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Chronicles of Mesion: Considering Hiatus; Comments Needed.
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<blockquote data-quote="LordVyreth" data-source="post: 2962259" data-attributes="member: 9626"><p><strong>The Gate of Madness: Beware the Squeakers!</strong></p><p></p><p>“Well, that was a fun trip!” Ik enthusiastically commented. “And I think I made some fans.”</p><p></p><p> Lorren grumbled. “I didn’t have as much luck. I thought I could get some assistance in my magical research from Bathail, but he was far more interested in magic far too…subtle for me. Also, well, he remembered me from my work in Fra Dane.”</p><p></p><p> “Your work?” Elvis asked cautiously.</p><p></p><p> “Well, one of my experiments was officially known as Sulphur Day, because of the smell.”</p><p></p><p> A look of recognition passed on Luke’s face. “That was you? It took me weeks to get the smell out of my clothes! What did you do?”</p><p></p><p> Lorren shrugged. “Every genius has to make a few mistakes. I’m happy knowing that I’m already a living legend at such a young age. It’s not for something I’m exactly proud of, but it’s a start.”</p><p></p><p> As they continued their discussion, the party slowly made their way to the entrance of the Gate of Madness, mere hours after the caravan dropped them off near it. The party already began their preparations for their first dungeon raid. According to Callis, the caravan they just left could pick them up, but since it takes over forty days to reach Ulgurtha, by the time the caravan was returning, almost three months will have passed! Since that would put the date into winter, this was not an attractive option. Alternately, another caravan was arriving much sooner, but it only gave the party seven days to find out all they could about the humanoid tribes Effervo Vesica hired.</p><p></p><p> The entrance to the Gate of Madness was almost disappointingly plain. There was nothing to mark it but a hole in the round and a simple wooden sign. Lorren read the sign. “The Gate of Madness. Abandon all ‘blank’ ye who enter here.”</p><p></p><p> “It says blank?” Enrique asked with skepticism.</p><p></p><p> Lorren shook his head. “No, but something was blacked out, and then somebody wrote something else over it. And then somebody crossed that out and wrote something else. It goes on like this for dozens of words. Apparently, the most recent word is ‘parsnips.’”</p><p></p><p> Ik eagerly grabbed a quill and some ink. “Oooh! I want to write something new. How does ‘Abandon all Arugula’ sound?”</p><p></p><p> While Ik fiddled with the front of the sign, Enrique noticed further writing on the back. Among the writings were more symbols in Adventurer’s Cant, which spelled out to say “Be prepared to defend yourself,” “Mean monster here,” “Natural Dangers,” and “Trap.” A less general but more ominous sentence under that the Cant symbols simply read, “Leave the squeakers alone.” Unfortunately, the party had no idea who or what the squeakers were, so they made a note of it as they carefully assembled the party, drew their weapons, and descended into the dungeon. It was about halfway down the stairs into the first cavern of Mesion’s largest and most dangerous dungeon that they realized none of them brought a lantern.</p><p></p><p> “What do you mean we don’t have anything?” Luke asked angrily.</p><p></p><p> Grim shrugged. “I can see in the dark. I don’t know what your excuse is.”</p><p></p><p> Elvis pulled some torches out of his backpack. “Look, this will have to do for now. Hopefully we can find something better as we travel. If worse comes to worse, we can find that town that’s a day or so off from here. It’ll cost us a few days, but it beats stumbling around in the dark.”</p><p></p><p> The party found themselves (once they could see it,) in a seemingly normal-looking cavern with three tunnels extending to the northwest, southwest, and northeast. After a brief investigation, only the northwest tunnel stood out. For one thing, it smelled slightly of honey, which was unusual at the very least. More importantly, another Adventurer’s Cant symbol was above the entrance to the tunnel. After translating it to read “A good and/or kind resident lives here,” the underequipped party had no trouble choosing this direction to start their journey. They didn’t get far, however, before finding another large cave at the end of the tunnel. Grim, who was taking the lead because of his ability to see in the dark, quickly scanned the cave for threats, and noticed a flock of bats on the roof. “I see some bats,” he simply pointed out. “But I’m not sure if they’re a threat.” Grim seemed hesitant. He had to fight enough animals or creatures he had no immediate problems with already. </p><p></p><p> “Wait, don’t bats squeak? I thought we were supposed to leave the squeakers alone!” Anastacia said worriedly.