el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
Session #87 (part i)
Roland did not remember going to sleep, but this certainly felt like a dream.
Roland found himself sitting before a great pyramid atop a hill covered in lush jungle. The pyramid was made of great golden bricks, and it had outer tiers upon which crawling, pounced, played and slept thousands of cats of all kinds and sizes. He was separated from the pyramid by a broken stone bridge, but the gap was not so great that thought he’d have any trouble bounding over it. He could hear the rush of water echoing up from far down below. But in front of the gap sat a fascinating creature that looked up at him
The creature had the body of a lion, but the upper body and head of a human woman. She had long golden hair, pouty lips and dark eyes. She was buxom and bare-breasted, but seemed to have no sense of shame. She rolled her eyes and licking the side of her paw, brushed it through her locks.
Roland got down on one knee and looked down. He knew her to be celestial gynosphinx of a high order that served Bast directly.
“Roland Aramesia. You are between moments. You are in the space between where you were and where you will be, and by be grace of our queen and goddess I have plucked you here to give you a message,” the sphinx’s voice seemed as golden as her hair, but there was a muted sinister echo to it as well.
“Whatever I might do to further the will of my goddess,” Roland replied reverently. “I am unworthy of even the slightest bit of her attentions.”
“Humility does not suit you, Bastite,” the sphinx replied. “But you will have to forget your pride lest it obscure your vision and the scent on the wind. You are involved in weighty matters, but it may fall to you to see what others cannot or will not. The conflicts that brew in the Little Kingdoms may have far more wide-ranging repercussions. And it is not only the forces of good and evil that will be set against each other, but also those of law and chaos, and those are not as easily foreseen. The choices you and your companions make can influence the shape of things to come, whether it is the smothering security of strength or danger and peril of freedom. Choose well.”
“But how will I know?” Roland asked.
“The moment is over,” the sphinx said. “A new moment begins.”
-----------------------------------
“AND THAT WAS THE TOLL I EXTRACTED FROM YOU,” said the skeletal figure atop the gatehouse. “SO SAYS I, GANTUS - KEEPER OF THE GATE! NOW, YOU MAY LEAVE.”
The double doors out to the bridge and out of the city opened of their own accord.
“You will not keep our friends!” Ratchis disagreed, and he ran for the door into the right hand tower. The others followed.
“Fire, friend, come to me again,” Bastian chanted in dwarven as they jogged up the narrow steps to the top of the tower, a small lick of flame appeared in his hand again.
The trapdoor on the right tower burst open as Ratchis leapt out of it.
“You want to die? Then die! Sagitta Magicus!” Gantus said, pointing at the Friar of Nephthys, and two arrows of bright light slammed into his chest. But Ratchis was not even slowed, he drew his great sword as he charged,
Martin leapt out of the trapdoor right after the hulking priest and sent two arrows of flame arcing over Ratchis at Gantus, and the undead thing roared as flames engulfed him, sending tattered flaming bits of his robe to fly off on the wind.
Ratchis hewed bone and sinew as he drove the undead sorcerer back with his great sword.
Bastian had made his way atop the tower as well, and ran beside Ratchis throwing his small ball of fire to burst in the Keeper’s skeletal face. It shrieked.
Martin the Green cast Bull’s Strength on Logan as the young warrior hustled past to join the melee.
“SHADOWS OF TOPALINE,” Gantus screeched into the air, leaning back broken and pained on the floor. “I RECIND THE LAWS THAT KEEP YOU FROM ENTERING MY DOMAIN, SO YOU MAY DEAL WITH THESE INTERLOPERS!”
And with that, he promptly disappeared. As two more of the ‘noggles’ appeared above them. Bastian managed to leap out of the way, but Ratchis caught a claw to the ear.
“Noggle! Noggle noggle!” they cried. But Ratchis ignored them swinging his sword wildly where the skeleton had been a moment before, convinced it was just invisible.
“It can teleport itself, just like it can others,” Martin said.
--------------------
Roland found himself in a ten foot by ten foot cell off a narrow hall. He could see a thick oaken door slightly up the hall to the left. He willed himself to shrink down to house cat form, and he slipped like a shadow between bars. Dorn was desperately working to bend the bars of his cell, and failing.
“Roland is that you?” Dorn asked the little cat.
“Meow!” Roland agreed
“Dorn! Use your weapon!” Kazrack called from a cell further down the hall, and then came the echoing ring of his flail against the lock. Dorn took his hammer from his side and began to bang on the lock to his cell as well.
“Wait!” Dorn cried between blows. “How did you get out last time?”
