Session #44
Session #44
Part One: Slow and steady wins the race. . .
“There is magic here,” Kazrack said. He was holding three of his runestones in his open palm and looking from them to the right door at the rear of the chamber. “It is very strong. Stronger than I think any of us can cast.”
The door was made of bluish-black stone, and framed in a black stone. They broke the continuity of the mosaic that encompassed three of the chamber’s four walls.
Beorth was examining the mosaic and taking in the story it told of a man’s birth, life and then his journey into the afterlife.
Belear, Ratchis and Kazrack had dispensed the healing miracles of the their respective deities, and the group felt strong after their victory.
It was agreed that Captain Adalar would remain on the lowest level of the shaft with the three young brothers, Baervard, Helrahd and Kirla, in order to guard the exit. They were in a position where they could be called for support, or to prepare the escape. This was also where the others, Ratchis, Kazrack, Martin, Jeremy, Derek, Blodnath, Belear and Beorth, would return to camp when fatigue suggested that a day was done.
“I can attempt to break the enchantment on the morrow when I can prepare my orisons and prayers,” Belear said.
The other door was askew, as the stone above it was cracked and pressed down on it. The passage beyond was clearly collapsed. Kazrack and Blodnath began to examine it to insure that it did not speak ill of the integrity of the rest of the area.
“I think the hole in the floor pretty much shows us this place isn’t stable,” Derek quipped, winking at Jeremy, who chuckled.
Kazrack frowned at the party’s newest member.
It was agreed that they’d camp here for the night to guard the remaining chain and their way in and out to this portion of the subterranean structure that went deeper than any save Beorth expected. They were afraid something might emerge from the doors or the crack in the tiled floor and cut the remaining chain, blocking them from probing deeper without great effort of getting through the heavy plated metal door.
As they did not need to rest and prepare spells, Derek, Blodnath and Jeremy took turns watching while the others slept (except of course, for Martin).
Isilem, the 16th of Prem – 565 H.E.
It was hard to tell if the sun was shining above, but hours later they all awoke in the dark. Martin lit a torch, and commented that the party was running out of natural light sources now that both lanterns had been lost.
The watch-mage used his mending spells to fix the broken chain links of the door, while Jeremy held them together, and Beorth propped the door with Derek’s help. Ratchis, Kazrack and Belear prayed and prepared their spells, and soon Ratchis was using the lesser restoration prayer to restore some of Beorth’s strength and some of his own from the battle with the final shadow the previous day.
After sharing some rations, everyone gathered and waited while Belear tried his hand at breaking the enchantment on the right hand door. He chanted some words in dwarvish and reached forward as if to touch the door with his open palm, but stopped short and grunted.
Wiping sweat from his brow, he stepped back and sighed.
“I believe I successfully broke of the spells on the door, but I think there may have been more than one,” the elder priest said.
In a moment, Ratchis cast an orison and he could see the blue dweomer shimmering on the door. He nodded in agreement with the dwarven priest.
“I will open the door,” Kazrack said.
Ratchis shrugged and Jeremy rolled his eyes.
“I will cast some of my gods’ blessings upon me to help protect me when I do,” Kazrack added. He always seemed flustered at the party’s reactions to his willingness to risk his life.
Martin looked to Beorth nervously, but the paladin’s face was placid as always.
Kazrack got down on one knee before the door and prayed to his gods in his racial tongue. “Lords and Lady please watch over me. Forever guide me in the right direction and help me to resist all things that would take from that path whether they be dangers or temptations.” (1)
Kazrack stood and pushed at the door. It was very heavy, and he had to put his weight into it. The sound of stone scraping on stone filled the room, and the frame settled as the weight of the door came off of it. Suddenly, Kazrack felt the door move in a strange way and he flinched back. The door was open a crack, but the surface of it was changing, melding into the protruding face of gnome, with a large mole on its nose, and scaly skin.
