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Sagiro's Story Hour: The FINAL Adventures of Abernathy's Company (FINISHED 7/3/14)
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Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 365
The Beginning of the End
There’s a moment of dismay over the mind-link at this sudden turn of events, and that dismay is amplified as those in Cayyat realize that Morningstar and Grey Wolf, through some unfair trick of trans-demiplane passage, haven’t yet arrived. Dranko can clearly hear a horrible sound, a tearing and squelching, coming from where Gibbil was standing.
“I think he’s getting bigger,” he shouts. Unable to see, he nonetheless activates his boots of haste and lashes out toward the noise with this whip. Ernie draws the Honor of Nemmin, steps toward the gruesome sounds, and slashes. He feels the blade bite deep into something huge and… chitinous?
Whatever Gibbil is turning into, it lets out a horrid rasping roar.
“Your accent has changed!” says Dranko.
So, it seems, have its teeth. Dranko feels huge sharp teeth bite down on his shoulder, and a powerful claw rakes across the side of his head. The creature's gurgling, raspy breath is now coming from up near where they think the ceiling is. Yoba swings her own sword upward but doesn’t strike anything solid.
Aravis quickens a cone of cold, blasting upward and outward, and using the battlestone of St. Jenniver to avoid damaging any allies in its area of effect He follows this up with greater dispel magic, but this has no effect on the blanketing darkness.
Kibi quickens a maximized ray of enfeeblement and fires it upward toward the noise of the beast, but can’t tell if it’s struck true. The he takes a chance with Otto’s irresistible dance and waves his hand as high as he can reach, but he fails to make contact with his enemy’s body. Dranko continues to lash with his whip, making occasional contact, while Ernie does likewise with his sword. After Ernie drops a quickened holy smite on it, they all hear the sound of a great lumbering beast retreating to the far side of the cabin’s huge main room.
A sickening wave of negative energy washes over them, draining away their life-force. Dranko and Yoba get the worst of it, but all of them feel the sadly-familiar gut-draining pull of CON loss.
The Company hears the sound of Yoba charging across the room. “I think he’s up near the ceiling!” she yells.
Aravis quickens a true strike and sends a maximized disintegrate towards where he imagines the monster to be. He is rewarded only with a series of crashes as part of the roof, robbed of its structural integrity, comes tumbling down upon the furniture. Kibi foregoes the dance still on his fingertips to try his own greater dispel magic, and this manages to partially banish the inky blackness. In the twilight-gloom that remains, they can see the shape of their foe – it’s a wingless dragon, its serpentine body over fifteen feet long, clinging to the ceiling with his legs splayed out. Between its claws is an enormous hole where Aravis’s disintegrate went clean through two support beams and the thick wooden ceiling.
Now that Kibi can see his foe, he quickens a cone of cold and blasts it, coating its scaly body with blue ice. Dranko runs over and whips it in the face. And Ernie finishes it off with a flame strike that reduces the monster to an unholy char. The corpse drops to the floor at Dranko’s feet and then vanishes. Light returns.
In less than 20 seconds the majority of Cayyat’s interior space has been utterly trashed.
Gibbil reappears in the center of the devastation.
“Hello sirs!” he announces brightly. “Hello, madam,” he says specifically to Yoba. “Welcome to the demiplane of Cayyat. It’s a pleasure to see you here. This place passes timelessly, making for very efficient use of your time. My name is Gibbil, and I am the caretaker of Cayyat. How may I serve you today?”
“Don’t mention our mission!” urges Ernie over the mind-link.
“How are you at woodworking?” Dranko asks, gesturing to the complete devastation all around them.
“Oh. Oh dear,” says Gibbil, surveying the destruction. “This doesn’t seem right. Cayyat is meant to be intact and safe for visitors! I’d best get to work on it right away.”
/*/
Two (relative) months fly by quickly. Many items are crafted, scrolls inked, and potions brewed. Ernie and Yoba spend plenty of quality time together, and Morningstar finishes writing her chapters of Ellish scripture promised to High Priestess Rhiavonne. She keeps her tone informal, and makes sure to provide context for everything she writes so as to leave as little as possible open to interpretation for future generations. She specifically notes the importance of the Daywalkers, but adds a warning. “They are a weapon,” she writes, “and like all weapons, they can be a danger to their wielder.”
Though two months have passed in Cayyat, it’s still the afternoon before the big Ellish funeral when they return. The proceedings start at midnight, and while it’s a somber affair (as all funerals are), it carries an edge of righteous joy, and of celebration, since the sisters died in the service of so successful a cause.