“By use of a spell that I was not wise enough to prepare this day even though I knew we’d have to come back through here,” Kazrack chastised himself. “Gods! I am a fool!”
“Boy, I bet Roland wishes he could talk now,” Dorn laughed.
“Meow! Meow!” Roland agreed.
“No!” Kazrack began to fumble desperately through his overstuffed back. “I just remembered I have a crowbar packed away in here!” (1)
-------------------------------
The head of another of the spindly humanoids went flying off the tower as Ratchis cleaved it off. And Logan stabbed one that bore a burn mark on the side of its head from Bastian’s produce flame through the chest, and then chopped it again to make sure it was dead.
A third of the creatures appeared and clawed at Martin, drawing blood.
“Oh my! Help!” Martin cried. Bastian stepped over and slammed the thing with his shield, but as he brought his hammer around for a follow up blow, the thing ‘popped’ away and appeared atop the watch-mage again. There was a rushing sound and Bastian instinctively dove backward. Green and black flames washed over Martin and the ‘noggle’ lay on the ground charred and shriveled, squealing weakly for a moment before it finally died.
“What the…?” Bastian stepped back.
“It’s okay…” Martin began to explain focusing his will to dispel the arcane flame, but then he saw what Bastian was looking at. Two shadows came swooping down at the bearded warrior, but he ducked and rolled away.
“In the name of Nephthys! Foul denizens of the underworld, I free you!” Ratchis cried, whipping his belt of scored and broken links above his head. The two shadows cackled with delight, and spun around to come by for a second pass.
“Lentus!” Martin cast, and one of the shadows now slid like molasses against the sky. Logan ran past it cutting it through the middle with his long sword, but it came out the other side to no effect. The shadow reached out and brushed Martin’s cheek and the watch-mage felt just the slightest drain of strength. He ran for the trapdoor and Logan followed.
“Don’t wander off,” Logan called after him.
Bastian was not so fast a second time and the felt the cold touch of the other shadow even as his own weapon passed through without effect.
Having called to Nephthys to bless his great sword, Ratchis felt the satisfying tug on his blade as he brought it through the creature. The temporary magic of his sword had torn at the essence of the creature. He had hurt it.
They came swooping at him again, and again he swung even as he felt their cold strength-draining touch. However, this time the satisfying tug was followed by the shadow dwindling away to nothing. Bastian stepped in close to distract the remaining shadow, putting himself at risk, but allowing Ratchis two more devastating blows that destroyed it as well.
“We need to go find the others!” Martin said, poking his head back up through the trapdoor.
-----------------------------------------
Roland, Dorn and Kazrack listened at the door out of the dungeons, leaving two pried open cells behind them. Hearing nothing, they crept up the hall beyond towards the great chamber Gantus seemed to use as a studio for his twisted sculptures. They listened before entering the room and heard the sound of squeaking metal and a door open from the right side of the chamber.
“NOW TO DEAL WITH THOSE PESKY PRISONERS,” Gantus said, seeming unable to but give voice to his thoughts.
“You should have fled, fiend!” Kazrack cried, charging out of the hall halberd first and shattering the undead’s pelvic bone.
A burst of searing holy light exploded from the tiny black kitten and Gantus shrieked as his bones turned to powder and he was soon nothing more than a pile of dust atop some tattered rags.
Kazrack spit on it and then looked up and around.
“You think there is anything else in here we might need?” Kazrack asked, noticing the creature’s silver diadem with inset diamond he had just spit on and stowing it in his pack.
“Not unless we need dismembered hands,” Dorn replied.
The three of them made their way through the small door Gantus hand come through and found the back side of a secret door at the top of narrow steps that let out on the ground floor of the right tower.
-----------------------------
Back in the courtyard the others were frustrated by their inability to find Kazrack, Roland and Dorn.
“We should keep looking,” Martin said. “There is probably a secret door.”
Bastian nodded.
“He could have sent them anywhere,” Ratchis said. “Last time Kazrack reappeared in the sky and fell. Maybe it will happen again. Let’s wait and be alert, maybe we can catch him this time.”
Bastian nodded.
“No offense, but I’d rather let him fall,” Logan said. “He’s bound to still get hurt and end up hurting us if we try to catch him.”
“Do what you want,” Ratchis replied.
“There will be no falling,” Kazrack said jovially as he came out of the tower, Dorn and Roland (now back in human form) behind him. “The undead fiend has been destroyed.”
“And we killed the last of his annoying minions,” said Logan. “Let’s go.”
