Sailors on the Starless Sea

[sblock=OOC/Dogmatron]Just doing a little reading and it seems to me that (based on the example in the Thief class) that you can make the roll and then decide to spend luck if you need to do so. So that's the way we'll play it: roll first, then decide/spend if you want.[/sblock]

save to grab chain [1d20] = 10 Will burn 5 points of Luck to hit the DC15...


Fendrel's head spins as he peers down the well. With a short cry he loses his balance and tumbles over the edge. Flaying about as he falls, his hand accidently strikes the chain and he instinctively grabs on for dear life.

Alaric looks at the faces appearing in the mists. "I wonder who these were. Perhaps souls lost here?"

ooc: Any of them look familiar? Does one look like Zim?!


Xim: The halfling screeches as his relation dies randomly, ignominiously. He runs over to the body and kneels down next to it, a hate-filled tear trickling down one cheek. He is barely phased when Narancasta rubs the holy water on her head, but he looks up as his cousin tumbles at the well.

Xim dashes over and leaps at his cousin, pulling the other halfling away from the well and down to the ground. He smacks the other, not hard, and clutches the front of his collar.

"Blast you, fool! Zim's not cold a minute and you decide to jump down some fool hole? Fine, just die in a way we can pick your bones, not lose them down a well." He pushes off the other halfling and stalks off, preparing his sling to throw a stone from off the ground at... something. He walks over to the place Zim died and looks up through the holes in the walls.

"Where are you, cowards? Come face me and die! I'll send you to the pits of hell if I have to drag you down myself!" He whips his sling at the nearest opening or crack, hoping to get lucky and hit whoever dropped the gate upon his cousin.

Dudles and Borok simply watch the halfling grimly. Dudles shivers as the halfling wastrel screams, while Borok simply looks dour and readies his hammer to strike anything that appears. A small tear had begun to form in his eye when the halfling maid had fallen, but none of the others noted it.

Alaric simply looks at the pit, grief something he'd learned to shelve during his travels with the militant Narancasta. He focuses on the problem at hand: who are these faces?

Alaric: [roll0]

Xim's sling shot: [roll1]

ooc: whoops, forgot to add modifiers. Alaric has +2 or +3 Int, while Xim I can't remember what his Dex is.

Fendrel holds tight to the chain with hands and legs and manages to arrest his fall. The chain feels sticky under his hands and slippery down by his feet. The chain doesn't keep his attention for long because there are half-formed things down here swirling around the halfling burbling and chattering vile abominations in Fendrel's ears.

Xim's leap forward gets hold him hold of the chain dangling into the well. His perception begins to shift and twist but he manages to back away pulling the chain with him and dragging Fendrel from the well.

Fendrel's eyes are wide and staring as if seeing things man was not meant to see but Xim's smack brings him 'round to awareness. The halfling is changed, however, his hair stands on end and waves about as if each strand were a tentacle reaching towards anyone who comes near, curling and uncurling with an uncanny motion. The chain is also altered: near the bottom where Fendrel was clinging it appears melted, though not by heat, and the links are malformed as if they were dripping away into the depths of the well.

Alaric's study of the faces reveals nothing. None are familiar to him but he can see that the sinkhole goes down at least thirty feet before the bottom is obscured by the thick mist.

Xim's rage elicits no response from whatever dropped the portcullis on Zim. The rock careens off the stone of the gatehouse and disappears with an unsatisfying clatter.

Narančasta, Siva

Narančasta is caught by surprise as one halfling rushes out and jumps in the well, rapidly followed by another who drags the first one back out, before smacking Fendrel around the ears in an earily familiar gesture.

No plan survives contact with the enemy, or exposure to halflings.

He looks around the courtyard. They are now scattered all over the place. Narančasta decides to remain where he is. He has a good view of the whole courtyard. He can keep watch while the others investigate the pit and the burnt out building.

OOC: probably about where the D is on the map.

"Alaric, did you see anything down there?"

GlassEye said:

The halfling is changed, however, his hair stands on end and waves about as if each strand were a tentacle reaching towards anyone who comes near, curling and uncurling with an uncanny motion.

Click to expand...

Siva moves cautiously over to Fendrel, her bow held in one hand, but with an arrow still nocked. From a couple of paces away she observes his hair.

"Fendrel. Are you feeling alright.?"

"Oh hell," Boral mumbles. "Those halflings are plumb crazy. I was going to follow the group with Betsy here, but I don't see me getting her down that well."

"Don't worry, I think we can rule a trip down the well out," Kurl says after noting the condition of his bailed out comrade and taking a peer down the well.

Happy states, "We got to keep moving. Whatever killed Xim is undoubtedly pondering how to take out the rest of us. The well is off the table as an option for exploration. The sinkhole seems a bit too ominous for me. That leaves the tower and the burnt ruin. Let's check out the ruin."

Tender shrugs. "I suppose it is best to meet your death head on. I'm fine with the ruin, then, unless someone has any objections or better ideas? Let's just not pass under any other portcullis. Any idea where the operating mechanism for that thing might be found," the dwarf asks as he looks around for the answer. "Maybe the bastard who killed Xim is still around the lever."

When Kurl peers into the well the dark shaft opens up into an expansive darkness that causes the wizard's apprentice to stagger and lose his balance. Luckily he manages to stumble away from the well instead of toppling into it.

[sblock=OOC]Kurl: Will save (1d20+1=21)[/sblock]

Alaric: "No, sir, though I don't doubt dark magic now. The smoke holds faces, perhaps of those fallen into the abyss itself now writhing in the coils of Set and all the demons of Stygia. None of them are our friends, thankfully, but that tells us nothing. That way holds only death, and I've made no pacts to keep me safe in the embrace of the black mistress. I see the chains of the well have melted in a way I would guess similar to what I've seen in the phyalls of alchemists poured upon metals to etch lions into the blades of swords, so I suspect no safe travel there. Our companions have it aright: The ruin then the tower, and if luck holds with us perhaps a safer path?"


Xim: The halfling collapses on his knees in the dust, and only now speaks, not looking at anyone. "Her name was Zim," he growls. "You said it wrong. Mine is Xim, meaning crooked. Her name was Zim. Like the flower."

ooc: The animal tracks lead towards the ruin or the tower?

Looking again the group sees that the animal track lead from the gatehouse to the tower and also to the well.