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The Gate Pass Irregulars: A War of the Burning Sky Campaign
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<blockquote data-quote="Cafu" data-source="post: 6146572" data-attributes="member: 6692807"><p>The room did not reveal anything else bar another lever set next to the door. We left it alone as we were in no shape to deal with any other pleasant surprises that this room could throw at us. John then cast a new spell onto a pebble; suddenly, the whole room brightened, as if we were experiencing a sunny day, rather than the Stygian gloom that seemed to be so prevalent in this castle. This new light revealed the ceiling of the shaft, although ceiling would have been a misnomer. A silvery, rippled surface of an indeterminate nature could be seen spreading across the shaft, quite a distance upwards. We couldn’t make out any further detail from this distance, but it was certainly not natural. Still, while interesting, at this point, we still had a large section of this first floor to explore and we decided to leave it for the moment.</p><p> </p><p>We left this room and retreated to the corridor. The closest door was hiding the buzzing entity. Then suddenly, I remembered what the gnomes had told us. They had opened this door, glanced inside the room and then closed it immediately. They said that they had seen some red insects, similar to wasps inside. As we contemplated this, something was surfacing at the back of my mind and I began remembering:</p><p> </p><p>“Hell wasps! That’s what those things are. They’re in the Codex of Infernal Insects; by Plutocrius. They come from Hell; nasty things; they have a hive mind and they can invade creatures or bodies and control them. Highly poisonous; you can’t hurt them with weapons. Plutocrius didn’t say how they could be defeated. He did say that they were horrible creatures. Too small for weapons; the only way I can think of is with damaging spells which affect an area. I have one of those; my acidic cloud? They may be resistant to acid though; Plutocrius didn’t specify but it could work.”</p><p> </p><p>Everyone was staring at me. Then John asked:</p><p> </p><p>“You mean there’s a whole book written on infernal insects? And you’ve read it?”</p><p> </p><p>“Well, it’s a very thin book; Plutocrius moved on to other things; said infernal insects were too dangerous. He then wrote the authoritative tome on the mountain goats of the northern Gate Pass Range. I haven’t read that one.”</p><p> </p><p>I was surprised. Plutocrius was the classic work in its field; surely everyone had read it? Well, to be fair, his was the only work in this field. Infernal insects were fairly rare on our plane. They tended to stay in one of the hells.</p><p> </p><p>Longhelim cleared his throat, breaking my train of thought:</p><p> </p><p>“This is very useful, Faden. Anyone have any ideas how to deal with these swarms apart from melting them with acid?”</p><p> </p><p>John thought and then replied:</p><p> </p><p>“I have a spell which would allow me to see what is beyond the door. It doesn’t see very well in the dark though.”</p><p> </p><p>Felix had the answer to that one:</p><p> </p><p>“We’ll do what the gnomes did. Someone open the door for a moment and I will cast a spell which will emit illuminate the room and that’ll allow you to look through your seeing spell.”</p><p> </p><p>This sequence was enacted and then John began casting his spell. This took quite some time. I knew that spell but it had been quite some time since I had cast it myself and I had forgotten quite how complicated it was. Finally John was done and he began to report:</p><p> </p><p>“There are empty holes in this room; probably baths; it looks like some sort of bathroom; really big though. There are also two really strange creatures chained to the far wall. They have a bunch of legs that seem to be coming out of their necks; and they’re red. They’ve got heads like particularly nasty dogs and very big teeth. Ah, what’s this? Oh, never mind. Looks like some golden coloured water at the bottom of the baths. Lots and lots of these wasps though. Definitely look as if they would form into swarms; two I reckon; nesting in the pools; bunch of bones in the pool as well; probably skeletons. What do you want to bet that they animate if we enter. All the other bones did. Oh, and there’s a door on the far side of the room.”</p><p> </p><p>I turned to Longhelim:</p><p> </p><p>“So, several skeletons, two unknown red creatures with lots of legs and very large teeth and two swarms of hell wasps; the wasps are able to animate undead as well. Acid?”</p><p> </p><p>He nodded:</p><p> </p><p>“Acid.”</p><p> </p><p>This time we enacted the same sequence except that as soon as the door was opened, I cast my spell. The acidic fog covered the whole room. John continued concentrating on his spell and when the fog cleared, he said the following:</p><p> </p><p>“The chained creatures are gone, melted. The liquid gold stuff at the bottom of the pools is gone; the wasps are still flying around and they are buzzing all of over the place; I think they are pretty angry.”</p><p> </p><p>That was disappointing. I was hoping that the wasps would have perished under the acid.</p><p> </p><p>Longhelim just said:</p><p> </p><p>“Never mind. You’ll just have to do it again after you learn the spell once more.”</p><p> </p><p>“Would have been useful to get them out of the way today. We could have checked that last door then,” I groused.