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AGELESS Campaign Episode 2 - Temple of the Cat-Goddess
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<blockquote data-quote="Silver Moon" data-source="post: 5163625" data-attributes="member: 8530"><p><strong>Chapter 43, "The Staircase Trap" (Episode Two, Chapter Three) - Wednesday, September 6, 1882, 4:00 P.M. (Egyptian time).</strong></p><p></p><p>Lawrence looks around the room. "How can you tell we’re in Egypt? Shouldn't it be hotter?" Mina gestures up the staircase and says, "We're probably deep underground, I am sure that the temperature will increase as we get closer to the surface." "Hmm. I've heard tales of large cities of the dead buried under the desert sands. Could we be in one of them?" Lawrence shudders.</p><p></p><p>Abby says “Mrs. Parker is likely right. We are probably quite far underground, and it we may not see the surface at all if this room is buried somewhere, as I suspect it is for these documents to be here, intact." She began to take a closer look at the walls, looking for any writings in the stone itself that might tell them more about where they were. The walls are smooth, lacking any hieroglyphics. </p><p></p><p>Ruby says, "Why don't we find out? I'll go first. If anyone wants to stay behind and look after the paper treasure... well, it seems pretty safe down here. Anyone who wants adventure, let's go!" As the party assembles to climb the stairs, Fish quips, "I'm happy to guard our tail, and I'm just as happy to take point with Miss West, as I do have some talent at 'creeping'."</p><p></p><p>Ruby steps to the bottom of the staircase and inspects it carefully for any sort of traps. She takes her time, searching each step before stepping onto it until she reaches the top of the stairs to inspect the door that guarded their way out. Abby says, "I'll bring up the rear. I want to examine the walls of the staircase for writings as we go along." "Great! So I'll watch Miss Marsters' rear," offers Fish.</p><p></p><p>Ruby cautiously makes her way up the stairs, checking each for possible traps. Nanuet trails twenty-feet behind her, with both George and Mina immediately after him. Behind them are Lawrence and John, with Abigail and Fish taking the rear guard.</p><p></p><p>When she reaches a step approximately fifty-feet up two things happen. The first is that a thirty-foot section of stairs, running from four steps before Ruby to two steps behind Nanuet, fall out from beneath them. The steps swing downward, the first and last eight feet sections fastened together and hinged to beneath the front and rear respectively. The two middle seven feet sections are hinged on the sides, one section to the left and the other to the right. </p><p></p><p>Nanuet manages to grab onto the bottom falling step as it swings over a deep pit below, hanging on and swinging with his hands eight feet below Mina and George. Ruby is less fortunate, with the steps all falling away from her before she can grab one as she falls twenty, thirty, forty feet, and continues...</p><p></p><p>The second thing that simultaneously occurs as the trap is sprung is that a dark smoke pours out from the pit walls from the corners where the steps had been and starts to fill the staircase. George watches in horror as the stairs fall out from under Ruby. A heart wrenching "NO!" is torn from his lips as he dives head first after Ruby. </p><p></p><p>George dives into the darkness and falls the same fifty-feet as Ruby had. The black smoke above blocks all of the party's light sources so he cannot see what is actually below him. His landing is abrupt but partially cushioned as he comes to a rest in a pool of semi-liquid sand that flows as it buries him up to his waist as he straightens himself out.</p><p> </p><p>Ruby has landed six feet away from him, also half-buried in the semi-liquid sand and having taken less impact as a fall from that height normally would [9 points damage]. Her upper right arm hurts from also landing on a solid stick or rod that had been floating atop the sand [4 points damage]. Nanuet begins to feel a burning sensation in his throats from smoke that surrounds him [2 points damage] which is now rising higher into the staircase. </p><p></p><p>"Miss West! Nanuet!" shouts Fish, as he springs into action. He pulls a silk rope from the duffle slung over his shoulder, and extracts a kerchief too. "Mr. Hardin, grab hold of this!" he exclaims, tossing the gunslinger one end of the rope. Hardin's hands snake out to snag the rope and he spins in place twice to rap the rope around his body and then braces himself as hard as he can against the inevitable "snap" as the rope plays out</p><p></p><p>"I'm a damn monkey!" Fish yelps, with an edge to his voice the party hasn't ever heard before. He quick-slips a loop of rope around his waist, securing it to the trapeze artist's strap sewn to the fabric of his trousers above his tailbone. He then smears an ointment across the kerchief, ties it across his nose and mouth, and scrambles toward the edge of the pit.