended in the pump room. Shall we go and see how they’re doing?” I asked.
Longhelim shook his head:
“No time. We should get on with the rest of the castle.”
So, we retreated back on ourselves, back into the previous corridor which led into darkness, with a sharp turn to the left. We moved carefully, looking for traps.
We did not make any attempt at stealth. We had a daylight spell which announced our presence to all and sundry. This light revealed the corridor carrying on but there was also a turn to the right. Victor moved to the corner and then poked his head around quickly, just to see what was there.
He returned the whispered:
“Long, empty corridor; double file only; lots of doors on either side.”
We decided to explore this new corridor. So we moved up, formed into our usual marching order and then Victor and John both advanced to the first doors. The former to listen at them and the latter to check them for traps; ever since he had received the gift of the earring from the Masters of the Two Winds, Victor’s hearing was phenomenal and he was using it to great effect; this time though he was not able to hear anything.
As we were advancing slowly down the corridor, checking each door, our progress was interrupted by something enormous roaring and lurching at us down the corridor. I say lurching because it was too huge to fit into the space properly and its progress was being hampered by its own size; it was either so angry or insane that it was willing to even hurt or trap itself in a space that was too small for its huge bulk.
I had never seen anything like it before. Its head was oval and it had short but very powerful legs that were propelling it forward, leaving blackened smears on the corridor walls; it also had an enormous maw with many, many teeth and it was doing its best to reach us. It was undead and had the usual fiery glow around it so it was probably healed by fire in the same manner as everything else in here.
Just as our new visitor was introducing itself, the doors we had been checking began to open and skeletons poured out of them. These were armed with swords but they began to use bursts of black miasma which were just as painful as swords. Thankfully, as a multitude of them reached our ranks, Felix summoned his holy power and a group of them burst into shards.
Both Victor and Longhelim waded their way through a couple of skeletons before confronting this lurching creature which promptly took a massive bite out of the paladin. Victor was using his defensive style of swordplay. I was at the rear at this point and several of the skeletons took advantage of my relative isolation as they began to stick their swords through me. I had to run past Drudge, who was shooting arrows here, there and everywhere, but not before I took several very deep slashes. After that, I cast my spell of speed at the group which cheered the warriors up no end.
Felix used his power yet again and more skeletons were destroyed pretty much putting paid to the lot of them but the other creature was still there. Although both Victor and Longhelim were hitting it again and again, neither of their weapons seemed to be penetrating as deeply as they should have been. It was also still taking huge bites out of Longhelim.
Thankfully, there was only one of it and it was being hampered badly by its size in the corridor so the two warriors finally prevailed, driving their swords through it. They then proceeded to chop it up, opening up a pathway for the rest of us into the latter part of the corridor. As they were doing so, they made a strange discovery; the creature was wearing some sort of belt! Very odd! John immediately put it on and began to act in an effeminate way, alluding to a legendary and infamous belt which changed the sex of the wearer but after fooling around for a few moments, he said that he felt stronger. In a more serious tone, he said:
“Drudge should wear this. It would allow him to take full advantage of his bow since he cannot wear gauntlets that enhance his strength the way you two can,” he motioned to Victor and Longhelim. “His gauntlets enhance his speed and agility.”
It was a good point and the belt was given to Drudge; as soon as he put it on, it settled snugly around his waist, visibly adjusting to his size.
Once we had healed up, we carried on down this corridor to find a crude cave at the end of it. It looked like the lair of the strange creature that had attacked us. We searched it thoroughly but it proved to be empty. Then we began to search the rooms from which the skeletons had appeared. These proved to be more lucrative. There were various objects there that could have been valuable; some obviously so, others may or may not have been; amongst the former were various bits of jewelry and personal objects such as quills with nibs of precious metals; amongst the latter were a couple of miniature images of people and a book of bad poetry. John, our resident expert, was of the opinion:
“Take it all!”
We had to take out one of the suits of half plate from Victor’s magical bag, before we could that; I hoped it would be worth it.
Once we had finished there, we carried on up the corridor, going to the next door. As usual, Victor listened and he motioned us to hold still. He obviously heard something. Then he returned and whispered:
“Some odd noise, like something scraping on metal; can’t really tell what it is but it’s definitely movement.”
So we arranged ourselves in battle formation and John’s invisible friend opened the door – to find a skeleton sweeping the floor with a broom, creating the odd scraping noise; we also just caught a glimpse of another skeleton slipping into a door opposite the one we had just opened into a corridor.
The sweeping skeleton did not seem hostile but we still kept a wary eye on it as we slipped across the corridor into the door opposite. It just kept sweeping. The corridor turned right into the darkness. As we entered into the door after the first skeleton, we entered into a store room with a collection of burnt out crates strewn over the floor. There was also a set of stairs leading out of the room onto a level above this; as well as some sort of small lift, probably a dumb waiter.
Longhelim said:
“This looks like a set of servant’s stairs to the main room above; the place where the party is. That dumb waiter must be for up there as well.”
The skeleton was there but it was ignoring us, so we reciprocated. We didn’t feel like going up to the party room yet so we went back to the corridor. There was another door just to our left; after taking the usual precautions, we opened the door to find it full of skeletons; they looked like the former servants of the castle and they seemed to be engaged in some sort activity associated with those tasks. Whatever had happened here had condemned these poor wretches to the same fate as everyone else.
This place really was The Castle of the Walking Dead.
Shaking our heads, we gently closed the door and left them, with Felix muttering:
“We have to do something about them when we return.”
Then we continued down the corridor. As he went along, John used his wand and suddenly stopped dead, whispering in his excitement:
“There’s a secret door just there, to our right.”
Then he went through a complicated routine, pressing three spots on the stone simultaneously, which released a spring and a door swung silently open. Curious, we all crowded behind John, to see a narrow corridor leading into the darkness. John went into it, with us keeping an eye on events but it was disappointing. The corridor ran along the back of the back of the rooms which we had investigated previously and which had yielded that collection of strange of eclectic objects. The walls of the corridor had a set of spy holes into each room. Further investigation revealed nothing else.
“Well, that was disappointing,” John was saying, as he closed the door; “I was hoping it would lead somewhere more interesting; instead, it looks as if the walls really did have eyes in this place.”
“Well, now they don’t need any eyes; they can just rely on the undead that float through the walls instead,” snorted Felix.
I was looking around: “As to that, this place is the last known location of Drakus Coaltongue. I’m just waiting for his ghost to turn up. I bet he can float through walls as well now.”
Everyone looked at me, speechless.
“I really wish you hadn’t said that,” snapped John as he turned around and began to check the corridor again, very, very carefully; I noticed that he was glancing at the walls apprehensively far more often than normal.
We then continued down the corridor which led to one final door at the end. We opened it with the usual precautions and it revealed a cistern. It was empty and clean; not surprising considering the bodily needs of the majority of the current inhabitants of the castle. Further investigation down it led to the river which we had seen previously and which obviously powered nearly everything in this place.
It reminded us that we had promised the gnomes that we would break the dam soon. As we were getting very low on spells by this point, we decided that we should break the dam and then attempt to rest again.
