skotothalamos
formerly roadtoad
To the High Bayou!
The constables departed for the High Bayou via the Flint-Bole Rail Line, which took the better part of a day. There were some logistical issues: Ironpeak and Mort accidentally got onto a car that was bound for Slate, which they only found out after they got decoupled from the rest of the train. The rest of the group arrived in the city of Bole on time and checked in with the local RHC office. Bole is a smaller city than Flint, and far less busy. Mostly, the local RHC constables just deal with disputes between loggers and local fey.
Mort and Ironpeak arrived in time for Mort to complain about a lack of transportation to the small town of Agate, which would be the group’s last outpost before heading into the bayou. The constables got a cart for Mort and Malkie to ride in while the others walked the day’s journey. The dirt/mud road to Agate was not well-traveled. When the constables arrived, they found out why: the sleepy village looked like it only had a few hundred residents. Most of the residents seemed to be hunters, silk trappers, and the basic services needed to support them. The constables quickly learned that the silk trappers were in the business of gathering the silk of the giant spiders of the High Bayou. A little asking around convinced the constables to take a second boat with them, which would carry the remains of a dead goat, to appease the fey titan The Voice of Rot while traveling in its demesne. It did seem suspicious that the main advocate for taking the second boat was a man renting out boats, but they did not seem to mind.
They headed out into the bayou at first light, following a map provided by Xambria. At least once they made a wrong turn, crashing into a wall of spider web. Luckily, the constables were able to extricate their boats before any spiders could reach them. The delay meant that they did not arrive at the ziggurat until well after dark, however. The ziggurat sat on a small island in the bayou marked by some golden flags left by Xambria’s team. The group tied off their boats and did some initial scouting of the site.
The ziggurat had three tiers and a single entrance, inside of which a dull glowing light could be seen. Outside of the entrance, several bodies were lying amongst the ruins of a camp. As the constables took in the scene, all of them had a sudden inability to gauge distance; for a moment, none of them could tell which was closer, the ziggurat or their own hands.
After a long three days of travel, Ironpeak suggested that the constables make camp near the boats and start their exploration of the ziggurat the next morning. Over the course of the night, more than half of the constables showed signs of having contracted Distant Madness, but it seemed to pass as they slept. In the morning, they inspected the bodies and ruined camp, finding that they had all been previously searched. The bodies showed signs of extreme psychic damage.
Above the entrance to the ziggurat was carved a symbol of seven concentric rings surrounding a central white stone. There was a dot on the sixth ring of this symbol. Summer inferred that this was a representation of the planets of the solar system. The sixth planet is Apet, the distant plane. The constables entered the ziggurat, descending the entrance stairs for some fifty feet before arriving in a chamber which held three mummies in alcoves on the far wall, and two dead grad students splayed on the floor. The light was coming from an enchanted lantern hanging from a pole. Long hallways stretched into the darkness to the left and right. Turning back toward the entrance, the constables noted that the fifty-foot staircase they’d descended now appeared to be only ten feet long. The mummies appeared to have once been orcs, and upon closer inspection, they were posed as though they should be holding or wearing the three golden artifacts the group had found (which Ironpeak was carrying). A note pinned to the wall next to the mummies, written in Xambria’s hand, read, “These mummies are worth more than all your tuition. Don’t touch them.”
The constables decided to try returning the artifacts to their owners as a means of appeasing them. Cazara was selected as least likely to cause damage. She carefully returned the sword, staff, and amulet to the appropriate mummies, but nothing seemed to happen, so she promptly took the items back. At some point, someone asked Summer what she had seen in the stars, and she explained that she would not be consulting the sky for the near future. (What she wasn’t telling people was that she kept feeling like she was on the verge of having a vision, but whenever she tried to look skyward, she felt like there were worms crawling in her eye sockets. It was so bad that she had pulled Cazara aside to check her eyes for worms.)
The constables looked around for any signs of traps. Cazara and Mort noticed some holes in the walls of the passageway heading to the right, and they surmised that they must be traps of some kind. No traps were detected down the left-hand passageway. Reasoning that the direction with traps would hold more interesting rooms, the constables headed to the right. Cazara and Mort each made a close examination of the holes in the walls. Each hole was set about four feet above the floor, and they were on opposite sides of the hallway. Cazara noticed a seam in the wall surrounding the small hole, large enough to be a door. Mort pried open the secret door on his side and was greeted by a mummy with a spear who promptly stabbed the tiefling. Another spear shot out from the hole near Cazara, double-skewering Mort. Mort and Cazara immediately took fiery vengeance on the two mummies and they burst into flames. The traps were cleared at the expense of a good amount of Mort’s blood.