</p><p></p><p>"Ouch. That was unexpected," Ruby said as she held her bleeding arm to her chest. Then she heard a thud next to her and squinted. In the very dim light that was coming from above she could tell it was George. "Oh crap, are you alright George? Please tell me you are okay." "Quite alright dearest." says George calmly. </p><p></p><p>She waved her uninjured arm and cast four little globes of light that floated up into the air, gently illuminating the area. She took a good look at George to assess his injuries and then a good look around at her surroundings, including looking for whatever it was she hit down here.</p><p></p><p>Peering over the edge of the pit, Fish spots Nanuet hanging on below. He clambers toward him with the grace of an acrobat, trailing the rope. Once alongside him, Fish hisses through his mask, "Hardin and the others are topside. I'm climbing down after the Beauty and the Brains. We might all want to climb down with all that smoke rising above us!"</p><p></p><p>Leaving the rope around his waist slackened so that Nanuet can elect to haul himself upwards, Fish concentrates on climbing down the wall of the pit as quickly and sure-footedly as possible. Rather than dwell on the hazards, he imagines he's descending from the shadowed peak of the Big Top into spotlights and applause. The now-softly-glowing globes emitting light from below add to the effect.</p><p></p><p>Mina had backed down a few steps to get out of the smoke. She says, "I hear their voices below, we need to get to them soon." With no spells that could do anything about the smoke, and Fish already halfway down the hole with his rope Abby couldn't really do anything to help further. "Mrs. Parker," she shouted, "we may need to open the door back up and let this trap reset. It must reset, we can't be the first people who ever set this off." </p><p></p><p>Mina points up and says, "But notice Abby how the smoke rises, filling the upper corridor to the door above. This trap was clearly established with the expectation that people would be coming down the flight of stairs rather than up. My guess is that the trap may be magical rather than mechanical in nature." </p><p></p><p>Abby replies, "Magical or mechanical, I can't affect it at the moment. Once the others are out we should be able to wait this out at the bottom of the stairs if the smoke is only going up. I'm just an apprentice level wizard," Abby said apologetically. "Nanny always said I'd come to nothin' if I didn't study harder. Might as well find out which it is," she added and cast a detect magic spell. </p><p></p><p>Moving towards George causes her to sink a few inches more, and she realizes that they are inside a pool of quicksand and her feet have not touched any floor yet. The pool of quicksand is roughly twenty-five feet in diameter with rough dirt walls. The more-solid item that her arm struck turns out to be the arm bone of a skeleton, which became dislodged from the torso when she hit it. </p><p></p><p>Looking around she sees another ten-to-twelve other skeletal remains floating atop the quicksand, apparently earlier victims of this particular trap. "Now lie back, till your head back and spread your arms and legs as wide as you can and we will float on top of this." says George as he holds Ruby's hand tightly so she cannot sink under. </p><p></p><p>Above, Fish makes his way towards Nanuet and manages to grab his arm as the smoke becomes thicker. Mina now begins to feel a burning sensation in her throat as the smoke fills the staircase near the edge of the pit. Lawrence grabs the rope and tries to brace himself on the stairs. He coughs in the choking smoke. </p><p></p><p>As Ruby sunk deeper into the quicksand she took a deep breath in. "Oh, George, I'm not usually one to panic but this isn't looking very good..." But she looked in his eyes and saw the calm there and tried to mirror it. She slowly did as he said and tried to tilt her head back and arrange her legs. "I think my arm is broken from the fall. I hit... someone... when I fell."</p><p></p><p>Fish climbs down just above the sand trap. He drives a piton and secures his line. "Are you two alright?" he asks as he swings his task hammer. ping...ping...ping "Mr. Eastman, I think we can haul both you and Miss West out of this mess, but we gotta get you tied in! Suggestions?" he asks, breathing heavily. Ruby says, "I'm a little hurt. But I'll be okay. I'll have a hard time climbing with only one arm though. And then there is the little problem of sinking in quicksand..." "Do you have extra length of rope? If so make a rescue loop. That's it tie it off in a bowline. Now drop that down and I can help Constance get it under her armpits and you can haul her up," says George. </p><p></p><p>Lawrence asks, "Ruby? Why don't you tie the rope around your waist and we can pull you up. Then you won't need to climb." Ruby called up, "Well Larry, it'd be easier if we weren't... SINKING IN QUICKSAND!! Every time we move we sink further!" Fish tosses a looped length of rope down toward George, secured to the piton.