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<blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 3944714" data-attributes="member: 1210"><p>They rest, and wake, and rest all day as best they can on the ashen roof. There are a pair of catapults on top of the burn palace, both of which are still functional. It takes three of our heroes to crank the catapult’s arm back, and then they put a few rocks in the cup (there is a pile of ammunition for the catapults atop the roof).</p><p></p><p>Severin pulls the lever, and the arm hurls its payload away, over the wall and beyond. </p><p></p><p>“Hmm,” muses Barouk.</p><p></p><p>The party continues to rest, letting their wounds heal for another night. Then, in the morning, they begin their pursuit of the Mouth of Bleak. The trap door leads to a shaft heading down, set with rusted rungs set loosely into the wall. Romdar’s eyes widen. “Did you hear that?” he whispers. “Laughter! He’s down there!”</p><p></p><p>Everyone scowls at the rungs and the shaft. Finally, Barouk mutters, “Wussies,” and begins to descend. The rungs groan, but hold him. The others, breathing easier now that the rungs have held the heavy dwarf, begin to descend. All of them find it an easy climb- except for Kifla. She agonizes at the top for a while, gnawing her lip at the thought of a 70’ fall, but in the end she clambers cautiously down and manages to reach the bottom safely. </p><p></p><p>At the bottom is a small chamber, with a ceiling only about 7’ overhead. Small bits of rusty metal are scattered about on the floor, including the remains of several of the rungs of the ladder running up the wall and out of the ceiling via the shaft that our heroes descended. Both a passage and a single door lead out of the room. Suddenly the adventures realize that the room is earthen- a tunnel hewn from earth, not an ashen structure!</p><p></p><p>“Be careful,” warns Barouk.</p><p></p><p>Kifla casts <em>mage armor.</em> She knows that it will last a while, and she has a feeling that she might need protection at any moment. </p><p> </p><p>Barouk and Severin move to the hallway leading out of the room. It is small and cramped; the hallway has a multitude of small, iron-bound doors with tiny windows in them running along its length. The doors occur on both sides of the hallway about every five feet, all the way to the hall’s end (where a final door, straight ahead, lies).</p><p></p><p>The two of them move up and peer through the small windows. “It’s a cell,” Severin says. “I think there’s an old body in there. It’s just a skeleton now.”</p><p></p><p>“Mine, too,” Barouk rumbles. </p><p></p><p>“It’s locked,” Severin announces, after trying his door. Barouk nods, rattling the handle to the door he is next to. They move along to the next door on each side, and find essentially the same thing.</p><p></p><p>There are a total of 17 doors, with eight on each side and one at the end. They begin checking them all. Severin pauses a few doors down. “I think there’s a dire rat in here,” he says.</p><p></p><p>“We have no need to mess with it,” Romdar points out, “and probably nothing to gain.”</p><p></p><p>“I bet that there is a torture chamber beyond that door back there,” Barouk says dourly, nodding back to the room the party just came from. Kifla shudders.</p><p></p><p>“Well, let’s go check it out,” Romdar suggests. “It doesn’t seem like there’s anything here in these cells except for the skeletons of prisoners, and I doubt whether they’ll have anything on them- they were prisoners.”</p><p></p><p>“Good point,” nods Severin.</p><p></p><p>The party goes back to the door and throws it open. Indeed, it is a torture chamber; Barouk was right. A rack is along one wall. In a corner, an iron maiden seems to radiate menace. Opposite the entrance, an oven large enough to force several people inside rests above a cold pit of ashes. A cage of steel bars squats in another corner. It looks as though the bars of the ceiling are adjustable, allowing a torturer to restrict the space available to his victim. Straps and knives and pincers and other implements of horror are everywhere.</p><p></p><p>Kifla blanches. She hasn’t the stomach for such terrible things.</p><p></p><p>“No exits,” Barouk grumbles. “And no Mouth of Bleak.”</p><p></p><p>“He has to be here somewhere,” protests Romdar.</p><p></p><p>“Maybe there’s something in one of these cells,” Severin muses.</p><p></p><p>“Hold on a second,” Romdar says. He casts <em>detect magic</em> and scans around- but there is nothing. “Let’s go back to the hallway, and I’ll look in there too, while I have this spell up,” he offers.</p><p></p><p>The party returns to the hallway, and Romdar scans the entry room on the way. <em>Nothing,</em> he thinks, exasperated. <em>Where is that goat-headed bastard??