D&D 5E CB's Stonefast IC -- COMPLETE

As the crew finds space for themselves in the ossuary, he reflects that this is a good place to rest. Of all the rooms he has seen, this is the one least likely to have roof panels, if the builders had any respect for their dead. Nevertheless, Father Spec takes precautions.

First things first.

"Um, would anyone care to examine the rope?" asks Spec. "It seems to be magical, but I cannot immediately discern its purpose." He'll hand it to the first one who accepts it. If no one is interested, that's fine too, and he'll keep it.

He takes the first watch, during which he keeps the door closed, staying on the inside, with a light cantrip cast upon Guran's sword, because it amused him to keep it there. The effect creates odd shadows dancing amongst the bones in the walls, but his concern is elsewhere. If there's a lock, he locks it and inserts his thieve's tools to prevent anything from the outside gaining easy access. He begins with a systematic investigation of the ceiling. He's seen sliding panels in the corridor, and he is quite observant. If there's something to be noticed, he hopes he'll see it.

Then, he eats. He's hungry, and he realizes how helpful it would be if he could instantly create water to help everyone wash and clean themselves. The Traveller will find a way.

His duty completed, he relaxes. He casts Guidance on whoever takes the next watch. He then asks Guran if he wants to pray together. Others are welcome, but he looks particularly to Guran, whose inquisitiveness he has noticed. It's a bold offer, but the lad seems curious, and he wants to be supportive. Fharlanghn has been with them, he feels. He has brought them together. The prayer is a simple one, envisioning the road extending to the horizon, describing the wonders that one sees while the horizon never gets any closer. That's the familiar framework, and it provides a foundation on which an adherent can process the events of the day (looking back along the road), or the wishes for one's future (looking forward), or imagine other courses, other choices, or consider the welfare of others (by looking off the side of the road as you walk along it). Spec finds this incredibly peaceful, and powerful, and he answers any questions Guran might have.

With either the magic rope, or the silk cord that he has with him, he shows how a rope can be see to depict the Traveller's Road. how running one's hands along its length can give something tangible, a physical thing to keep your mind on your prayers.

Then, he sleeps. He removes much of his armour to try to be comfortable, but it doesn't work well. Five fitful hours later (assuming there are no interruptions), he wakes, and blows his nose. He stands, stretches, finds a place to pee, and does a few exercises with the knife that Colden has given him. The blade is very sharp, and he feels that with it and a shield he will be much more effective in combat. The proper warriors no doubt laugh at his pot bellied self moving around with his tiny blade, but in Spec's imagination, he has become a new man. He doesn't work so hard as to build up a sweat, of course. But neither will his muscles atrophy. Then, as others are stirring more and more and it looks like they will soon depart, he begins to pray again. Again, he invites Guran to join him. When he does so, new spells come to his mind. He feels invigorated, strengthened, and, if nothing else since this weird adventure began, he feels like he has genuinely helped someone.
 

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After completing his impromptu lectio divina (sans prayer book) with Guran, Spec took a careful circuit of the ossuary and found one false shelf on the lower level of a shelf of skulls. The panel was perhaps 12 inches high and 18 inches long; too small for even a small individual to shimmy into. Opening the panel, Spec found an unlocked very long stone box, and when he lifted the lid, he discovered that the stone box was filled with all manner of coin from many different places in the Realms. Spec counted the coins, found there were very many, then set about looking for other hidden panels. He found none--none in the shelving, and none in either the floor or ceiling.

OOC: 15 platinum pieces and 1560 gold pieces. A religion check indicated that the coins likely belonged to the original owners of the skulls. [MENTION=61026]tuxgeo[/MENTION], your turn.
 

Once inside the ossuary room again, Guran checks around for likely places where he could rest for an hour or so before it would become his duty to stand guard. When Father Spec offers the rope from the spider-room to any of the others who would take it, Guran vocally defers that choice to the rest of them--and most especially does he wait for the halfling barbarian, who actually fought the spider, to express an interest, because Guran remembers how that lad had seemed so determinedly acquisitive in the room with the magically-healing beer; however, Guran wouldn't be at all surprised to see the party's wizard elect to take a longer look at the rope, in the halfling's stead. While such offering and possible taking is going on, Guran sticks the unlit end of his torch into a corner of a shelf in a place where the material sitting on the shelf is able to hold the torch in place, but while still leaving the burning end of the torch sticking out in the air. Guran leaves it there, because he doesn't want to keep holding the torch while he rests and watches.