The gnomes had told us that the river was dammed somewhere at the racing track. We had directions how to get there. We had to go through the stables, which were dark and smelly; mostly of flame and nastier stuff. There was also a large pipe on the ceiling which finished at a spigot. There was no wall at the back and we could see that the room opened out into an enormous space; although the gnomes had been here recently but we still employed caution as we carefully pointed John’s powerful light spell into it. As Jorine had described, this area looked to be part of a natural cave except for the floor. As we stepped in, we saw a track of beaten earth under our feet; with John in the lead, we followed it around; it was a rough oval shape and seemed to follow the outer edge of the cave. We glanced into the centre and there we could see the remains of stalagmites jutting up from the floor, giving us an indication of the type of cave that it must have been before it became a horse track.
Approximately half way through, we came across the river and following it, we found the dam. Victor took out his hammer and warned:
“Stand back!”
Then he began to smash the dam beneath him while standing on air courtesy of Felix’s spell. It didn’t take long for Victor smash it and the water surged along the tunnel towards the pump room. Once that had been done, we decided to retire back to the chapel.
Jorine’s magical hut was still there so we decided to avail ourselves of its hospitality.
Of course, something was waiting for us; we had barely began to get ourselves organized for resting when suddenly, two nasty undead creatures glided through the wall. We had seen them before; they were the same horrible things that we had met in Dassen; under the palace of King Steppengaard in Bresk; when we had to sneak in through the sewers via the graveyard, these same undead had made an appearance; shrouded, misty, incorporeal, underneath their cowls they looked as if they had a thousand faces, flashing eternally through their visage and all of them screaming their agonies of a thousand years; their touch was deadly, leaving a chill through the soul.
Thankfully, Felix reacted quickly and put a powerful spell on Longhelim’s weapon. The paladin and Victor proceeded to confront them. As this was happening, a dreadful keening shriek tore the air; it was so overwhelming that everyone froze for a moment; except Longhelim, thankfully, who still engaged one of the undead. The other attacked Victor while he was fairly helpless and the warrior visibly sagged. Then the door suddenly shattered and a new creature was revealed: this one was big, humanoid and with strong looking limbs; that was where the resemblance to a humanoid stopped. It had a long neck and the head of a vulture! Oh, and large wings. I recognized it immediately; it was a vrock; a demon! Having both demons and devils in the same location went against accepted doctrine. It was written that if they were anywhere close to each other, they would actively seek each other out and have an argument; generally a fairly terminal one.
Then again, I don’t think accepted doctrine had ever experienced anywhere quite like Castle Korstull.
Well, however odd its presence, its appearance seemed to shake Victor out of his stupor and despite his pummeling at the hands the undead, he stepped forward to confront this new enemy. Longhelim had managed to destroy one of the transparent undead courtesy of Felix’s magic. It made a very satisfying sight as it completely dissipated with a final wail after one of Longhelim’s blows.
Despite his weakened condition, Victor was holding his own against the vrock, in fact even striking several telling blows on the demon, causing it to shriek angrily and strike out with beak and talon. I managed to cast a spell of force missiles at it; it was difficult to get my spell to affect it but finally, they sank in. Longhelim had confronted the other undead and with his next strike, dispatched it, again thanks to Felix’s spell. The paladin took a moment and cast his own spell on his sword. Then, cunningly keeping the demon in the doorway, the two warriors took turns to confront it through skillful movement which ultimately ensured that it was hacked back to whatever abyssal pit had spawned it.
As soon as it had gone, Felix strode forward:
“Here, let me look at both of you!” he said as he examined both Longhelim and Victor.
He dismissed the paladin:
“You’re fine”; then he turned to Victor: “You’re not. Those undead have affected you very badly but once we finish resting, I’ll be able to do something about it.”
Victor looked relieved. We tidied up our possessions inside the magical hut and then settled down again.
Some time later, we heard noises but also managed to discern gnomish voices from a distance. Wisely, they were making noise deliberately, just in case we were here; that way, we wouldn’t have a nasty surprise as they marched into the chapel and simultaneously, there was little danger of an adverse reaction from our watch.
I stirred as I was sleeping and heard a murmured conversation between Jorine and whoever was on watch. Then I turned over and fell into a deeper sleep.
Upon awakening, I, together with Felix and John began to prepare our spells; despite his late start, John was becoming an adept spell caster of a most unusual type. However, before we did so, we put our heads together to make sure that we had certain defences to cast on everyone; the main one being the spell for protection against fire. There were various other spells cast on various individuals of our team which I have described before but this time, Felix also summoned a great feast; it took us some time to eat it as it was so sumptuous and there was enough to invite the gnomes as well.
It was at this point that I realised that there didn’t seem to be as many members of the Illorn clan as previously:
“Victor, what happened to the other gnomes?” I whispered to the warrior.
He just looked at me and shook his head. I was saddened and a little appalled. I have to confess that I had forgotten the names of those who had fallen. Oller, Grellfin and Jorine were still there; the three missing ones were sell swords but they had shown great courage in participating in this expedition.
As I was still thinking about this, Felix cleared his throat:
“Ladies and gentlemen, my new magical feast will feed eleven people; there are twelve of us. I am afraid that members of my team will all participate so one of the members of clan Millorn will not be able to partake; I will let you decide to who that will be.”
The gnomes had a quick consultation amongst themselves and it was finally decided that Ernest would be the unlucky fellow to be excluded. Once that decision had been made, Felix continued:
“This food is rich; it will feed you for the day; it will also give you courage, the likes of which you have never encountered; no poison will have any effect on you and the fare will also strengthen your inner resolve. It is also said to boost the skills of a warrior. Soldiers say that an army marches on its stomach so it only stands to reason that an exceptional feast would provide exceptional warriors.
Now, let us all give thanks to Farlanghn then begin!”
While Longhelim was our great orator and spokesperson, Felix was not bad either, when he put his mind to it.
The priest was quite right; the food was exceptional and I felt amazingly buoyed by it. After we had all finished, I began to cast a spell on the last rod hanging in mid air where the doors to the chapel had been. Again, it took me some time but finally, I was able to gather the nature of the command word and grasping the rod, gave it to John, after sharing the information with him.
John had also used his time to magically divine the magical horn we had found:
“Hey guys, watch this!”
He went to a corner and blew on the horn. A cloud of fog blew out of the other end, obscuring that corner.
Longhelim looked dubious at this but Felix said:
“That spell saved my life when that goblin sorcerer and his warg were chewing me into little bits!”
John stowed it and the rod away among his possessions and the Longhelim turned to me:
“The gnomes told us it will take some time before there is enough water pressure for the pumps to start working properly. This should give us time to find out what is going on in that damnable party.”
I nodded but then said:
“We should try to finish those hell wasps first. I learned the spell with the acid again just for them.”
“Oh, I’d forgotten about them. Yes, let’s go there first.”
The gnomes decided to stay here for the time being and we went back to the room where the hell wasps resided. We proceeded to repeat our routine; John opened the door very quickly and I cast my spell. We waited for a few moments and then opened the door again and found that there were no more hell wasps left. They had all been dissolved. Whatever else had been at the bottom of the pools had also been dissolved; in fact, after the two clouds, fairly much everything in the room had been dissolved; although, we could see that the two pools were filling with water.
Investigation of the door led to a spa but this one was completely empty.
We came out and then, for the sake of completion, found another secret door, which we knew must have been there. This led to another narrow corridor, allowing watchers to see through spy holes into guest quarters. This was a parallel corridor to the one we found after fighting the strange creature which had been wearing a belt and which nearly bit Longhelim in half.
Finally, that only left the double doors from which had sounds of merriment could be heard. I just knew that whatever it was that was amusing to whoever was behind those doors, was not going to be funny to me. Castle Korstull was that kind of place.