</p><p> </p><p>We looked at the last door in the corridor.</p><p> </p><p>“The gnomes said that one led through a corridor and ultimately ended in the pump room. Shall we go and see how they’re doing?” I asked.</p><p> </p><p>Longhelim shook his head:</p><p> </p><p>“No time. We should get on with the rest of the castle.”</p><p> </p><p>So, we retreated back on ourselves, back into the previous corridor which led into darkness, with a sharp turn to the left. We moved carefully, looking for traps.</p><p> </p><p>We did not make any attempt at stealth. We had a daylight spell which announced our presence to all and sundry. This light revealed the corridor carrying on but there was also a turn to the right. Victor moved to the corner and then poked his head around quickly, just to see what was there.</p><p> </p><p>He returned the whispered:</p><p> </p><p>“Long, empty corridor; double file only; lots of doors on either side.”</p><p> </p><p>We decided to explore this new corridor. So we moved up, formed into our usual marching order and then Victor and John both advanced to the first doors. The former to listen at them and the latter to check them for traps; ever since he had received the gift of the earring from the Masters of the Two Winds, Victor’s hearing was phenomenal and he was using it to great effect; this time though he was not able to hear anything.</p><p> </p><p>As we were advancing slowly down the corridor, checking each door, our progress was interrupted by something enormous roaring and lurching at us down the corridor. I say lurching because it was too huge to fit into the space properly and its progress was being hampered by its own size; it was either so angry or insane that it was willing to even hurt or trap itself in a space that was too small for its huge bulk.</p><p> </p><p>I had never seen anything like it before. Its head was oval and it had short but very powerful legs that were propelling it forward, leaving blackened smears on the corridor walls; it also had an enormous maw with many, many teeth and it was doing its best to reach us. It was undead and had the usual fiery glow around it so it was probably healed by fire in the same manner as everything else in here.</p><p> </p><p>Just as our new visitor was introducing itself, the doors we had been checking began to open and skeletons poured out of them. These were armed with swords but they began to use bursts of black miasma which were just as painful as swords. Thankfully, as a multitude of them reached our ranks, Felix summoned his holy power and a group of them burst into shards.</p><p> </p><p>Both Victor and Longhelim waded their way through a couple of skeletons before confronting this lurching creature which promptly took a massive bite out of the paladin. Victor was using his defensive style of swordplay. I was at the rear at this point and several of the skeletons took advantage of my relative isolation as they began to stick their swords through me. I had to run past Drudge, who was shooting arrows here, there and everywhere, but not before I took several very deep slashes. After that, I cast my spell of speed at the group which cheered the warriors up no end.</p><p> </p><p>Felix used his power yet again and more skeletons were destroyed pretty much putting paid to the lot of them but the other creature was still there. Although both Victor and Longhelim were hitting it again and again, neither of their weapons seemed to be penetrating as deeply as they should have been. It was also still taking huge bites out of Longhelim.</p><p> </p><p>Thankfully, there was only one of it and it was being hampered badly by its size in the corridor so the two warriors finally prevailed, driving their swords through it. They then proceeded to chop it up, opening up a pathway for the rest of us into the latter part of the corridor. As they were doing so, they made a strange discovery; the creature was wearing some sort of belt! Very odd! John immediately put it on and began to act in an effeminate way, alluding to a legendary and infamous belt which changed the sex of the wearer but after fooling around for a few moments, he said that he felt stronger. In a more serious tone, he said:</p><p> </p><p>“Drudge should wear this. It would allow him to take full advantage of his bow since he cannot wear gauntlets that enhance his strength the way you two can,” he motioned to Victor and Longhelim. “His gauntlets enhance his speed and agility.”</p><p> </p><p>It was a good point and the belt was given to Drudge; as soon as he put it on, it settled snugly around his waist, visibly adjusting to his size.</p><p> </p><p>Once we had healed up, we carried on down this corridor to find a crude cave at the end of it. It looked like the lair of the strange creature that had attacked us. We searched it thoroughly but it proved to be empty. Then we began to search the rooms from which the skeletons had appeared. These proved to be more lucrative. There were various objects there that could have been valuable; some obviously so, others may or may not have been; amongst the former were various bits of jewelry and personal objects such as quills with nibs of precious metals; amongst the latter were a couple of miniature images of people and a book of bad poetry. John, our resident expert, was of the opinion:</p><p> </p><p>“Take it all!”</p><p> </p><p>We had to take out one of the suits of half plate from Victor’s magical bag, before we could that; I hoped it would be worth it.