The Keepers of the Gate marched out of the city across the bridge and made their way up to the gold-rune-covered black obelisk on the side of the black roacky outcropping.
“Do we just touch it to go back?” asked Ratchis.
“Allow me a moment,” Martin the Green said, pushing up his sleeves to cast analyze portal. Bastian allowed his hawk to take off and circle the island of stone and stretch his wings for the first time since they had arrived in Topaline.
“Hmmm, the conditions and specifics about how this portal works are rather intricate,” Martin said. “But the nature of the rift in the planes in this area has upset the delicate balance of how it works. We should be able to simply return by joining hands and tracing that rune.” He pointed.
“Okay then…” Kazrack said.
“But,” Martin continued. “There is an aspect of balance to how often it lets people through. No one else can go back through until we’ve gone through.”
“So I can go through?” Bastian asked. “Because I didn’t come through this way.”
“How did you get here?” Ratchis asked the bearded man.
“I was brought here,” was all he said.
“As long as you go last you should be fine, but no one will be able to come back here until Bastian has passed back through or someone has reset the portal from this side,” Martin went on to explain.
“That works out perfectly,” Ratchis said. “We don’t want anyone coming back here and trying to harm Abderus to get to the Key Room.”
The Keepers of the Gate held hands in a line, Bastian at the rear, his hawk tucked uncomfortably under his coat, and Martin reached out and traced the rune pronouncing it. Suddenly the strange world of Topaline went away.
There was nothing. Not light, nor sensation of moving, not even a sense of a body. Just cold eternal in all directions. An eternity passed and there was a square of light and the slightest sense of self in a rigid, frozen body tumbling in an inky void. The square grew bigger until the light was all there was.
Suddenly, the Keepers of the Gate felt themselves crash heavily onto a rubble strewn floor. They gasped in harsh air and tried to disentangle themselves, blinded again as they had been the first time through. (2)
“Someone turn on a light,” Bastian said.
“You’re blind,” Ratchis said. “We all are. We just have to wait it out.”
And wait it out they did. Less than ten minutes later they were making their back through the caverns and catacombs to the temple of Bast above.
--------------------------------
Notes
(1) DM’s Note: You know that moment that happens at least once a campaign where you comb your character sheet looking for something, anything to help? This was one of those.
(2) See Session #82
Roland did not remember going to sleep, but this certainly felt like a dream.
Roland found himself sitting before a great pyramid atop a hill covered in lush jungle. The pyramid was made of great golden bricks, and it had outer tiers upon which crawling, pounced, played and slept thousands of cats of all kinds and sizes. He was separated from the pyramid by a broken stone bridge, but the gap was not so great that thought he’d have any trouble bounding over it. He could hear the rush of water echoing up from far down below. But in front of the gap sat a fascinating creature that looked up at him
The creature had the body of a lion, but the upper body and head of a human woman. She had long golden hair, pouty lips and dark eyes. She was buxom and bare-breasted, but seemed to have no sense of shame. She rolled her eyes and licking the side of her paw, brushed it through her locks.
Roland got down on one knee and looked down. He knew her to be celestial gynosphinx of a high order that served Bast directly.
“Roland Aramesia. You are between moments. You are in the space between where you were and where you will be, and by be grace of our queen and goddess I have plucked you here to give you a message,” the sphinx’s voice seemed as golden as her hair, but there was a muted sinister echo to it as well.
“Whatever I might do to further the will of my goddess,” Roland replied reverently. “I am unworthy of even the slightest bit of her attentions.”
“Humility does not suit you, Bastite,” the sphinx replied. “But you will have to forget your pride lest it obscure your vision and the scent on the wind. You are involved in weighty matters, but it may fall to you to see what others cannot or will not. The conflicts that brew in the Little Kingdoms may have far more wide-ranging repercussions. And it is not only the forces of good and evil that will be set against each other, but also those of law and chaos, and those are not as easily foreseen. The choices you and your companions make can influence the shape of things to come, whether it is the smothering security of strength or danger and peril of freedom. Choose well.”
“But how will I know?” Roland asked.
“The moment is over,” the sphinx said. “A new moment begins.”
-----------------------------------
“AND THAT WAS THE TOLL I EXTRACTED FROM YOU,” said the skeletal figure atop the gatehouse. “SO SAYS I, GANTUS - KEEPER OF THE GATE! NOW, YOU MAY LEAVE.”
The double doors out to the bridge and out of the city opened of their own accord.
“You will not keep our friends!” Ratchis disagreed, and he ran for the door into the right hand tower. The others followed.
