Tom Cashel
First Post
Episode V: INTO the LOST CITY
(a Velm’s-Eye view)
Characters: Bronn Spellforger (shield dwarf Wiz2), Corwyn Black (human Ftr4), Daziel (human Clr4, Selûne), Saeita Neví (wild elf Mnk4), Van Dyksun (human Rgr3/Rog1), Velm Trueforger (shield dwarf Ftr4).
Eleint 1-4
This is the first time I’ve bothered to keep a journal in my life. Truth be told, I’m doing it to get rid of a nasty hangover more than anything else. The scratch of the quill on the parchment is soothing somehow...the dipping into ink a balm for pulsing temples.
Now that I’ve been given the Stone Boot right out of Clan T———, what else is there for me to do but drink? I’ve chopped enough wood for today, and I’m sick of this backwater town. There’s always been a lot of talk about how suspicious and provincial dwarves can be, but these Cormyrians are truly a worthless lot.
Except for my companions, of course...they are the exceptions. And exceptional. I respect Corwyn for his strength, Snowcap for having the innocence and idealism I’ve lost, Daziel for her puissant skill at war planning, and Saeita for knowing when silence is best. And also for having the best punch I’ve ever seen from man, dwarf or elf. Even Cousin Bronny has been different since his Return; older and perhaps wiser. We shall see...
So tomorrow we set out for the Lost City of Aerunedar. Which will be good for us: as usual, Bronn and Daziel are at each other’s throats the second there’s a lack of danger pressing in on all sides. We’ve made Daziel our leader. A good choice.
Aerunedar, the Goldhome, awaits me. Journal, you’re the only one I say this to: I’ll go down fighting for Clan Darkfell. No one else of my kind did, that’s for certain. I’ll meet my doom in those lightless depths and I hope that I can save my friends or lift Hatho’s Curse in the process. But I’ve seen it in my dreams, the Axe of Clanggeddin dripping with gore, and I know what it means. Bereft and without Clan, I’ll welcome it.
Bring me your worst. I’ll give you Clanggeddin’s best.
Eleint 5-8
Trudging back along the same path to Aerunedar, sleeping at the same campsites, staring at the same moon overhead, while Daziel and Snowcap chant prayers to the Goddess. I’m tired of walking this road. I know what the Father of Battles has planned for me, and I want to slay as many wurgym-sargh as I can before I am felled.
Companions, if you are reading this small book taken from my broken corpse: do not pull me back from my Lord and Keeper. I stand at Clanggeddin’s side.
Met Cyrgul along the road again. No one’s sure what he is, but we agree he’s probably not human.
Reached Stone Tooth. No ale and my mouth is dry.
Eleint 9
Spent the whole of this day rebuilding a rope bridge across the chasm. Almost lost Saeita to the depths.
I felt a chill when we passed the spot of Bronny’s doom...I wonder if he felt it too.
We sleep in the Shrine of Selûne beneath the grand staircase. Someone else passed this way before us—“Leather Boot” is what Snowcap and Daziel are calling him—I think it was the Zhent wizard. He’ll be waiting for us...I hope he’s ready for my axe. Bronny and I have a score to settle with that dog.
The Shrine is safe. It’s good to be within the bosom of the earth again. I dream of the Axe Father.
Eleint 10
We descend into the old mithril mines; damp, moaning, windy caverns bereft of life. I’m able to find the correct way; you can tell from the reinforcements to the stone that the cave has been worked. Turns out it’s more of an under-road than a simple cave, burrowing down through the earth toward Aerunedar.
Scrawled on the wall in chalk: MEERSCHAULK. No one knows what it means.
We walk the miles for hours and hours, until our legs tire and we have to sleep. A side passage will do.
(later)
Hard to get back to sleep now. I woke to Bronn screaming—and a devil of a deep-lizard stuck to the ceiling, trying to drag Bronny into its jaws with a disgusting sticky tongue. How it crept up on us undetected I don’t know; neither Bronn nor Corwyn heard it until the tongue flicked out and stuck to Bronny’s shoulder.
We slew it before it could run away.
