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Message: <blockquote data-quote="el-remmen" data-source="post: 2046468" data-attributes="member: 11">Session #65 (part 2)“Nephthys!  Grant me light!” Ratchis called to his goddess as Martin lowered him once more to take the next person across.  He touched Dorn’s helmet, and now light shone from there as well.Kazrack hurried up one of the narrow steps that led up to one of the galleries where one of the orc bowman made ready another shot, and cut it open.  It tumbled over unconscious and would soon bleed out.Beorth smashed open the skull of the orc that stabbed him, and it tumbled into the brackish water, but more orcs spilled out above on the wall.  Arrows and javelins rained down Beorth, but for once the paladin deftly dodged.  Kazrack on the other hand grunted as an arrow found a spot between greaves.  Bones yelped and fired an arrow at an orc that came through the broken metal door.  With the new light, he could see more behind it, as it fell clutching at its throat.Flora’s voice filled the flooded chamber as she sung a rousing song of  Ra’s Light overcoming the darkness of night and Set, and the Fearless Manticore Killers and their companions, felt a wash of pride and courage come over them against these horrid foes.As Ratchis struggled to come back across, this time with Dorn in tow (leaving Gunthar to grumble about being left in the dark again), Martin chanted his arcane words and a wall of flame leapt up in front of Bones, blocking the progress of the orcs beyond.“Whoa!”  cried the halflings leaping after Flora across the wall. Martin’s illusion cracked and smelled like a real fire, and even gave off heat.Kazrack continued to smash orcs with his flail, wading through them with the fury of his race, while more arrows rained around him and Beorth.Gunthar cursed and leapt to one of the cracked pillars, leaving Martin alone to concentrate on keeping his illusory flame going.“They are getting something!” Ratchis warned, interpreting their barks and snorts.  “Watch out!”  He had dropped Dorn on the wall, and now made his way to get Gunthar.Suddenly, two orcs came out of a narrow hall that Kazrack had already passed with a wooden board. They laid it out to one of the cracked columns and began to make their way across.Dorn fired a crossbow bolt into an orc making its way down some stairs at Flora.  It wielded a heavy bronze blade that was rounded at one end where it thickened. (1)  Flora’s soprano voice echoed through the great chamber still filling them all with vigor, but the passionate singing did not keep her from thrusting her short sword into the charging orc’s chest.  It fell over dead.Beorth hurried past Kazrack and into the midst of three orcs that had been firing down on them all.  He cut one down immediately, but was forced back by arrows from the two orcs out on the column, allowing the two others to reposition themselves above another of the smaller ante-galleries.  The paladin over-extended himself, trying to hit the last one, and fell flat on his face.  A moment later, Gunthar came leaping over him, as Ratchis had helped him over the last bit of the way across, swords swinging over his head.“Get up, Baldie!” the Neergaardian chided, as he cut the leg from one of the stumpy orcs, smiling.  “Fighting these things is like cutting butter with a warm knife! Ha! Like the butter I spread on the ass of my whores!”Gunthar covered Beorth as the paladin got up, shielding him from arrow fire from the cracked column out on the water.  Dorn, and Ratchis returned fire on those orcs, while Bones discreetly searched the orcs Beorth had left behind.  The paladin charged up and down another set of the small steps parallel to the wall, but a particularly stocky orc turned brought its strange blade down on the paladin’s already wounded shoulder.  More blood coated his armor.  Kazrack’s progress to aid Beorth was hindered, by another orc that stepped out of a hall.  The dwarf tried to stop himself to quickly as he swung his golden flail and swept himself off his feet.   The orc showed its cracked yellow teeth and brought its bronze blade up, but it struck a lip of stone from a gallery above this level and tumbled from his hands. (2)Martin let his concentration on the illusory wall of fire slip as he fired his crossbow at one of the orcs on a column, and moment later it slipped into the water grabbing at the bolt in his chest.“Anubis, please bring me a little of your light in this place of darkness,” Beorth prayed to his god, holding his right hand to his wounded shoulder, and felt the familiar and welcome ache of his wounds quickly closing.Kazrack and Gunthar dispensed with the orcs that blocked their progress, but by the time Ratchis got over to grab Martin, the illusory wall was gone and fresh stream of orcs came out onto the gallery wall.  Orcs with bows supported the bronze blade-wielding ones, but the Fearless Manticore Killers and their companions were ready for them, and cut them down with sword and bow.  