</p><p> </p><p>Once we had finished there, we carried on up the corridor, going to the next door. As usual, Victor listened and he motioned us to hold still. He obviously heard something. Then he returned and whispered:</p><p> </p><p>“Some odd noise, like something scraping on metal; can’t really tell what it is but it’s definitely movement.”</p><p> </p><p>So we arranged ourselves in battle formation and John’s invisible friend opened the door – to find a skeleton sweeping the floor with a broom, creating the odd scraping noise; we also just caught a glimpse of another skeleton slipping into a door opposite the one we had just opened into a corridor.</p><p> </p><p>The sweeping skeleton did not seem hostile but we still kept a wary eye on it as we slipped across the corridor into the door opposite. It just kept sweeping. The corridor turned right into the darkness. As we entered into the door after the first skeleton, we entered into a store room with a collection of burnt out crates strewn over the floor. There was also a set of stairs leading out of the room onto a level above this; as well as some sort of small lift, probably a dumb waiter.</p><p> </p><p>Longhelim said:</p><p> </p><p>“This looks like a set of servant’s stairs to the main room above; the place where the party is. That dumb waiter must be for up there as well.”</p><p> </p><p>The skeleton was there but it was ignoring us, so we reciprocated. We didn’t feel like going up to the party room yet so we went back to the corridor. There was another door just to our left; after taking the usual precautions, we opened the door to find it full of skeletons; they looked like the former servants of the castle and they seemed to be engaged in some sort activity associated with those tasks. Whatever had happened here had condemned these poor wretches to the same fate as everyone else.</p><p> </p><p>This place really was The Castle of the Walking Dead.</p><p> </p><p>Shaking our heads, we gently closed the door and left them, with Felix muttering:</p><p> </p><p>“We have to do something about them when we return.”</p><p> </p><p>Then we continued down the corridor. As he went along, John used his wand and suddenly stopped dead, whispering in his excitement:</p><p> </p><p>“There’s a secret door just there, to our right.”</p><p> </p><p>Then he went through a complicated routine, pressing three spots on the stone simultaneously, which released a spring and a door swung silently open. Curious, we all crowded behind John, to see a narrow corridor leading into the darkness. John went into it, with us keeping an eye on events but it was disappointing. The corridor ran along the back of the back of the rooms which we had investigated previously and which had yielded that collection of strange of eclectic objects. The walls of the corridor had a set of spy holes into each room. Further investigation revealed nothing else.</p><p> </p><p>“Well, that was disappointing,” John was saying, as he closed the door; “I was hoping it would lead somewhere more interesting; instead, it looks as if the walls really did have eyes in this place.”</p><p> </p><p>“Well, now they don’t need any eyes; they can just rely on the undead that float through the walls instead,” snorted Felix.</p><p> </p><p>I was looking around: “As to that, this place is the last known location of Drakus Coaltongue. I’m just waiting for his ghost to turn up. I bet he can float through walls as well now.”</p><p> </p><p>Everyone looked at me, speechless.</p><p> </p><p>“I really wish you hadn’t said that,” snapped John as he turned around and began to check the corridor again, very, very carefully; I noticed that he was glancing at the walls apprehensively far more often than normal.</p><p> </p><p>We then continued down the corridor which led to one final door at the end. We opened it with the usual precautions and it revealed a cistern. It was empty and clean; not surprising considering the bodily needs of the majority of the current inhabitants of the castle. Further investigation down it led to the river which we had seen previously and which obviously powered nearly everything in this place.</p><p> </p><p>It reminded us that we had promised the gnomes that we would break the dam soon. As we were getting very low on spells by this point, we decided that we should break the dam and then attempt to rest again.</p><p> </p><p>The gnomes had told us that the river was dammed somewhere at the racing track. We had directions how to get there. We had to go through the stables, which were dark and smelly; mostly of flame and nastier stuff. There was also a large pipe on the ceiling which finished at a spigot. There was no wall at the back and we could see that the room opened out into an enormous space; although the gnomes had been here recently but we still employed caution as we carefully pointed John’s powerful light spell into it. As Jorine had described, this area looked to be part of a natural cave except for the floor. As we stepped in, we saw a track of beaten earth under our feet; with John in the lead, we followed it around; it was a rough oval shape and seemed to follow the outer edge of the cave. We glanced into the centre and there we could see the remains of stalagmites jutting up from the floor, giving us an indication of the type of cave that it must have been before it became a horse track.