As we neared the doors, John stopped us and motioned us back:
“I’ve got that spell again; the one that allows me to see what’s in a room without opening the door.”
Longhelim replied immediately:
“Good place to use it.”
So John began his casting; as previously, it took a little time and then he concentrated, closing his eyes. After a little time, he opened his eyes and told us:
“Well, that was a waste of time; or maybe it wasn’t. I cast my spell just behind the doors; and found that all I could see was stacks of wood and things; it took me a little while to understand but it seems that whoever is in there has piled up a lot of furniture and whatever else they could put their hands on against the door. We’re certainly not going to be able to just charge in there.”
Victor took off his bag and began to rummage through it. I knew he was looking for his hammer.
“I could smash through it I suppose,” he said, though he sounded a little dubious.
I realised that it was a question of time. Yes, he could smash through bit it would take time and give however was in that room time to respond.
I thought for a moment. Then I said:
“Hopefully, we won’t have to. Let’s go around the corner. I hope this is a large hall. “
We moved down the corridor in front of the doors and then around the corner. A little distance down this corridor, I said:
“It’s a bit of a gamble but, I believe that behind this wall is part of the banqueting hall. I can make a hole in this wall.”
The others just stared at that part of the corridor.
Longhelim frowned:
“Are you sure about this Faden? About this position in the corridor?”
“I’m a dwarf. I know these things. We dwarves are born with innate instincts about stone work, corridors, caves and things.”
This was said slightly tongue in cheek. I had never been underground prior to my adventures with this lot and I may have been stretching things a little about my instincts since my family were merchants. The closest thing my father had to instincts about stone work was getting the best price for a gemstone. Still I was sure that this was one of the walls of the banqueting hall.
The others were already beginning to get ready. Drudge swung his arms slightly, his bow in his hand. Victor and Longhelim were squaring their shoulders and then the paladin nodded at me. I tried this new spell. Theoretically, it created a hole in a wall that would allow passage into the space beyond for a single person. Thankfully, that was exactly what it did. The hole appeared, light streamed in from John’s spell and illuminated a scene from the very pits of abyss.
Victor and Longhelim stepped through followed by Felix and Drudge with John and I guarding the rear. Even before I moved in, I heard Felix’s voice dripping with disgust:
“Ghouls!”
In many ways the vilest of all undead, and there was a lot of competition for this title, these creatures were cursed with insatiable hunger; and their favourite food was human flesh although they would eat any humanoid at a push. That was why they were amongst the most reviled of all undead abominations.
I stepped through and saw a scene out of a nightmare. We had surprised some sort of feast; several ghouls were already trying to jump on Victor and Longhelim but most of them were still sitting at tables, shouting, whooping and yipping; they were also waving knives and forks around, some of which had gobbets of something on their prongs. If the ghouls were true to form, that was human flesh they had but I had no idea where they had obtained it. Then I remembered the poor missing gnome and halfling sell swords from Jorine’s group. We never did establish how they had perished and ghouls, as well as being merciless killers, were also expert scavengers.
One of the disgusting creatures was standing on a table and strumming a lute parodying a bard while the worst abomination of all lay on a throne overlooking this spectacle. A mound of…..something, some sort of quivering substance; as it twisted and shook, a flash of white suggested that it had the remains of bones within it; there was also an ioun stone circling its throne; it would be difficult to say it had a head.
There was uproar as all the ghouls kicked back their chairs and looked at us…..hungrily. I motioned with my hands and cast another spells which I didn’t use very often; a forest of black tentacles emerged from the ground and began to wrestle with the ghouls at the back of the room; snaking around their legs, arms, torsos, necks, the creatures went into a frenzy, scratching, biting and screaming but the tentacles held them fast, including the one playing the lute, who screamed in a high soprano.
Then, a voice emerged from the mound on the throne:
“Humans! Stop! I wish to parley! Aid me!”
Victor’s response to this was to advance to the throne and strike at the mound. I couldn’t blame him. Something that was in charge of a bunch of ghouls suddenly telling us to stop and leave them alone? I couldn’t see either the paladin or our priest acquiescing to this; and Victor’s actions spoke louder than words.
Longhelim joined Victor and attacked the mound which flailed with tentacles but was ultimately no match for the two warriors; I was a little puzzled as to how something that weak had survived here for so long but did not give it a great deal of thought as Felix used a burst of his holy power and most of the ghouls turned into dust.
The singing ghoul was still trapped in the tentacles, together with several others but they were finally strangled, vanquishing all visible enemies. I turned to Longhelim:
“Did you hear that thing? It was trying to talk to us.”
“Yes. I’m sure it was. I am also sure those ghouls would have eaten us given the slightest chance. That’s what they do. They cannot control themselves. It’s their curse. For future reference, I’m not going to talk to anything that’s in charge of a bunch of ghouls; or to ghouls either for that matter. Trust me Faden, talking to ghouls is the easiest way to get eaten!”
Thankfully, Felix reacted quickly and put a powerful spell on Longhelim’s weapon. The paladin and Victor proceeded to confront them. As this was happening, a dreadful keening shriek tore the air; it was so overwhelming that everyone froze for a moment; except Longhelim, thankfully, who still engaged one of the undead. The other attacked Victor while he was fairly helpless and the warrior visibly sagged. Then the door suddenly shattered and a new creature was revealed: this one was big, humanoid and with strong looking limbs; that was where the resemblance to a humanoid stopped. It had a long neck and the head of a vulture! Oh, and large wings. I recognized it immediately; it was a vrock; a demon! Having both demons and devils in the same location went against accepted doctrine. It was written that if they were anywhere close to each other, they would actively seek each other out and have an argument; generally a fairly terminal one.
Then again, I don’t think accepted doctrine had ever experienced anywhere quite like Castle Korstull.
Well, however odd its presence, its appearance seemed to shake Victor out of his stupor and despite his pummeling at the hands the undead, he stepped forward to confront this new enemy. Longhelim had managed to destroy one of the transparent undead courtesy of Felix’s magic. It made a very satisfying sight as it completely dissipated with a final wail after one of Longhelim’s blows.
Despite his weakened condition, Victor was holding his own against the vrock, in fact even striking several telling blows on the demon, causing it to shriek angrily and strike out with beak and talon. I managed to cast a spell of force missiles at it; it was difficult to get my spell to affect it but finally, they sank in. Longhelim had confronted the other undead and with his next strike, dispatched it, again thanks to Felix’s spell. The paladin took a moment and cast his own spell on his sword. Then, cunningly keeping the demon in the doorway, the two warriors took turns to confront it through skillful movement which ultimately ensured that it was hacked back to whatever abyssal pit had spawned it.
As soon as it had gone, Felix strode forward:
“Here, let me look at both of you!” he said as he examined both Longhelim and Victor.
He dismissed the paladin:
“You’re fine”; then he turned to Victor: “You’re not. Those undead have affected you very badly but once we finish resting, I’ll be able to do something about it.”
Victor looked relieved. We tidied up our possessions inside the magical hut and then settled down again.
Some time later, we heard noises but also managed to discern gnomish voices from a distance. Wisely, they were making noise deliberately, just in case we were here; that way, we wouldn’t have a nasty surprise as they marched into the chapel and simultaneously, there was little danger of an adverse reaction from our watch.
I stirred as I was sleeping and heard a murmured conversation between Jorine and whoever was on watch. Then I turned over and fell into a deeper sleep.
