NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 1535193" data-attributes="member: 18280">Seventh SessionThat night, Desu left Selby-by-the-Water alone.  The moon was waning, but it was still the night before the half moon, and there was more than adequate light.  When Desu had been younger, he had gone on a vision quest.  His first vision quest had failed; he hoped that this one would be more successful.  If his companions waited, they could decide what to do when he returned.For most of the group, time ran swiftly by.  Ahern wove rope in the inn.  Krog worked as a fisherman, making occasional forays to catch one of the sheep he’d seen in the river.  Nift busked in marketplace and taproom, turning music into silver as his master had taught him.  The three days around the vernal equinox were Spring Carnival, and the inns began to fill up with guests from out-of-town.  Nift found himself joined by jugglers and dancing bears in the places he was accustomed to playing.  Fire-breathers and acrobats from the East played to throngs in the High Market.  Puppeteers played out legendary scenes, and guilds put on plays – histories, comedies, and tragedies, many with religious themes.  People went about with masks, and parades both planned and unplanned thronged the streets.During this time, Krog the Hungry searched for a halfling card-reader to tell his fortune.  Krog’s card reading went thus:  The card that represented his recent past was the Tower of Swords, representing great danger or shaky foundations in a martial matter.  The card that crossed him in the present was the Knight of Wands, reversed.  A man versed in arcane lore, but as it was reversed, a man who was only little versed in the occult or whose work against Krog was only incidental.  The final card, representing the near future was the Seven of Orbs reversed, a small sum of money coming his way.Marlo Shortshield visited the Shadow House, where he made enquiries about Keye.According to what Marlo could discover, Keye had been an evil wizard who had come to Selby-by-the-Water almost a decade ago.  He had slain quite a few people, and terrorized the locals with his skulks – humanoids that could camouflage themselves so as to appear nearly invisible.  Eventually, a warrior, a wizard, and a priest had come to Selby-by-the-Water in pursuit of Keye.  One of these people was Keye’s twin, Locke.  Keye fled west into Weirwood the Great, and the trio left in pursuit of him.  Nothing more of Keye could they say, save that they believed (and hoped) that he was dead.Marlo Shortshield returned to the inn and told Locke about the naked man in the alley.  He then told Locke what he had learned at the Shadow House.  “I feel that the name Keye may have something to do with you, Locke,” he said.  Marlo then convinced Locke to stand watch for him while he picked the pockets of a few travelers.  Whether due to bad luck or inexperience, Locke was soon arrested…though a barrister was able to sort out the matter before Locke even saw the inside of a Magistrate’s Office.Nift found female companionship with a gnome who was in the town for the Carnival.  From conversations around Selby, he learned that a group of adventurers had slain a giant ghost on a hill south of Selby, toward Rookhaven, called the Green Howe.  There was an underground passage into the Howe, but the adventurers fled from another ghost they saw therein.On the equinox itself, Marlo Shortshield decided to explore the sewers on his own.  Not telling anyone what he was doing, Marlo located a sewer grate that he could unlock.  Beyond the manhole cover was a tight stone tube descending a little more than twelve feet into the sewer tunnel.  Marlo quickly scrambled down the iron rungs set into the stone, closing the manhole cover above him.He found himself in an X-shaped intersection made of tunnels are roughly six feet square, with a two-foot wide channel carved into the center of the floor.  With the spring flooding, though, the channel overflowed, so that Marlo stood in a stream of waste flowing slowly southward, both to the east and to the west.  The smell was overpowering.  The flow westward seemed stronger, and Marlo followed it in that direction.  Loose debris and rotting waste floated along the top of the water.  Vents to the surface, occurring on an average every thirty feet, provided dim light and some scant relief.Not far from the intersection, Marlo found a stone door in the sewer tunnel wall.  It was locked, but Marlo pulled out his lock picks.  After a few seconds, he heard a faint click as the lock’s tumblers fell into place.  He opened the thick stone door, revealing a twelve-foot square room containing sewer workers’ gear.  Several sets of man-sized hip waders hung from pegs along the walls, as well as sewer workers’ masks.  Marlo stole a mask – it greatly reduced the stench!As he made to exit the room, he noticed a group of small discs, milky white with flecks of red, floating down along the top of the sewage.  