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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ilgatto" data-source="post: 9688993" data-attributes="member: 86051">Duergar & Daemons Part IV: Secret of the EggIn which the rough notes seem to indicate that our noble heroes did not go the refectory at the end of the last installment but rather to the house across the street from it – i.e., the one to the left of the gate that took them into the egg.Day 44, continued: At some point, our noble heroes notice that the latch in the top of egg starts closing on its own, slowly ‛extinguishing’ the light. Apparently, night has fallen.Day 45: It must be around nine o’clock in the morning when the chevalier, fully dressed and geared up, blows a reveille on his new trumpet.“Rise and shine, mes amis!,” he cries, eager for someone to start breakfast.Some time after that, we find Navarre approaching the gate that took them into the egg yesterday. He intends to find out what the egg is actually made of – surely it cannot be a dragon’s egg? – but doesn’t get much more than that the ‘shell’ is made of a chalky substance. He exits the egg and starts walking around it, subjecting the fungi in the garden to a closer inspection. Like Sir Eber, he doesn’t recognize any of them, nor has he ever seen any of the small creatures living among them – bugs, small snakes, hairless rat-like creatures, usually white, sometimes even wholly translucent and often without eyes.When he gets back to the gate, he descends the overgrown flight of steps. He crosses the submerged bridge and starts following the moat in a clockwise direction. It is a perfect circle and gets as close to the cavern wall as its shape allows, which leaves the occasional patch of dry land between it and the wall. He reaches a rather large hole in the wall and shines his lantern into it, revealing a cave-like space. Almost immediately, he notices two staggeringly large spiders high up on the walls, each at least nine feet in diameter, legs included.“Good lord!,” he says, taking a few steps back before running back to the bridge.“Spiders!,” he yells, when he gets back to the egg. “Spiders!”The chevalier is the first to appear.“Mon duc?,” he inquires. “Quoi?”“Pony-sized spiders,” Navarre breathes, trying to regain his composure. “The cavalry!”“We must kill them,” Sir Eber says, appearing in the doorway.“Let’s do it,” Sir Suvali says behind him.“Whatever for?,” Navarre exclaims in surprise.“I am a ranger,” Sir Eber says. “I serve nature. Giant spiders are abominations and they must be destroyed.”“Indeed?,” Navarre breathes, raising an eyebrow. “Must we kill everything that happens to cross our path? Need I remind you that we are not savages?”“Bah,” Sir Eber scoffs. “Where are they?”Moments later, of our noble heroes have gathered the hole with the spiders.“In there,” Navarre says, shining his lantern at it.“Right,” Sir Eber says, drawing his weapons. “Let’s kill them.”“If you insist on killing these spiders, I suggest we see if there are more of them in the other holes first,” Navarre says. “We know nothing of the creatures and we do not know if they will attack en masse when you start hacking away at their fellows.”“I agree,” Sir Suvali says. “Spiders can be poisonous and we are not equipped for that.”“Bah!,” Sir Eber scoffs. “Alright then. Lead the way.”And so Navarre and the ranger start walking, anti-clockwise to avoid passing the hole with the spiders and perhaps provoking them too early. Sir Oengus follows them at some distance while the others take up various tactical positions throughout the cavern, their bows drawn. The noble duo pass two holes not unlike the one with the spiders, each empty, and presently get to a large cave-like opening some sixty feet wide and perhaps ten high. They are now on the far side of the cavern as it were, directly opposite the entrance. Shining their lanterns into the opening, they see some three dozen pottery urns lining the walls. They enter the room and find it to be remarkably dry and devoid of any monstrous spiders.“A burial chamber?,” Sir Eber suggests.“It would seem so,” Navarre agrees.Some moments before the noble duo enter the burial chamber, Sir Oengus decides to throw a line into the moat to see if he can catch one of the fish in it. The DM asks him to roll d20 and when our noble fisherman rolls “20”, he is informed that something bites instantly and that he reels in a twenty-pound carp, all within seconds. Quite pleased with himself, he starts after his noble companions, reaches the burial chamber, enters, picks up one of the urns and empties it onto the floor, spilling a large amount of ashes.