We repel the bat attack fairly quickly and without too many injuries. A while later we manage to moor; a small ribbon hangs from a tree. From here it’s another 500 meters. There are spiderwebs everywhere, as usual, but these have been cut away—some time ago. Sarïa also finds signs of alligators and footprints of trolls, though the latter are not recent.
We sleep undisturbed.
7 Autumn 500 AOV
'Long Ben' will wait for us for two days. He refuses, however, to join us on the trip to the ziggurat.
Carlao leads us toward the temple. The terrain begins to slope upward slightly, and the vegetation becomes denser. The plants here are not swamp plants—they were cultivated at some point. There are many drag marks in the soil.
We soon reach another body of water, with the ziggurat standing on a small island in the center. We get a strange sensation: which is closer, my hand or the ziggurat? Fortunately, the feeling passes. Near the ziggurat we see a camp. We circle around the lake and find another golden ribbon further along. At the back of the structure, a narrow spit of land connects to the island.
Approaching the stepped pyramid, we again feel that odd sense of our senses being overloaded. We enter the collapsed camp. Three bodies lie rotting. Everything here has been rummaged through. The bodies are surprisingly intact—not eaten, no maggots, and no scavengers have been here. Suddenly it strikes us: there aren’t even mosquitoes. Ayleen feels quite tired.
Sarïa examines the decaying corpses. There are no wounds. When she opens their mouths, she finds something fungal inside—she recognizes it as a tumor. The bodies are full of tumors. Scattered on the ground is various equipment, along with a few soaked journals missing their last pages. Nothing remains that refers to the expedition’s findings.
There is an open entrance with stairs leading down. Above the opening is a symbol: a sphere surrounded by seven concentric circles. On the sixth ring is another small sphere. According to Felix, these are the planes. The sphere on the sixth circle is
Apet, the plane associated with interdimensional travel—known for its eternal sandstorms. Around the plane is a silvery ring with a piece missing.
We enter a room decorated with jaguar and dragon basins carved into the walls. The corridor behind us suddenly looks much longer. On the floor lie two more expedition members: a human man and a halfling woman. These bodies show blackened marks from necrotic damage. A tripod has collapsed against the far wall. In the rear wall are three alcoves with three figures standing in them—ork mummies, fully wrapped. One seems to be holding an absent spear, the second once had a sword, and the third stands in prayer. A note reads: * Do not touch the mummies. They’re worth a lot of money. —X(ambria)*
Two more doorways lead deeper inside.
On the right wall is another depiction: a figure struck by a heavenly beam. Where the source of the beam once was, there is now a small rectangular hole. Ayleen casts
detect magic but sees nothing unusual. When she switches to
detect planar energy, the same energy we sensed on the artifacts fills this entire chamber—Apet’s essence, the plane that bends space and time. That explains the strange distortions in distance and dimension.
We take the right passage. Two more alcoves with figures: in one, a mummy has speared a skeleton. The other alcove is shut with wooden slats, and behind them another ork stands with a spear, but we manage to disarm it. We reach a new chamber. On a floor tile are seven concentric rings, with a point placed on the first ring:
Jiese, the plane of fire, home to salamanders, influencing war, strife, and significant births. In the center is a square pillar. Near the entrance lies a rod with a charred end. Kane senses something dangerous from the pillar. The ground around it is also blackened for about three meters.
Ayleen enters the room to the left, keeping close to the wall to avoid the scorched ground. Farther along is another passage. A mural shows the rings again, this time with the sphere on the fifth ring:
Urim, the plane of earth, tied to the rise and fall of wealth. Ayleen sees that the ceiling in the next chamber looks unstable. Back in the pillar room, Sarïa attempts to leap over the blackened floor, which triggers a burst of flame. We follow more cautiously, but Felix triggers the fire again. Carlao sees a golden ring embedded in the ceiling. Sarïa pokes it with her staff, disabling the fire trap. At the back of the room is a hole chipped through the wall, leading to another room. Felix crawls through the small tunnel and finds a second pillar chamber. The tunnel is relatively recent.
Ayleen disarms the trap in the second chamber. Kane hears the trap in the first room resetting behind him as he steps out last. Carlao moves ahead into the next area, where two floating fleshy masses with many eyes drift in the air. On the walls crawl four-legged, spiderlike forms. The creatures are half-transparent, like the ones we saw earlier at the weapon expo.
Felix and Ayleen sneak forward to lure them out, but Felix makes too much noise and is spotted. They fire and fall back quickly. The creatures do not pursue. Felix tries again but is attacked before he can shoot properly—his retaliation hits hard, but at the end of his assault he is suddenly shunted into the
Astral Plane.
While Felix is gone, we continue the fight. This time the creatures do pursue, but we take them down one by one. Only Felix suffers further trouble when he returns: one of the spiders impales his tongue onto his leg, and Carlao is briefly snagged as well.