We are getting close. There are mine-wagons overturned here and there, and I can feel the ghosts of Darkfell crowding toward the warm life we radiate. I don’t remember the underground ever being so cold.
Eleint 11
Another four hours walking in the mines, and we came upon what we have sought. The cave opens into a space, a very large dark space, and thundering, rushing water can be heard off to the right. The waterfall from the map?
We pick our way past old ruins, fields of broken stone walls. There’s a huge pillar of stone, and beyond a forest of deep fungi—mushroom “trees” fifteen to twenty feet tall, “underbrush” of mushrooms, creepers, vines, phosphor moss. Looks positively deadly. We turn left.
Walking along at the front of a row of four enormous pillars. Between them, we see that the fungus forest is quite extensive. The fourth pillar is carved into the shape of an enormous booted foot, with a leg stretching up into the gloom. The Pillar of Iolar? We can’t be sure in this accursed darkness, but there’s a wide, black river on the other side of it. Big albino fish in there.
“Don’t fall in,” advises Bronny.
Again we turn left, following along the shore. Half of us are blind, hands on the shoulders of their seeing-eye dwarves. It’s a dangerous way to travel, and it makes me nervous. Better than advertising ourselves with light, though.
Abruptly we’re surrounded by rank, nauseating vapor. Gods, the stink! We get clear of it, and eventually the retching stops.
“What was that?” No one can answer. Bronn thinks it was a spell. We move on.
Bursts of magic, four of them, pulse from beneath the water. They strike without error, and they wound, but not deeply. Something sinuous moves in the dark water...and is gone.
We move on. Whatever it is, it’s toying with us.
Soon we can see a bridge up ahead, spanning the river. It’s really a marvel that Clan Darkfell could span a two-hundred-foot wide river with a stone bridge. Not everyone is as impressed as I am. Bah. Rickety wooden supports are enough for humans, I suppose.
The others try to decide where we are on the map. We cross the bridge, and find at the other side a pair of towers standing sentry in the dark. The one on the left seems mostly intact, the one on the right crumbling; not all of Clan Darkfell’s engineering marvels have stood the test of years.
A whish in the dark. Javelins fall around us, wounding some. Flung from the battlements atop the open portcullis. We rush forward, out of harm’s way, and burst into the right tower.
They are waiting for us: reptilian creatures that exude a horrible, strength-sapping stench. Their leader flings spells at us, but to no avail. We rush through the tower, a killing wind.
After the battle, Snowcap goes outside to check the tower perimeter while we search the bodies. The inner walls of the tower are covered with primitive scrawls: the word MEERSCHAULK repeated endlessly, along with crude snakelike shapes. A leader?
A crackling of white light from outside, a roll of thunder. Snowcap comes screaming into the tower, hair standing on end, scorched and smoking. “In the water!” he wails, “a human head on a snaky body! Horror!”
We decide it’s time to leave. Now.
Straight back across the bridge, straight across a plain of broken stone, past the ruin of a stone building (hoping we’re headed in the right direction, since they’re trusting me to lead them) and Clanggeddin be Praised we reach the side of this massive cataract. Slip into a cave with a ruined mine wagon in its mouth. There’s a dwarf skeleton with goblin arrows lodged amongst his ribs. A reminder to me from the Axe Father? When the time comes, I will do what you wish, Silverbeard.
(later)
They are chanting, chanting in the dark, from the direction of the tower: “Yss-fara...yss-fara...yss-fara...” I roll over and plug my ears.
Eleint 12
The others awaken stiff and sore, cramped with chill, but I am just getting back into my old form. The depths are kind to me.
We break the fast and hold council, and it is decided we will head into the mushroom forest, based mostly on the wisdom of Snowcap: “I’d rather the danger I don’t know, to the danger I might know.” In other words, give me poison fungus rather than another encounter with the spell-hurling snake. Good enough for me.
Back along the cavern wall, past mine entrances and finally past the cave by which we entered, and we reach the forest.
The deep growths are a multitude of colors, bright and dull, but this rainbow signifies only death. Daziel checks for poisons, and to her chagrin finds too many to categorize. Eventually we decide to press through on foot, rather than using potions and spells to buoy ourselves above.