</p><p> </p><p>Approximately half way through, we came across the river and following it, we found the dam. Victor took out his hammer and warned:</p><p> </p><p>“Stand back!”</p><p> </p><p>Then he began to smash the dam beneath him while standing on air courtesy of Felix’s spell. It didn’t take long for Victor smash it and the water surged along the tunnel towards the pump room. Once that had been done, we decided to retire back to the chapel.</p><p> </p><p>Jorine’s magical hut was still there so we decided to avail ourselves of its hospitality.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Cafu, post: 6146572, member: 6692807"] The room did not reveal anything else bar another lever set next to the door. We left it alone as we were in no shape to deal with any other pleasant surprises that this room could throw at us. John then cast a new spell onto a pebble; suddenly, the whole room brightened, as if we were experiencing a sunny day, rather than the Stygian gloom that seemed to be so prevalent in this castle. This new light revealed the ceiling of the shaft, although ceiling would have been a misnomer. A silvery, rippled surface of an indeterminate nature could be seen spreading across the shaft, quite a distance upwards. We couldn’t make out any further detail from this distance, but it was certainly not natural. Still, while interesting, at this point, we still had a large section of this first floor to explore and we decided to leave it for the moment. We left this room and retreated to the corridor. The closest door was hiding the buzzing entity. Then suddenly, I remembered what the gnomes had told us. They had opened this door, glanced inside the room and then closed it immediately. They said that they had seen some red insects, similar to wasps inside. As we contemplated this, something was surfacing at the back of my mind and I began remembering: “Hell wasps! That’s what those things are. They’re in the Codex of Infernal Insects; by Plutocrius. They come from Hell; nasty things; they have a hive mind and they can invade creatures or bodies and control them. Highly poisonous; you can’t hurt them with weapons. Plutocrius didn’t say how they could be defeated. He did say that they were horrible creatures. Too small for weapons; the only way I can think of is with damaging spells which affect an area. I have one of those; my acidic cloud? They may be resistant to acid though; Plutocrius didn’t specify but it could work.” Everyone was staring at me. Then John asked: “You mean there’s a whole book written on infernal insects? And you’ve read it?” “Well, it’s a very thin book; Plutocrius moved on to other things; said infernal insects were too dangerous. He then wrote the authoritative tome on the mountain goats of the northern Gate Pass Range. I haven’t read that one.” I was surprised. Plutocrius was the classic work in its field; surely everyone had read it? Well, to be fair, his was the only work in this field. Infernal insects were fairly rare on our plane. They tended to stay in one of the hells. Longhelim cleared his throat, breaking my train of thought: “This is very useful, Faden. Anyone have any ideas how to deal with these swarms apart from melting them with acid?” John thought and then replied: “I have a spell which would allow me to see what is beyond the door. It doesn’t see very well in the dark though.” Felix had the answer to that one: “We’ll do what the gnomes did. Someone open the door for a moment and I will cast a spell which will emit illuminate the room and that’ll allow you to look through your seeing spell.” This sequence was enacted and then John began casting his spell. This took quite some time. I knew that spell but it had been quite some time since I had cast it myself and I had forgotten quite how complicated it was. Finally John was done and he began to report: “There are empty holes in this room; probably baths; it looks like some sort of bathroom; really big though. There are also two really strange creatures chained to the far wall. They have a bunch of legs that seem to be coming out of their necks; and they’re red. They’ve got heads like particularly nasty dogs and very big teeth. Ah, what’s this? Oh, never mind. Looks like some golden coloured water at the bottom of the baths. Lots and lots of these wasps though. Definitely look as if they would form into swarms; two I reckon; nesting in the pools; bunch of bones in the pool as well; probably skeletons. What do you want to bet that they animate if we enter. All the other bones did. Oh, and there’s a door on the far side of the room.” I turned to Longhelim: “So, several skeletons, two unknown red creatures with lots of legs and very large teeth and two swarms of hell wasps; the wasps are able to animate undead as well. Acid?” He nodded: “Acid.” This time we enacted the same sequence except that as soon as the door was opened, I cast my spell. The acidic fog covered the whole room. John continued concentrating on his spell and when the fog cleared, he said the following: “The chained creatures are gone, melted. The liquid gold stuff at the bottom of the pools is gone; the wasps are still flying around and they are buzzing all of over the place; I think they are pretty angry.” That was disappointing. I was hoping that the wasps would have perished under the acid. Longhelim just said: “Never mind. You’ll just have to do it again after you learn the spell once more.” “Would have been useful to get them out of the way today. We could have checked that last door then,” I groused. We