Morningstar is happy to see both her parents in attendance, but is more surprised to see Ernie’s parents, Hob and Rowan. As she looks around at the guests paying their respects, she notices that Dranko’s grandfather is there all the way from Tal Korum. And Grey Wolf’s brother and sister. And Kibi’s parents. It turns out that Yale has done the legwork necessary to get all the Company’s families together in one place, so that a final round of goodbyes can be said before the party starts their final subterranean journey. Though she is not personally in attendance, Yale has sent several royal guardsmen to watch over the funeral, and one of these whispers to Morningstar that for many years now, Yale has arranged for all the Company’s family to be guarded as well as possible.
When the public mourning and heartfelt speeches have concluded, the Company returns to the Greenhouse for a final night’s sleep before the big day.
/*/
Over breakfast, Eddings refuses to become emotional. Despite the Company’s strong belief that they will not be coming back, Eddings remains supremely skeptical.
“I’ve heard this sort of thing before,” he says dryly. “You’ve come back from everything else – from the past, from a Gods’ cemetery, from an inescapable mountain prison, from a demiplane full of goblins, from a maze in a madman's mind, just to name a few. I’ll plan my future based on the evidence, and will see you upon your return.”
And so, the party says goodbye to Eddings and the cats, and Kibi casts greater teleport, whisking the Company far across the sea to the beach of Ula’s island. Soon they have squeezed through the cliff-side fissure and lowered themselves down into the ten-sided chamber, its walls adorned with the holy symbols of the Kivian pantheon.
There is no little girl waiting for them. Instead, an old woman offers her greetings. She sits wearily against one wall, her skin wrinkled and her eyes rheumy.
Dranko approaches her. “Are you the same girl that we met here before?”
“Yes.”
“How is it that you’ve aged?”
Ula smiles. “I suppose that my time is almost up?”
“Does that mean we’re late?” Dranko asks. “Is everything doomed?”
“Oh, no,” says Ula. “I imagine that your arrival is the reason I am nearly at my end.”
This causes a stir of consternation among the party, but Ula shakes her head. “You misunderstand. This was my purpose all along. Yulan created me so that when you found this place, it was my beginning. When you leave it will be my end. I will have served the purpose for which I was created… which is a nice feeling.”
“But...” says Ernie. “Was your life fun?”
“I don’t see what fun has to do with it,” says Ula. “But I feel fulfilled, if that’s what you mean.”
She looks at all of their serious faces. “So, this is it. You’re ready this time. You have that look about you.”
All seven heroes nod their heads.
“I should warn you: magic doesn’t necessarily work the same way down below. Lots of things don’t. You may find your most potent magics muted.”
Dranko gestures to his helm of brilliance. “If this doesn’t work after all the money I spent on it, I’m going to be very, very angry!”
Ula chuckles. “Abernia’s going to miss you, Dranko. They broke the mold with you.”
She grows more serious. “I’m sure the world will miss you all in the weeks and months to come, but it will be best for you to take this course. Your enemies have a long head start, but I suspect they have much to keep them occupied down there.”
“If you could give us one bit of advice, what would it be?” Dranko asks.
Ernie laughs. “Don’t sass the demon?
“Say,” says Dranko. “Once we go down there, the demon lord can’t get my soul anymore. In your face, Tapheon!”
Ula looks at the group. “My advice would be: ‘take nothing for granted.’”
“I’m going to miss the sky,” says Dranko.
“I’ll miss Ell!” says Morningstar.
“Oh, don’t be too worried about that,” says Ula. “The Gods will still keep their eyes on you. They’ll just have to work a little harder to exert their influence, and they’ll have more competition than they’re used to.”
“This whole thing about Gods walking around kind of freaks me out,” says Dranko.
Aravis clears his throat and grins.
“I guess it’s time,” says Kibi. Alone among the Company, he doesn't mind the prospect of living out his life in an underground environment, and is eager to get started.
“Right below here,” says Ula, “is another room, just like this one, though it has no trap-door.” She points to the two large handles that protrude from the floor. “In that room you will see a green glowing circle in the center. It is a one-way teleport device, which Yulan put there soon after he made the barrier. It will take you very, very far down. Hundreds of miles of down. Better to say that the distance doesn't matter. It’s prohibitively far.
“The teleport circle will take you to the one spot where the Barrier can, in theory, be breached. I don’t know how it can be breached; you’ll have to figure that out for yourself. It is possible that those three miscreants, who forced their way past me when I was younger, are there right now, scratching their heads. They might not know how to get through the Barrier, either. You should be prepared to fight them, in case you find them waiting for you.
“After that, you’re on your own. Are you ready?”
She struggles to her feet, refusing several offers to help her up.
“This is probably my last hour on Abernia, so let me do what I’m meant to do.”
Ula reaches down and grasps one of the handles. She looks like she couldn't pick up a dictionary, let alone the enormous marble trap door, but she lifts it effortlessly. “Down you go. Good luck!”
Dranko puts on a grave expression. “Ula, we’ll remember you fondly after you’re gone.”