The hallway stretched on and on into the dark ziggurat. Ironpeak’s sword shone brightly, lighting the way as the group shuffled along. Eventually, they came upon a square chamber with a large pillar in the middle of it. Carved on the floor was another concentric-ring symbol, this one with a dot on the innermost ring: Jiese, the plane of fire. Mort, as the least likely to be harmed by fire, entered first and set off a fire trap that blasted outward from the center pillar. Mort rushed about the room, seeking a way to disable the trap while the others waited and the trap fired over and over again. He found an exit hallway with a ten-foot pole that looked to be scorched on one end, together with some fire-making gear. He lit the end of the pole on fire and then noticed the ring symbol was also carved into the pillar. He touched the burning end of the pole to the representation of Jiese on the pillar and the fire stopped, allowing the others to enter the room.
Two exits from the fire room were available: the hallway where Mort had found the fire-making supplies, and a tunnel that appeared to have been recently dug into one of the walls. Reasoning that Xambria’s expedition might have dug the tunnel to avoid traps down the hallway, Mort, Cazara, and Summer went into the tunnel while James had an experimental look into the hallway. Ironpeak and Malkie remained in the first hallway, out of range of the fire trap and unsure of when it would return to life. Looking back toward the entrance, Malkie noted that the long hallway from the first chamber was much shorter than she had thought.
At the other end of the tunnel was another fire-trap room with Jiese iconography. Mort easily disabled it and he and Zara moved quickly to the obvious exit. Summer followed closely behind. Up ahead, they saw a chamber crawling with strange beasts. Large spider-like things clung to the ceiling, while a pair of many-eyed orbs floated in the middle space. All of them seemed to be fading in and out of reality like the creatures that had been summoned to the Arms Expo. The spider things lashed out with their tongues, grabbing Mort and Cazara and pulling them into the room. At the sounds of combat, the others came running. Mort and Cazara soon had another problem: the floor was sliding apart, revealing an unfathomable pit beneath them. At the same time, vines began to grow at unnatural speed, threatening to cover the entrance and exit to the room within seconds.
Cazara used the spider-thing’s phenomenally-long tongue against it, climbing the tongue itself up to the ceiling and kicking and clawing her way through numerous spiders before dropping back to the floor. Mort was less lucky and began having hallucinations caused by the strange beasts. He found himself falling into the pit. But before he could fall out of sight, Ironpeak hacked her way through the vines, grabbed the loose end of a vine and dove into the pit, somehow catching up to Mort in defiance of physics. Some blasts from Summer, some shots from James and Mort (in the grasp of Ironpeak, dangling from a vine in the pit) and some good old-fashioned punching and biting from Cazara and Malkie finished off the strange beasts.
As the beasts died, most of the others began to see what Ironpeak had first realized: the pit trap was actually an illusion. The floor was perfectly solid. Mort and James could not be convinced, however, and were terrified of the room. Their own minds were constantly rationalizing the fact that their fellow adventurers were not falling into the pit. Ironpeak seemed to be hanging from a vine. Cazara was floating in mid air. All that made more sense to them than an illusion. A concentric-ring symbol in the middle of the floor indicated the moon of the third planet, and was colored green. Summer inferred that this referred to the Dreaming, and she, Cazara, and Ironpeak were able to, after much experimentation, determine that touching a flower to the moon would turn off the illusion. Luckily, a few of the vines had flowers on them, and the group was finally able to get Mort and James across the room.
The hallway leading out of that chamber was guarded by multiple mummy-spear traps, but the constables were able to disarm most of them by literally disarming the mummies, stealing and/or breaking the spears after intentionally triggering the traps.
Turning a corner, the constables found what looked to be an important feature of the ziggurat. The hallway was long and at the far end was another fire-trap room, but long before that, on the left-hand side of the hall, an iron bar was holding open a secret door leading into a hidden chamber. At the threshold to the hidden chamber, some wag had placed a woven mat that said “Welcome.” Just inside the chamber were two dead humans. Farther in were two more dead humans and a trio of dead tieflings. Two columns carved to look like winged serpents flanked a large golden plate set into the wall like a massive door. An arcane semi-circle had been drawn in chalk on the floor, centered on the golden plate. It seemed the constables had found what they were looking for.