</p><p></p><p>Lying on their backs and floating atop the quicksand they can see that Nanuet has used Fish's rope to get back up the dangling stairs. The light globes also illuminate four pipes higher up along the wall immediately beneath the hinged stairs from which the smoke is pouring out. They also see suspended beneath the front staircase is a bronze metal tube, approximately one foot high and six inches in diameter, open on the front and held up by metal bars in the center on both sides. Inside the open front area they see the distinctive shape of an hourglass. The hourglass is solid bronze, so they cannot see if it contains any sand. </p><p></p><p>Ruby tried not to panicking at the sinking in the sand thing and instead she concentrated on the mechanics above her. "Hey Ben, if you can get me up there I think I can disable the trap." "Hold on a moment longer, friends! There's no time," says Fish with urgency in his voice. "Let me take a crack at that infernal device before our comrades up top choke to death!" Fish climbs back up the wall and attempts to disable the trap, taking a deep breath before he nears the smoke.</p><p></p><p>The dark smoke continues to pour from the tubes beneath the stairs hanging downward, now completely filling the section of stairs below the pit as well as the entire staircase upward from that point. Nanuet has now been pulled down the staircase and back to the first room with the shelves, suffering relatively low from the inhalation of the smoke. "I'm going to help Nanuet out," Abby said to Mrs. Parker, took a deep breath, and ran back toward where the stairs had dropped extending a hand to Nanuet when he was close enough. </p><p></p><p>George, whose head was more above the sand than Ruby's, takes the rope and slowly and carefully throws it for her head, looping it around Ruby. "Get your arms through there Ruby so you can't sink any further." His well placed aim made it easy for her to reach up and get her arms through, though it made her sink a little further. Still she felt more secure with the rope under her arms.</p><p></p><p>"Pull me up Ben so we can hurry and throw the rope back for George." She was trying not to notice how much he had sunk when he moved to help her. She was scared he would be hurt but at the same time she was glad he was with her, otherwise she would not know what to do. Ruby yanked on the rope and tried to pull herself up out of the sand as she could. </p><p></p><p>With the secured rope, Ruby and George are able to keep from sinking further. Fish reaches the cylinder with the hourglass and is able to flip it over 180 degrees until he hears a 'click' sound. Three things then occur. First, the smoke immediately stops pouring from the tubes. Second, the four staircase sections each being to slowly rise back upward. Third, the skeletons all become animated and start moving through the quicksand towards George and Ruby. </p><p></p><p>"Oh... crap. SKELETONS!!!!!!!!" she yelled out. "Um, NANA, what do we do??" She reached into the sand and pulled out her pistol, shaking the sand from it once it was out. She cocked a grin for a moment and mumbled to herself, "Jake would have a heart attack over the state of this gun..." She pointed the gun at the advancing undead.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Silver Moon, post: 5163625, member: 8530"] [B]Chapter 43, "The Staircase Trap" (Episode Two, Chapter Three) - Wednesday, September 6, 1882, 4:00 P.M. (Egyptian time).[/B] Lawrence looks around the room. "How can you tell we’re in Egypt? Shouldn't it be hotter?" Mina gestures up the staircase and says, "We're probably deep underground, I am sure that the temperature will increase as we get closer to the surface." "Hmm. I've heard tales of large cities of the dead buried under the desert sands. Could we be in one of them?" Lawrence shudders. Abby says “Mrs. Parker is likely right. We are probably quite far underground, and it we may not see the surface at all if this room is buried somewhere, as I suspect it is for these documents to be here, intact." She began to take a closer look at the walls, looking for any writings in the stone itself that might tell them more about where they were. The walls are smooth, lacking any hieroglyphics. Ruby says, "Why don't we find out? I'll go first. If anyone wants to stay behind and look after the paper treasure... well, it seems pretty safe down here. Anyone who wants adventure, let's go!" As the party assembles to climb the stairs, Fish quips, "I'm happy to guard our tail, and I'm just as happy to take point with Miss West, as I do have some talent at 'creeping'." Ruby steps to the bottom of the staircase and inspects it carefully for any sort of traps. She takes her time, searching each step before stepping onto it until she reaches the top of the stairs to inspect the door that guarded their way out. Abby says, "I'll bring up the rear. I want to examine the walls of the staircase for writings as we go along." "Great! So I'll watch Miss Marsters' rear," offers Fish. Ruby cautiously makes her way up the stairs, checking each for possible traps. Nanuet trails twenty-feet behind her, with both George and Mina immediately after him. Behind them are Lawrence and John, with Abigail and Fish taking the rear guard. When she reaches a step approximately fifty-feet up two things happen. The first is that a thirty-foot section of stairs, running from four steps before Ruby to two steps behind Nanuet, fall out from beneath them. The steps swing downward, the first and last eight feet sections fastened together and hinged to beneath the front