Upon awakening, I, together with Felix and John began to prepare our spells; despite his late start, John was becoming an adept spell caster of a most unusual type. However, before we did so, we put our heads together to make sure that we had certain defences to cast on everyone; the main one being the spell for protection against fire. There were various other spells cast on various individuals of our team which I have described before but this time, Felix also summoned a great feast; it took us some time to eat it as it was so sumptuous and there was enough to invite the gnomes as well.
It was at this point that I realised that there didn’t seem to be as many members of the Illorn clan as previously:
“Victor, what happened to the other gnomes?” I whispered to the warrior.
He just looked at me and shook his head. I was saddened and a little appalled. I have to confess that I had forgotten the names of those who had fallen. Oller, Grellfin and Jorine were still there; the three missing ones were sell swords but they had shown great courage in participating in this expedition.
As I was still thinking about this, Felix cleared his throat:
“Ladies and gentlemen, my new magical feast will feed eleven people; there are twelve of us. I am afraid that members of my team will all participate so one of the members of clan Millorn will not be able to partake; I will let you decide to who that will be.”
The gnomes had a quick consultation amongst themselves and it was finally decided that Ernest would be the unlucky fellow to be excluded. Once that decision had been made, Felix continued:
“This food is rich; it will feed you for the day; it will also give you courage, the likes of which you have never encountered; no poison will have any effect on you and the fare will also strengthen your inner resolve. It is also said to boost the skills of a warrior. Soldiers say that an army marches on its stomach so it only stands to reason that an exceptional feast would provide exceptional warriors.
Now, let us all give thanks to Farlanghn then begin!”
While Longhelim was our great orator and spokesperson, Felix was not bad either, when he put his mind to it.
The priest was quite right; the food was exceptional and I felt amazingly buoyed by it. After we had all finished, I began to cast a spell on the last rod hanging in mid air where the doors to the chapel had been. Again, it took me some time but finally, I was able to gather the nature of the command word and grasping the rod, gave it to John, after sharing the information with him.
John had also used his time to magically divine the magical horn we had found:
“Hey guys, watch this!”
He went to a corner and blew on the horn. A cloud of fog blew out of the other end, obscuring that corner.
Longhelim looked dubious at this but Felix said:
“That spell saved my life when that goblin sorcerer and his warg were chewing me into little bits!”
John stowed it and the rod away among his possessions and the Longhelim turned to me:
“The gnomes told us it will take some time before there is enough water pressure for the pumps to start working properly. This should give us time to find out what is going on in that damnable party.”
I nodded but then said:
“We should try to finish those hell wasps first. I learned the spell with the acid again just for them.”
“Oh, I’d forgotten about them. Yes, let’s go there first.”
The gnomes decided to stay here for the time being and we went back to the room where the hell wasps resided. We proceeded to repeat our routine; John opened the door very quickly and I cast my spell. We waited for a few moments and then opened the door again and found that there were no more hell wasps left. They had all been dissolved. Whatever else had been at the bottom of the pools had also been dissolved; in fact, after the two clouds, fairly much everything in the room had been dissolved; although, we could see that the two pools were filling with water.
Investigation of the door led to a spa but this one was completely empty.
We came out and then, for the sake of completion, found another secret door, which we knew must have been there. This led to another narrow corridor, allowing watchers to see through spy holes into guest quarters. This was a parallel corridor to the one we found after fighting the strange creature which had been wearing a belt and which nearly bit Longhelim in half.
Finally, that only left the double doors from which had sounds of merriment could be heard. I just knew that whatever it was that was amusing to whoever was behind those doors, was not going to be funny to me. Castle Korstull was that kind of place.
As we neared the doors, John stopped us and motioned us back:
“I’ve got that spell again; the one that allows me to see what’s in a room without opening the door.”
Longhelim replied immediately:
“Good place to use it.”
So John began his casting; as previously, it took a little time and then he concentrated, closing his eyes. After a little time, he opened his eyes and told us:
“Well, that was a waste of time; or maybe it wasn’t. I cast my spell just behind the doors; and found that all I could see was stacks of wood and things; it took me a little while to understand but it seems that whoever is in there has piled up a lot of furniture and whatever else they could put their hands on against the door. We’re certainly not going to be able to just charge in there.”
Victor took off his bag and began to rummage through it. I knew he was looking for his hammer.
“I could smash through it I suppose,” he said, though he sounded a little dubious.
I realised that it was a question of time. Yes, he could smash through bit it would take time and give however was in that room time to respond.
I thought for a moment. Then I said:
“Hopefully, we won’t have to. Let’s go around the corner. I hope this is a large hall. “
We moved down the corridor in front of the doors and then around the corner. A little distance down this corridor, I said:
“It’s a bit of a gamble but, I believe that behind this wall is part of the banqueting hall. I can make a hole in this wall.”
The others just stared at that part of the corridor.
Longhelim frowned:
“Are you sure about this Faden? About this position in the corridor?”
“I’m a dwarf. I know these things. We dwarves are born with innate instincts about stone work, corridors, caves and things.”
This was said slightly tongue in cheek. I had never been underground prior to my adventures with this lot and I may have been stretching things a little about my instincts since my family were merchants. The closest thing my father had to instincts about stone work was getting the best price for a gemstone. Still I was sure that this was one of the walls of the banqueting hall.
The others were already beginning to get ready. Drudge swung his arms slightly, his bow in his hand. Victor and Longhelim were squaring their shoulders and then the paladin nodded at me. I tried this new spell. Theoretically, it created a hole in a wall that would allow passage into the space beyond for a single person. Thankfully, that was exactly what it did. The hole appeared, light streamed in from John’s spell and illuminated a scene from the very pits of abyss.
Victor and Longhelim stepped through followed by Felix and Drudge with John and I guarding the rear. Even before I moved in, I heard Felix’s voice dripping with disgust:
“Ghouls!”
In many ways the vilest of all undead, and there was a lot of competition for this title, these creatures were cursed with insatiable hunger; and their favourite food was human flesh although they would eat any humanoid at a push. That was why they were amongst the most reviled of all undead abominations.
I stepped through and saw a scene out of a nightmare. We had surprised some sort of feast; several ghouls were already trying to jump on Victor and Longhelim but most of them were still sitting at tables, shouting, whooping and yipping; they were also waving knives and forks around, some of which had gobbets of something on their prongs. If the ghouls were true to form, that was human flesh they had but I had no idea where they had obtained it. Then I remembered the poor missing gnome and halfling sell swords from Jorine’s group. We never did establish how they had perished and ghouls, as well as being merciless killers, were also expert scavengers.
One of the disgusting creatures was standing on a table and strumming a lute parodying a bard while the worst abomination of all lay on a throne overlooking this spectacle. A mound of…..something, some sort of quivering substance; as it twisted and shook, a flash of white suggested that it had the remains of bones within it; there was also an ioun stone circling its throne; it would be difficult to say it had a head.
There was uproar as all the ghouls kicked back their chairs and looked at us…..hungrily. I motioned with my hands and cast another spells which I didn’t use very often; a forest of black tentacles emerged from the ground and began to wrestle with the ghouls at the back of the room; snaking around their legs, arms, torsos, necks, the creatures went into a frenzy, scratching, biting and screaming but the tentacles held them fast, including the one playing the lute, who screamed in a high soprano.
Then, a voice emerged from the mound on the throne:
“Humans! Stop! I wish to parley! Aid me!”