The constables departed for the High Bayou via the Flint-Bole Rail Line, which took the better part of a day. There were some logistical issues: Ironpeak and Mort accidentally got onto a car that was bound for Slate, which they only found out after they got decoupled from the rest of the train. The rest of the group arrived in the city of Bole on time and checked in with the local RHC office. Bole is a smaller city than Flint, and far less busy. Mostly, the local RHC constables just deal with disputes between loggers and local fey.
Mort and Ironpeak arrived in time for Mort to complain about a lack of transportation to the small town of Agate, which would be the group’s last outpost before heading into the bayou. The constables got a cart for Mort and Malkie to ride in while the others walked the day’s journey. The dirt/mud road to Agate was not well-traveled. When the constables arrived, they found out why: the sleepy village looked like it only had a few hundred residents. Most of the residents seemed to be hunters, silk trappers, and the basic services needed to support them. The constables quickly learned that the silk trappers were in the business of gathering the silk of the giant spiders of the High Bayou. A little asking around convinced the constables to take a second boat with them, which would carry the remains of a dead goat, to appease the fey titan The Voice of Rot while traveling in its demesne. It did seem suspicious that the main advocate for taking the second boat was a man renting out boats, but they did not seem to mind.
They headed out into the bayou at first light, following a map provided by Xambria. At least once they made a wrong turn, crashing into a wall of spider web. Luckily, the constables were able to extricate their boats before any spiders could reach them. The delay meant that they did not arrive at the ziggurat until well after dark, however. The ziggurat sat on a small island in the bayou marked by some golden flags left by Xambria’s team. The group tied off their boats and did some initial scouting of the site.
The ziggurat had three tiers and a single entrance, inside of which a dull glowing light could be seen. Outside of the entrance, several bodies were lying amongst the ruins of a camp. As the constables took in the scene, all of them had a sudden inability to gauge distance; for a moment, none of them could tell which was closer, the ziggurat or their own hands.
After a long three days of travel, Ironpeak suggested that the constables make camp near the boats and start their exploration of the ziggurat the next morning. Over the course of the night, more than half of the constables showed signs of having contracted Distant Madness, but it seemed to pass as they slept. In the morning, they inspected the bodies and ruined camp, finding that they had all been previously searched. The bodies showed signs of extreme psychic damage.
Above the entrance to the ziggurat was carved a symbol of seven concentric rings surrounding a central white stone. There was a dot on the sixth ring of this symbol. Summer inferred that this was a representation of the planets of the solar system. The sixth planet is Apet, the distant plane. The constables entered the ziggurat, descending the entrance stairs for some fifty feet before arriving in a chamber which held three mummies in alcoves on the far wall, and two dead grad students splayed on the floor. The light was coming from an enchanted lantern hanging from a pole. Long hallways stretched into the darkness to the left and right. Turning back toward the entrance, the constables noted that the fifty-foot staircase they’d descended now appeared to be only ten feet long. The mummies appeared to have once been orcs, and upon closer inspection, they were posed as though they should be holding or wearing the three golden artifacts the group had found (which Ironpeak was carrying). A note pinned to the wall next to the mummies, written in Xambria’s hand, read, “These mummies are worth more than all your tuition. Don’t touch them.”
The constables decided to try returning the artifacts to their owners as a means of appeasing them. Cazara was selected as least likely to cause damage. She carefully returned the sword, staff, and amulet to the appropriate mummies, but nothing seemed to happen, so she promptly took the items back. At some point, someone asked Summer what she had seen in the stars, and she explained that she would not be consulting the sky for the near future. (What she wasn’t telling people was that she kept feeling like she was on the verge of having a vision, but whenever she tried to look skyward, she felt like there were worms crawling in her eye sockets. It was so bad that she had pulled Cazara aside to check her eyes for worms.)
The constables looked around for any signs of traps. Cazara and Mort noticed some holes in the walls of the passageway heading to the right, and they surmised that they must be traps of some kind. No traps were detected down the left-hand passageway. Reasoning that the direction with traps would hold more interesting rooms, the constables headed to the right. Cazara and Mort each made a close examination of the holes in the walls. Each hole was set about four feet above the floor, and they were on opposite sides of the hallway. Cazara noticed a seam in the wall surrounding the small hole, large enough to be a door. Mort pried open the secret door on his side and was greeted by a mummy with a spear who promptly stabbed the tiefling. Another spear shot out from the hole near Cazara, double-skewering Mort. Mort and Cazara immediately took fiery vengeance on the two mummies and they burst into flames. The traps were cleared at the expense of a good amount of Mort’s blood.