“Thank you, Dranko.”
The party drops down into the lower room, and above them Ula closes the trap door. This chamber is lit only by the glowing green teleportation circle, a flickering column of light three feet across. By its ghostly luminosity they can see the symbols of the Kivian Gods and Goddesses etched into the walls.
There is no more discussion. One by one they move into the circle, and each in turn is transported deep into the heart of Abernia.
It is, at last, the beginning of the end.
…to be continued…
The Beginning of the End
There’s a moment of dismay over the mind-link at this sudden turn of events, and that dismay is amplified as those in Cayyat realize that Morningstar and Grey Wolf, through some unfair trick of trans-demiplane passage, haven’t yet arrived. Dranko can clearly hear a horrible sound, a tearing and squelching, coming from where Gibbil was standing.
“I think he’s getting bigger,” he shouts. Unable to see, he nonetheless activates his boots of haste and lashes out toward the noise with this whip. Ernie draws the Honor of Nemmin, steps toward the gruesome sounds, and slashes. He feels the blade bite deep into something huge and… chitinous?
Whatever Gibbil is turning into, it lets out a horrid rasping roar.
“Your accent has changed!” says Dranko.
So, it seems, have its teeth. Dranko feels huge sharp teeth bite down on his shoulder, and a powerful claw rakes across the side of his head. The creature's gurgling, raspy breath is now coming from up near where they think the ceiling is. Yoba swings her own sword upward but doesn’t strike anything solid.
Aravis quickens a cone of cold, blasting upward and outward, and using the battlestone of St. Jenniver to avoid damaging any allies in its area of effect He follows this up with greater dispel magic, but this has no effect on the blanketing darkness.
Kibi quickens a maximized ray of enfeeblement and fires it upward toward the noise of the beast, but can’t tell if it’s struck true. The he takes a chance with Otto’s irresistible dance and waves his hand as high as he can reach, but he fails to make contact with his enemy’s body. Dranko continues to lash with his whip, making occasional contact, while Ernie does likewise with his sword. After Ernie drops a quickened holy smite on it, they all hear the sound of a great lumbering beast retreating to the far side of the cabin’s huge main room.
A sickening wave of negative energy washes over them, draining away their life-force. Dranko and Yoba get the worst of it, but all of them feel the sadly-familiar gut-draining pull of CON loss.
The Company hears the sound of Yoba charging across the room. “I think he’s up near the ceiling!” she yells.
Aravis quickens a true strike and sends a maximized disintegrate towards where he imagines the monster to be. He is rewarded only with a series of crashes as part of the roof, robbed of its structural integrity, comes tumbling down upon the furniture. Kibi foregoes the dance still on his fingertips to try his own greater dispel magic, and this manages to partially banish the inky blackness. In the twilight-gloom that remains, they can see the shape of their foe – it’s a wingless dragon, its serpentine body over fifteen feet long, clinging to the ceiling with his legs splayed out. Between its claws is an enormous hole where Aravis’s disintegrate went clean through two support beams and the thick wooden ceiling.
Now that Kibi can see his foe, he quickens a cone of cold and blasts it, coating its scaly body with blue ice. Dranko runs over and whips it in the face. And Ernie finishes it off with a flame strike that reduces the monster to an unholy char. The corpse drops to the floor at Dranko’s feet and then vanishes. Light returns.
In less than 20 seconds the majority of Cayyat’s interior space has been utterly trashed.
Gibbil reappears in the center of the devastation.
“Hello sirs!” he announces brightly. “Hello, madam,” he says specifically to Yoba. “Welcome to the demiplane of Cayyat. It’s a pleasure to see you here. This place passes timelessly, making for very efficient use of your time. My name is Gibbil, and I am the caretaker of Cayyat. How may I serve you today?”
“Don’t mention our mission!” urges Ernie over the mind-link.
“How are you at woodworking?” Dranko asks, gesturing to the complete devastation all around them.
“Oh. Oh dear,” says Gibbil, surveying the destruction. “This doesn’t seem right. Cayyat is meant to be intact and safe for visitors! I’d best get to work on it right away.”
/*/
Two (relative) months fly by quickly. Many items are crafted, scrolls inked, and potions brewed. Ernie and Yoba spend plenty of quality time together, and Morningstar finishes writing her chapters of Ellish scripture promised to High Priestess Rhiavonne. She keeps her tone informal, and makes sure to provide context for everything she writes so as to leave as little as possible open to interpretation for future generations. She specifically notes the importance of the Daywalkers, but adds a warning. “They are a weapon,” she writes, “and like all weapons, they can be a danger to their wielder.”
Though two months have passed in Cayyat, it’s still the afternoon before the big Ellish funeral when they return. The proceedings start at midnight, and while it’s a somber affair (as all funerals are), it carries an edge of righteous joy, and of celebration, since the sisters died in the service of so successful a cause.
