CLOSED! Rhun's Greyhawk ALPHA Game (ToEE)

[Insight]

"Otto," murmurs Coraine from the corner of his mouth, all the while looking around at the forest in a casual manner, "look for a good place to 'disappear'. When you give me the signal, I'll create a ruckus to cover your move into hiding. Then follow at a discrete distance. That, at any rate, may give us something of an edge."

"Capital idea," Otto replies. "I'll give a bird call -- like this," the halfling says, making a bird-like sound with his hands.

Otto looks for a good hiding place.

 

[hafrogman]

Marco shakes his head at Verdis.

"Why bring even more attention to ourselves than necessary? If they believe us oblivious, that is at least one item in our favor."

 

[Scotley]

Verdis

"It just pains me to walk into a trap. If no more birdies report then they wont' have reason to believe the situation has changed right? But if the rest of you are against it, I'll wait."

 

[Rhun]

Otto notes plenty of places where he could "disappear" from the path. There is probably a good one every hundred feet or so along the trail.

 

[Rhun]

The track leading from Nulb quickly becomes more rutted and spotted with rank weeds - thistles, burrs, thorns, nettles, and others. The other vegetation is quite disconcerting - dead trees with a skeletal appearance, scrub growth twisted and unnaturally colored, all unhealthy and sickly looking or exceptionally robust and disgusting. Quite suddenly, the ruins you have sought appear before you. The outerworks, once stout walls and towers, have been thrown down, and now are little more than overgrown mounds of grey rubble and blackish weeds. Skulls and bones of humans and humanoids gleam white here and there amidst the growth. A grove of oddly stunted and unhealthy looking usk trees still grow along the northen end of the former compound, and a stump of a tower juts up from the northeastern corner of the shattered wall.The leprous grey Temple, however, stands intact, its arched butresses somehow obscene with their growth of climbing vegetation.

Everything surrounding the place is disgusting. The myriad of leering faces and twisting, contorted forms writhing and posuting on every face of the edifice seem to jape at the obscenities they depict. The growth in the compound is noisome. Thorns clutch, burrs stick and crushed stems emit foul stench or raise angry welts on exposed skin. Worst of all is the pervading fear which seems to hang over the entire area - a smothering, clinging, almost tangible cloud of vileness and horror. Sounds seem distorted, either muffled and shrill or unnaturally loud and grating.

Your eyes play tricks. You see darting movement at the corner of your vision, but when you shift your gaze toward such, there is nothing there at all. You cannot help but wander who or what made the maze of narrow paths through the weedy courtyard. What sort of thing could wander here and there around this ghastly edifice of evil without shrieking and gibbering and going completely mad? Yet the usual mundane sounds of your travel are accompanied only by the chorus of the wind, moaning through hundreds of aperatures built into the stonework to sing like doomed souls given over to the tender mercies of demonkind. Echoing these horrible sounds are the macabre croaks from the scattered flapping, leering ravens.

There is no doubt; you have come to a place of ineffable evil.

 

[Scotley]

Verdis

Awed by the sight before Verdis comments softly, "Gods Otto, I can see why you didn't stick around. I'd hate to be out here in the dark alone." Shaking off a serious case of the willies, Verdis checks his crossbow and turns to the others. "So what do we do first, check out that temple?"

 

[hafrogman]

"I knew we should have turned back."

Marco speaks with a kind of fatalistic depression at the sight of the structure before them. The normally unflappable scholar shivers in the evil emanations.

"This is . . . the temple?"

 

[Rhun]

Ragnok casts a glance at Marco. "What else could it be? You can feel the vileness emanating from this place. Mark my words, great evil lurks ahead."

 

[Thanee]

Dara

Dara looks around for a while, this whole place is evil through and through, and it does not fill her heart with joy to be here.

“Out here in the dark alone... even together it's not exactly inviting. But it doesn't help, this is where we need to go! This must be where this cult is hiding. We got work to do.”

 

[Insight]

Awed by the sight before Verdis comments softly, "Gods Otto, I can see why you didn't stick around. I'd hate to be out here in the dark alone." Shaking off a serious case of the willies, Verdis checks his crossbow and turns to the others. "So what do we do first, check out that temple?"

Otto shudders. "Yes, well... this is certainly not the most hospitable location. I'd rather not overstay our visit if at all possible. You never know what might pop out at any given time."

The halfling regards the eerie temple. "The temple? Yes, that certainly seems the most obvious point from which to begin our quest."