The hallway stretched on and on into the dark ziggurat. Ironpeak’s sword shone brightly, lighting the way as the group shuffled along. Eventually, they came upon a square chamber with a large pillar in the middle of it. Carved on the floor was another concentric-ring symbol, this one with a dot on the innermost ring: Jiese, the plane of fire. Mort, as the least likely to be harmed by fire, entered first and set off a fire trap that blasted outward from the center pillar. Mort rushed about the room, seeking a way to disable the trap while the others waited and the trap fired over and over again. He found an exit hallway with a ten-foot pole that looked to be scorched on one end, together with some fire-making gear. He lit the end of the pole on fire and then noticed the ring symbol was also carved into the pillar. He touched the burning end of the pole to the representation of Jiese on the pillar and the fire stopped, allowing the others to enter the room.
Two exits from the fire room were available: the hallway where Mort had found the fire-making supplies, and a tunnel that appeared to have been recently dug into one of the walls. Reasoning that Xambria’s expedition might have dug the tunnel to avoid traps down the hallway, Mort, Cazara, and Summer went into the tunnel while James had an experimental look into the hallway. Ironpeak and Malkie remained in the first hallway, out of range of the fire trap and unsure of when it would return to life. Looking back toward the entrance, Malkie noted that the long hallway from the first chamber was much shorter than she had thought.
At the other end of the tunnel was another fire-trap room with Jiese iconography. Mort easily disabled it and he and Zara moved quickly to the obvious exit. Summer followed closely behind. Up ahead, they saw a chamber crawling with strange beasts. Large spider-like things clung to the ceiling, while a pair of many-eyed orbs floated in the middle space. All of them seemed to be fading in and out of reality like the creatures that had been summoned to the Arms Expo. The spider things lashed out with their tongues, grabbing Mort and Cazara and pulling them into the room. At the sounds of combat, the others came running. Mort and Cazara soon had another problem: the floor was sliding apart, revealing an unfathomable pit beneath them. At the same time, vines began to grow at unnatural speed, threatening to cover the entrance and exit to the room within seconds.
Cazara used the spider-thing’s phenomenally-long tongue against it, climbing the tongue itself up to the ceiling and kicking and clawing her way through numerous spiders before dropping back to the floor. Mort was less lucky and began having hallucinations caused by the strange beasts. He found himself falling into the pit. But before he could fall out of sight, Ironpeak hacked her way through the vines, grabbed the loose end of a vine and dove into the pit, somehow catching up to Mort in defiance of physics. Some blasts from Summer, some shots from James and Mort (in the grasp of Ironpeak, dangling from a vine in the pit) and some good old-fashioned punching and biting from Cazara and Malkie finished off the strange beasts.
As the beasts died, most of the others began to see what Ironpeak had first realized: the pit trap was actually an illusion. The floor was perfectly solid. Mort and James could not be convinced, however, and were terrified of the room. Their own minds were constantly rationalizing the fact that their fellow adventurers were not falling into the pit. Ironpeak seemed to be hanging from a vine. Cazara was floating in mid air. All that made more sense to them than an illusion. A concentric-ring symbol in the middle of the floor indicated the moon of the third planet, and was colored green. Summer inferred that this referred to the Dreaming, and she, Cazara, and Ironpeak were able to, after much experimentation, determine that touching a flower to the moon would turn off the illusion. Luckily, a few of the vines had flowers on them, and the group was finally able to get Mort and James across the room.
The hallway leading out of that chamber was guarded by multiple mummy-spear traps, but the constables were able to disarm most of them by literally disarming the mummies, stealing and/or breaking the spears after intentionally triggering the traps.
Turning a corner, the constables found what looked to be an important feature of the ziggurat. The hallway was long and at the far end was another fire-trap room, but long before that, on the left-hand side of the hall, an iron bar was holding open a secret door leading into a hidden chamber. At the threshold to the hidden chamber, some wag had placed a woven mat that said “Welcome.” Just inside the chamber were two dead humans. Farther in were two more dead humans and a trio of dead tieflings. Two columns carved to look like winged serpents flanked a large golden plate set into the wall like a massive door. An arcane semi-circle had been drawn in chalk on the floor, centered on the golden plate. It seemed the constables had found what they were looking for.