Morningstar is happy to see both her parents in attendance, but is more surprised to see Ernie’s parents, Hob and Rowan. As she looks around at the guests paying their respects, she notices that Dranko’s grandfather is there all the way from Tal Korum. And Grey Wolf’s brother and sister. And Kibi’s parents. It turns out that Yale has done the legwork necessary to get all the Company’s families together in one place, so that a final round of goodbyes can be said before the party starts their final subterranean journey. Though she is not personally in attendance, Yale has sent several royal guardsmen to watch over the funeral, and one of these whispers to Morningstar that for many years now, Yale has arranged for all the Company’s family to be guarded as well as possible.
When the public mourning and heartfelt speeches have concluded, the Company returns to the Greenhouse for a final night’s sleep before the big day.
/*/
Over breakfast, Eddings refuses to become emotional. Despite the Company’s strong belief that they will not be coming back, Eddings remains supremely skeptical.
“I’ve heard this sort of thing before,” he says dryly. “You’ve come back from everything else – from the past, from a Gods’ cemetery, from an inescapable mountain prison, from a demiplane full of goblins, from a maze in a madman's mind, just to name a few. I’ll plan my future based on the evidence, and will see you upon your return.”
And so, the party says goodbye to Eddings and the cats, and Kibi casts greater teleport, whisking the Company far across the sea to the beach of Ula’s island. Soon they have squeezed through the cliff-side fissure and lowered themselves down into the ten-sided chamber, its walls adorned with the holy symbols of the Kivian pantheon.
There is no little girl waiting for them. Instead, an old woman offers her greetings. She sits wearily against one wall, her skin wrinkled and her eyes rheumy.
Dranko approaches her. “Are you the same girl that we met here before?”
“Yes.”
“How is it that you’ve aged?”
Ula smiles. “I suppose that my time is almost up?”
“Does that mean we’re late?” Dranko asks. “Is everything doomed?”
“Oh, no,” says Ula. “I imagine that your arrival is the reason I am nearly at my end.”
This causes a stir of consternation among the party, but Ula shakes her head. “You misunderstand. This was my purpose all along. Yulan created me so that when you found this place, it was my beginning. When you leave it will be my end. I will have served the purpose for which I was created… which is a nice feeling.”
“But...” says Ernie. “Was your life fun?”
“I don’t see what fun has to do with it,” says Ula. “But I feel fulfilled, if that’s what you mean.”
She looks at all of their serious faces. “So, this is it. You’re ready this time. You have that look about you.”
All seven heroes nod their heads.
“I should warn you: magic doesn’t necessarily work the same way down below. Lots of things don’t. You may find your most potent magics muted.”
Dranko gestures to his helm of brilliance. “If this doesn’t work after all the money I spent on it, I’m going to be very, very angry!”
Ula chuckles. “Abernia’s going to miss you, Dranko. They broke the mold with you.”
She grows more serious. “I’m sure the world will miss you all in the weeks and months to come, but it will be best for you to take this course. Your enemies have a long head start, but I suspect they have much to keep them occupied down there.”
“If you could give us one bit of advice, what would it be?” Dranko asks.
Ernie laughs. “Don’t sass the demon?
“Say,” says Dranko. “Once we go down there, the demon lord can’t get my soul anymore. In your face, Tapheon!”
Ula looks at the group. “My advice would be: ‘take nothing for granted.’”
“I’m going to miss the sky,” says Dranko.
“I’ll miss Ell!” says Morningstar.
“Oh, don’t be too worried about that,” says Ula. “The Gods will still keep their eyes on you. They’ll just have to work a little harder to exert their influence, and they’ll have more competition than they’re used to.”
“This whole thing about Gods walking around kind of freaks me out,” says Dranko.
Aravis clears his throat and grins.
“I guess it’s time,” says Kibi. Alone among the Company, he doesn't mind the prospect of living out his life in an underground environment, and is eager to get started.
“Right below here,” says Ula, “is another room, just like this one, though it has no trap-door.” She points to the two large handles that protrude from the floor. “In that room you will see a green glowing circle in the center. It is a one-way teleport device, which Yulan put there soon after he made the barrier. It will take you very, very far down. Hundreds of miles of down. Better to say that the distance doesn't matter. It’s prohibitively far.
“The teleport circle will take you to the one spot where the Barrier can, in theory, be breached. I don’t know how it can be breached; you’ll have to figure that out for yourself. It is possible that those three miscreants, who forced their way past me when I was younger, are there right now, scratching their heads. They might not know how to get through the Barrier, either. You should be prepared to fight them, in case you find them waiting for you.
“After that, you’re on your own. Are you ready?”
She struggles to her feet, refusing several offers to help her up.
“This is probably my last hour on Abernia, so let me do what I’m meant to do.”