Soon the forest grows too dense. Mushroom caps tower overhead. “I wonder if we could use those as boats in a pinch?” wonders Bronny out loud...for all his faults, he is certainly full of ideas.
We are assaulted by tentacled violet mushrooms. We encounter a flowing puddle of black ooze that ruins my chain shirt and scars my neck with acid. I ran away...by the Great Arm of Clanggeddin I fled and stood next to Corwyn...I could hear them fighting it in the darkness, heading it off with torches, screaming when its foul tendrils burned them...and I ran away.
I have proven my true worth: nothing. A coward, a poltroon. Great Father of Battles, Silverbeard, will you still take me? Will I have the courage to go when I am called?
Thanks to Daziel’s quick thinking and ready flame, the seething black ooze slides away hunting easier and tastier prey. We press on toward the rushing of water, which grows ever louder, and discover a small tower in the depths of the forest, encrusted with algae, moss and mushrooms.
We enter through a trapdoor in the roof. All the doors radiate magicks (according to Bronny and Daziel), and the inside is lit by globes of light. But it is still and silent, and filled with dusty (extremely comfortable-looking) furniture. Bronny warns us that some of it is magical, but we descend the staircase and make ready to sleep here anyway.
A coward like me will sleep anywhere, I suppose. Where’s that wineskin Bronny gave me?
(later)
One thing remains constant on every expedition: there are only two ways you will wake up in the middle of the night. Either you are shaken awake, or you wake up to someone screaming. More often the latter. It doesn’t make for pleasant dreams, I can tell you that much. Especially not if you’re the one doing the screaming.
This time it is Spooky—Saeita, that is—who wakes me. “The magical chair,” she hisses, “it moved.”
We stand ready, blinking away sleep. The chair, apparently, walked of its own volition to the trapdoor at the tower’s center and knocked hard upon it, ten times.
Now the wardrobe doors swing open, revealing a huge abomination within, sewn together from the parts of countless bodies, dull cloudy blue-grey eyes staring without sight.
Behind us, Snowcap cries out.
“Who are you?” whispers a wholly unfamiliar, and wholly unnerving voice in the room.
He is there with us—how I do not know—shrouded in tattered black robes and a cloak, and from beneath his hood eyes peer: a malevolent twinkling pair of white lights.
But he doesn’t want to kill us. He is more a wasted and pathetic creature, locked away for centuries in his tower, unable to die and unable to truly live. Journal, I will spare you the details of our talk with him.
He is the Flamecoil, one of the four wizards who brought down Aerunedar in the name of The Coil. The others were Shieldcoil, Shapecoil, and Corpsecoil.
One down, three to go, as far I am concerned.
This coward has dwelt here since the allies of the Coil—all manner of reptile creatures worshiping a god called ‘Meerschaulk’—turned against them and took for themselves the City of Darkfell. Now the reptiles are the Sons of the Coil, and they follow a king called Yss-fara. The blood of dragons flows in his veins.
My axe will spill it onto the stone.
Daziel pities him, this thing they call “lich.” Snowcap wishes to do him a service; perform a quest. Bronny wishes to learn magic from him. I drink wine; I am disgusted that they would pollute their own souls by aiding the Doom of Aerunedar, the one who slew the silver dragon Glamerdrung.
But who am I to protest? A coward...as much a coward as this Flamecoil. But I will not end up like he, he who has cheated death and hidden away in a dank forest of fungus. We seek the waterfall, and the bard Hathos, and if Clanggeddin calls me I shall go. Whenever he calls, I shall hear, and the battle will be glorious ere I am fallen.
They have agreed to retrieve for the Flamecoil the corpse of his lover, the Shieldcoil. Fools. They perform services for this demon, yet balk at Bronny’s attempts to learn from him. Already the lich poisons us. He is worse than Muxos, worse than the Fezarch, worse even than Lady Winter.
Someday, wizard...undying one...Flamecoil...I’ll send your soul to rest beside Shieldcoil. I don’t pity you, and I don’t admire you. I’ll hate you with my final breath.