looked at the last door in the corridor. “The gnomes said that one led through a corridor and ultimately ended in the pump room. Shall we go and see how they’re doing?” I asked. Longhelim shook his head: “No time. We should get on with the rest of the castle.” So, we retreated back on ourselves, back into the previous corridor which led into darkness, with a sharp turn to the left. We moved carefully, looking for traps. We did not make any attempt at stealth. We had a daylight spell which announced our presence to all and sundry. This light revealed the corridor carrying on but there was also a turn to the right. Victor moved to the corner and then poked his head around quickly, just to see what was there. He returned the whispered: “Long, empty corridor; double file only; lots of doors on either side.” We decided to explore this new corridor. So we moved up, formed into our usual marching order and then Victor and John both advanced to the first doors. The former to listen at them and the latter to check them for traps; ever since he had received the gift of the earring from the Masters of the Two Winds, Victor’s hearing was phenomenal and he was using it to great effect; this time though he was not able to hear anything. As we were advancing slowly down the corridor, checking each door, our progress was interrupted by something enormous roaring and lurching at us down the corridor. I say lurching because it was too huge to fit into the space properly and its progress was being hampered by its own size; it was either so angry or insane that it was willing to even hurt or trap itself in a space that was too small for its huge bulk. I had never seen anything like it before. Its head was oval and it had short but very powerful legs that were propelling it forward, leaving blackened smears on the corridor walls; it also had an enormous maw with many, many teeth and it was doing its best to reach us. It was undead and had the usual fiery glow around it so it was probably healed by fire in the same manner as everything else in here. Just as our new visitor was introducing itself, the doors we had been checking began to open and skeletons poured out of them. These were armed with swords but they began to use bursts of black miasma which were just as painful as swords. Thankfully, as a multitude of them reached our ranks, Felix summoned his holy power and a group of them burst into shards. Both Victor and Longhelim waded their way through a couple of skeletons before confronting this lurching creature which promptly took a massive bite out of the paladin. Victor was using his defensive style of swordplay. I was at the rear at this point and several of the skeletons took advantage of my relative isolation as they began to stick their swords through me. I had to run past Drudge, who was shooting arrows here, there and everywhere, but not before I took several very deep slashes. After that, I cast my spell of speed at the group which cheered the warriors up no end. Felix used his power yet again and more skeletons were destroyed pretty much putting paid to the lot of them but the other creature was still there. Although both Victor and Longhelim were hitting it again and again, neither of their weapons seemed to be penetrating as deeply as they should have been. It was also still taking huge bites out of Longhelim. Thankfully, there was only one of it and it was being hampered badly by its size in the corridor so the two warriors finally prevailed, driving their swords through it. They then proceeded to chop it up, opening up a pathway for the rest of us into the latter part of the corridor. As they were doing so, they made a strange discovery; the creature was wearing some sort of belt! Very odd! John immediately put it on and began to act in an effeminate way, alluding to a legendary and infamous belt which changed the sex of the wearer but after fooling around for a few moments, he said that he felt stronger. In a more serious tone, he said: “Drudge should wear this. It would allow him to take full advantage of his bow since he cannot wear gauntlets that enhance his strength the way you two can,” he motioned to Victor and Longhelim. “His gauntlets enhance his speed and agility.” It was a good point and the belt was given to Drudge; as soon as he put it on, it settled snugly around his waist, visibly adjusting to his size. Once we had healed up, we carried on down this corridor to find a crude cave at the end of it. It looked like the lair of the strange creature that had attacked us. We searched it thoroughly but it proved to be empty. Then we began to search the rooms from which the skeletons had appeared. These proved to be more lucrative. There were various objects there that could have been valuable; some obviously so, others may or may not have been; amongst the former were various bits of jewelry and personal objects such as quills with nibs of precious metals; amongst the latter were a couple of miniature images of people and a book of bad poetry. John, our resident expert, was of the opinion: “Take it all!” We had to take out one of the suits of half plate from Victor’s magical bag, before we could that; I hoped it would be worth it. Once we had finished there, we carried on up the corridor, going to the next door. As usual, Victor listened and he motioned us to hold still. He obviously heard something. Then he returned and whispered: “Some odd noise, like something scraping on metal; can’t really