“Found the lair of my father have you?” The stone moved as if fluid, moving the jaws and lips. The voice was shrill, like a gnome gargling shards of glass with his ale. “Well, let this be a lesson to ya!”
Everyone froze, and could feel every muscle in their body tense up. All except Kazrack, who quickly turned away from the door in horror of what was about to happen. Martin braced himself for whatever horrible spell was about to be released by the opening of the door.
But nothing happened.
It was silent for another moment, and then everyone let a breath out. Belear must have successfully dispelled the warding spell, but the magic mouth had still been there.
“There is something very satisfying about that,” Jeremy said.
Martin nodded.
Kazrack and Ratchis pushed the heavy stone door straight back. It fit into a nook opposite it, making the entrance lead right into a narrow hall that turned right, and led down a very narrow and very steep staircase of small steps.
Kazrack quickly wedged pitons into the crease around the stone block that served as a door to keep from it being pushed back in place from the other side, though how one might get to the other side was unclear to him. He snorted at the shoddy and unmaintained workmanship of this place, and thought of the secret dwarven carved chambers of his people back in Verdun (2), and of the dim memories of his youth in Llurgh-Splendar-Tor. His brief hammerfalls echoed through the narrow corridor, sand and grit poured from the creases between stones.
Ratchis ducked his head, as he lead the way, long sword in hand. The rest followed, Jeremy taking up the rear, both he and Martin carried among the last of the party’s torches.
“I’m the rear guard from Neergaard!” Jeremy guffawed. Derek snickered, and Martin rolled his eyes.
“Keep it quiet back there,” Ratchis hissed, looking back over his shoulder.
“What was that Ratchis?” Jeremy exaggerated the gesture of putting his free hand to his ear. “I can’t hear you over Beorth and Kazrack stamping around in their armor!”
Ratchis growled. Derek frowned at Jeremy, but had to cover his mouth to keep from laughing.
At the bottom of the steps, the narrow corridor turned left, and obviously opened into some kind of chamber. There was a wooden sarcophagus leaning upright in the corner. Ratchis noted the absence of many cobwebs across the narrow corridor. Someone had been here, and had been here often, but perhaps not that recently.
Ratchis stepped past the sarcophagus, and stepped to the right leaving room for Kazrack and others to come past. Beorth stopped at the sarcophagus, and spoke a quiet prayer. He then pulled it open to ensure its occupant was not animated. A cloud of bone dust erupted when it was open, and the clatter of the disturbed shards. He enlisted Kazrack’s help in lower in it down. The paladin spoke another prayer over it, and then pushed it to the side out of the way.
This was a small antechamber that was connected by a narrow hallway to a longer and wider room. It was mostly cloaked in darkness. They crept in to find an office or lab of sorts. On the right was a stone slab like a body might be laid out on. Above it, built into the corner of the wall was a book shelf. There were nine books. The third one was larger, squarer and thicker. Across from this on the left was a wooden desk covered in papers. There were shards of glass scattered atop them, and all over the floor. A rotting wooden chair lay on its side, among puddles of some deep blue liquid, and bright red liquid that poured from the desktop. Where the liquids met they did not mix, but the red flowed quickly over the blue, pooling on the other side. At the head of the room was an immense bronze statue of woman.
Kazrack moved forward never taking his eyes off the statue, but being careful not step in the strange liquid. Beorth came up behind him. Martin made his way forward and got down on all fours to examine the liquid.
The woman in the statue had four arms. The upper right and the lower left held curved bladed swords that looked like over-sized butcher knives. The upper left hand was making a clawing motion, while the lower right held a bronze depiction of a human head by its wire hair. Despite the fact that she had four breasts, and her expression was filled with rancor, full lips retracted to reveal sharpened teeth, she still had a menacing beauty about her. The statue was bolted to the wall from its bat-like wings in order to give her the appearance of coming through the wall, and leaping over her pedestal. She had tiny horns nearly hidden by her long flowing hair. Despite its content, Kazrack was flabbergasted by the workmanship. Immediately below the statue, flanked by cold bronze braziers was a stone sarcophagus atop a slab of stone. There were no markings on the sarcophagus of any kind, but there was a large metal padlock gleaming as it hung through metal rings sunk into the stone.