As Father Spec casts the Light cantrip again, Guran watches his actions closely; and he can do so easily, because this time the Father is casting the cantrip directly upon Guran's short sword. Father Spec's gestures of finger and hand and arm are clearly executed with an obvious ease of long practice, and this time they are being performed near enough to Guran for him to see them in their tiniest detail. Those gestures seem to Guran to be subtly different from the gestures he had been taught at the Temple where he grew up. He sees that Spec's fingers move much more freely, more energetically, more sharply, and at the same time more gracefully than the movements of his teacher in his earlier years, when that teacher was already of advanced years even for a dwarf; and whose hands might have been stiff with age.

As the Cleric of Travel begins to search the room carefully, Guran selects a spot on the floor with his back to the door, and crouches there in a squatting position, with boots splayed wide and with elbows resting on knees. It's important to him not to kneel when addressing Moradin, for Moradin is a god of both Work and Creation; and since Moradin does not kneel when He works, the act of kneeling while praying to Him is thought to be unseemly, since it could be seen as some kind of rejection of Moradin's ways. Guran lowers his gaze toward the floor in order to open his mind and to remove his thoughts from his immediate surroundings. As he does so, he quietly chants, "My work looms in darkness before me," saying the prayer he was taught as a way to prepare his mind, using those words as an affirmation both of his awareness of new opportunity and of his readiness to learn. He then rehearses the gestures he has just seen Spec perform, trying to mimic them as well as he can while their memory is still fresh in his mind. He repeats the gestures over and over, muttering the dwarven version of the incantation for the Light cantrip while doing so. He soon seems to feel a strange energy flowing throughout his limbs, but no light appears on anything he touches. He concludes based on this that he must be doing something right, but also that it might be better for him to get a good rest before trying that cantrip again. He imagines that the unseen portion of his mind might need slack time to negotiate some newer and diviner terms with his soul, and is waiting only for his conscious mind to get out of the way before it does so.

Guran takes the next watch; and the first part of his watch is spent talking with Father Spec and praying with him to Fharlanghn, and learning about the way in which the road is a rope. He's not sure he gets that part; but the Cleric of Travel does seem genuinely happy with that metaphor, so Guran concludes it must have more meaning than is obvious now.

Guran tries to think of questions he might ask; but he knows that at least a partial understanding of most subjects is needed in order to formulate questions that open out one's understanding. "A rope doesn't branch," he ventures to suggest. "Could each fork in a road be like a splice in a rope? Or am I dragging the comparison too far in the wrong direction? Is there even such a thing as 'too far?' I know I have seen some folks running their fingers along strings of prayer beads. Is this use of a rope to envision a road a bit like that?"

He doesn't get much farther than that in understanding Spec's religion at this time, and decides not to press the subject of his own worship of Moradin, because he thinks it wise to leave off there in order to allow the learned Father to have a good chance to get some sleep. Guran stands guard in the quiet of the ossuary and keeps a wary eye out for mice. In the silence of the chamber of the dead, he reflects on how each body must die, and in that they are all alike; but also how each one dies in a different manner, and in that they are all different. He wonders how many of these skulls are from those who died untimely, in the company of others who had no way to save them. It seems a forlorn imagining: a wounded body getting closer to death, with friends in anguish nearby without the means to halt or reverse the process. He wishes he could find a way, or ways, to keep that from happening near him; and that thought continues to haunt him throughout the remainder of his watch, and into the sleep he takes after the next party member begins to stand guard.

As he sleeps, his fingers remember the gestures he had practiced so often tonight. As he sleeps, his mind clears of concerns of the moment, but the thought and the wish that had been haunting him for a couple of hours still do so. His subconscious, at play in renewing his being, does things to his mind he could never conceive, for those things being done work through the ways and the matters from which Guran forms his conceptions. He trusts Moradin to guide all those changes, and that is as well as may be.

In the morning, they pray some more. Guran then tries the Light cantrip for the first time after sleeping, trying to cast it on a handaxe; and he finds to his surprise and delight that it actually works this time: the blade of the axe glows! Guran thanks Father Spec for the generous instruction, and says he feels that he could probably do more than that, but is unsure of just what new abilities he might have. He admits that last night he had actually prayed to Moradin, as was his wont, so he can't be sure which god truly guided him; but he is sure Spec's instruction was of benefit, and he would like to know some way to recompense Spec, or his church, or any other for that help as might be thought "fittinghn"; and he would like to be able to ask more questions if he can think of them; but Spec ought to be aware that such thinking might take time, for Guran has often been told that he isn't the sharpest axe in the toolbelt.

As an afterthought, Guran takes the no-longer-burning torch down from the shelf where he stuck it (they only last an hour), and re-casts Light upon his armor, thereby extinguishing the light on the axe.
 