...now where’s that wine?
(a Velm’s-Eye view)
Characters: Bronn Spellforger (shield dwarf Wiz2), Corwyn Black (human Ftr4), Daziel (human Clr4, Selûne), Saeita Neví (wild elf Mnk4), Van Dyksun (human Rgr3/Rog1), Velm Trueforger (shield dwarf Ftr4).
Eleint 1-4
This is the first time I’ve bothered to keep a journal in my life. Truth be told, I’m doing it to get rid of a nasty hangover more than anything else. The scratch of the quill on the parchment is soothing somehow...the dipping into ink a balm for pulsing temples.
Now that I’ve been given the Stone Boot right out of Clan T———, what else is there for me to do but drink? I’ve chopped enough wood for today, and I’m sick of this backwater town. There’s always been a lot of talk about how suspicious and provincial dwarves can be, but these Cormyrians are truly a worthless lot.
Except for my companions, of course...they are the exceptions. And exceptional. I respect Corwyn for his strength, Snowcap for having the innocence and idealism I’ve lost, Daziel for her puissant skill at war planning, and Saeita for knowing when silence is best. And also for having the best punch I’ve ever seen from man, dwarf or elf. Even Cousin Bronny has been different since his Return; older and perhaps wiser. We shall see...
So tomorrow we set out for the Lost City of Aerunedar. Which will be good for us: as usual, Bronn and Daziel are at each other’s throats the second there’s a lack of danger pressing in on all sides. We’ve made Daziel our leader. A good choice.
Aerunedar, the Goldhome, awaits me. Journal, you’re the only one I say this to: I’ll go down fighting for Clan Darkfell. No one else of my kind did, that’s for certain. I’ll meet my doom in those lightless depths and I hope that I can save my friends or lift Hatho’s Curse in the process. But I’ve seen it in my dreams, the Axe of Clanggeddin dripping with gore, and I know what it means. Bereft and without Clan, I’ll welcome it.
Bring me your worst. I’ll give you Clanggeddin’s best.
Eleint 5-8
Trudging back along the same path to Aerunedar, sleeping at the same campsites, staring at the same moon overhead, while Daziel and Snowcap chant prayers to the Goddess. I’m tired of walking this road. I know what the Father of Battles has planned for me, and I want to slay as many wurgym-sargh as I can before I am felled.
Companions, if you are reading this small book taken from my broken corpse: do not pull me back from my Lord and Keeper. I stand at Clanggeddin’s side.
Met Cyrgul along the road again. No one’s sure what he is, but we agree he’s probably not human.
Reached Stone Tooth. No ale and my mouth is dry.
Eleint 9
Spent the whole of this day rebuilding a rope bridge across the chasm. Almost lost Saeita to the depths.
I felt a chill when we passed the spot of Bronny’s doom...I wonder if he felt it too.
We sleep in the Shrine of Selûne beneath the grand staircase. Someone else passed this way before us—“Leather Boot” is what Snowcap and Daziel are calling him—I think it was the Zhent wizard. He’ll be waiting for us...I hope he’s ready for my axe. Bronny and I have a score to settle with that dog.
The Shrine is safe. It’s good to be within the bosom of the earth again. I dream of the Axe Father.
Eleint 10
We descend into the old mithril mines; damp, moaning, windy caverns bereft of life. I’m able to find the correct way; you can tell from the reinforcements to the stone that the cave has been worked. Turns out it’s more of an under-road than a simple cave, burrowing down through the earth toward Aerunedar.
Scrawled on the wall in chalk: MEERSCHAULK. No one knows what it means.
We walk the miles for hours and hours, until our legs tire and we have to sleep. A side passage will do.
(later)
Hard to get back to sleep now. I woke to Bronn screaming—and a devil of a deep-lizard stuck to the ceiling, trying to drag Bronny into its jaws with a disgusting sticky tongue. How it crept up on us undetected I don’t know; neither Bronn nor Corwyn heard it until the tongue flicked out and stuck to Bronny’s shoulder.
We slew it before it could run away.