and rear respectively. The two middle seven feet sections are hinged on the sides, one section to the left and the other to the right. Nanuet manages to grab onto the bottom falling step as it swings over a deep pit below, hanging on and swinging with his hands eight feet below Mina and George. Ruby is less fortunate, with the steps all falling away from her before she can grab one as she falls twenty, thirty, forty feet, and continues... The second thing that simultaneously occurs as the trap is sprung is that a dark smoke pours out from the pit walls from the corners where the steps had been and starts to fill the staircase. George watches in horror as the stairs fall out from under Ruby. A heart wrenching "NO!" is torn from his lips as he dives head first after Ruby. George dives into the darkness and falls the same fifty-feet as Ruby had. The black smoke above blocks all of the party's light sources so he cannot see what is actually below him. His landing is abrupt but partially cushioned as he comes to a rest in a pool of semi-liquid sand that flows as it buries him up to his waist as he straightens himself out. Ruby has landed six feet away from him, also half-buried in the semi-liquid sand and having taken less impact as a fall from that height normally would [9 points damage]. Her upper right arm hurts from also landing on a solid stick or rod that had been floating atop the sand [4 points damage]. Nanuet begins to feel a burning sensation in his throats from smoke that surrounds him [2 points damage] which is now rising higher into the staircase. "Miss West! Nanuet!" shouts Fish, as he springs into action. He pulls a silk rope from the duffle slung over his shoulder, and extracts a kerchief too. "Mr. Hardin, grab hold of this!" he exclaims, tossing the gunslinger one end of the rope. Hardin's hands snake out to snag the rope and he spins in place twice to rap the rope around his body and then braces himself as hard as he can against the inevitable "snap" as the rope plays out "I'm a damn monkey!" Fish yelps, with an edge to his voice the party hasn't ever heard before. He quick-slips a loop of rope around his waist, securing it to the trapeze artist's strap sewn to the fabric of his trousers above his tailbone. He then smears an ointment across the kerchief, ties it across his nose and mouth, and scrambles toward the edge of the pit. "Ouch. That was unexpected," Ruby said as she held her bleeding arm to her chest. Then she heard a thud next to her and squinted. In the very dim light that was coming from above she could tell it was George. "Oh crap, are you alright George? Please tell me you are okay." "Quite alright dearest." says George calmly. She waved her uninjured arm and cast four little globes of light that floated up into the air, gently illuminating the area. She took a good look at George to assess his injuries and then a good look around at her surroundings, including looking for whatever it was she hit down here. Peering over the edge of the pit, Fish spots Nanuet hanging on below. He clambers toward him with the grace of an acrobat, trailing the rope. Once alongside him, Fish hisses through his mask, "Hardin and the others are topside. I'm climbing down after the Beauty and the Brains. We might all want to climb down with all that smoke rising above us!" Leaving the rope around his waist slackened so that Nanuet can elect to haul himself upwards, Fish concentrates on climbing down the wall of the pit as quickly and sure-footedly as possible. Rather than dwell on the hazards, he imagines he's descending from the shadowed peak of the Big Top into spotlights and applause. The now-softly-glowing globes emitting light from below add to the effect. Mina had backed down a few steps to get out of the smoke. She says, "I hear their voices below, we need to get to them soon." With no spells that could do anything about the smoke, and Fish already halfway down the hole with his rope Abby couldn't really do anything to help further. "Mrs. Parker," she shouted, "we may need to open the door back up and let this trap reset. It must reset, we can't be the first people who ever set this off." Mina points up and says, "But notice Abby how the smoke rises, filling the upper corridor to the door above. This trap was clearly established with the expectation that people would be coming down the flight of stairs rather than up. My guess is that the trap may be magical rather than mechanical in nature." Abby replies, "Magical or mechanical, I can't affect it at the moment. Once the others are out we should be able to wait this out at the bottom of the stairs if the smoke is only going up. I'm just an apprentice level wizard," Abby said apologetically. "Nanny always said I'd come to nothin' if I didn't study harder. Might as well find out which it is," she added and cast a detect magic spell. Moving towards George causes her to sink a few inches more, and she realizes that they are inside a pool of quicksand and her feet have not touched any floor yet. The pool of quicksand is roughly twenty-five feet in diameter with rough dirt walls. The more-solid item that her arm struck turns out to be the arm bone of a skeleton, which became dislodged from the torso when she hit