Ula reaches down and grasps one of the handles. She looks like she couldn't pick up a dictionary, let alone the enormous marble trap door, but she lifts it effortlessly. “Down you go. Good luck!”
Dranko puts on a grave expression. “Ula, we’ll remember you fondly after you’re gone.”
“Thank you, Dranko.”
The party drops down into the lower room, and above them Ula closes the trap door. This chamber is lit only by the glowing green teleportation circle, a flickering column of light three feet across. By its ghostly luminosity they can see the symbols of the Kivian Gods and Goddesses etched into the walls.
There is no more discussion. One by one they move into the circle, and each in turn is transported deep into the heart of Abernia.
It is, at last, the beginning of the end.
…to be continued…
weiknarf
Explorer
Oh dear
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 366
Welcoming Committee
There is no momentous feeling of having traveled hundreds of miles, or indeed of having traveled at all. Each member of the Company steps into the light, and steps out into darkness.
The horrid feeling of Essence bombards them, and Ernie hastily casts magic circle of protection before anyone passes out. The assault on their senses is blunted. After an initial fear that Seven Dark Words has laid a trap for them, they see with their darkvision that they are alone.
The party stands upon a single iron slab that extends past the edge of their vision in all directions. There are no walls, and nothing holding up the vast rock ceiling that looms not more than twenty feet above their heads. The iron is unnaturally smooth, appearing almost polished over its entire surface, except for one blemish. Ten feet from where they stand, the party sees a ragged-edged hole in the iron, as if some impossibly strong acid has burned its way through it. It is from that hole that the taint of Essence comes.
Kibi walks tentatively to the hole and looks down. He sees that an irregular shaft has been made, barely wide enough for a single person, extending downward at least sixty feet. The walls of the shaft are iron – Yulan’s Barrier is at least that thick. Kibi doesn’t see any of the Adversary’s blood remaining on the interior walls of the hole, which is good, because he thinks it would be impossible for anyone to descend through it without touching the sides.
Grey Wolf casts enhanced senses and takes a look after Kibi has moved away. He thinks he can spot the end of the tunnel, far below, at least a hundred feet. A faint flicker of light shines from the depths.
Staying close to Ernie, they briefly explore the area around them, and find that if they walk a hundred feet in any direction, the ceiling slopes downward until it presses against the immense iron slab. They are in what is effectively a bubble, a solitary air pocket, countless miles below the surface.
Back at the foul shaft, Ernie murmurs a prayer to Yulan. “You know why we are here, and what we are trying to do. Will you allow our passage?”
Flicker drops a lit coin down into the hole, while Grey Wolf watches it fall to better gauge its depth. The coin’s light shines upon the walls, until it drops out the bottom of the tunnel, bounces off of something even farther below, and rolls out of sight.
Aravis casts light on the end of a torch, and they lower it down on a rope. After it exits out the bottom of the shaft, it goes another fifty feet before it touches the ground.
“I don’t think they’re waiting for us,” says Ernie. “They have a job to do, and I’m sure they’ve moved on to do it.”
Dranko goes first (after getting a personalized protection from evil from Ernie), shimmying down the rope through the narrow shaft -- a shaft burned through Yulan’s world-spanning iron shell by Adversary blood. He can look up and see the others watching him, but when he reaches the mid-way point they start to fade, and his connection to them via the telepathic bond goes out. By the time he has reached the bottom, he can hear faint whispers around the edges of his mind – similar to the mental chatter over the mind link, but as a background noise, indecipherable.
As he emerges from the shaft, Dranko finds that there is light here that is not coming from the party’s enchanted objects, a light that is brighter than twilight though not so bright as daytime sunlight. It is coming from dust. Tiny glowing specs float all around him, and though Dranko cannot focus on any single one of them, the little motes provide a constant glow.
In the light of these illuminated dust-specks, he sees that the Blood-bored shaft opens into an enormous cavern that stretches for hundreds of yards around him. Down below – not directly beneath the hole, but hundreds of feet off to his left – is a large stone building, a temple of some kind, with symbols etched onto its walls. The most prominent of these symbols is an open black hand, and with a shudder Dranko thinks of the Hand of the Adversary, which fell to Abernia and smashed its way down to the Underdark. Has it given rise to its own foul cult?
Two gigantic stalactites, easily a hundred feet tall and twenty across where they meet the ceiling, hang above the temple, pointed downward towards it like giants' spears. A third stalactite, just as large, has already broken off and smashed through the temple’s roof. It’s impossible for Dranko to tell how long ago it fell.
There are no signs of people, no noises of animals, and no stirring of breeze. The coin they had dropped has come to rest half-way down a wide stone staircase that winds its way up from the temple along one wall of the cavern. The staircase ends directly beneath the hole, and otherwise leads nowhere at all.