We are getting close. There are mine-wagons overturned here and there, and I can feel the ghosts of Darkfell crowding toward the warm life we radiate. I don’t remember the underground ever being so cold.
Eleint 11
Another four hours walking in the mines, and we came upon what we have sought. The cave opens into a space, a very large dark space, and thundering, rushing water can be heard off to the right. The waterfall from the map?
We pick our way past old ruins, fields of broken stone walls. There’s a huge pillar of stone, and beyond a forest of deep fungi—mushroom “trees” fifteen to twenty feet tall, “underbrush” of mushrooms, creepers, vines, phosphor moss. Looks positively deadly. We turn left.
Walking along at the front of a row of four enormous pillars. Between them, we see that the fungus forest is quite extensive. The fourth pillar is carved into the shape of an enormous booted foot, with a leg stretching up into the gloom. The Pillar of Iolar? We can’t be sure in this accursed darkness, but there’s a wide, black river on the other side of it. Big albino fish in there.
“Don’t fall in,” advises Bronny.
Again we turn left, following along the shore. Half of us are blind, hands on the shoulders of their seeing-eye dwarves. It’s a dangerous way to travel, and it makes me nervous. Better than advertising ourselves with light, though.
Abruptly we’re surrounded by rank, nauseating vapor. Gods, the stink! We get clear of it, and eventually the retching stops.
“What was that?” No one can answer. Bronn thinks it was a spell. We move on.
Bursts of magic, four of them, pulse from beneath the water. They strike without error, and they wound, but not deeply. Something sinuous moves in the dark water...and is gone.
We move on. Whatever it is, it’s toying with us.
Soon we can see a bridge up ahead, spanning the river. It’s really a marvel that Clan Darkfell could span a two-hundred-foot wide river with a stone bridge. Not everyone is as impressed as I am. Bah. Rickety wooden supports are enough for humans, I suppose.
The others try to decide where we are on the map. We cross the bridge, and find at the other side a pair of towers standing sentry in the dark. The one on the left seems mostly intact, the one on the right crumbling; not all of Clan Darkfell’s engineering marvels have stood the test of years.
A whish in the dark. Javelins fall around us, wounding some. Flung from the battlements atop the open portcullis. We rush forward, out of harm’s way, and burst into the right tower.
They are waiting for us: reptilian creatures that exude a horrible, strength-sapping stench. Their leader flings spells at us, but to no avail. We rush through the tower, a killing wind.
After the battle, Snowcap goes outside to check the tower perimeter while we search the bodies. The inner walls of the tower are covered with primitive scrawls: the word MEERSCHAULK repeated endlessly, along with crude snakelike shapes. A leader?
A crackling of white light from outside, a roll of thunder. Snowcap comes screaming into the tower, hair standing on end, scorched and smoking. “In the water!” he wails, “a human head on a snaky body! Horror!”
We decide it’s time to leave. Now.
Straight back across the bridge, straight across a plain of broken stone, past the ruin of a stone building (hoping we’re headed in the right direction, since they’re trusting me to lead them) and Clanggeddin be Praised we reach the side of this massive cataract. Slip into a cave with a ruined mine wagon in its mouth. There’s a dwarf skeleton with goblin arrows lodged amongst his ribs. A reminder to me from the Axe Father? When the time comes, I will do what you wish, Silverbeard.
(later)
They are chanting, chanting in the dark, from the direction of the tower: “Yss-fara...yss-fara...yss-fara...” I roll over and plug my ears.
Eleint 12
The others awaken stiff and sore, cramped with chill, but I am just getting back into my old form. The depths are kind to me.
We break the fast and hold council, and it is decided we will head into the mushroom forest, based mostly on the wisdom of Snowcap: “I’d rather the danger I don’t know, to the danger I might know.” In other words, give me poison fungus rather than another encounter with the spell-hurling snake. Good enough for me.
Back along the cavern wall, past mine entrances and finally past the cave by which we entered, and we reach the forest.
The deep growths are a multitude of colors, bright and dull, but this rainbow signifies only death. Daziel checks for poisons, and to her chagrin finds too many to categorize. Eventually we decide to press through on foot, rather than using potions and spells to buoy ourselves above.