“You utter Philistine!,” Navarre exclaims. “What are you doing?”“Avast, lubber,” Sir Oengus says. “No harm in stirring things up a bit.”Anyway. Our noble heroes finish their tour of the cavern and discover two more holes – each with at least one spider in it – before they get back to the bridge. Now, the chevalier enters the egg again and proceeds to the city plaza, where he has another look at the strange symbol in the center. Is it a door? A lid hiding some space underneath? Can the central bit be made to turn in some way? He is inspecting the groove filled with the silver powder when Sir Suvali turns up.“I have figured out what the symbols mean,” the sorcerer says. “They read, in order, Teleport, Portal, Gate, Strength, Protection, Permanence.”“Vraiment?,” the chevalier murmurs absentmindedly, taking a small bag from his pack.“Ho!,” Sir Suvali yells. “Stop!”The chevalier looks up in some dismay.“Comment?,” he protests. “It is silver!”“Tampering with the circles is dangerous!,” Sir Suvali says hastily. “We don’t need two fronts! The others are outside! Let’s deal with the spiders first!”“Hmm…,” the chevalier murmurs, getting to his feet and putting away the bag.The noble duo discuss the symbol for a while.“We should place one of the araignées on it,” the chevalier suggests.“Let’s talk to the others,” the sorcerer says.It must be around midday when Sir Suvali calls everyone to attention.“Gentlemen,” he starts. “I have studied the symbol and there are four things we can do. One, we turn off the light during the day to see if that triggers some sort of effect. Two, we kill the spiders. Three, we find out where the stream comes from. Four, we return to the main tunnel and see where it leads. I say we start killing the spiders.”“I strongly oppose the notion that we must kill everything we run into,” Navarre starts. “Why…”“We will vote,” the sorcerer cuts him short.A vote is taken and it is decided that our noble heroes will start with turning off the light. Some extra torches and lanterns are lit and Sir Suvali, Sir Eber, and Navarre climb to the roof of the ‛sorcerer’s home’, the others to the roof of the ‛temple’. The chevalier procures his new trumpet and blows a dirge, upon which Sir Suvali pulls the metal chain. Slowly, the metal latch starts to close until the sphere of light has wholly disappeared, leaving only a corona-like effect surrounding the latch. When nothing happens for less than a second, the sorcerer starts opening the latch again.“Hey!,” Navarre exclaims. “What are you doing?”Without a word, the sorcerer closes the latch again, shrouding the city in darkness once more. Shadows flicker in the light of the torches and lanterns, shapes move on the walls. It is all a bit creepy but nothing untoward happens for about ten minutes until the chevalier climbs down from the roof, proceeds to the center of the plaza and performs an elegant pavane.“Un petit ballet!,” he declares.“Maybe blood must flow on the altar before something happens?,” Sir Eber says, pulling a knife.“Not with the chevalier in the middle of the symbol,” Sir Suvali says.Shaking his head at all this, Navarre says: “And now? Are we going to try and lure one of the spiders onto the symbol?”“Wait, lure,” Sir Eber scoffs. “We should kill them all.”“My dear fellow!,” Navarre exclaims irritably. “Your murderous notions are starting to bore me.”Our noble heroes decide that they will try and lure one of the spiders onto the symbol and they return to the first hole with the spiders. With the others taking up positions along an imaginary path back to the egg, Sir Eber jumps across the moat to get some distance between himself and the hole and lights one of his fire bombs. He lobs it at the hole but misses it. He lights and hurls another one, this time with more success, and flames appear in the hole. Immediately, both spiders emerge at speed and scuttle to safety higher up the cavern wall. The creatures look like hunting spiders rather than weavers, perhaps best likened to enormous tarantulas.“Good lord!,” Navarre whispers under his breath.And then his noble companions start shooting, Sir Suvali first and obviously aiming to kill, and now Sir Eber hurls another fire bomb. It crashes and shatters right in front of the hole, the flames effectively blocking the spiders’ retreat, albeit too late to prevent one of them from getting back into the hole anyway.