Dranko tugs on the rope to indicate it’s safe, and soon all seven of them are standing on a wide stone platform at the top of the staircase. They all have questions, obviously, but before anyone can speak, they each become aware of something… odd… in their minds. They can hear one another’s thoughts, just barely, even outside the mind-link! Not enough to make out anything specific – it’s more like an incoherent background whisper, the mental equivalent of the din of voices in a crowded plaza.
Morningstar is an expert at teasing out the thoughts of others; she tries to zero in on a single train of whispered thought, and finds Flicker’s. As he talks out loud, he is also broadcasting his thoughts in a small way, and Morningstar hears thoughts and speech simultaneously. It’s severly jarring, and makes it hard for any of them to talk to one another, as a natural residual telepathy occurs concurrently with their spoken words.
When they all stop talking, the telepathic echoes quiet, though Morningstar thinks she can still detect the faintest of mental reverberations at the edge of her perception.
“Hello?” she calls. “We hear you out there. Are you trying to talk to us?”
Physical echoes bounce back from the temple below, but no one answers. She tries a detect thoughts and clutches her head in her hands. The thoughts of her friends, typically easy to ignore, are a raucous babbling in her mind. But with an effort she filters them out, and becomes satisfied that there are no other thinking minds close by.
The stairway down to the temple runs along the cavern wall on their right, and every minute or so there is a long flat section. Jutting from the wall at each of these platforms is a black hand carved from some sort of polished black stone. They’re shiny, probably from being touched repeatedly. The stairs themselves are also well worn, as though hundreds of feet have climbed them over the years. It’s all evidence that this staircase was built to allow a pilgrimage, from the temple up to the rocky dead-end where the Company happened to drop down into the cavern.
Finally they reach the ground, and walk to the huge double doors at the front of the temple. These are made of something similar to wood, but which is not wood – more like a petrified fungus coated with resin. Open black hands are carved into both, and they stand ajar.
Grey Wolf, with his enhanced senses active, smells death coming from inside the temple.
“Oh, joy,” he says.
The party walks through a small antechamber and into a huge open space like the nave of a cathedral. In the back right they can see the bottom section of the great stalactite that has pierced the ceiling, its point gouged into the marble floor. All around it is smashed rubble, boulder-size chunks of worked stone from the walls and ceiling, along with broken off bits of the stalactite itself.
Morningstar casts detect evil, and the spell warns her of a very weak emanation that permeates the entire temple. And though there are no bodies in sight, Grey Wolf is certain that the smell of corpses is coming from the far end of the great hall. By the light of the glowing motes, he can see several doors leading out to other parts of the cathedral (where the stalactite has not clogged the exits with detritus). The motes bob and float in a slow dance, though there is no breeze here at all.
By the dust layer on the ground, Dranko guesses that the place has been abandoned for months. On a lark he casts know age on one intact wall of the temple, and learns that it is 810 years old. All of them are pleased that a divination spell worked, but Dranko is suspicious enough that he casts it a second time. It returns the same answer. This temple was built 810 years ago.
“Hey, look at this!”
Ernie has noticed a series of intact murals set into the wall to their left. They are beautifully carved, and have avoided all damage from the stalactite, which fell into the opposite corner of the temple. The Company crowds around to look, as the six detailed panels tell a story.
The first panel shows a large empty cavern, empty, but with three huge stalactites hanging from the ceiling.
The second panel shows that same cavern, but a huge black hand reaches out of one wall. A light shines from the palm of the hand, onto the floor of the cavern.
The third panel depicts the temple itself, half-built, on the very spot where they now stand. The creatures shown building it are humanoid, though not quite proportioned correctly.
The fourth panel shows the temple fully built, with a bright corona around it.
The fifth panel shows a crowd of humanoids on the left side of the frame, and a little black hand has been drawn over each of their heads. They are all bowing. In front of them, on the right side of the frame, are seven more humanoid figures, four of which are about the same size as those in the black-hand crowd, and three of which are noticeably shorter.
The sixth and final panel shows one of the figures with a black hand symbol, putting a circlet or crown on the head of one of the shorter members of the group of seven.
“So,” says Dranko. “We should have worshippers. Where are they?”
Kibi frowns. “I have a feeling that the people who were supposed to give us that crown, are who we’re smelling in the back of this temple.”
As if his comment were a summons, a throng of creatures comes streaming in from various doorways leading out of main temple chamber. They are between six and seven feet tall, and humanoid, though they are top-heavy, broad-shouldered, with slanted torsos and oddly-jointed legs. They float a few inches from the ground, and dirty gray robes with hoods are draped over their bodies – robes bearing the symbol of an open black hand on the sides of the hoods. The faces of these creatures are pale, sallow, and in the middling stages of decomposition.
Each has a large, burned out hole where its heart should be.
The nausea of Essence accompanies them.