Victor’s response to this was to advance to the throne and strike at the mound. I couldn’t blame him. Something that was in charge of a bunch of ghouls suddenly telling us to stop and leave them alone? I couldn’t see either the paladin or our priest acquiescing to this; and Victor’s actions spoke louder than words.
Longhelim joined Victor and attacked the mound which flailed with tentacles but was ultimately no match for the two warriors; I was a little puzzled as to how something that weak had survived here for so long but did not give it a great deal of thought as Felix used a burst of his holy power and most of the ghouls turned into dust.
The singing ghoul was still trapped in the tentacles, together with several others but they were finally strangled, vanquishing all visible enemies. I turned to Longhelim:
“Did you hear that thing? It was trying to talk to us.”
“Yes. I’m sure it was. I am also sure those ghouls would have eaten us given the slightest chance. That’s what they do. They cannot control themselves. It’s their curse. For future reference, I’m not going to talk to anything that’s in charge of a bunch of ghouls; or to ghouls either for that matter. Trust me Faden, talking to ghouls is the easiest way to get eaten!”
As Longhelim and I were having this exchange, everyone else was searching this room; we picked up the ioun stone that had been flying around the throne and then John found a secret door in the corner of the room. We poked around in the banqueting room but found nothing else. So, we opened the secret door. It led into a very short corridor, which ultimately crossed the known corridor and led into a room with a table and a map. A cantrip revealed that the map was magical.
Carefully I looked at the map. I could see that it showed the surrounding area; I tried to roll it up but as soon as I touched it, a transparent snake appeared and struck at me; thankfully, I managed to dodge; I recognized it as a magical trap for the unwary; be that as it may, I still took the map. One never knew when it could be useful.
There was one final room to explore but this was a kitchen and held nothing of interest except pots and pans.
We decided to return to the chapel and speak to the gnomes but before we did Felix led us to the room which contained the skeletons which must have been the servants:
“John, please open that door. Those poor wretches don’t deserve the fate they are suffering; no one does.”
As John ordered his invisible friend to do so, Felix summoned his holy power and the skeletons shattered into many, many pieces. Wordlessly, we carried on walking. I was saddened by what we had had to do; I could just imagine what being a servant in Coaltongue’s castle must have been like; and then, just to finish things, these self same servants were animated as skeletons after some overwhelming catastrophe whose nature we still had to determine.
When we returned to the chapel, we could see that the gnomes were still resting but keeping a good watch. Jorine raised her head at our approach and said:
“All finished? Did you find much more?”
We gave her a quick version of what happened, especially our little encounter with the ghouls. She wrinkled her nose:
“Nasty creatures; and you say this thing on the throne wanted to talk? How odd. Well, never mind; they question has become irrelevant. It will be quite some time before there is enough water pressure to raise the lift. I suggest you rest as we plan to go up as soon as it works.”
So, we waited, while conversing quietly with the gnomes. They were very pleased with how things had been working out to this time. Finally, after a long period, they rose and Jorine said:
“Well, we’re ready. The water pressure should be high enough by now. You coming? Oh, we have to leave Ernest, Zooten and Veraine behind; we need someone to guard our treasure and from the size of the platform, there won’t be enough room on it for all of us.
Oh, one other thing. I was telling Oller about the lift room, the lever and what you believed but he didn’t think that this castle had eight more floors. He doesn’t think it’s big enough.”
John frowned and replied:
“He may be right; there are an awful lot of very strange things going on here; we’re going by the number of positions for the lever; it makes sense that the lever is some sort of instruction set for the lift; you know, we want to go here so we put the lever position here. It’s what makes the most sense to us but until we actually do it, we can’t prove whether it’s right or wrong. Thanks for letting us know anyway.”
Jorine smiled and then said:
“Shall we go?”
We joined them but I was less than happy as nearly all of our defensive spells had run out. Still, we needed to go now. We didn’t have unlimited time.
So, we departed towards the lift room.
It was still the same. The lift was down with the mechanism and its gear set on the unlabelled slot. Oller examined it and said that it was trapped. That was news to us. John approached the lever and decided to look at it more closely but he couldn’t find anything; then suddenly, we could all feel a magical attack as several of us froze momentarily, unable to do anything. Felix, unaffected, frowned:
“That was a divine spell; but a very complicated one; it is certainly one I couldn’t manage myself at the moment. Thankfully, it won’t last long but still….”
As predicted, everyone was able to shake off the magic quite quickly; John had another search of the lever but found nothing else, so he moved the lever to position B and all of us jumped on as the platform began to ascend.
It was a very slow ascent. Frankly, I could have climbed faster but at least this was much safer; the platform also stopped at the slightest provocation; well, it stopped regularly but at this rate, it was going to take us a very long time to reach the top of the shaft. As I began to look up to where we were going, as mentioned previously, we began to discern that the top of the shaft was covered in a strange barrier, seemingly made out of liquid silver. I wasn’t sure what the meant but I was a little perturbed.
I pointed it out to Longhelim:
“Look at that! We haven’t talked about it before but I think we should start! Do you know what it is? I don’t like it.”
Longhelim looked up but was unperturbed.
“Faden, so far as we’re concerned, the Torch wasn’t on the floor below; therefore, we have to search above us. If we’re right, then there are eight more floors to look through. There is really very little choice but to go up, silver barrier or no silver barrier.”
“Yes, but shouldn’t we at least……”
At this point, a ball of fire exploded at the bottom of the platform, burning everyone with the exception of John and Oller, who somehow managed to dodge around the flames; then a creature of fire, an elemental, appeared in the air above us and jumped on top of Victor on the platform, smothering him in flame. Of course, our spells which protected us from fire had finished at this point so there was a bellow from the warrior. Despite the burning and the proximity of this thing, I managed to cast my spell of speed and Victor wriggled from under its position while hitting it several times with his sword. He managed to send it back to its fiery plane but then another appeared, burning people again. Thankfully, this time Victor was in a better position and it was met with the warrior’s swings; it met the same fate as its companion.
Unfortunately, the platform was still rising at a very slow rate and while the elementals did not cause anyone to lose consciousness, they still manage to burn several people quite badly. Thankfully, Drudge, Longhelim, Felix and John all used their wands, healing everyone to some extent.
Then the lift began to rise again and moments later, the walls literally exploded, showering the whole floor with spikes.
Victor shouted:
“Caltrops! Sweep them to the side! Use your cloaks! Don’t use your feet!”
Vigorously, he began to use his cloak to brush the floor and sweep these three pronged little spikes to the side of the platform. Immediately, I saw what he was trying to do and began to do the same while I could see that the gnomes were already doing the same and helping each other once someone’s position had been swept. Then, just as we were finishing, the shaft sprang its next surprise, and it was a doozy!
As the platform crawled up the shaft again, I felt a magical spell go off and suddenly, Victor began to babble uncontrollably; I paled. It was a magic I recognized. I had a version of it in my own spell book. It seized the victim’s brain for a short period but once it had a hold of that person, it could force him or her to commit or perform totally random actions. These ranged from doing nothing or just standing there babbling, like Victor, to attacking your friends. In fact, it was very likely that Victor would end up attacking someone on the platform, which was going to be very, very bad.
It wasn’t very good for the gnomes either; I could see that Jorine had also been affected as had Oller; Grellfinn was the only one who remained sane among them. The gnome paladin obviously knew what this magic was as well since he immediately grabbed the gnome magician in an embrace and tried to hold her; she was squirming like a fish in a net.