They were moving faster than the rest of the filth, so Marlo stepped back into the room and closed the door.  He didn’t know what the things were, and had a natural caution.  He waited long enough for the discs to pass, and then opened the door again.  The things seemed to be gone.  He headed back the way he had come.Going to the southeast, Marlo found a dry secondary tunnel.  It was only about three feet in diameter, but as a halfling Marlo was fairly short, and could walk nearly upright in it.  There were fewer vents here, and smaller ones, making the entire area gloomier than the main tunnels had been.  Creeping down the shadowy passage, Marlo found his curiosity getting the better of his caution.Seeing a darker shadow ahead, Marlo peered forward.  He realized it was a body, though whether dead or alive he could not tell.  “Hello?” he called.  “Who’s there?  Do you need help?”  The body shifted a little.  So, whoever it was still lived.  Still, there was no answer.Marlo came closer.  Having waded through sewage and still wearing the sewer worker’s mask, he didn’t notice the awful stench of the thing that waited for him down the tunnel.  At last, he drew close enough to see that the body, though it was moving, was animated with a dark parody of life.  It was crusted with filth.The tunnel was low, and the undead creature was as tall as a man.  It wouldn’t have been able to stand and run.  There was a chance that Marlo could have escaped.  Instead, he drew his sword and pressed forward.That duel in the darkness was grim, and short.  The low tunnel gave Marlo an advantage.  He could dance out of the thing’s reach as it tried to claw and bite him.  He stabbed again and again, severing unliving muscle with each stroke.  The creature was weakening.  If he could keep up the dance for a few seconds longer…half a minute at most…it would be done.The unliving thing reached out one long arm, its drool-covered claw scraping Marlo’s cheek.  Marlo could feel a cold numbness spreading through him.  He felt another claw rake along his ribs, drawing him into the creature’s hideous once-human maw.  Its teeth sank into his neck, and he knew no more.Marlo Shortshield had not told anyone where he was going, and the group of adventurers did not know him well.  When Desu returned from his vision quest, having secured the goodwill of a horse spirit, they held a council to determine what their next course should be.“Keye went west,” Locke noted.  “Perhaps he went to the ruined building we saw on the Selwyn River?”“I could do some looking around,” Nift offered.  The group agreed to give Nift a week to research, until the new moon on the 30th of Burgeoning.  Then they would hire a ship to take them back upriver to the ruins.To settle his curiosity, Desu eventually went to the river to see the sheep Krog had said could be seen there.  They were indeed there, no less real than the quarter lamb Krog had eaten the evening before.  There had been some discussion as to what these sheep were – Nift had claimed that some people said they had seen shepherds beneath the water as well.  Krog had thought they were ghost sheep.Desu found some grass growing not far from the docks and went back.  He reached into himself, feeling his connection to the Green and to all living things.  Through that connection, he befriended one of the sheep, drawing it from the water.  It looked much like the sheep he had seen on the surface, but looking within its mouth he could see that it had something not unlike gills within the flesh of its throat. Unwilling to take the aquatic sheep with him – how could he care for it? – he released it, and, with good will toward the Lakashi druid, the sheep slipped underwater again.By working his way through mounds of old and moldering paperwork, Nift finally discovered the manifest of the ship that had brought Keye to Selby-by-the-Water.  It had been the Moonraker, captained by Roderick Gryphon and registered to the Cloven Isles in Lake Esmire.  Other than this, there was little to find, for the Harbormaster’s Office didn’t keep organized files.On the final day of Burgeoning, they hired the River Princess, captained by Mariel Slower, to take them to Long Archer.  Because of the speed of the Selwyn River, it was necessary to pull the ship along with donkey drivers that followed the shore on either side.  On the fourth day, they came to Turtle Lake, which took a day to cross, and on the eighth day, in the early afternoon, they reached the ruins they sought.  This was the exposed corner of an otherwise-buried ruined building on the southern bank.  They paid half fee for the ride back to Selby-by-the-Water, and Ahern went with the River Princess to ensure its return in three day’s time.They took the ship’s boat to the shore, offloaded, and waved the ship off.  Then they examined the area.  They were surprised to discover three large, well-hidden birchbark canoes.The buried building seemed to have been made from close-fitted masonry, without benefit or mortar or cement.  