…to be continued…
Welcoming Committee
There is no momentous feeling of having traveled hundreds of miles, or indeed of having traveled at all. Each member of the Company steps into the light, and steps out into darkness.
The horrid feeling of Essence bombards them, and Ernie hastily casts magic circle of protection before anyone passes out. The assault on their senses is blunted. After an initial fear that Seven Dark Words has laid a trap for them, they see with their darkvision that they are alone.
The party stands upon a single iron slab that extends past the edge of their vision in all directions. There are no walls, and nothing holding up the vast rock ceiling that looms not more than twenty feet above their heads. The iron is unnaturally smooth, appearing almost polished over its entire surface, except for one blemish. Ten feet from where they stand, the party sees a ragged-edged hole in the iron, as if some impossibly strong acid has burned its way through it. It is from that hole that the taint of Essence comes.
Kibi walks tentatively to the hole and looks down. He sees that an irregular shaft has been made, barely wide enough for a single person, extending downward at least sixty feet. The walls of the shaft are iron – Yulan’s Barrier is at least that thick. Kibi doesn’t see any of the Adversary’s blood remaining on the interior walls of the hole, which is good, because he thinks it would be impossible for anyone to descend through it without touching the sides.
Grey Wolf casts enhanced senses and takes a look after Kibi has moved away. He thinks he can spot the end of the tunnel, far below, at least a hundred feet. A faint flicker of light shines from the depths.
Staying close to Ernie, they briefly explore the area around them, and find that if they walk a hundred feet in any direction, the ceiling slopes downward until it presses against the immense iron slab. They are in what is effectively a bubble, a solitary air pocket, countless miles below the surface.
Back at the foul shaft, Ernie murmurs a prayer to Yulan. “You know why we are here, and what we are trying to do. Will you allow our passage?”
Flicker drops a lit coin down into the hole, while Grey Wolf watches it fall to better gauge its depth. The coin’s light shines upon the walls, until it drops out the bottom of the tunnel, bounces off of something even farther below, and rolls out of sight.
Aravis casts light on the end of a torch, and they lower it down on a rope. After it exits out the bottom of the shaft, it goes another fifty feet before it touches the ground.
“I don’t think they’re waiting for us,” says Ernie. “They have a job to do, and I’m sure they’ve moved on to do it.”
Dranko goes first (after getting a personalized protection from evil from Ernie), shimmying down the rope through the narrow shaft -- a shaft burned through Yulan’s world-spanning iron shell by Adversary blood. He can look up and see the others watching him, but when he reaches the mid-way point they start to fade, and his connection to them via the telepathic bond goes out. By the time he has reached the bottom, he can hear faint whispers around the edges of his mind – similar to the mental chatter over the mind link, but as a background noise, indecipherable.
As he emerges from the shaft, Dranko finds that there is light here that is not coming from the party’s enchanted objects, a light that is brighter than twilight though not so bright as daytime sunlight. It is coming from dust. Tiny glowing specs float all around him, and though Dranko cannot focus on any single one of them, the little motes provide a constant glow.
In the light of these illuminated dust-specks, he sees that the Blood-bored shaft opens into an enormous cavern that stretches for hundreds of yards around him. Down below – not directly beneath the hole, but hundreds of feet off to his left – is a large stone building, a temple of some kind, with symbols etched onto its walls. The most prominent of these symbols is an open black hand, and with a shudder Dranko thinks of the Hand of the Adversary, which fell to Abernia and smashed its way down to the Underdark. Has it given rise to its own foul cult?
Two gigantic stalactites, easily a hundred feet tall and twenty across where they meet the ceiling, hang above the temple, pointed downward towards it like giants' spears. A third stalactite, just as large, has already broken off and smashed through the temple’s roof. It’s impossible for Dranko to tell how long ago it fell.
There are no signs of people, no noises of animals, and no stirring of breeze. The coin they had dropped has come to rest half-way down a wide stone staircase that winds its way up from the temple along one wall of the cavern. The staircase ends directly beneath the hole, and otherwise leads nowhere at all.
Dranko tugs on the rope to indicate it’s safe, and soon all seven of them are standing on a wide stone platform at the top of the staircase. They all have questions, obviously, but before anyone can speak, they each become aware of something… odd… in their minds. They can hear one another’s thoughts, just barely, even outside the mind-link! Not enough to make out anything specific – it’s more like an incoherent background whisper, the mental equivalent of the din of voices in a crowded plaza.
Morningstar is an expert at teasing out the thoughts of others; she tries to zero in on a single train of whispered thought, and finds Flicker’s. As he talks out loud, he is also broadcasting his thoughts in a small way, and Morningstar hears thoughts and speech simultaneously. It’s severly jarring, and makes it hard for any of them to talk to one another, as a natural residual telepathy occurs concurrently with their spoken words.