Then, just to add to the merriment, another of the shrouded undead with the changing faces appeared in the shaft, speeding through the wall and landed next to me. Somehow, I managed to lurch to the side just as it attempted to touch me and I avoided its deadly attack but that had been pure luck. Things were very bad; Longhelim managed to get next to the undead; Felix had just attempted to get rid of that horrible magic which had been affecting Victor, who was still babbling importantly. Then he used his holy power and forced the shrouded undead to flee from us into the wall with a frustrated, hissing shriek; it had obviously been looking forward to attacking us on the lift.
Moments later, Victor was cowering in a corner of the lift, his head in his hands and looking at us fearfully. Somehow Jorine had managed to squirm out of Grellfinn’s arms and was just about to cast some sort of spell when he managed to snag her again. Oller however, was swinging his daggers at the platform and a moment later, Victor leapt up and also began swing at the platform with a will. That was a little dangerous as even without his brain working, Victor hitting the platform made it shudder alarmingly. Thank the gods that he didn’t have the mind to use his hammer! That would have been a disaster! Or a destroyed platform and us plummeting down the shaft!
At that moment, spears shot out of the walls! Several of them struck people, including Victor. He swung at them with his sword but he had several nasty, deep wounds in his side as a result. As I looked around warily, looking for more spears, I saw the silver barrier was now considerably closer and it continued to give me a sense of great unease. I had never seen anything like it.
Suddenly, with a feral cry, Oller flung himself at Jorine and stabbed her several times with his daggers; each blow was calculated to be as deadly as possible and there was little she could do while she was being held by Grellfinn. She began to gush blood and abruptly stopped squirming as more blood came out of her mouth.
“NOOOOOO” a bellow from Grellfinn.
“What have you done?” an anguished shout at Oller. The other gnome looked at him triumphantly, as if he had just vanquished a hated enemy.
As this drama was playing out, another voice was shouting; Victor’s voice!
“Longhelim, take my sword, quick!”
It looked as if the warrior had a moment’s lucidity and had handed his sword over to the paladin, leaving himself weaponless although he still had thick, gauntlets; which was very fortunate as a moment later, he landed a beauty of an upper cut on the paladin only to follow almost immediately by cowering in the corner, as if deathly afraid of something only he could see.
At that moment, Drudge began to shoot arrows into the platform. That was something new; he hadn’t been affected by the magic previously. He began shouting:
“Fire! Fire! Chain Devil! Behind you, Faden!”
He began to fire at the platform again.
Frantically, I looked around but couldn’t see anything. I flinched, awaiting a blow that I was sure was coming from somewhere; probably an invisible enemy! I tried to dodge but nothing came. Suddenly, on the other side of the platform, Longhelim had dropped Victor’s sword and began to swing his own sword, shouting:
“Chain Devil, in front of me! Fire, fire! The platform’s about to burn! Get ready for the fall!”
Again, I looked around me, but still I couldn’t see any change; the lift was still rising slowly and majestically towards the silver barrier. From the corner came another voice, Victor’s but high and child-like, which kept repeating:
“We’re going to heaven, we’re going to heaven!”
Both Longhelim and Drudge kept either swinging into thin air or firing into the platform as previously while, Grellfinn, tears streaming down his face, grabbed Oller and smothered him in his arms. The other gnome was babbling uncomprehendingly.
Then, Victor sprang up and gave Longhelim a good right hook in the chin this time before he suddenly stopped and looked around him. He looked at the paladin with wide eyes:
“We were bespelled, weren’t we? I’m sorry about the clout!”
Longhelim answered: “Believe you me, that could have been so much worse! I find it difficult to believe that we suffered so little harm!”
Drudge was looking around with a surprised look in his eyes. The lift had stopped again but then began to move, where upon, John cleared his throat and said:
“Gentlemen, we’ve got a problem. There’s a magical barrier just below the silver one; it’s one of those indestructible walls that Faden can do; I recognize it; it’s invisible, but it’s there all right. If we don’t do something quick, this lift is going to crush us against it!”
Longhelim whirled around:
“Faden, how do you get rid of that spell!”
I thought furiously:
“There’s nothing we’ve got that can do it! We have to send the lift down. Victor, smash the chains! That’ll do it! Otherwise we’ll be crushed!”
As Victor rushed to the chain, taking out his hammer at the same time, there was a shout behind me:
“She’s dead! And it’s your fault!”
I had been moving behind Victor and glanced back to see Oller glaring at me, tears flowing down his face this time. Grellfinn still had his arms around him, partly holding, partly hugging. He stared at me and just shook his head. I ignored Oller and carried on.
“It was no one’s fault, Oller. She knew the risks.”
This was a gentle voice, coming from Grellfinn.
We were still ascending, slowly but suddenly one of the corners of the lift sagged as Victor smashed his hammer against one of the chains and parted it in one blow. Then, there was another shout:
“Oh, you idiot, John. The rod, the bloody rod!”
This shout was actually from John himself and I saw him digging out the rod we had taken from below. He put in it the air and snapped the command word. It suddenly stood in the air, just fitting between the platform and the barrier.
That was the last thing anyone could do before invisible force compelled us to the floor and for an endless moment, we felt unbearable pressure and agony. Bones creaked, tendons strained and muscles screamed; there was a screech from the lift as the floor bulged just under the rod which John had activated; then it was driven through the metal floor of the lift! However, it did create enough of a gap for John to be spared the crush. He was the only one though. I was being crushed against the barrier……which suddenly disappeared!
As we rolled and groaned on the floor, the lift went up the shaft and we finally went through the silver barrier; unfortunately, I was in so much pain, I didn’t even notice and then the floor had risen above it and stopped. This time, there were a couple of exits from the platform so it looked as if we had finally arrived at our first destination.
One of the exits was a door while the other was an open entrance into a room.
Before we went anywhere though, we had to take care of ourselves. Everyone was hurt to a lesser or greater degree, with the exception of John, who had been saved by the rod and who somehow had avoided all hurt on the horrific ascent. Unfortunately, the rod was probably still hanging in the shaft beneath us now. So, Felix, Longhelim and John began to prepare to heal everyone with their wands but then I said:
“Before you start using those, I think we need to learn our spells again. We are in a completely new place and I know we are not feeling it but look at the two gnomes; they are sweating as if they were in the middle of the plane of fire. We need the spells which protect us from fire at the very least. I think it very likely that there are a lot of fire using creatures here.“
Longhelim replied:
“We can’t rest here. We’d be jumped for sure.”
I had already thought about this:
“I agree. Resting here for the normal period and then re-learning spells would be madness; so we will have to cram them; I hate doing it because I can think of few more dangerous things that weakening ourselves in this place; but unfortunately, one of those things is wondering through this place without any defensive spells, especially fire protection.”
Longhelim nodded:
“Yes, I see that; right, we’ll do it.”
While we were talking, John had already explored the exit into the room.
“There’s loads of rods and gears in this place, with pulleys and things; I think all this stuff works the lift.”
“Can we rest in there for an hour or so?” I asked.
“It’ll be a squeeze but we should be able to do it,” was the reply.
Felix began to put his wand away.
“In that case, I’ll use what spells I have instead.”
Having formulated our plan, Felix and John healed everyone with a mixture of spells and wands and then we all moved into the room which seemed to contain the mechanism for the lift. It was very cosy but we spell casters were able to concentrate and managed to gain access to our spells. As usual, after doing that, I felt as if my head was full of wool, my tongue felt several times too large for my mouth and I could barely open my eyes; John and Felix’s eyes were red rimmed and bloodshot. I expect I looked little better.