</p><p></p><p> Lorren shrugged. “Well, if they leave us alone, we’ll do the same to them.”</p><p></p><p> Grim took a few cautious steps into the cave, immediately prompting the bats to fly down and swarm the unfortunate barbarian. Even as the bats began to suck his blood and leave brutal wounds that seemed unable to close on their own, the party was slow to respond out of fear from the warning. Eventually, though, they decided to stop the bats’ attack, and so with weapon and torch the bats were dispersed. The tunnel continued on the other side of the cave, so the party traveled northwards until they came to a door.</p><p></p><p> “The good person the Cant symbol told us about could be here,” Luke offered.</p><p></p><p> Enrique looked skeptical. “After what the ‘squeakers’ did, I’m not so certain we should trust random symbols that could’ve been written by anyone.” He searched the door for traps, made sure it was unlocked, and listened for any suspicious noises on the other side. After finding out that the door was harmless and the next room was quiet, he and Grim quickly opened the door and stepped inside.</p><p></p><p> Finally, the first signs of the bizarre nature of the Gate were revealed to the party. The next room perfectly emulated the interior of a giant bee hive, complete with its inhabitant, a humanoid-shaped bee! The bee, however, seemed harmless enough. He was simply reading a book on insect zoology when the party entered, and he gave them a glance but didn’t appear hostile after seeing them.</p><p></p><p> Luke took the lead as party goodwill ambassador. “Hello. I was told that a friendly force could be found here. Are you he?”</p><p></p><p> The bee looked confused, and replied in Common, albeit with high-pitched, buzzing voice. “I would not know what you speak of. I have been in this facility for months now, so I do not know who or what would tell you that. But I am not your enemy.”</p><p></p><p> Lacking Luke’s tact, Elvis asked, “What are you?”</p><p></p><p> The bee replied. “We are the Abeil. We live in the mountains near this dungeon. We value knowledge above all things, so frequently our queen schedules expeditions into this dungeon to learn about its secrets. When these expeditions are over, one remains behind to maintain our facilities. I am that one.”</p><p></p><p> “So you know what we can expect to find in this dungeon? Can you give us a map?” Anastacia asked.</p><p></p><p> The abeil shook its head. “I’m afraid not. After the raid, the abeil leave with all the information gathered. I am left with only a few books to pass the time and everything needed to keep the hive maintained. I have not left the hive in months.”</p><p></p><p> Enrique nodded, and then he noticed another door at the far end of the hive. “Excuse me, Mr….what should we call you?”</p><p></p><p> “We have no names,” the abeil replies. “We are just given identification numbers. I am Worker #89.”</p><p></p><p> “Well…89,” Enrique replied. “Do you at least know what’s behind that door?”</p><p></p><p> 89 nodded. “That’s where the explorers come from. I don’t think you should go that way; you won’t get very far, so it’s pointless.”</p><p></p><p> “What are the explorers?” Ik nervously asked.</p><p></p><p> “Oh, they are relatively safe, at least at this level. They periodically arrive on this level and simply pass through, mapping everything and recording every change. It’s best to leave them alone.”</p><p></p><p> The wording of that phrase set off alarms in the party’s heads, but they decided that these explorers merited further investigating. Taking their leave of number 89, they traveled through the north door to find a long hallway. At first, the hallway appeared empty save for one creature, an imp-like monster that sat at the far end of the hall and seemed unconcerned with the party’s presence, and a strong-looking metal doorway at the other end. Watching the potential threat carefully, Grim strode quietly into the room, where he promptly was struck by a swift-moving scythe trap.</p><p></p><p> “Can I stop taking point?” Grim complained, as he bandaged his new wound. Despite the sudden attack from the trap, the creature remained inactive. </p><p></p><p> “Well, I might as well,” Enrique replied. “I might be able to spot any future traps before it’s too late.”</p><p></p><p> He carefully searched the hallway, but when he closed with the monster just a bit further, it finally acted by screaming as loud as it could! The screams echoed down the hallway and seemingly proved too much for Enrique, who could do little but block his ears and try to recover from the sudden pain.