SUNDAY NIGHT TEASER (12.7.08)
1) The investigation of Jorgenfist's library level begins.
2) The first 'librarian' is a bit miffed at having noisy adventurers stomping around his library, so he makes an example of two of them...a 'small' example...
3) The next 'librarian' is no more understanding than the first, and his wing of the library has a nasty habit of causing noisy violators to lose their lunch...and their eyesight!
4) Then we have a third 'librarian' who enjoys separating groups of noisy children behind stone walls and then proceeding to divest them of their pesky magic items.
5) The final 'librarian' of the night must have been a fan of Sleepy Hollow, since he, you know, lacks a head and all. Oh, and he has six cheerful library aids to help him file books back...and crack open the skulls of trespassers. Talk about your Library Police!
THE LIBRARY LEVEL
The stone passage wound down through the bedrock in a corkscrew for several hundred feet before the walls changed to worked granite. They were regular, but strangely rounded…hard angles had been polished away to smooth corners, rendering the entire area somewhat disorienting to look upon. With no hard lines defining edges, the place seemed subtly alien. As the hall finally leveled off, it branched sharply at right angles. One branch ended in a massive cave-in that completely filled the corridor, while the other seemed to open into a large chamber a few dozen feet along.
A pair of double doors stood in the southern wall of the room. The floor was made of glossy, polished black and gray marble. To the east, what might have been another exit had long since collapsed. Yet, nothing in the room compared to the curious effects that its walls had…looking in, it was bizarrely impossible to judge the chamber’s exact dimensions. Any wall looked at directly remained stable, but everywhere else through peripheral vision, the walls seemed to stretch away into impossibly infinite gulfs, as if the room itself were somehow ‘unhooked’ from its own physicality. Duerten, at the head of the column, slowly entered the chamber, his eyes squinting as he struggled to bring its features into focus. No sooner had he crossed the threshold than a wave of vertigo washed over him as he was overwhelmed with nausea. At the same time, he felt his body twist and convulse, and he collapsed to his hands and knees. A moment later, the seizure passed, though the nausea remained. Duerten climbed slowly to his feet, but when he looked around, the room had changed in perspective again, this time seeming larger than it had. Suddenly, the priest realized what had happened. The room had not grown larger…he had been shrunk to no more than half his original size! To make matters worse, a hulking shadow detached itself from the far side of the room and began lumbering towards him. Numerous severe-looking runes sparked and flickered upon the body of the towering giant, seemingly seared into the creature’s skin. Although its eyes looked dull, its muscles bulged grotesquely, as if barely contained by a thin layer of flesh, and it moved unnaturally fast for a creature of such ponderous size. A horrid expression, either rage or pain, contorted its features as it sped forward. Duerten barely had the strength to raise his shield over his head as the giant’s huge club came crashing down. When it struck, the dwarf felt the heavy steel buckle from the impact, and the shock thrummed down his arm, numbing it to the shoulder.
Dexter darted into the room, rushing to the side of his friend. Disorienting nausea made his head swim for a moment, but it quickly passed. As the rune-scarred giant raised its club again, the rogue stabbed upward with his sword, impaling the brute’s thigh. The giant didn’t react. Though the wound bled profusely, he took no notice. Snarling, he began to swing the club again, but in that instant, at Reaper’s command, Galenmir stepped forward and impaled the giant through the chest with one of the long ranseurs taken from the trolls. Again, the brute did not react as in pain, but staggered back as bright red blood bubbled and frothed from its pierced lung. Air wheezed from the sucking wound, and the giant stared down at it uncomprehending. Dexter took to the opportunity to slip behind the goliath and drive both his blades through its kidneys. Still not uttering a sound, the rune-enslaved behemoth toppled to the floor.