Ratchis began to carefully pull the books off the shelf and pass them down to Derek who laid them out on the stained stone slab. He noted that there were silver markings on the spines of the books, circles and vertical lines; as if numbering them. The markings seemed to have been added long after the books’ binding.
Martin had moved over to the desk, lifting the hem of his robes to keep them from dragging into the unidentifiable liquids. He shuffled through the papers. The tips of the crusty parchment crumbled to dust in his hands, and he began to turn them more carefully. They were written in some flowing script that reminded him of root dwarven runes from which the common script is based. (3) However, there was marginalia obviously written a lot more recently, and in the coded script of the gnomish people, called Binar.
Kazrack dropped three runestones into his hand spoke a prayer. Soon he was checking the room for magical auras. The lock on the sarcophagus shone brightly, only slightly less bright were aura around the second and fourth books that had been taken down from the shelf.
“We are running out of torches and thus light,” Beorth commented. Kazrack nodded. Ratchis and Martin, however, were too busy looking to the statue.
“Who is she?” Martin asked aloud, pointing to the statue.
“Obviously, she is a demon of some kind,” Ratchis replied.
“Mozek’s mother?” Kazrack asked.
“Could be,” Martin replied. “Though the warding on the door made reference to what we can only assume was Mozek’s father.”
“You think this place was his?” Beorth asked. He had to struggle to remember all the fractured details that Jana had given him about the gnomes, the fiends and the other troubles the party had been involved with, as his own memory of it all was blank.
“Even a gnome could build a place better than this,” Kazrack said, gesturing to the architecture.
“It seems too old,” Martin speculated. “Even gnomes do not live this long. My guess is he found it.” The watch-mage flipped through one of the books that did not detect as magical. Inside he found better-preserved pages in the same script, and more gnomish marginalia.
‘Do you think he wrote these books?” Beorth asked.
“I think he found them,” Martin replied. “He obviously translated them. The marginalia could be bits of translation, or if he knew the language well could be notes about whatever they say.”
“You can’t read them?” Kazrack asked.
“I don’t quite recognize the script,” Martin said. He began to flip through another book and saw many plates with anatomical drawings of types of undead. “It seems like some ancient form of common, or maybe a corrupt form of dwarvish.
Kazrack walked over and looked. He cocked his head and grunted. “I can’t make heads or tails of it.”
“Nor can I,” Belear said, he was flipping through another book.
“On the morrow I can cast a spell that will help me comprehend what is written here,” Martin said.
“Lehrethonar grants me a similar miracle,” Kazrack said. Martin nodded.
“In the meantime, let’s put them away,” Ratchis interjected.
The books were split up among the party. Jeremy carried the biggest and heaviest one – but each of the books covers seemed to be metal covered in some kind of black (or stained) reptilian hide. They were heavy.
“And what about light?” Beorth asked.
Ratchis looked down at the chair, and then over at the desk. After a ton of noise, these were smashed into makeshift torches. The extra lantern oil (now that they had no lanterns) was used to soak the large wooden sticks, and a winter blanket was shredded and also dipped in oil and wrapped around the heads of them. They would not be as good as torches made by an expert, but they would do for now. In all they were able to make two-dozen makeshift torches. These were divvied up as well.
Kazrack was looked around the room, and noticed a trap door in the floor to the left of the statue and behind a brazier. The brazier was moved. Blodnath came forward and looked for traps while Derek looked on from over his shoulder. Jeremy crowded the old dwarf as well, and he hissed and spit at them, gesturing for them to move away.
“But I know how to do that stuff,” Derek said.
“That’s nice kid,” Blodnath said. “Maybe if you keep distracting me I won’t find the trap and when I did you can take a turn, eh?”