it. Looking around she sees another ten-to-twelve other skeletal remains floating atop the quicksand, apparently earlier victims of this particular trap. "Now lie back, till your head back and spread your arms and legs as wide as you can and we will float on top of this." says George as he holds Ruby's hand tightly so she cannot sink under. Above, Fish makes his way towards Nanuet and manages to grab his arm as the smoke becomes thicker. Mina now begins to feel a burning sensation in her throat as the smoke fills the staircase near the edge of the pit. Lawrence grabs the rope and tries to brace himself on the stairs. He coughs in the choking smoke. As Ruby sunk deeper into the quicksand she took a deep breath in. "Oh, George, I'm not usually one to panic but this isn't looking very good..." But she looked in his eyes and saw the calm there and tried to mirror it. She slowly did as he said and tried to tilt her head back and arrange her legs. "I think my arm is broken from the fall. I hit... someone... when I fell." Fish climbs down just above the sand trap. He drives a piton and secures his line. "Are you two alright?" he asks as he swings his task hammer. ping...ping...ping "Mr. Eastman, I think we can haul both you and Miss West out of this mess, but we gotta get you tied in! Suggestions?" he asks, breathing heavily. Ruby says, "I'm a little hurt. But I'll be okay. I'll have a hard time climbing with only one arm though. And then there is the little problem of sinking in quicksand..." "Do you have extra length of rope? If so make a rescue loop. That's it tie it off in a bowline. Now drop that down and I can help Constance get it under her armpits and you can haul her up," says George. Lawrence asks, "Ruby? Why don't you tie the rope around your waist and we can pull you up. Then you won't need to climb." Ruby called up, "Well Larry, it'd be easier if we weren't... SINKING IN QUICKSAND!! Every time we move we sink further!" Fish tosses a looped length of rope down toward George, secured to the piton. Lying on their backs and floating atop the quicksand they can see that Nanuet has used Fish's rope to get back up the dangling stairs. The light globes also illuminate four pipes higher up along the wall immediately beneath the hinged stairs from which the smoke is pouring out. They also see suspended beneath the front staircase is a bronze metal tube, approximately one foot high and six inches in diameter, open on the front and held up by metal bars in the center on both sides. Inside the open front area they see the distinctive shape of an hourglass. The hourglass is solid bronze, so they cannot see if it contains any sand. Ruby tried not to panicking at the sinking in the sand thing and instead she concentrated on the mechanics above her. "Hey Ben, if you can get me up there I think I can disable the trap." "Hold on a moment longer, friends! There's no time," says Fish with urgency in his voice. "Let me take a crack at that infernal device before our comrades up top choke to death!" Fish climbs back up the wall and attempts to disable the trap, taking a deep breath before he nears the smoke. The dark smoke continues to pour from the tubes beneath the stairs hanging downward, now completely filling the section of stairs below the pit as well as the entire staircase upward from that point. Nanuet has now been pulled down the staircase and back to the first room with the shelves, suffering relatively low from the inhalation of the smoke. "I'm going to help Nanuet out," Abby said to Mrs. Parker, took a deep breath, and ran back toward where the stairs had dropped extending a hand to Nanuet when he was close enough. George, whose head was more above the sand than Ruby's, takes the rope and slowly and carefully throws it for her head, looping it around Ruby. "Get your arms through there Ruby so you can't sink any further." His well placed aim made it easy for her to reach up and get her arms through, though it made her sink a little further. Still she felt more secure with the rope under her arms. "Pull me up Ben so we can hurry and throw the rope back for George." She was trying not to notice how much he had sunk when he moved to help her. She was scared he would be hurt but at the same time she was glad he was with her, otherwise she would not know what to do. Ruby yanked on the rope and tried to pull herself up out of the sand as she could. With the secured rope, Ruby and George are able to keep from sinking further. Fish reaches the cylinder with the hourglass and is able to flip it over 180 degrees until he hears a 'click' sound. Three things then occur. First, the smoke immediately stops pouring from the tubes. Second, the four staircase sections each being to slowly rise back upward. Third, the skeletons all become animated and start moving through the quicksand towards George and Ruby. "Oh... crap. SKELETONS!!!!!!!!" she yelled out. "Um, NANA, what do we do??" She reached into the sand and pulled out her pistol, shaking the sand from it once it was out. She cocked a grin for a moment and mumbled to herself, "Jake would have a heart attack over the state of this gun..." She pointed the gun at the advancing undead. [/QUOTE]
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