“Shoot it!,” Sir Eber, Sir Suvali, and the chevalier yell in unison, firing more arrows and hitting the remaining spider several times.Not wanting to risk the remaining spider charging Sir Eber across the moat, Navarre is left with little choice but to start shooting at the creature as well. When the spider is hit several times and attempts to retreat further back up the wall, Sir Eber hurls another fire bomb, this one directly at it, hitting it. Another hit by Sir Oengus sends the spider crashing down to the cavern floor burning. Sir Eber attempts to jump the moat but fails miserably and ends up in the water. When he eventually reaches the spider, it is dead.Apparently invigorated by this ‘success’, the chevalier charges to another opening known to contain a spider and has a look inside, only to find that there is no spider in it. He enters and has a good look around to see if he can ‛find any spider eggs’ but doesn’t find any.“Merde!,” he exclaims, before heading back to where Sir Suvali is inspecting the burnt corpse of the first spider.“They are not poisonous,” the sorcerer says after some time.What follows is a bit of a grisly scene, much, as it turns out, to the amusement of Sir Suvali, Sir Eber, Sir Oengus, and the chevalier. The latter drags the corpse back into the egg and onto the symbol on the plaza floor, to find that it remains stuck to his hands.“Mon Dieu!,” he cries in disgust. “Get it off!”Sir Eber draws his sword and cuts off the bits of the corpse that stick to the chevalier and now Sir Oengus and Sir Suvali start chopping up and dissecting the corpse. Then, since nothing has happened when the noble foursome dragged the corpse onto the symbol, Sir Eber, all worked up with slaying at least one of the spiders, half-jokingly suggests sacrificing one of Sir Suvali’s dogs on the altar on the roof of the ‛sorcerer’s home’. Sir Suvali, obviously not joking, speaks out against this and so the ranger withdraws his remark because it is evil.And so, after the noble foursome did manage to at least partially satisfy their murderous instincts and, after this, it is decided that our noble heroes will leave the egg tomorrow and get back to the tunnel that first got them there to explore it further – traveling deeper into the Underdark.Day 46: That night, just after midnight and at the beginning of his watch, Navarre is standing guard on the roof of the building where our noble heroes spend the night when he notices a strange light, shimmering very faintly in front of the doors leading to where the cave with the urns is. He is informed that he is not quite sure of what he sees and looks at the light for some time, finding that he can only actually see it when he is not looking at it directly. When he finally decides that the light must be ‘real’ and not his mind playing tricks on him, he wakes the others.“Sorry to wake you at this ungodly hour and all that,” he says apologetically when everybody is awake. “I rather think we should investigate a strange light effect at yonder gates.”“Good,” Sir Suvali says. “I will get to the roof of the temple so that I can keep an eye on you.”And so, after exchanging some looks, only four of our noble heroes get to the plaza, where Navarre now realizes that each of the eight ‘legs’ of the spider symbol points to its own set of doors in the shell. When our noble heroes get closer to the doors, they find that the strange light seems to disappear, much like a fog as one enters it.“Everybody ready?,” Navarre asks, advancing.“Not so fast, old boy,” Sir Eber says in mock imitation of his noble companion’s manner of speech and hastening to be at the front. “We wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself, what?”When our noble heroes open the doors, they are astonished to find that they are not looking out over the fungus garden as expected. Instead, they are looking into a room some six yards to a side and with a table and some chairs to the right and a larder or cupboard of sorts to the left, all a bit smaller than one would expect. On the table is an unlit candle with some cards and coins next to it.“What in blazes…!?,” Navarre starts, looking over his shoulder and back into the room. “What is this? Where is the cavern?”Sir Eber enters the room and starts inspecting some chains running from floor to ceiling against the back wall.“Another door?,” he suggests, pulling the chains.“You can come down now, mon ami!,” the chevalier yells to Sir Suvali. “All is well!”When the sorcerer arrives, he has a good look into the room and this somehow seems to be his cue to remark that it is the night of the full moon.