Soon the forest grows too dense. Mushroom caps tower overhead. “I wonder if we could use those as boats in a pinch?” wonders Bronny out loud...for all his faults, he is certainly full of ideas.
We are assaulted by tentacled violet mushrooms. We encounter a flowing puddle of black ooze that ruins my chain shirt and scars my neck with acid. I ran away...by the Great Arm of Clanggeddin I fled and stood next to Corwyn...I could hear them fighting it in the darkness, heading it off with torches, screaming when its foul tendrils burned them...and I ran away.
I have proven my true worth: nothing. A coward, a poltroon. Great Father of Battles, Silverbeard, will you still take me? Will I have the courage to go when I am called?
Thanks to Daziel’s quick thinking and ready flame, the seething black ooze slides away hunting easier and tastier prey. We press on toward the rushing of water, which grows ever louder, and discover a small tower in the depths of the forest, encrusted with algae, moss and mushrooms.
We enter through a trapdoor in the roof. All the doors radiate magicks (according to Bronny and Daziel), and the inside is lit by globes of light. But it is still and silent, and filled with dusty (extremely comfortable-looking) furniture. Bronny warns us that some of it is magical, but we descend the staircase and make ready to sleep here anyway.
A coward like me will sleep anywhere, I suppose. Where’s that wineskin Bronny gave me?
(later)
One thing remains constant on every expedition: there are only two ways you will wake up in the middle of the night. Either you are shaken awake, or you wake up to someone screaming. More often the latter. It doesn’t make for pleasant dreams, I can tell you that much. Especially not if you’re the one doing the screaming.
This time it is Spooky—Saeita, that is—who wakes me. “The magical chair,” she hisses, “it moved.”
We stand ready, blinking away sleep. The chair, apparently, walked of its own volition to the trapdoor at the tower’s center and knocked hard upon it, ten times.
Now the wardrobe doors swing open, revealing a huge abomination within, sewn together from the parts of countless bodies, dull cloudy blue-grey eyes staring without sight.
Behind us, Snowcap cries out.
“Who are you?” whispers a wholly unfamiliar, and wholly unnerving voice in the room.
He is there with us—how I do not know—shrouded in tattered black robes and a cloak, and from beneath his hood eyes peer: a malevolent twinkling pair of white lights.
But he doesn’t want to kill us. He is more a wasted and pathetic creature, locked away for centuries in his tower, unable to die and unable to truly live. Journal, I will spare you the details of our talk with him.
He is the Flamecoil, one of the four wizards who brought down Aerunedar in the name of The Coil. The others were Shieldcoil, Shapecoil, and Corpsecoil.
One down, three to go, as far I am concerned.
This coward has dwelt here since the allies of the Coil—all manner of reptile creatures worshiping a god called ‘Meerschaulk’—turned against them and took for themselves the City of Darkfell. Now the reptiles are the Sons of the Coil, and they follow a king called Yss-fara. The blood of dragons flows in his veins.
My axe will spill it onto the stone.
Daziel pities him, this thing they call “lich.” Snowcap wishes to do him a service; perform a quest. Bronny wishes to learn magic from him. I drink wine; I am disgusted that they would pollute their own souls by aiding the Doom of Aerunedar, the one who slew the silver dragon Glamerdrung.
But who am I to protest? A coward...as much a coward as this Flamecoil. But I will not end up like he, he who has cheated death and hidden away in a dank forest of fungus. We seek the waterfall, and the bard Hathos, and if Clanggeddin calls me I shall go. Whenever he calls, I shall hear, and the battle will be glorious ere I am fallen.
They have agreed to retrieve for the Flamecoil the corpse of his lover, the Shieldcoil. Fools. They perform services for this demon, yet balk at Bronny’s attempts to learn from him. Already the lich poisons us. He is worse than Muxos, worse than the Fezarch, worse even than Lady Winter.
Someday, wizard...undying one...Flamecoil...I’ll send your soul to rest beside Shieldcoil. I don’t pity you, and I don’t admire you. I’ll hate you with my final breath.
...now where’s that wine?
)
