Ulfang, June 1st, AE 420
The next day the party rides out to the prison camp. On the way, Corwin and Aris both notice a slight shimmer in the air that seems to follow them; they both recognize it as the visual sensor from a scrying spell.
“Great,” Jovah groans. There’s not much they can do about it; they can only keep relatively quiet and hope that those watching can’t figure out where they are going.
The sensor lasts a few minutes and thens winks out of view. The party continues riding, and arrives an hour or so later at the gates of the camp.
This camp was used at the end of the Siege of Ulfang, when Elros Ekozius (then an “Archduke” under the rebel Kings) besieged the town in hopes of subjugating it along with the rest of Ambardor. Many prisoners were taken when the Siege was broken in the year 416, and they were kept here until a peace treaty was worked out and they could be exchanged for prisoners that Ghithor had taken in the war. Jalea learned that portions of the camp that were supposed to be full of prisoners were in fact empty; perhaps hundreds of POW’s are (unofficially) unaccounted for. Lord Arlen Kentfield was the warden of the camp, and Jalea believes him to be responsible. Discrepancies were “fudged” in the paperwork; although the number of missing in action soldiers during the Siege seems high, there is no hard evidence of the missing soldiers.
Now, the camp is deserted. Its twenty or so long barracks are surrounded by a fifteen foot tall stone wall, topped with spear tips. In the center of the camp there is another wall that surrounds another half-dozen barracks, and the warden’s offices. Beyond that is a sheer fifty foot cliff, dropping to the savage coastline of the Retic Sea. A ways off to the west stands a lighthouse, apparently in use. Aris sends his hawk there to watch things from above.
The gates hang open, swinging back and forth in the high winnds that whip off the Sea. Brennen rides down the length of the barracks, checking to see if there is any evidence of life or activity. He remembers being ambushed by wights at the abandoned keep where they recovered the Egg from the Sahuagin, months before, and doesn’t want to get caught again by such things.
There is nothing to be seen, however, and the groups moves further in. Eventually, they tie up their horses and check out the main structure, the former prison headquarters. It’s a two story wooden building, and Jalea knows there is a secret passageway in the basement. They check out the above ground floors, finding nothing, and then head down to the basement.
Before going below ground, Reana casts alarm to ward the area. If anything larger than a rat enters the building, she’ll be aware of it.
The basement contains more cells, abandoned and empty. Manacles hang unlocked, chains rust on the floor. Jalea walks down to the end of one of the corridors, and locates the secret door that he was once taken through, maybe three years before. It opens up, revealing a long, narrow passage sloping downwards. They file through, one by one, and decend slowly until they reach a small chamber containing a spiral stair going further down.
Jalea looks around the chamber, and points out a circular hole in the floor.
“There was an altar over that. Blood-stained and everything. When I saw that, that’s when I made my break. I never went any further than this.”
They prepare to go down the spiral stair, but as Gavin steps down, Reana stops him.
“The alarm went off!” she says.
“So there’s some one up there?” Brennen asks.
“Well, it could just be a wild dog or something…” Reana admits.
“Let’s go forward and see what we find,” Brennen says.
They go down the stair, and find a passage way heading directly west. After thirty feet or so, however, it ends at a cave-in. Brennen inspects it to see if it can be cleared.
“It’s pretty massive,” he says. “Also, it looks to me like it was done intentionally.”
“We’ll have to go back,” Jovah says.
They return to the secret door area, and get ready to see what set off the alarm. Reana stops them again just after they open the door.
“I hear something upstairs,” she says. “Someone walking around…”
She summons a wolf, and sends it up the stairs to the first floor. Muffled curses, and the sounds of bowfire can be heard, then silence again.
“Ambush,” Corwin says. He casts improved invisibility on himself, and moves up to the stairs. The others starts casting spells, too, and get ready to bust their way out. Aris makes himself invisible and follows Corwin up the stairs. As the get up to the first floor they see that there are pairs of archers at the end of each of the four hallways leading to the stairs. Corwin moves to a post sheltered from all but one pair, and Aris moves towards the pair that block the exit from the building.
“Tag, you’re it,” he says to one, hitting it with a vampiric touch as he becomes visible. He draws his flameblade and engages them.
Corwin is startled by arrow coming dangerously close to his head. He looks up and realizes that another archer is on the stair to the second floor, and must have heard him creaking on the floorboards and estimated his position. He magic missiles the archer, and moves over about ten feet to throw him further off.
The others start rushing up the stairs. Brennen and Jovah rush up to the second floor and take down the archer injured by Corwin’s magic missile. Reana runs up and engages another pair of archers, cutting them to ribbons. Jalea stops at the first floor landing, and begins exchanging bowfire with yet another pair, and Gavin moves to engage the last pair.
The pair of archers fighting Aris, pull back onto the front porch of the building, and get ready to flank him if he comes further out. Aris repsonds with a burning hands spell, and notices how deftly they avoid its full effects.
“Theives’ Guild,” he thinks to himself.
It’s about then that Aris sees the golden-eyed man. Where he came from, he’s not sure, but he steps into view, and casts a spell. Suddenly, slimy, black tentacles are covering the inside of the building, grasping and trying to crush anything they can grab. One grabs Aris; another grabs Jalea; and another bounces off Corwin’s shield spell. Jalea manages to wiggle out of his tentacle, but Aris is trapped, helpless to act as the two rogues and the golden-eyed man rush off to the side.
Corwin steps up, and casts dispel magic and successfully gets rid of the tentacles before they can do any real harm. Aris steps forward onto the porch and lets the fleeing rogue and his wizardly ally have it with a fireball.
The rogue drops in a heap, but the golden-eyed man seems entirely unaffected. He turns and casts a spell back at Aris, and suddenly everything is moving in slow motion for Aris and Corwin.
Jalea is following fleeing rogues jumping through windows on the first floor, and the pair that Gavin charged decided discretion was the better part of valor as well. Gavin pokes his head out the window his two rogues lept out of, and sees the golden-eyed man.
“Aha!” he thinks. “I’ve got him dead to rights!”
He leaps through the window and rushes to engage him. The golden-eyed man steps back and summons a Dire Ape to keep Gavin occupied. Jovah is up on the roof of the first floor, and Brennen is running up from the porch to engage the golden-eyed man.
Corwin dispels the ape; Aris shoots the golden-eyed man with magic missiles, and again they have no effect! Reana makes her way into the fight and lands a heavy blow on the enemy, followed by another even better shot by Gavin.
Reana and Gavin criticalled the guy on consecutive shots!
The golden-eyed man decides he’s seen as much as he needs to and begins changing shape! A flurry of desperate blows from Gavin, Reana, and Brennen injure him, but don’t stop his shifting. Corwin manages to get a melf’s acid arrow through his spell resistance, but he finishes his transformation into a small golden hawk (that looks quite familiar to Aris’, um, familiar) and flies off towards Ulfang like a bullet.