“Fire, friend, come to me again,” Bastian chanted in dwarven as they jogged up the narrow steps to the top of the tower, a small lick of flame appeared in his hand again.
The trapdoor on the right tower burst open as Ratchis leapt out of it.
“You want to die? Then die! Sagitta Magicus!” Gantus said, pointing at the Friar of Nephthys, and two arrows of bright light slammed into his chest. But Ratchis was not even slowed, he drew his great sword as he charged,
Martin leapt out of the trapdoor right after the hulking priest and sent two arrows of flame arcing over Ratchis at Gantus, and the undead thing roared as flames engulfed him, sending tattered flaming bits of his robe to fly off on the wind.
Ratchis hewed bone and sinew as he drove the undead sorcerer back with his great sword.
Bastian had made his way atop the tower as well, and ran beside Ratchis throwing his small ball of fire to burst in the Keeper’s skeletal face. It shrieked.
Martin the Green cast Bull’s Strength on Logan as the young warrior hustled past to join the melee.
“SHADOWS OF TOPALINE,” Gantus screeched into the air, leaning back broken and pained on the floor. “I RECIND THE LAWS THAT KEEP YOU FROM ENTERING MY DOMAIN, SO YOU MAY DEAL WITH THESE INTERLOPERS!”
And with that, he promptly disappeared. As two more of the ‘noggles’ appeared above them. Bastian managed to leap out of the way, but Ratchis caught a claw to the ear.
“Noggle! Noggle noggle!” they cried. But Ratchis ignored them swinging his sword wildly where the skeleton had been a moment before, convinced it was just invisible.
“It can teleport itself, just like it can others,” Martin said.
--------------------
Roland found himself in a ten foot by ten foot cell off a narrow hall. He could see a thick oaken door slightly up the hall to the left. He willed himself to shrink down to house cat form, and he slipped like a shadow between bars. Dorn was desperately working to bend the bars of his cell, and failing.
“Roland is that you?” Dorn asked the little cat.
“Meow!” Roland agreed
“Dorn! Use your weapon!” Kazrack called from a cell further down the hall, and then came the echoing ring of his flail against the lock. Dorn took his hammer from his side and began to bang on the lock to his cell as well.
“Wait!” Dorn cried between blows. “How did you get out last time?”
“By use of a spell that I was not wise enough to prepare this day even though I knew we’d have to come back through here,” Kazrack chastised himself. “Gods! I am a fool!”
“Boy, I bet Roland wishes he could talk now,” Dorn laughed.
“Meow! Meow!” Roland agreed.
“No!” Kazrack began to fumble desperately through his overstuffed back. “I just remembered I have a crowbar packed away in here!” (1)
-------------------------------
The head of another of the spindly humanoids went flying off the tower as Ratchis cleaved it off. And Logan stabbed one that bore a burn mark on the side of its head from Bastian’s produce flame through the chest, and then chopped it again to make sure it was dead.
A third of the creatures appeared and clawed at Martin, drawing blood.
“Oh my! Help!” Martin cried. Bastian stepped over and slammed the thing with his shield, but as he brought his hammer around for a follow up blow, the thing ‘popped’ away and appeared atop the watch-mage again. There was a rushing sound and Bastian instinctively dove backward. Green and black flames washed over Martin and the ‘noggle’ lay on the ground charred and shriveled, squealing weakly for a moment before it finally died.
“What the…?” Bastian stepped back.
“It’s okay…” Martin began to explain focusing his will to dispel the arcane flame, but then he saw what Bastian was looking at. Two shadows came swooping down at the bearded warrior, but he ducked and rolled away.
“In the name of Nephthys! Foul denizens of the underworld, I free you!” Ratchis cried, whipping his belt of scored and broken links above his head. The two shadows cackled with delight, and spun around to come by for a second pass.
“Lentus!” Martin cast, and one of the shadows now slid like molasses against the sky. Logan ran past it cutting it through the middle with his long sword, but it came out the other side to no effect. The shadow reached out and brushed Martin’s cheek and the watch-mage felt just the slightest drain of strength. He ran for the trapdoor and Logan followed.
“Don’t wander off,” Logan called after him.
Bastian was not so fast a second time and the felt the cold touch of the other shadow even as his own weapon passed through without effect.
Having called to Nephthys to bless his great sword, Ratchis felt the satisfying tug on his blade as he brought it through the creature. The temporary magic of his sword had torn at the essence of the creature. He had hurt it.