</em></p><p></p><p>The party moves down the hall of cells to the end and Barouk begins trying to force the door. It is a heavy, solid thing, however, designed to hold dangerous prisoners; the dwarf fails, though he throws his full strength against it.</p><p></p><p>As he pauses, drawing back, Barouk suddenly stiffens. “Laughter!” he growls. “I heard him!” He whirls around. “He was this way!” He starts to stalk away back towards the entry room. </p><p></p><p>“Hey!” Severin interjects suddenly. “What’s that buzzing sound?” His eyes narrow. He knows what it is already; he knows that sound. <em>Vermin.</em> He moves over to the little window that opens on the cell that the noise is emanating from and looks inside. </p><p></p><p>Most of the cell is filled up by an enormous wasp’s nest.</p><p></p><p>Romdar comes over and takes a look through the window once Severin moves aside. He whistles. “That’s a lot of wasps.”</p><p></p><p>Severin lights a torch. The window into the room is just about the right size for the torch to jam into perfectly. Not quite perfectly, but close enough. He shoves the torch into place. And the cell is <em>small.</em> Severin smiles grimly. <em>The smoke should eat the air in their, and eventually suffocate them. At the least, it will leave them sluggish and weak.</em> He feels a grim satisfaction: <em>vermin.</em> He has studied them and their ways. Now he has slain (or at least incapacitated) a full nest of them! He feels a burgeoning pride. After a few moments he pulls out the torch to verify that things are going well, and indeed they are. Dozens of wasps lie dead or in a stupor on the ground. Quickly, he shoves the torch back in.</p><p></p><p>“It was over here somewhere,” Barouk calls. He is in the entry chamber, opposite the ladder of rungs. “But there’s nothing here.” <em>Could be he’s invisible,</em> the monk muses.</p><p></p><p>”Maybe he’s behind a secret door,” Kifla suggests. Reluctantly, she goes back into the torture chamber and begins a thorough search, looking for secret doors. There are bloodstains everywhere, and the little gnome finds a number of things that she wishes she hadn’t (including an ear and several little bits of bone and flesh). “Nothing,” she says mournfully. Everyone else comes in, and they search it again, hoping to find something- to no avail.</p><p></p><p>The party moves to the entry room and carefully searches again. This time, they uncover a very cleverly hidden door, built to look like plain stone opposite the rungs. A few more moments of searching, and Romdar turns up a hidden switch that opens the door. It swivels open, exposing a 10’ wide hallway about 15’ long that ends in some sort of chamber. </p><p></p><p>Romdar moves forward, halting at the threshold to the room. It’s big, 40’ wide by 20’ deep. At the center is a small covered wooden square with four statues beneath it: a lion, a goat, a wolf and an angel. In each corner of the room is a column with a hollow area facing into the room. The hollow areas have a thick screw like device coming up from the bottom of the area. Each pillar seems to have some writing engraved upon it. In the northwest corner, the writing reads, “I burned it down.” In the northeast, it reads “I betrayed them all.” In the southwest, it reads, “I am lost forever.” Finally, the southeast pillar’s message is, “I came to see.”</p><p></p><p>“It’s some kind of puzzle,” Romdar says.</p><p></p><p>The others cluster up behind him, but nobody wants to go in. “Now who’s the wuss?” Romdar says wryly, and crosses the threshold into the room. Nothing appears to happen to him, but the others don’t exactly hurry to follow his example. Romdar moves up to the northwest pillar. The hollow area in the pillar looks to be about the same size as the statues at the central covered area. “It looks like you would screw something onto this,” he calls out to the others. </p><p></p><p>“That’s weird,” says Severin. He steps into the room. Nothing happens, so he moves to the central structure and begins looking over the lion statue. Barouk and Kifla continue to watch from outside the room. Severin reaches out to see if the statue is attached, and as soon as he touches it, a portcullis slams down, cutting Barouk and Kifla off from Severin and Romdar! Simultaneously, Barouk hears a pair of sounds from back towards the cell block. The first sounds like well over a dozen cell doors swinging open. The second sounds like the rattle of bones moving. Finally, at the same instant, a rain of freezing cold ash begins to fall inside the room with the statues and Romdar and Severin. The two of them scream in pain from the chilling ashen rain.