“Wow!,” Sir Oengus exclaims. “Next door! Come on!”He speeds off and now the chevalier enters the room to help Sir Eber with the chains. The noble duo find them unwilling to move at first, as if corroded or stuck. When they finally get them to move, nothing really happens for some time.“They are running free,” Sir Eber says, looking down. “Latches.”The noble duo remove four latches and presently find the chains much heavier to pull. Grinding and clunking noises come from behind the wall.“It’s moving,” Sir Eber says, as part of the wall starts moving upward. “What is it? A sluice door? Bloody tight fit if you ask me.”Navarre takes some steps back and, after some time and without masses of water gushing in, the door is fully open. Beyond it is a dark tunnel running perpendicular to the room, twenty yards across and with the ceiling some five yards above a river flowing from left to right. A quay connects the room the river, obviously man-made though it was probably dwarves. Metal mooring rings are at various locations along the water’s edge.“I do declare!,” Navarre exclaims, still largely unable to take it all in and with shivers running down his spine. “Will it ever stop?”Sir Eber steps onto the quay and looks left and right.“Cold,” he says, as he gets to his kneews and puts his hand into the stream. “Let’s close the door and see what’s behind the rest.”He steps back into the room and starts moving the chains in the opposite direction, aided by the chevalier.When the door is closed, the latches back in place, Navarre composes himself.“Oengus!,” he yells. “Found anything?”“Can’t get the blasted thing to open!,” Sir Oengus calls from somewhere to his left.“We’re going to the entrance,” Navarre yells back at him, rather eager to see if there is still a way back to where they came from. En route, our noble heroes regroup and they eventually open the doors that first got them into the egg. Beyond, bathed in an eerie twilight, is the fungus garden. Our noble heroes have a good look through the doors, disinclined to actually leave the egg at this point, before closing them again.“We’ll take the doors at nine o’clock,” Sir Suvali says.These open easily. Beyond them is what seems to be an empty space filled with a fog-like substance. There is no floor, giving the impression that the egg is suspended in a strange bank of ghostly, glittering mist.Once again, Navarre has a hard time understanding what he sees. Not so his noble companions, who turn out to be much less impressionable where alien environments are concerned. Indeed, Sir Suvali has already stuck one leg into the fog and he presently sits down in the doorway, his legs dangling over the edge. Stranger still, he now announces that he starts ‘thinking about things, imagining and materializing them’ – the notes not really commenting on what happens when he does so, except that he doesn’t seem to be able to materialize light or things flying past and that he seems to be informed that things appear and then disappear again when one actually starts thinking about them.Still at a loss to make any sense of what he appears to be seeing, Navarre suggests our noble heroes start opening doors until they find something they can actually make sense of.“Belay that, lubber,” Sir Oengus says, tying a rope around his waste and handing the other end to Sir Eber. “Let’s see what happens when you dive into the deep.”“Adieu, amice,” the chevalier says, waving his hand and somehow managing to convey a sense of resignation, wonder, and regret. “Adieu!” But Sir Oengus has reconsidered jumping into the deep after getting some out of game advice and he now sits down and works himself across the threshold until he is hanging from it by his hands.“You can also walk normally,” Sir Suvali says to him. “Just walk until you hit the cavern wall.”Sir Oengus pulls himself back up and steps through the doorway without – much to Navarre’s surprise – plummeting into the foggy depths. Indeed, the fellow starts walking straight ahead as if he were on solid ground – albeit not without having to roll several d20s. Sir Eber ties another length to the rope and then Sir Oengus rolls “15”, utters a startled cry and plummets straight down into the foggy void until the rope catches him and he ends up swinging to and fro like a pendulum.“Good!,” Sir Suvali yells at him from the doorway. “Now start walking again!”“Hey! Schoolmaster!,” Sir Oengus yells back at the sorcerer as Sir Eber starts reeling him in. “You can do your own walking, alright?”