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Duerten stood impatiently as Wesh reversed the shrinking charm, muttering under his breath constantly. Once the spell was complete, and he had regained his normal size, the companions pressed deeper into the labyrinth. There was only one way to leave the room, and that corridor was straight and unobstructed, opening into an even larger chamber at its far end. Runes were carved in bands along the walls, and the room was lit unnervingly by a reddish glow from the slowly burning flames in a shallow fire pit in its center. An immense iron cauldron, its sides emblazoned with an etching of a seven-pointed star, stood above the fire. Smoke rose from its unseen bubbling contents, and a halo of human bones and fragments of what might have been dried flesh lay scattered around the cauldron’s three-pronged base.
“Hold up,” Dex whispered from his position at point, his hand held up in warning. “I thought I saw something.”
The rogue peered intently into the smoke-filled room, looking for the shadowy movement he thought he’d caught a fleeting glimpse of within the gloom. Cautiously, he stepped forward…and immediately wished he hadn’t. The haze was cloying, and it burned his eyes like acid, causing them to tear and blur until he could no longer see anything. Worse, inhaling the vapors was starting to make him feel nauseated, and before he could stop himself, he began to heave and wretch violently. He didn’t see the large shape moving towards him.
Adso, however, did see it. He didn’t know what was happening to Dex, and he didn’t know if he would be affected the same way, but he never hesitated. He went to the aid of his friend. As he stepped into the smoke, he took a deep breath and held it. He looked around to get his bearings, but suddenly he was struck by something that felt like a sledgehammer made of stone. He reeled, and saw a massive figure standing over him. It looked like a living statue, but its face was skull-like with glowing blue runes carved into its forehead. It raised one giant fist and brought it down again, smashing into the monk’s face. Adso’s nose shattered, and for a moment, blood and tears blurred his vision. When it cleared again, there were two giants above him. For a moment, he thought his brain had been damaged and his sight doubled, but then he made out the skeletal features of Galenmir as the undead general struggled with the hulking construct.
From the doorway, the others watched the titanic battle. Cruemann leveled his bow, struggling to draw bead on the right target. Swearing, he released, and let out a sigh of relief a moment later when his shaft pierced the stony hide of the golem. Beside him, he heard Wesh chanting, and a moment later, a veritable hail of sharp stone appeared in mid-air above the behemoth, burying it in an avalanche of debris. Adso quickly flipped to his feet and shoved Dexter back towards the hallway.
“Whew,” Cruemann said as he turned towards his friends, smiling. “That was a close ca…”
His words were cut short as a small globe of fire struck him in the face. He cried out, batting at the flames crisping his skin, and the others whirled to look behind them. There in the corridor down which they had just come was a lumbering humanoid shape standing at least ten-feet in height. It looked to have been born of living ore and sculpted of pig iron. A massive maw split its prodigious belly and through the sockets of its eyes, flared nostrils, and both mouths flickered an angry glow, as if a furnace raged within its bowels. The impression was cemented as its jagged belly maw belched forth a blaze of cinders and sparks. Duerten’s heart quailed when he saw it, for knew it for what it was…a scanderig…a forgefiend…a creature straight out of bedtimes stories told to dwarven children to frighten them out of bad behavior. And now here one was, as real as the stone beneath his feet, and twice as terrifying as he could ever have imagined.
Before Duerten could give voice to his horror, the forgefiend gestured and a stone wall abruptly materialized out of thin air, sealing off the corridor and trapping Wesh, Dexter and Cruemann on the opposite side with the scanderig. Wesh didn’t know what in the Hells he was facing, but the look on Duerten’s face had told him everything he needed to know. Grabbing Cruemann and Dexter by the shoulders, he spoke a few brief words and the three of them vanished in a flash of light, appearing a moment later back among their companions. Cautiously, the group backed away from the wall into the mist, suspiciously eyeing the barrier, waiting for the fiend to reappear.