Derek frowned, and he and Jeremy moved away. Almost immediately, Blodnath leapt up to his feet and shook his head, “It’s safe. There ain’t nothing here.”
He reached down and pulled it open. There was a shower of dust below. He moved out of the way to let the others by. Kazrack went down first, followed closely by Ratchis.
Below was a short metal ladder leading down to a very small passage that went off to the left, and it was so low Ratchis had to get down on his knees to get through it. Fortunately, it was not very long and after about twenty feet opened up in an area with another ladder going up. Ratchis opened the trap door above and immediately heard a shuffling sound and a very deep grinding moan.
“There are undead up here,” the half-orc called down and leapt up out of the trapdoor to leave room for Kazrack who quickly climbed up. Beorth and Jeremy were close behind him. Beorth held a torch.
Ratchis moved forward in the narrow passage with taller vaulted ceilings and little alcoves holding embalmed dead and skeletons on either side. Ahead the passage broadened into a room, Ratchis could see a pillar, but then his view was blocked. Towards him lurched a nine-foot tall muscular humanoid, but its leathery hide was blackened, and it wore a leather harness, as if it had once been used as a beast of burden. It forehead was swollen, and its eyes vacant.
“Ogre zombies!” Ratchis cried out and stepped forward to where the chamber widened to hold the entrance, holding his sword up to strike when they reached him. Unfortunately, Ratchis forgot that the things fists could reach him before the body would be in range of his blade. He felt the knotted fists of the thing slam him with incredible might on the neck and shoulders, and he crumbled to the ground. The other ogre zombie, reached down and slammed him again in the side of the head. Ratchis moaned and tried desperately to roll back to his feet, though the pain was excruciating.
Kazrack came leaping over his companion, light flail in hand to deal with the narrow space, but there was a resound crack as the undead ogres slammed their meaty fists in the dwarf’s face. Kazrack’s blow never connected, he found himself lying on his back beside Ratchis.
Beorth did not hesitate. While the ogre arms were still outstretched, and recoiling back to strike again, the paladin leapt within their reach and calling upon the divine vengeance of his god, cracked the closer one’s skull open. One of its milky eyeballs burst and dribbled down its face, as the other side of the staff slammed into its chin.
The paladin moved aside, allowing Derek and Jeremy to move in the narrow confines of the chamber and the corridor. Jeremy tore open one of its legs, while Derek’s battle-axe bit into its ribs. It fell over, pouring gray-blue embalming fluid across the sandy floor.
Derek slipped past the lumbering hulk, but was surprised to see two more of the thick forms shambling out of the rear of the passage which continued past this small chamber.
“There are more!” he warned, as Ratchis scrambled to his feet and asked Nephthys to bless some stone he picked up off the ground.
Jeremy ducked a blow by the remaining ogre zombie at the front of the chamber, while Derek scrabbled to avoid the blows of the two that came into the room from the other side.
“I could use a little help here,” Derek whined.
Jeremy parried the blow of the ogre before him, and using the force of the dead arm pressed down on the flat of his blade to swing his body towards Derek, and then drawing his short sword with his left hand he shoved it deeply into the gut of one of the zombies menacing Derek.
“That’s what you get for going ahead by yourself,” Jeremy quipped with a smile. “Who do you think you are, Kazrack?”
He followed this up with a slash across its chest; a piece of rib ricocheted back and forth across the room for a moment, but the thing would not fall. Derek finished it off with a chop of his axe.
Kazrack got his wind back and stood, slamming the head of his flail against the first ogre zombie. It did not fall.
Ratchis was able to get past it and threw one of his stone at the ogre at the rear of the chamber, that still reached dumbly for Derek. The stone smashed the thing’s yellowed teeth and lodged itself in the roof of its mouth. It did not react.
The ogre in front ignore Kazrack and turned around to swing at Jeremy, who just barely noticed in time. The thing’s dead fist slammed the stone wall instead, leaving a round impression of cracks in its surface. Derek was not so lucky and he felt his back strike the wall, as a zombie fist nearly caved in his chest.