</p><p></p><p> “An alarm system!” Elvis yelled, and he quickly prepared his bow to finish the creature. Lorren followed through with his own magic, and the rest of the party opened fire as well. Grim, however, was not interested in attacking from a distance. He preferred to face his enemies directly, and so he charged the monster, where he promptly fell into the pit trap just a short distance from the monster! This was not his day.</p><p></p><p> Fortunately, the beast eventually fell to the volley of attacks, and Enrique promptly finished exploring the hallway while the party retrieved Grim. His explorations only lasted a few minutes, however, when the metal door opened. A half dozen vaguely humanoid figures emerged. Each was wrapped head to toe in a strange black cloth, making it impossible to see any of their features, but they had a reptilian gait. One of them was sitting on a metal tray of some sort, which was slowly pushed by the other creatures. As it moved, its thick, rusty wheels made a sharp squeaking noise, alerting the party about the nature of these beings. Heeding the message’s advice, they simply watched as the monsters visited each trap, where they removed a number of tools from the trays and reset them both. As they did so, the one on the tray was furiously scribbling on a pad of paper, drawing every detail of the room, including the heroes, perfectly. Finally, one of the creatures grabbed the corpse of the fallen monster, while another took a perfectly healthy monster of the same race out of the tray. The new monster was trapped in a jar, but in a few moments, the metal door opened, the black-clothed creatures removed the screaming imp-creature and placed it where the last imp was, and all half-dozen of them re-entered the darkness beyond the metal door. With a long, slow rumbling noise, the door was closed and the mysterious creatures were gone.</p><p></p><p> OOC Notes: And that’s as far as the party got through the Gate of Madness so far. I wanted to impose the weird, surreal, creepy nature of the dungeon early on, and hopefully between the giant, friendly bee-man and the “squeakers,” I got things off to a good start. I got the idea for the Gate of Madness from ENWorld, actually. A topic in the main forum was discussing the merits of dungeons, with many complaints about the unrealistic nature of the old-school dungeons. Another poster supported the old dungeons and thought they worked as a more symbolic place than a literal one; a descent into nightmares and the classic underworld, instead of just being a big hole in the ground with its own ecology. Now, I can see the point of the other posters about making it make sense, but I also realized that if handled right, capturing that old-school sense (albeit with more realistically balanced encounters,) could work in a modern game, Hence the Gate of Madness. Now, the reason the Gate is the way it is still poses a mystery, at least to the players, but trust me; I worked out something.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="LordVyreth, post: 2962259, member: 9626"] [b]The Gate of Madness: Beware the Squeakers![/b] “Well, that was a fun trip!” Ik enthusiastically commented. “And I think I made some fans.” Lorren grumbled. “I didn’t have as much luck. I thought I could get some assistance in my magical research from Bathail, but he was far more interested in magic far too…subtle for me. Also, well, he remembered me from my work in Fra Dane.” “Your work?” Elvis asked cautiously. “Well, one of my experiments was officially known as Sulphur Day, because of the smell.” A look of recognition passed on Luke’s face. “That was you? It took me weeks to get the smell out of my clothes! What did you do?” Lorren shrugged. “Every genius has to make a few mistakes. I’m happy knowing that I’m already a living legend at such a young age. It’s not for something I’m exactly proud of, but it’s a start.” As they continued their discussion, the party slowly made their way to the entrance of the Gate of Madness, mere hours after the caravan dropped them off near it. The party already began their preparations for their first dungeon raid. According to Callis, the caravan they just left could pick them up, but since it takes over forty days to reach Ulgurtha, by the time the caravan was returning, almost three months will have passed! Since that would put the date into winter, this was not an attractive option. Alternately, another caravan was arriving much sooner, but it only gave the party seven days to find out all they could about the humanoid tribes Effervo Vesica hired. The entrance to the Gate of Madness was almost disappointingly plain. There was nothing to mark it but a hole in the round and a simple wooden sign. Lorren read the sign. “The Gate of Madness. Abandon all ‘blank’ ye who enter here.” “It says blank?” Enrique asked with skepticism. Lorren shook his head. “No, but something was blacked out, and then somebody wrote something else over it. And then somebody crossed that out and wrote something else. It goes on like this for dozens of