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Guran tries to think of questions he might ask; but he knows that at least a partial understanding of most subjects is needed in order to formulate questions that open out one's understanding. "A rope doesn't branch," he ventures to suggest. "Could each fork in a road be like a splice in a rope? Or am I dragging the comparison too far in the wrong direction? Is there even such a thing as 'too far?' I know I have seen some folks running their fingers along strings of prayer beads. Is this use of a rope to envision a road a bit like that?"

"Hm. Indeed." Spec clears his throat, and scratches his nose as he thinks. "Indeed."

"The rope's an image, and an imperfect one, of course: depending on your thoughts, it might represent a day's travel, a planned career, or one's whole life. The ends aren't important -- it's the nestling together of strands, brought together from at times disparate places, or sources."

He squints at Guran, and wonders if he makes sense.

"But I think the larger truth is that there aren't any real forks in the road. We follow a path, we make choices, but we always end up at a destination. And that destination is always a way point. The choices we make may seem very real to us in the moment -- we may celebrate them or regret them afterwards -- but whenever we look back, it's still the single journey that we have made, going straight back to our starting point. And there's still a single journey ahead."

Spec smiles as a light seems to go off metaphorically in Guran's head. And actually in his hand. A perfect symbol of understanding that there has been some real communication. None of the others have even heard of Fharlanghn, and Spec is beginning to wonder where his journey has taken him -- it seems to be much further than he had previously suspected.
 

Colden rubbed the sleep from tired eyes and sat with his back to the wall with his handaxe across his lap. His armour and shield lay in a neat pile near his bedroll, the smell of grease and polish a comforting part of his life.

Like most of his life, he felt he was missing something. The others seemed to be a very knowledgable bunch of people and asked questions he could never have even thought to ask. He felt like a large child in a world of adults being led around. Only in battle did he feel like he added anything to the group.

Feeling himself getting tired he stood and examined his wounds, there was some bruising but despite the battering he had recieved he was feeling optimistic.
 

OOC: Nothing disturbs the group's rest through Spec's, Guran's, or Colden's watch. Six hours have passed. There's no telling what time of day it is in the artificial light of the dungeon, but a good bet is that (most) of you have been here for two days. Next up on watch is Roscoe, [MENTION=24609]Strahd_Von_Zarovich[/MENTION].
 

Before everyone lay down to rest Roscoe begs Fulgrim to pour him some of the ale from the barrel they found to a wooden jug decorated a big red "R" onto it that Roscoe brought from home. If he will agree Roscoe will enjoy his shift drinking, if not, he will be upset and sad for the entire shift as he mumbles curses under his breath.

He will walk around and between his comrades, spying for prying eyes between the skulls on the shelves, He will train his sword, swinging and swishing it in the air at similar patterns to the ones that brought down the vicious spider hours ago. If the shift has not ended he will dance silently on his bare and hairy feet a Halfling dance as he memorize to himself the famous song "The lizard in the corn field" by the famous troubador Koblot Yellowfield.
 

OOC: Provide a Constitution saving throw just in case, [MENTION=24609]Strahd_Von_Zarovich[/MENTION]. Fulgrim's up, [MENTION=95059]Forged Fury[/MENTION].


Roscoe is full of energy, flitting about the room, slicing the air with his short sword, singing a merry jig, and begging Fulgrim for beer. The Halfling cautiously peers between skulls all throughout the shelving, knocking one to the ground, but spots nothing noteworthy other than the stone box full of gold and silver discovered by Father Spec.
 

OOC: I think Roscoe was talking about the other beer we found earlier? I'm not sure, but I think I recall finding a different keg of beer earlier, which was where the initial disagreement between Fulgrim and Roscoe came from. In either case, Fulgrim would allow Roscoe a very small portion, trying his best to explain to the halfling that they needed to keep some so that Fulgrim could attempt to reverse engineer it.


Awoken by Roscoe for the final shift, Fulgrim stretched and took a few minutes to slip into his armor. He appreciated the fact that all of his kin had been trained to wear armor, it had saved his skin, literally, more than once. As the halfling settled down, the dwarf mage cracked open his spellbook and turned to a few pages that he had been working on for some time. Setting to work, Fulgrim thought through the potential ways one could harness the arcane forces necessary to produce the effects he was trying to achieve. Staring at the skulls arranged around him, he wished for the collective wisdom once contained in the skulls around him. After a short while, he vigorously scribbled notes into the book, finally having unlocked a pair of magical spells. Setting the book aside, Fulgrim picked up the rope they had discovered from the spiderweb and did his best to determine its properties. So what do you do, little friend?
 

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