Kazrack roared, feeling a fury enter him that he rarely felt. It was as if Krauchaar’s invigorating ales had been poured down his gullet. (4) He slammed the ogre before him in the shin, and it cracked. A long splinter of bone burst out of the thing’s thick skin and it fell over to the right, its head crunching as it slammed against the stone wall. It was now a huge obstacle of dead rotting meeting wedged between the walls of the narrow chamber. It was pinned there, askew and at an angle, partially blocking the view of Ratchis, Derek and Jeremy in the other part of the room.
Martin, Belear and Blodnath made it to the narrow chamber, but could not get past Kazrack and the two huge bodies right there.
Ratchis tossed another stone. This one caught the thing in the neck and its jugular vein snapped, spraying the caustic embalming fluid on Derek. The young woodsman moved back out of the spray, coughing and spitting, and rubbing his eyes with the butt of his left hand.
The ogre pushed past Derek and slammed a fist into Ratchis’ face, but Jeremy’s long sword struck it in temple at the same instant. And it stopped moving.
“No need to thank me,” Jeremy said to Ratchis, sheathing his swords.
Ratchis grunted.
“What do you think these things were doing here?” Kazrack asked, rubbing his neck where he had been struck.
“Work horses,” Ratchis replied. He pointed to the leather harnesses on the monsters. They were probably used to carry or cart heavy things. Those metal rings on the back of the harness were probably used to connect them to the stones and things used to make this place so they can could be dragged around.”
“Undeath is the worst form of slavery,” Beorth muttered.
“Not even an ogre deserves it,” Ratchis added.
“I think they were used to push the stone door back in place,” Derek said, slinking ahead to see a narrow alcove where a large block had been slide from the other side. “We are behind the door that led into this area.”
Some time was spent looking for hidden or disguised doors or passageways, but the stone gave away nothing – even to trained dwarven eyes.
“There is nowhere else left to go,” Martin said, as everyone came back out into the central chamber.
“There’s one place…” Jeremy pointed to the crack in the floor, where the statue had gone through, along with Jeremy.
“Yes, there are more undead down there,” Beorth added. “At the very least we have to deal with them, so we might as well explore.”
“I am not sure that there is much here worth staying for,’ Belear said, solemnly. “Do not forget the gnomes and do not forget that our people are endangered by the dark elves by your own admission.”
“The books might be the key to helping us defeating the fiendish gnomes,” Martin said. “And they obviously have something to do with this place.”
“This place is tainted,” Beorth said. “I must know more about it, and I must destroy all undead I come across. I may not remember taking my vows as a ghost-hunter of Anubis, but I know that I made them in my heart and in my spirit. I will not abandon them.”
“No one is asking you to abandon them, Beorth,” Ratchis said, softly, the rasp of his voice making him almost indecipherable. “And I agree that we have to search below. It will take time to translate the books and this is a foul place that needs to be cleansed in the meantime.”
Kazrack and Martin nodded.
Jeremy shrugged his shoulders.
“I am here to help Martin the Green and thus help you all,” Derek motioned to the rest of the Fearless Manticore Killers. “And if you need me here, I guess here is where I’ll be. That dragon doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.”
Martin shot the young man a look.
“We’re going down,” Kazrack said. “Blodnath, ready the ropes.”
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Notes:
(1) DM’s Note: Kazrack cast both Resistance and Guidance before opening the door.
(2) The small dwarven community of Verdun is very ghettoized living in an isolated area of the Residential District. They have secret tunnels and chambers beneath they city where they gather and worship.
(3) The modern common script is based on elvish letters, but the common tongue itself has is greatly influenced by dwarven, and early writings emulated that race’s runes.
(4) Among Krauchaar’s followers are the furious Tavern Brawlers, who can drink themselves into a rage where they feel no pain and swing their weapons with great strength.