John whispered to me:
“Gods, the way we look, we could pass for castle denizens.”
Longhelim speared him with a look:
“I heard that and it is not funny!”
Carefully I looked at the map. I could see that it showed the surrounding area; I tried to roll it up but as soon as I touched it, a transparent snake appeared and struck at me; thankfully, I managed to dodge; I recognized it as a magical trap for the unwary; be that as it may, I still took the map. One never knew when it could be useful.
There was one final room to explore but this was a kitchen and held nothing of interest except pots and pans.
We decided to return to the chapel and speak to the gnomes but before we did Felix led us to the room which contained the skeletons which must have been the servants:
“John, please open that door. Those poor wretches don’t deserve the fate they are suffering; no one does.”
As John ordered his invisible friend to do so, Felix summoned his holy power and the skeletons shattered into many, many pieces. Wordlessly, we carried on walking. I was saddened by what we had had to do; I could just imagine what being a servant in Coaltongue’s castle must have been like; and then, just to finish things, these self same servants were animated as skeletons after some overwhelming catastrophe whose nature we still had to determine.
When we returned to the chapel, we could see that the gnomes were still resting but keeping a good watch. Jorine raised her head at our approach and said:
“All finished? Did you find much more?”
We gave her a quick version of what happened, especially our little encounter with the ghouls. She wrinkled her nose:
“Nasty creatures; and you say this thing on the throne wanted to talk? How odd. Well, never mind; they question has become irrelevant. It will be quite some time before there is enough water pressure to raise the lift. I suggest you rest as we plan to go up as soon as it works.”
So, we waited, while conversing quietly with the gnomes. They were very pleased with how things had been working out to this time. Finally, after a long period, they rose and Jorine said:
“Well, we’re ready. The water pressure should be high enough by now. You coming? Oh, we have to leave Ernest, Zooten and Veraine behind; we need someone to guard our treasure and from the size of the platform, there won’t be enough room on it for all of us.
Oh, one other thing. I was telling Oller about the lift room, the lever and what you believed but he didn’t think that this castle had eight more floors. He doesn’t think it’s big enough.”
John frowned and replied:
“He may be right; there are an awful lot of very strange things going on here; we’re going by the number of positions for the lever; it makes sense that the lever is some sort of instruction set for the lift; you know, we want to go here so we put the lever position here. It’s what makes the most sense to us but until we actually do it, we can’t prove whether it’s right or wrong. Thanks for letting us know anyway.”
Jorine smiled and then said:
“Shall we go?”
We joined them but I was less than happy as nearly all of our defensive spells had run out. Still, we needed to go now. We didn’t have unlimited time.
So, we departed towards the lift room.
It was still the same. The lift was down with the mechanism and its gear set on the unlabelled slot. Oller examined it and said that it was trapped. That was news to us. John approached the lever and decided to look at it more closely but he couldn’t find anything; then suddenly, we could all feel a magical attack as several of us froze momentarily, unable to do anything. Felix, unaffected, frowned:
“That was a divine spell; but a very complicated one; it is certainly one I couldn’t manage myself at the moment. Thankfully, it won’t last long but still….”
As predicted, everyone was able to shake off the magic quite quickly; John had another search of the lever but found nothing else, so he moved the lever to position B and all of us jumped on as the platform began to ascend.
It was a very slow ascent. Frankly, I could have climbed faster but at least this was much safer; the platform also stopped at the slightest provocation; well, it stopped regularly but at this rate, it was going to take us a very long time to reach the top of the shaft. As I began to look up to where we were going, as mentioned previously, we began to discern that the top of the shaft was covered in a strange barrier, seemingly made out of liquid silver. I wasn’t sure what the meant but I was a little perturbed.
I pointed it out to Longhelim:
“Look at that! We haven’t talked about it before but I think we should start! Do you know what it is? I don’t like it.”
Longhelim looked up but was unperturbed.
“Faden, so far as we’re concerned, the Torch wasn’t on the floor below; therefore, we have to search above us. If we’re right, then there are eight more floors to look through. There is really very little choice but to go up, silver barrier or no silver barrier.”
“Yes, but shouldn’t we at least……”
At this point, a ball of fire exploded at the bottom of the platform, burning everyone with the exception of John and Oller, who somehow managed to dodge around the flames; then a creature of fire, an elemental, appeared in the air above us and jumped on top of Victor on the platform, smothering him in flame. Of course, our spells which protected us from fire had finished at this point so there was a bellow from the warrior. Despite the burning and the proximity of this thing, I managed to cast my spell of speed and Victor wriggled from under its position while hitting it several times with his sword. He managed to send it back to its fiery plane but then another appeared, burning people again. Thankfully, this time Victor was in a better position and it was met with the warrior’s swings; it met the same fate as its companion.
Unfortunately, the platform was still rising at a very slow rate and while the elementals did not cause anyone to lose consciousness, they still manage to burn several people quite badly. Thankfully, Drudge, Longhelim, Felix and John all used their wands, healing everyone to some extent.
Then the lift began to rise again and moments later, the walls literally exploded, showering the whole floor with spikes.
Victor shouted:
“Caltrops! Sweep them to the side! Use your cloaks! Don’t use your feet!”
Vigorously, he began to use his cloak to brush the floor and sweep these three pronged little spikes to the side of the platform. Immediately, I saw what he was trying to do and began to do the same while I could see that the gnomes were already doing the same and helping each other once someone’s position had been swept. Then, just as we were finishing, the shaft sprang its next surprise, and it was a doozy!
As the platform crawled up the shaft again, I felt a magical spell go off and suddenly, Victor began to babble uncontrollably; I paled. It was a magic I recognized. I had a version of it in my own spell book. It seized the victim’s brain for a short period but once it had a hold of that person, it could force him or her to commit or perform totally random actions. These ranged from doing nothing or just standing there babbling, like Victor, to attacking your friends. In fact, it was very likely that Victor would end up attacking someone on the platform, which was going to be very, very bad.
It wasn’t very good for the gnomes either; I could see that Jorine had also been affected as had Oller; Grellfinn was the only one who remained sane among them. The gnome paladin obviously knew what this magic was as well since he immediately grabbed the gnome magician in an embrace and tried to hold her; she was squirming like a fish in a net.
Then, just to add to the merriment, another of the shrouded undead with the changing faces appeared in the shaft, speeding through the wall and landed next to me. Somehow, I managed to lurch to the side just as it attempted to touch me and I avoided its deadly attack but that had been pure luck. Things were very bad; Longhelim managed to get next to the undead; Felix had just attempted to get rid of that horrible magic which had been affecting Victor, who was still babbling importantly. Then he used his holy power and forced the shrouded undead to flee from us into the wall with a frustrated, hissing shriek; it had obviously been looking forward to attacking us on the lift.
Moments later, Victor was cowering in a corner of the lift, his head in his hands and looking at us fearfully. Somehow Jorine had managed to squirm out of Grellfinn’s arms and was just about to cast some sort of spell when he managed to snag her again. Oller however, was swinging his daggers at the platform and a moment later, Victor leapt up and also began swing at the platform with a will. That was a little dangerous as even without his brain working, Victor hitting the platform made it shudder alarmingly. Thank the gods that he didn’t have the mind to use his hammer! That would have been a disaster! Or a destroyed platform and us plummeting down the shaft!