“Okay, you’re right,” Sir Suvali says in a somewhat strangled voice and throwing the others some uncomfortable glances before regaining some of his composure.“I’ll go, if you will allow me, Oengus,” he says, when Sir Oengus is back in the egg, perhaps in an attempt to be funny. And with this, he steps into the void and starts walking, slowly descending as if he were walking down the fungus-covered hill, until he finally runs into what must be the cavern wall.“Everything is non-corporeal but substantial,” he hollers to his noble companions in the doorway. “Everything that is in the cavern is also in the gray space.”“Er..,” Navarre starts, when the sorcerer gets back to the egg. “Can you fly in there?”“Too risky,” the sorcerer returns pompously.“You seem to know a lot more about this than I do,” Navarre remarks testily when his noble companion doesn’t seem inclined to explain why this would be ‘too risky’. “Perhaps you could actually share some of that knowledge with the less informed?”After his usual pause for effect, Sir Suvali proceeds to explain that there are actually several ‘planes of existence’ and that this is one of them. It is known as the ‘ethereal plane’, the ‘realm of ether’, of which ‛all matter is made in one way or another’. None of this makes any sense to Navarre and, indeed, any of his noble fellows and so nobody thinks of asking why this ‘plane’ happens to be here at the moment.“Isn’t this where the Eminent Rector is trapped?,” Navarre asks, after pondering the whole thing for a while. “Maybe we can free him somehow, now that we have an access to this ‘plane’?”“Exactly what I wanted to say,” Sir Suvali says rather too quickly, which he didn’t.He procures his acorn amulet and starts to concentrate.“Finally!,” the voice of Augustus Magister Rex sounds in his mind.The sorcerer explains the situation, mentioning the Underdark, dwarves, the strange egg, the gate to the Ethereal Plane.“Can’t say I’ve got the foggiest about any of that,” the Eminent Rector replies. “Do write everything down, will you? Fascinating stuff!”“So there’s nothing you can tell us about dwarves?,” Sir Suvali asks. “Dragons?”“Nothing at all,” the Eminent Rector replies cheerfully. “Dragons, you say? Surely not the creatures children speak of?”Thus ends the conversation with Augustus Magister Rex, sorcier extraordinaire and former rector of the Royal Aristocratic Academy.“Well, that was helpful,” Navarre says, after Sir Suvali has informed his noble companions of the rector’s answers. “Anyway. Am I to understand from all this that the fungus garden is out there but not always? And that this rather depends on one maintaining one’s concentration?”“Yes,” Sir Suvali says.“Good lord.”On to the next set of doors it is, which open to what can perhaps best be described as a view of the night sky, a vast, unending realm of black dotted with what must be stars glittering in the distance. Far, far away, our noble heroes discern vague, silvery lines crossing the expanse. Sir Suvali steps outside and ends up floating, suspended in nothing, albeit with his magical wings deployed as it later turns out.“Where to?,” the chevalier asks.“I am,” Sir Suvali replies. He calls out to the Eminent Rector following some remarks to the extent of ‘wasn’t Augustus trapped in the Astral Plane instead of the Ethereal Plane?’ but he doesn’t get anything. He starts moving further away from the egg, to find that he flies rather than floats, mostly because of his wings. He folds his wings and now hovers in mid-nothing.“Do you have to believe in things in there as well?,” Navarre asks him, perhaps beginning to deal with the ‘reality’ of everything he is experiencing. The sorcerer doesn’t answer and shoots an arrow into the distance before throwing his bow after it. It doesn’t get very far and also ends up suspended hovering in mid … air?Rather despite himself, Navarre finds himself being taken by the moment. Is he really not to experience one of these ‘planes’? He steps through the doorway and ends up suspended in nothing like the sorcerer.“Good lord!,” he hollers to Sir Oengus in the doorway. ”I’m standing on nothing!”But now some players take this as their cue to demand an end to the session for reasons of it being late and all that and so all that remains to be said is that Navarre throws one end of his spidersilk rope to Sir Oengus and then tries to fly or float but that he cannot because there is a floor.</blockquote>

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