They came swooping at him again, and again he swung even as he felt their cold strength-draining touch. However, this time the satisfying tug was followed by the shadow dwindling away to nothing. Bastian stepped in close to distract the remaining shadow, putting himself at risk, but allowing Ratchis two more devastating blows that destroyed it as well.
“We need to go find the others!” Martin said, poking his head back up through the trapdoor.
-----------------------------------------
Roland, Dorn and Kazrack listened at the door out of the dungeons, leaving two pried open cells behind them. Hearing nothing, they crept up the hall beyond towards the great chamber Gantus seemed to use as a studio for his twisted sculptures. They listened before entering the room and heard the sound of squeaking metal and a door open from the right side of the chamber.
“NOW TO DEAL WITH THOSE PESKY PRISONERS,” Gantus said, seeming unable to but give voice to his thoughts.
“You should have fled, fiend!” Kazrack cried, charging out of the hall halberd first and shattering the undead’s pelvic bone.
A burst of searing holy light exploded from the tiny black kitten and Gantus shrieked as his bones turned to powder and he was soon nothing more than a pile of dust atop some tattered rags.
Kazrack spit on it and then looked up and around.
“You think there is anything else in here we might need?” Kazrack asked, noticing the creature’s silver diadem with inset diamond he had just spit on and stowing it in his pack.
“Not unless we need dismembered hands,” Dorn replied.
The three of them made their way through the small door Gantus hand come through and found the back side of a secret door at the top of narrow steps that let out on the ground floor of the right tower.
-----------------------------
Back in the courtyard the others were frustrated by their inability to find Kazrack, Roland and Dorn.
“We should keep looking,” Martin said. “There is probably a secret door.”
Bastian nodded.
“He could have sent them anywhere,” Ratchis said. “Last time Kazrack reappeared in the sky and fell. Maybe it will happen again. Let’s wait and be alert, maybe we can catch him this time.”
Bastian nodded.
“No offense, but I’d rather let him fall,” Logan said. “He’s bound to still get hurt and end up hurting us if we try to catch him.”
“Do what you want,” Ratchis replied.
“There will be no falling,” Kazrack said jovially as he came out of the tower, Dorn and Roland (now back in human form) behind him. “The undead fiend has been destroyed.”
“And we killed the last of his annoying minions,” said Logan. “Let’s go.”
The Keepers of the Gate marched out of the city across the bridge and made their way up to the gold-rune-covered black obelisk on the side of the black roacky outcropping.
“Do we just touch it to go back?” asked Ratchis.
“Allow me a moment,” Martin the Green said, pushing up his sleeves to cast analyze portal. Bastian allowed his hawk to take off and circle the island of stone and stretch his wings for the first time since they had arrived in Topaline.
“Hmmm, the conditions and specifics about how this portal works are rather intricate,” Martin said. “But the nature of the rift in the planes in this area has upset the delicate balance of how it works. We should be able to simply return by joining hands and tracing that rune.” He pointed.
“Okay then…” Kazrack said.
“But,” Martin continued. “There is an aspect of balance to how often it lets people through. No one else can go back through until we’ve gone through.”
“So I can go through?” Bastian asked. “Because I didn’t come through this way.”
“How did you get here?” Ratchis asked the bearded man.
“I was brought here,” was all he said.
“As long as you go last you should be fine, but no one will be able to come back here until Bastian has passed back through or someone has reset the portal from this side,” Martin went on to explain.
“That works out perfectly,” Ratchis said. “We don’t want anyone coming back here and trying to harm Abderus to get to the Key Room.”
The Keepers of the Gate held hands in a line, Bastian at the rear, his hawk tucked uncomfortably under his coat, and Martin reached out and traced the rune pronouncing it. Suddenly the strange world of Topaline went away.
There was nothing. Not light, nor sensation of moving, not even a sense of a body. Just cold eternal in all directions. An eternity passed and there was a square of light and the slightest sense of self in a rigid, frozen body tumbling in an inky void. The square grew bigger until the light was all there was.
Suddenly, the Keepers of the Gate felt themselves crash heavily onto a rubble strewn floor. They gasped in harsh air and tried to disentangle themselves, blinded again as they had been the first time through. (2)
“Someone turn on a light,” Bastian said.
“You’re blind,” Ratchis said. “We all are. We just have to wait it out.”
And wait it out they did. Less than ten minutes later they were making their back through the caverns and catacombs to the temple of Bast above.
--------------------------------
Notes
(1) DM’s Note: You know that moment that happens at least once a campaign where you comb your character sheet looking for something, anything to help? This was one of those.
(2) See Session #82