At that moment, spears shot out of the walls! Several of them struck people, including Victor. He swung at them with his sword but he had several nasty, deep wounds in his side as a result. As I looked around warily, looking for more spears, I saw the silver barrier was now considerably closer and it continued to give me a sense of great unease. I had never seen anything like it.
Suddenly, with a feral cry, Oller flung himself at Jorine and stabbed her several times with his daggers; each blow was calculated to be as deadly as possible and there was little she could do while she was being held by Grellfinn. She began to gush blood and abruptly stopped squirming as more blood came out of her mouth.
“NOOOOOO” a bellow from Grellfinn.
“What have you done?” an anguished shout at Oller. The other gnome looked at him triumphantly, as if he had just vanquished a hated enemy.
As this drama was playing out, another voice was shouting; Victor’s voice!
“Longhelim, take my sword, quick!”
It looked as if the warrior had a moment’s lucidity and had handed his sword over to the paladin, leaving himself weaponless although he still had thick, gauntlets; which was very fortunate as a moment later, he landed a beauty of an upper cut on the paladin only to follow almost immediately by cowering in the corner, as if deathly afraid of something only he could see.
At that moment, Drudge began to shoot arrows into the platform. That was something new; he hadn’t been affected by the magic previously. He began shouting:
“Fire! Fire! Chain Devil! Behind you, Faden!”
He began to fire at the platform again.
Frantically, I looked around but couldn’t see anything. I flinched, awaiting a blow that I was sure was coming from somewhere; probably an invisible enemy! I tried to dodge but nothing came. Suddenly, on the other side of the platform, Longhelim had dropped Victor’s sword and began to swing his own sword, shouting:
“Chain Devil, in front of me! Fire, fire! The platform’s about to burn! Get ready for the fall!”
Again, I looked around me, but still I couldn’t see any change; the lift was still rising slowly and majestically towards the silver barrier. From the corner came another voice, Victor’s but high and child-like, which kept repeating:
“We’re going to heaven, we’re going to heaven!”
Both Longhelim and Drudge kept either swinging into thin air or firing into the platform as previously while, Grellfinn, tears streaming down his face, grabbed Oller and smothered him in his arms. The other gnome was babbling uncomprehendingly.
Then, Victor sprang up and gave Longhelim a good right hook in the chin this time before he suddenly stopped and looked around him. He looked at the paladin with wide eyes:
“We were bespelled, weren’t we? I’m sorry about the clout!”
Longhelim answered: “Believe you me, that could have been so much worse! I find it difficult to believe that we suffered so little harm!”
Drudge was looking around with a surprised look in his eyes. The lift had stopped again but then began to move, where upon, John cleared his throat and said:
“Gentlemen, we’ve got a problem. There’s a magical barrier just below the silver one; it’s one of those indestructible walls that Faden can do; I recognize it; it’s invisible, but it’s there all right. If we don’t do something quick, this lift is going to crush us against it!”
Longhelim whirled around:
“Faden, how do you get rid of that spell!”
I thought furiously:
“There’s nothing we’ve got that can do it! We have to send the lift down. Victor, smash the chains! That’ll do it! Otherwise we’ll be crushed!”
As Victor rushed to the chain, taking out his hammer at the same time, there was a shout behind me:
“She’s dead! And it’s your fault!”
I had been moving behind Victor and glanced back to see Oller glaring at me, tears flowing down his face this time. Grellfinn still had his arms around him, partly holding, partly hugging. He stared at me and just shook his head. I ignored Oller and carried on.
“It was no one’s fault, Oller. She knew the risks.”
This was a gentle voice, coming from Grellfinn.
We were still ascending, slowly but suddenly one of the corners of the lift sagged as Victor smashed his hammer against one of the chains and parted it in one blow. Then, there was another shout:
“Oh, you idiot, John. The rod, the bloody rod!”
This shout was actually from John himself and I saw him digging out the rod we had taken from below. He put in it the air and snapped the command word. It suddenly stood in the air, just fitting between the platform and the barrier.
That was the last thing anyone could do before invisible force compelled us to the floor and for an endless moment, we felt unbearable pressure and agony. Bones creaked, tendons strained and muscles screamed; there was a screech from the lift as the floor bulged just under the rod which John had activated; then it was driven through the metal floor of the lift! However, it did create enough of a gap for John to be spared the crush. He was the only one though. I was being crushed against the barrier……which suddenly disappeared!
As we rolled and groaned on the floor, the lift went up the shaft and we finally went through the silver barrier; unfortunately, I was in so much pain, I didn’t even notice and then the floor had risen above it and stopped. This time, there were a couple of exits from the platform so it looked as if we had finally arrived at our first destination.
One of the exits was a door while the other was an open entrance into a room.
Before we went anywhere though, we had to take care of ourselves. Everyone was hurt to a lesser or greater degree, with the exception of John, who had been saved by the rod and who somehow had avoided all hurt on the horrific ascent. Unfortunately, the rod was probably still hanging in the shaft beneath us now. So, Felix, Longhelim and John began to prepare to heal everyone with their wands but then I said:
“Before you start using those, I think we need to learn our spells again. We are in a completely new place and I know we are not feeling it but look at the two gnomes; they are sweating as if they were in the middle of the plane of fire. We need the spells which protect us from fire at the very least. I think it very likely that there are a lot of fire using creatures here.“
Longhelim replied:
“We can’t rest here. We’d be jumped for sure.”
I had already thought about this:
“I agree. Resting here for the normal period and then re-learning spells would be madness; so we will have to cram them; I hate doing it because I can think of few more dangerous things that weakening ourselves in this place; but unfortunately, one of those things is wondering through this place without any defensive spells, especially fire protection.”
Longhelim nodded:
“Yes, I see that; right, we’ll do it.”
While we were talking, John had already explored the exit into the room.
“There’s loads of rods and gears in this place, with pulleys and things; I think all this stuff works the lift.”
“Can we rest in there for an hour or so?” I asked.
“It’ll be a squeeze but we should be able to do it,” was the reply.
Felix began to put his wand away.
“In that case, I’ll use what spells I have instead.”
Having formulated our plan, Felix and John healed everyone with a mixture of spells and wands and then we all moved into the room which seemed to contain the mechanism for the lift. It was very cosy but we spell casters were able to concentrate and managed to gain access to our spells. As usual, after doing that, I felt as if my head was full of wool, my tongue felt several times too large for my mouth and I could barely open my eyes; John and Felix’s eyes were red rimmed and bloodshot. I expect I looked little better.
John whispered to me:
“Gods, the way we look, we could pass for castle denizens.”
Longhelim speared him with a look:
“I heard that and it is not funny!”
carborundum
Adventurer
Good grief! This place is a total meat-grinder! I'm loving every update, of course, and waiting for each with bated breath!
I'm curious - How are you doing the "cramming" of the spells?
I'm curious - How are you doing the "cramming" of the spells?
RangerWickett
Legend
If it won't upset the GM, here is that section of the adventure. This is from the 3.5 version.
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Okay, I'll stop with the commentary track. I just really love that particular death trap.
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[/sblock]Okay, I'll stop with the commentary track. I just really love that particular death trap.
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Apologies for the delay.
It is a house rule; spell casters can re-learn their spells in one hour; it does come with a cost though. The process is exhausting and damages the Con stat of the caster by two points. These can only be recovered after twenty four hours; no magic can restore them.
One can cram more than once but each time it is done, the Con stat is damaged by another two points.
I don't like doing it because it is a real penalty but sometimes needs must.....
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