</p><p></p><p>Barouk grits his teeth and rushes over to the secret door leading to the entry chamber. His eyes bulge. “Gnome, get over here!” he screams, and throws himself against the door. “All those remains are coming, as animate skeletons!”</p><p></p><p><em><strong>Next Time:</strong></em> The conclusion of the Ashen Palace of Bleak!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="the Jester, post: 3944714, member: 1210"] They rest, and wake, and rest all day as best they can on the ashen roof. There are a pair of catapults on top of the burn palace, both of which are still functional. It takes three of our heroes to crank the catapult’s arm back, and then they put a few rocks in the cup (there is a pile of ammunition for the catapults atop the roof). Severin pulls the lever, and the arm hurls its payload away, over the wall and beyond. “Hmm,” muses Barouk. The party continues to rest, letting their wounds heal for another night. Then, in the morning, they begin their pursuit of the Mouth of Bleak. The trap door leads to a shaft heading down, set with rusted rungs set loosely into the wall. Romdar’s eyes widen. “Did you hear that?” he whispers. “Laughter! He’s down there!” Everyone scowls at the rungs and the shaft. Finally, Barouk mutters, “Wussies,” and begins to descend. The rungs groan, but hold him. The others, breathing easier now that the rungs have held the heavy dwarf, begin to descend. All of them find it an easy climb- except for Kifla. She agonizes at the top for a while, gnawing her lip at the thought of a 70’ fall, but in the end she clambers cautiously down and manages to reach the bottom safely. At the bottom is a small chamber, with a ceiling only about 7’ overhead. Small bits of rusty metal are scattered about on the floor, including the remains of several of the rungs of the ladder running up the wall and out of the ceiling via the shaft that our heroes descended. Both a passage and a single door lead out of the room. Suddenly the adventures realize that the room is earthen- a tunnel hewn from earth, not an ashen structure! “Be careful,” warns Barouk. Kifla casts [i]mage armor.[/i] She knows that it will last a while, and she has a feeling that she might need protection at any moment. Barouk and Severin move to the hallway leading out of the room. It is small and cramped; the hallway has a multitude of small, iron-bound doors with tiny windows in them running along its length. The doors occur on both sides of the hallway about every five feet, all the way to the hall’s end (where a final door, straight ahead, lies). The two of them move up and peer through the small windows. “It’s a cell,” Severin says. “I think there’s an old body in there. It’s just a skeleton now.” “Mine, too,” Barouk rumbles. “It’s locked,” Severin announces, after trying his door. Barouk nods, rattling the handle to the door he is next to. They move along to the next door on each side, and find essentially the same thing. There are a total of 17 doors, with eight on each side and one at the end. They begin checking them all. Severin pauses a few doors down. “I think there’s a dire rat in here,” he says. “We have no need to mess with it,” Romdar points out, “and probably nothing to gain.” “I bet that there is a torture chamber beyond that door back there,” Barouk says dourly, nodding back to the room the party just came from. Kifla shudders. “Well, let’s go check it out,” Romdar suggests. “It doesn’t seem like there’s anything here in these cells except for the skeletons of prisoners, and I doubt whether they’ll have anything on them- they were prisoners.” “Good point,” nods Severin. The party goes back to the door and throws it open. Indeed, it is a torture chamber; Barouk was right. A rack is along one wall. In a corner, an iron maiden seems to radiate menace. Opposite the entrance, an oven large enough to force several people inside rests above a cold pit of ashes. A cage of steel bars squats in another corner. It looks as though the bars of the ceiling are adjustable, allowing a torturer to restrict the space available to his victim. Straps and knives and pincers and other implements of horror are everywhere. Kifla blanches. She hasn’t the stomach for such terrible things. “No exits,” Barouk grumbles. “And no Mouth of Bleak.” “He has to be here somewhere,” protests Romdar. “Maybe there’s something in one of these cells,” Severin muses. “Hold on a second,” Romdar says. He casts [i]detect magic[/i] and scans around- but there is nothing. “Let’s go back to the hallway, and I’ll look in there too, while I have this spell up,” he offers. The party returns to the hallway, and Romdar scans the entry room on the way. [i]Nothing,[/i] he thinks, exasperated. [i]Where is that goat-headed bastard??