words. Apparently, the most recent word is ‘parsnips.’” Ik eagerly grabbed a quill and some ink. “Oooh! I want to write something new. How does ‘Abandon all Arugula’ sound?” While Ik fiddled with the front of the sign, Enrique noticed further writing on the back. Among the writings were more symbols in Adventurer’s Cant, which spelled out to say “Be prepared to defend yourself,” “Mean monster here,” “Natural Dangers,” and “Trap.” A less general but more ominous sentence under that the Cant symbols simply read, “Leave the squeakers alone.” Unfortunately, the party had no idea who or what the squeakers were, so they made a note of it as they carefully assembled the party, drew their weapons, and descended into the dungeon. It was about halfway down the stairs into the first cavern of Mesion’s largest and most dangerous dungeon that they realized none of them brought a lantern. “What do you mean we don’t have anything?” Luke asked angrily. Grim shrugged. “I can see in the dark. I don’t know what your excuse is.” Elvis pulled some torches out of his backpack. “Look, this will have to do for now. Hopefully we can find something better as we travel. If worse comes to worse, we can find that town that’s a day or so off from here. It’ll cost us a few days, but it beats stumbling around in the dark.” The party found themselves (once they could see it,) in a seemingly normal-looking cavern with three tunnels extending to the northwest, southwest, and northeast. After a brief investigation, only the northwest tunnel stood out. For one thing, it smelled slightly of honey, which was unusual at the very least. More importantly, another Adventurer’s Cant symbol was above the entrance to the tunnel. After translating it to read “A good and/or kind resident lives here,” the underequipped party had no trouble choosing this direction to start their journey. They didn’t get far, however, before finding another large cave at the end of the tunnel. Grim, who was taking the lead because of his ability to see in the dark, quickly scanned the cave for threats, and noticed a flock of bats on the roof. “I see some bats,” he simply pointed out. “But I’m not sure if they’re a threat.” Grim seemed hesitant. He had to fight enough animals or creatures he had no immediate problems with already. “Wait, don’t bats squeak? I thought we were supposed to leave the squeakers alone!” Anastacia said worriedly. Lorren shrugged. “Well, if they leave us alone, we’ll do the same to them.” Grim took a few cautious steps into the cave, immediately prompting the bats to fly down and swarm the unfortunate barbarian. Even as the bats began to suck his blood and leave brutal wounds that seemed unable to close on their own, the party was slow to respond out of fear from the warning. Eventually, though, they decided to stop the bats’ attack, and so with weapon and torch the bats were dispersed. The tunnel continued on the other side of the cave, so the party traveled northwards until they came to a door. “The good person the Cant symbol told us about could be here,” Luke offered. Enrique looked skeptical. “After what the ‘squeakers’ did, I’m not so certain we should trust random symbols that could’ve been written by anyone.” He searched the door for traps, made sure it was unlocked, and listened for any suspicious noises on the other side. After finding out that the door was harmless and the next room was quiet, he and Grim quickly opened the door and stepped inside. Finally, the first signs of the bizarre nature of the Gate were revealed to the party. The next room perfectly emulated the interior of a giant bee hive, complete with its inhabitant, a humanoid-shaped bee! The bee, however, seemed harmless enough. He was simply reading a book on insect zoology when the party entered, and he gave them a glance but didn’t appear hostile after seeing them. Luke took the lead as party goodwill ambassador. “Hello. I was told that a friendly force could be found here. Are you he?” The bee looked confused, and replied in Common, albeit with high-pitched, buzzing voice. “I would not know what you speak of. I have been in this facility for months now, so I do not know who or what would tell you that. But I am not your enemy.” Lacking Luke’s tact, Elvis asked, “What are you?” The bee replied. “We are the Abeil. We live in the mountains near this dungeon. We value knowledge above all things, so frequently our queen schedules expeditions into this dungeon to learn about its secrets. When these expeditions are over, one remains behind to maintain our facilities. I am that one.” “So you know what we can expect to find in this dungeon? Can you give us a map?” Anastacia asked. The abeil shook its head. “I’m afraid not. After the raid, the abeil leave with all the information gathered. I am left with only a few books to pass the time and everything needed to keep the