Nonetheless, the people who made it had skill in such things, for it had long endured, even buried beneath the forest.  A small part of a corroded bronze door was visible, but it would take much work to uncover it for use.  In the exposed corner, part of the ceiling had been broken into, making for a much easier entrance.Looking down, they saw that there was a fair jump to the bottom.  They tied a rope to an exposed, worn granite pillar outside the ruined building, and climbed down.  Krog led the way.They came down into a dimly lit chamber, about thirty feet from east to west, and perhaps twenty feet north to south.  Beyond this area, to the south, a stairway as wide as the antechamber itself descended into the ground.  To the north they saw a pair of great cast bronze double doors ten feet wide – they opened outward, and so were blocked by earth.  The doors had images of stylized wolves standing in relief upon them.  Similar images were carved into the walls.  In the years since the ceiling was breached, loam and leaves have fallen into this place.The only light came in through the hole in the ceiling.  They lit torches, and descended the stairs.  The stairs descended ten feet at a 45-degree angle, coming out into a larger room.  The end of the stairs must have been near the water table, for the bottom two stairs were covered in water.The stairs opened out into a room some fifty feet wide, going farther than their torch could show.  A row of five-foot wide pillars, shaped something like dark trees, lined the walls on either side.  There was a ten-foot space between each pillar, and a five-foot space between the pillars and the walls.  The walls themselves were carved with images of prowling wolves, which seemed to flicker and move in the torchlight.  The whole are was covered with murky, brackish water to a depth of about a foot, making footing treacherous.They moved cautiously into the room.  When they were thirty feet in, they could see that more stairs went down in a flight fifty feet wide.  However, the building fell completely below the water table there.  After little more than five feet, the far stairs were completely submerged.Krog paused for a second.  “Locke and Keye!” he said.  “I get it!”They had gone about forty feet from the first stair when four tenebrous wolves stepped from the shadows behind them, blocking off the exit to the room.  At the same time, four shadowy skeletons appeared, blocking the way to the south.As the group readied their weapons, Desu reached into the Green, trying to find something that would respond to his call and hold the wolves fast.  The only trees there, though, were carven pillars that slept the sleep of stone.  Nift began playing to inspire their courage.  Krog fell back toward the wolves as Locke confronted the skeletons.Their opponents stepped in and out of shadows as though they were phantoms, or not real, the sharp lines of their substance blurred like coal drawings smudged by a careless thumb.  The wolves tore into Krog, pulling him down.  Locke could feel his greatsword connect, but it seemed to do little to his dark foe; he could see no sign of hurt.  Risking himself, Desu stepped in to heal Krog magically.“Friends, we cannot prevail here,” he said.Nift stopped playing.  The sure-footed gnome skittered toward the northern stairs, dodging dark blades and snapping jaws to gain the first steps.  Once he was on the stairs, the wolves paid him no more heed.“Get to the stairs!” he called out.  Then he scrambled up the stairs, first to reach the rope and, beyond it, the clean air.Nift’s companions found the way harder, for the water-covered floor was slick, and their opponents supernaturally swift.  Locke fell once and scrambled to his feet, blood dripping from a score of wounds.At least, as they retreated, the skeletons ceased their attack.  However, as first Desu then Locke gained the stairs, the wolves turned all of their attention to Krog, who was quickly pulled down again.  As the druid and fighter looked on in dismay, the shadowy wolves savaged Krog, spattering blood and flesh on pillars and walls.“I had no more healing to give,” Desu said.Locke placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder.  “We can do no more here.  Let us leave while we still can.”Later they went back into the ruin.  Though they could see neither wolves nor skeletons – and did not believe they would appear until they had gone far enough into the pillared hall – they were cautious.  The wolves did not return.  They gathered what they could find of Krog and bore him from that place.  By the shores of the Selwyn River, they raised a cairn of loose stones and buried him beneath it.And so that place robbed them of its first victim.  Little did they know that, within a short time, they would raise another cairn beside that of Krog the Hungry.</blockquote>

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