“Let’s keep movin’,” Duerten said shakily after several minutes without any sign of the creature. None of his allies disagreed, and they quickly crossed the chamber to the far side where another short corridor led to what was apparently another chamber. Adso and Duerten took point, closely followed by Galenmir’s rattling bones, then Cruemann and Wesh. The chill in the next room wasn’t quite enough to frost the floors and walls, but it was certainly enough to frost their breath. The room itself contained what must have been two dozen suits of armor mounted on what appeared to be frozen or preserved ogres, trolls and hill giants, all staged as if rallying for war. As Adso took in the sight, he saw one of the figures, nearly eleven feet tall, dressed in plate armor and holding a wicked looking hatchet in each hand, turn its helmeted head towards him. The helm was open-faced, but inside there was no head, only a raw, ragged stump of a neck.
Sinclair and Reaper were still in the smoke-filled chamber, helping the still retching Dexter between them. They were trying to get the rogue clear of the choking vapors, but before they could reach the connecting corridor, a second stone wall appeared across it, separating them from their companions. Worse, the scanderig reappeared as well, stepping out of an adjacent wall as if it were made of mist.
Duerten came to an abrupt stop behind Adso as the headless zombie began stalking towards them. Simultaneously, six more of the previously frozen corpses began to animate as well, shambling drunkenly behind their master. Adso moved quickly to interpose himself between the undead and the others, but suddenly the other six zombies abruptly stopped short, as if they’d run into an invisible barrier.
“That should hold them!” Wesh grinned savagely.
Adso nodded in gratitude, but as he turned back towards the headless lord, the creature slashed viciously at him with one of its axes. As the blade tore his flesh, the monk felt his arm go numb, and when he looked down at the wound, he saw that the edges of it were caked in ice, freezing the blood before it could begin to flow.
Reaper snapped a wand out of his sleeve and turned towards the forgefiend, but before he could bring it to bear, the huge central maw of the creature snapped down, crushing the thin wood to splinters, and barely missing the necromancer’s fingers. Desperately, Reaper backed away from the chortling thing, hastily calling up one of his most potent spells as it advanced. As he spat out the curse, the scanderig abruptly lurched to a halt, rigid, staring blankly ahead as if confused. Suddenly, Sinclair was at Reaper’s side, his high pitched voice rattling off a spell of his own. As he completed the charm, the scanderig began to giggle. This quickly escalated into a full-fledged belly laugh, and then into uncontrollable gales of hilarity. The round-bodied monstrosity keeled over on its back, howling incoherently with laughter as the gnome’s spell convulsed through it.
“I think…maybe…I can handle it…from here…,” Dexter gulped, wiping spittle from his chin. His face was still pale, greenish, but his vision had cleared and as he clutched his blades, his hands were steady. Calmly, he walked over to the guffawing forgefiend and began stabbing it…repeatedly, and with deadly acuity.
Adso began backing away from the armored zombie as it weaved its axes menacingly through the air. Suddenly, it lunged, but before it could reach the monk, a long ranseur abruptly protruded from its chest. Adso looked up and over his shoulder, and saw the hulking form of Galenmir standing behind him, the toothy smile frozen on the skeleton’s face in terrible rictus. A moment later, a tremendous blast completely shattered the zombie’s breastplate, and the flesh beneath as a frenetic bombardment of bolts shot from Wesh’s hands. The headless ghoul collapsed, its torso a smoking ruin. Adso didn’t pause to admire the wizard’s handy work. Instead, he ran towards the stone wall separating him from his friends, knowing full well what it portended. Without hesitation, the monk began hammering at the wall with his bare hands and feet, heedless of the skin that tore from his flesh or the blood that began to flow freely. Incredibly, cracks began to appear in the stone, followed by chunks of masonry falling to the floor. In a matter of moments, he managed to breach a large section, and he quickly darted through. To his surprise, his three companions stood waiting for him on the other side, Reaper and Sinclair supporting a woozy-looking Dexter between them, the unmoving forgefiend lying on the floor behind them. Adso took Dexter’s arm over his own shoulder and helped the rogue back through the wall. Once the group was together again, they made their way past the headless corpse, glancing to their right as the other zombies banged impotently against Wesh’s invisible force wall.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