When they all stop talking, the telepathic echoes quiet, though Morningstar thinks she can still detect the faintest of mental reverberations at the edge of her perception.
“Hello?” she calls. “We hear you out there. Are you trying to talk to us?”
Physical echoes bounce back from the temple below, but no one answers. She tries a detect thoughts and clutches her head in her hands. The thoughts of her friends, typically easy to ignore, are a raucous babbling in her mind. But with an effort she filters them out, and becomes satisfied that there are no other thinking minds close by.
The stairway down to the temple runs along the cavern wall on their right, and every minute or so there is a long flat section. Jutting from the wall at each of these platforms is a black hand carved from some sort of polished black stone. They’re shiny, probably from being touched repeatedly. The stairs themselves are also well worn, as though hundreds of feet have climbed them over the years. It’s all evidence that this staircase was built to allow a pilgrimage, from the temple up to the rocky dead-end where the Company happened to drop down into the cavern.
Finally they reach the ground, and walk to the huge double doors at the front of the temple. These are made of something similar to wood, but which is not wood – more like a petrified fungus coated with resin. Open black hands are carved into both, and they stand ajar.
Grey Wolf, with his enhanced senses active, smells death coming from inside the temple.
“Oh, joy,” he says.
The party walks through a small antechamber and into a huge open space like the nave of a cathedral. In the back right they can see the bottom section of the great stalactite that has pierced the ceiling, its point gouged into the marble floor. All around it is smashed rubble, boulder-size chunks of worked stone from the walls and ceiling, along with broken off bits of the stalactite itself.
Morningstar casts detect evil, and the spell warns her of a very weak emanation that permeates the entire temple. And though there are no bodies in sight, Grey Wolf is certain that the smell of corpses is coming from the far end of the great hall. By the light of the glowing motes, he can see several doors leading out to other parts of the cathedral (where the stalactite has not clogged the exits with detritus). The motes bob and float in a slow dance, though there is no breeze here at all.
By the dust layer on the ground, Dranko guesses that the place has been abandoned for months. On a lark he casts know age on one intact wall of the temple, and learns that it is 810 years old. All of them are pleased that a divination spell worked, but Dranko is suspicious enough that he casts it a second time. It returns the same answer. This temple was built 810 years ago.
“Hey, look at this!”
Ernie has noticed a series of intact murals set into the wall to their left. They are beautifully carved, and have avoided all damage from the stalactite, which fell into the opposite corner of the temple. The Company crowds around to look, as the six detailed panels tell a story.
The first panel shows a large empty cavern, empty, but with three huge stalactites hanging from the ceiling.
The second panel shows that same cavern, but a huge black hand reaches out of one wall. A light shines from the palm of the hand, onto the floor of the cavern.
The third panel depicts the temple itself, half-built, on the very spot where they now stand. The creatures shown building it are humanoid, though not quite proportioned correctly.
The fourth panel shows the temple fully built, with a bright corona around it.
The fifth panel shows a crowd of humanoids on the left side of the frame, and a little black hand has been drawn over each of their heads. They are all bowing. In front of them, on the right side of the frame, are seven more humanoid figures, four of which are about the same size as those in the black-hand crowd, and three of which are noticeably shorter.
The sixth and final panel shows one of the figures with a black hand symbol, putting a circlet or crown on the head of one of the shorter members of the group of seven.
“So,” says Dranko. “We should have worshippers. Where are they?”
Kibi frowns. “I have a feeling that the people who were supposed to give us that crown, are who we’re smelling in the back of this temple.”
As if his comment were a summons, a throng of creatures comes streaming in from various doorways leading out of main temple chamber. They are between six and seven feet tall, and humanoid, though they are top-heavy, broad-shouldered, with slanted torsos and oddly-jointed legs. They float a few inches from the ground, and dirty gray robes with hoods are draped over their bodies – robes bearing the symbol of an open black hand on the sides of the hoods. The faces of these creatures are pale, sallow, and in the middling stages of decomposition.
Each has a large, burned out hole where its heart should be.
The nausea of Essence accompanies them.
…to be continued…
Wow, that's a great way to get the party invested straight away in this new environment they've been dumped into - have a group of people who've been anticipating their arrival and ready to welcome them for who knows how long, except the bad guys got there first and killed them all off. Well played again, you RBDM. 
And with the new phase of the story now under way, Part Three of the collected Story Hour is now finished and uploaded. Most of the earlier chapters have also had some minor typos or formatting glitches corrected as well. Enjoy!
And with the new phase of the story now under way, Part Three of the collected Story Hour is now finished and uploaded. Most of the earlier chapters have also had some minor typos or formatting glitches corrected as well. Enjoy!
Middle Snu
First Post
I vaguely remember that they simply started casting it every day as a "standard practice" once they hit high level, and I assume they still do.