[/i] The party moves down the hall of cells to the end and Barouk begins trying to force the door. It is a heavy, solid thing, however, designed to hold dangerous prisoners; the dwarf fails, though he throws his full strength against it. As he pauses, drawing back, Barouk suddenly stiffens. “Laughter!” he growls. “I heard him!” He whirls around. “He was this way!” He starts to stalk away back towards the entry room. “Hey!” Severin interjects suddenly. “What’s that buzzing sound?” His eyes narrow. He knows what it is already; he knows that sound. [i]Vermin.[/i] He moves over to the little window that opens on the cell that the noise is emanating from and looks inside. Most of the cell is filled up by an enormous wasp’s nest. Romdar comes over and takes a look through the window once Severin moves aside. He whistles. “That’s a lot of wasps.” Severin lights a torch. The window into the room is just about the right size for the torch to jam into perfectly. Not quite perfectly, but close enough. He shoves the torch into place. And the cell is [i]small.[/i] Severin smiles grimly. [i]The smoke should eat the air in their, and eventually suffocate them. At the least, it will leave them sluggish and weak.[/i] He feels a grim satisfaction: [i]vermin.[/i] He has studied them and their ways. Now he has slain (or at least incapacitated) a full nest of them! He feels a burgeoning pride. After a few moments he pulls out the torch to verify that things are going well, and indeed they are. Dozens of wasps lie dead or in a stupor on the ground. Quickly, he shoves the torch back in. “It was over here somewhere,” Barouk calls. He is in the entry chamber, opposite the ladder of rungs. “But there’s nothing here.” [i]Could be he’s invisible,[/i] the monk muses. ”Maybe he’s behind a secret door,” Kifla suggests. Reluctantly, she goes back into the torture chamber and begins a thorough search, looking for secret doors. There are bloodstains everywhere, and the little gnome finds a number of things that she wishes she hadn’t (including an ear and several little bits of bone and flesh). “Nothing,” she says mournfully. Everyone else comes in, and they search it again, hoping to find something- to no avail. The party moves to the entry room and carefully searches again. This time, they uncover a very cleverly hidden door, built to look like plain stone opposite the rungs. A few more moments of searching, and Romdar turns up a hidden switch that opens the door. It swivels open, exposing a 10’ wide hallway about 15’ long that ends in some sort of chamber. Romdar moves forward, halting at the threshold to the room. It’s big, 40’ wide by 20’ deep. At the center is a small covered wooden square with four statues beneath it: a lion, a goat, a wolf and an angel. In each corner of the room is a column with a hollow area facing into the room. The hollow areas have a thick screw like device coming up from the bottom of the area. Each pillar seems to have some writing engraved upon it. In the northwest corner, the writing reads, “I burned it down.” In the northeast, it reads “I betrayed them all.” In the southwest, it reads, “I am lost forever.” Finally, the southeast pillar’s message is, “I came to see.” “It’s some kind of puzzle,” Romdar says. The others cluster up behind him, but nobody wants to go in. “Now who’s the wuss?” Romdar says wryly, and crosses the threshold into the room. Nothing appears to happen to him, but the others don’t exactly hurry to follow his example. Romdar moves up to the northwest pillar. The hollow area in the pillar looks to be about the same size as the statues at the central covered area. “It looks like you would screw something onto this,” he calls out to the others. “That’s weird,” says Severin. He steps into the room. Nothing happens, so he moves to the central structure and begins looking over the lion statue. Barouk and Kifla continue to watch from outside the room. Severin reaches out to see if the statue is attached, and as soon as he touches it, a portcullis slams down, cutting Barouk and Kifla off from Severin and Romdar! Simultaneously, Barouk hears a pair of sounds from back towards the cell block. The first sounds like well over a dozen cell doors swinging open. The second sounds like the rattle of bones moving. Finally, at the same instant, a rain of freezing cold ash begins to fall inside the room with the statues and Romdar and Severin. The two of them scream in pain from the chilling ashen rain. Barouk grits his teeth and rushes over to the secret door leading to the entry chamber. His eyes bulge. “Gnome, get over here!” he screams, and throws himself against the door. “All those remains are coming, as animate skeletons!” [i][b]Next Time:[/b][/i][b][/b] The conclusion of the Ashen Palace of Bleak! [/QUOTE]
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