hive maintained. I have not left the hive in months.” Enrique nodded, and then he noticed another door at the far end of the hive. “Excuse me, Mr….what should we call you?” “We have no names,” the abeil replies. “We are just given identification numbers. I am Worker #89.” “Well…89,” Enrique replied. “Do you at least know what’s behind that door?” 89 nodded. “That’s where the explorers come from. I don’t think you should go that way; you won’t get very far, so it’s pointless.” “What are the explorers?” Ik nervously asked. “Oh, they are relatively safe, at least at this level. They periodically arrive on this level and simply pass through, mapping everything and recording every change. It’s best to leave them alone.” The wording of that phrase set off alarms in the party’s heads, but they decided that these explorers merited further investigating. Taking their leave of number 89, they traveled through the north door to find a long hallway. At first, the hallway appeared empty save for one creature, an imp-like monster that sat at the far end of the hall and seemed unconcerned with the party’s presence, and a strong-looking metal doorway at the other end. Watching the potential threat carefully, Grim strode quietly into the room, where he promptly was struck by a swift-moving scythe trap. “Can I stop taking point?” Grim complained, as he bandaged his new wound. Despite the sudden attack from the trap, the creature remained inactive. “Well, I might as well,” Enrique replied. “I might be able to spot any future traps before it’s too late.” He carefully searched the hallway, but when he closed with the monster just a bit further, it finally acted by screaming as loud as it could! The screams echoed down the hallway and seemingly proved too much for Enrique, who could do little but block his ears and try to recover from the sudden pain. “An alarm system!” Elvis yelled, and he quickly prepared his bow to finish the creature. Lorren followed through with his own magic, and the rest of the party opened fire as well. Grim, however, was not interested in attacking from a distance. He preferred to face his enemies directly, and so he charged the monster, where he promptly fell into the pit trap just a short distance from the monster! This was not his day. Fortunately, the beast eventually fell to the volley of attacks, and Enrique promptly finished exploring the hallway while the party retrieved Grim. His explorations only lasted a few minutes, however, when the metal door opened. A half dozen vaguely humanoid figures emerged. Each was wrapped head to toe in a strange black cloth, making it impossible to see any of their features, but they had a reptilian gait. One of them was sitting on a metal tray of some sort, which was slowly pushed by the other creatures. As it moved, its thick, rusty wheels made a sharp squeaking noise, alerting the party about the nature of these beings. Heeding the message’s advice, they simply watched as the monsters visited each trap, where they removed a number of tools from the trays and reset them both. As they did so, the one on the tray was furiously scribbling on a pad of paper, drawing every detail of the room, including the heroes, perfectly. Finally, one of the creatures grabbed the corpse of the fallen monster, while another took a perfectly healthy monster of the same race out of the tray. The new monster was trapped in a jar, but in a few moments, the metal door opened, the black-clothed creatures removed the screaming imp-creature and placed it where the last imp was, and all half-dozen of them re-entered the darkness beyond the metal door. With a long, slow rumbling noise, the door was closed and the mysterious creatures were gone. OOC Notes: And that’s as far as the party got through the Gate of Madness so far. I wanted to impose the weird, surreal, creepy nature of the dungeon early on, and hopefully between the giant, friendly bee-man and the “squeakers,” I got things off to a good start. I got the idea for the Gate of Madness from ENWorld, actually. A topic in the main forum was discussing the merits of dungeons, with many complaints about the unrealistic nature of the old-school dungeons. Another poster supported the old dungeons and thought they worked as a more symbolic place than a literal one; a descent into nightmares and the classic underworld, instead of just being a big hole in the ground with its own ecology. Now, I can see the point of the other posters about making it make sense, but I also realized that if handled right, capturing that old-school sense (albeit with more realistically balanced encounters,) could work in a modern game, Hence the Gate of Madness. Now, the reason the Gate is the way it is still poses a mystery, at least to the players, but trust me; I worked out something. [/QUOTE]
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