tell what it is but it’s definitely movement.” So we arranged ourselves in battle formation and John’s invisible friend opened the door – to find a skeleton sweeping the floor with a broom, creating the odd scraping noise; we also just caught a glimpse of another skeleton slipping into a door opposite the one we had just opened into a corridor. The sweeping skeleton did not seem hostile but we still kept a wary eye on it as we slipped across the corridor into the door opposite. It just kept sweeping. The corridor turned right into the darkness. As we entered into the door after the first skeleton, we entered into a store room with a collection of burnt out crates strewn over the floor. There was also a set of stairs leading out of the room onto a level above this; as well as some sort of small lift, probably a dumb waiter. Longhelim said: “This looks like a set of servant’s stairs to the main room above; the place where the party is. That dumb waiter must be for up there as well.” The skeleton was there but it was ignoring us, so we reciprocated. We didn’t feel like going up to the party room yet so we went back to the corridor. There was another door just to our left; after taking the usual precautions, we opened the door to find it full of skeletons; they looked like the former servants of the castle and they seemed to be engaged in some sort activity associated with those tasks. Whatever had happened here had condemned these poor wretches to the same fate as everyone else. This place really was The Castle of the Walking Dead. Shaking our heads, we gently closed the door and left them, with Felix muttering: “We have to do something about them when we return.” Then we continued down the corridor. As he went along, John used his wand and suddenly stopped dead, whispering in his excitement: “There’s a secret door just there, to our right.” Then he went through a complicated routine, pressing three spots on the stone simultaneously, which released a spring and a door swung silently open. Curious, we all crowded behind John, to see a narrow corridor leading into the darkness. John went into it, with us keeping an eye on events but it was disappointing. The corridor ran along the back of the back of the rooms which we had investigated previously and which had yielded that collection of strange of eclectic objects. The walls of the corridor had a set of spy holes into each room. Further investigation revealed nothing else. “Well, that was disappointing,” John was saying, as he closed the door; “I was hoping it would lead somewhere more interesting; instead, it looks as if the walls really did have eyes in this place.” “Well, now they don’t need any eyes; they can just rely on the undead that float through the walls instead,” snorted Felix. I was looking around: “As to that, this place is the last known location of Drakus Coaltongue. I’m just waiting for his ghost to turn up. I bet he can float through walls as well now.” Everyone looked at me, speechless. “I really wish you hadn’t said that,” snapped John as he turned around and began to check the corridor again, very, very carefully; I noticed that he was glancing at the walls apprehensively far more often than normal. We then continued down the corridor which led to one final door at the end. We opened it with the usual precautions and it revealed a cistern. It was empty and clean; not surprising considering the bodily needs of the majority of the current inhabitants of the castle. Further investigation down it led to the river which we had seen previously and which obviously powered nearly everything in this place. It reminded us that we had promised the gnomes that we would break the dam soon. As we were getting very low on spells by this point, we decided that we should break the dam and then attempt to rest again. The gnomes had told us that the river was dammed somewhere at the racing track. We had directions how to get there. We had to go through the stables, which were dark and smelly; mostly of flame and nastier stuff. There was also a large pipe on the ceiling which finished at a spigot. There was no wall at the back and we could see that the room opened out into an enormous space; although the gnomes had been here recently but we still employed caution as we carefully pointed John’s powerful light spell into it. As Jorine had described, this area looked to be part of a natural cave except for the floor. As we stepped in, we saw a track of beaten earth under our feet; with John in the lead, we followed it around; it was a rough oval shape and seemed to follow the outer edge of the cave. We glanced into the centre and there we could see the remains of stalagmites jutting up from the floor, giving us an indication of the type of cave that it must have been before it became a horse track. Approximately half way through, we came across the river and following it, we found the dam. Victor took out his hammer and warned: “Stand back!” Then he began to smash the dam beneath him while standing on air courtesy of Felix’s spell. It didn’t take long for Victor smash it and the water surged along the tunnel towards the pump room. Once that had been done, we decided to retire back to the chapel. Jorine’s magical hut was still there so we decided to avail ourselves of its hospitality. [/QUOTE]
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The Gate Pass Irregulars: A War of the Burning Sky Campaign
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