Soon, they had made it to the opposite side of the grand gallery and pried the intact stone doors on the other side open.  They marched into the dark hall beyond, Ratchis leading the way, and Bones smiling to himself his pouches a bit heavier with orcish coppers.When they felt they had put a good distance between them and the gallery, they stopped and risked a torch so they might examine Shadarach’s map.“Shadarach said that this middle area that looks like it is connected to several small rooms was the nursery,” Martin pointed  to what looked like bad drawing of a spider to Kazrack.  “If we go that way we may have to deal with the young.  I am not sure how I feel about that.”“This seems like an evil race,” Beorth said, solemnly, looking at the rocky ground and not the map.  He ran a hand over his bald head to wipe the cold sweat, before putting his helmet back on.  “We will do what needs to be done to escape here with our lives.”“Why not go this way?” Gunthar suggested.  He point to a passage leading to several on the right side of the map.“There will be scores and scores of orcs there,” Martin said.“Why don’t we just go through them?  They don’t look too tough.”“And they will have shamans and witch-doctors with magics…” Martin began.“We go the way Shadarach said to go,” Ratchis decided for everyone and began to walk.  “Put out the torch.”---------------------------------They walked for several more hours in the dark.  Here the tunnels were wide, but had low ceilings with large uneven sections of ceiling that made the humans all have to duck to get by.  This area had man round tunnels at floor level no more than three feet in diameter that all seemed dive down deeper into the rock when examined.  In a few places they found the tattered remains of spider webs waving in the cool air coming up from below.Beyond this the ceiling climbed again, the tunnel widening evenly on both sides, but eighty feet ahead egress was blocked by a twenty foot wall, at the to of which the tunnel continued with ceiling no higher than six feet.“I think this is the ‘spider wall’,” Martin said.“Naw! Ya think?” Bones snapped, and then let out a long breath.  “I’ll scout ahead,” Ratchis said.  Martin offered to make him invisible and Ratchis agreed.  Soon, he was off.  Dorn lit a torch, and Martin took the map out again.Suddenly, Flora screamed.  She and Bones were in the rear of the group, but Kazrack had moved up to listen to Beorth and Martin discuss the route.They all turned and Dorn raised the lantern.  A huge purple and white spider was poised over her.  There were puncture marks on her arm and shoulder, and indigo venom dripped from its fangs and from her body.“Get back girl!  I’ll save you.” Gunthar pulled Flora back and stepped forward, his sword not even drawn.  The spider reached forward and sunk its fangs into him as well.  “Augh!” And then the spider was suddenly not there.“Where’d it go?” Bones asked.Gunthar could feel the burn of venom in his system, while Flora weakly dragged herself behind Kazrack.“Ish invishibull!” Kazrack warned, and Gunthar swung where the spider had just been.Bones readied his short sword, while Dorn loaded his crossbow.“I don’t think it’s invisible,” martin said.  “It slipped into the shadow realm.” (3)Beorth turned back around, his staff held lightly in both hands, and tried very hard to listen.  It reappeared on the wall above Gunthar and Kazrack.  The foul-mouthed Neergaardian leapt in front of the dwarf.“There is is!” He cried, pointing with his sword.  “Come and get me!”Beorth reached up with his staff and smashed in its deep indigo eyes, smashing one that exploded.  It screeched and disappeared again.“Shtand in duh minnel uh nuh corriderr!” Kazrack commanded.  “Sho et cun’t git ush from above.”“Where is is?” Bones said, as they moved as a group.  “Oh, I hate spiders.”“Ooh, little snotling’s scared?” Gunthar taunted.“Not of you!”“Enough!” Beorth commanded, and all were silent waiting for the spider to re-appear.Suddenly it was beside Kazrack and he swung as fast as he could, but it leapt above the blow, and came down with both his fangs into the dwarf’s stomach. The dwarf could see himself reflected in it large moist eyes. Martin gasped as he noticed the eyes were unharmed.   “It’s like Debo!” Gunthar cried. His long sword cracked one of its fore legs, and ichor began to pool beneath it.  One of Bones’ arrow stuck out of the hairy maw.  “We need this creature’s attack to cease,” Flora sang.  “So help us out with some grease!”A slick patch of oil appeared beneath the spider, but its many legs gave it stability.“Beware!  There are two of them,” Martin warned by way of correcting Gunthar and fired his readied crossbow.  The bolt was buried itself deep in the spider’s head and it stopped moving.  “Stay alert!”The first spider, the eye still wounded re-appeared behind Gunthar, who had taken that moment to turn and look to the other side of him.  He wheezed as he felt even more venom pumped into him, as the fangs pierced his back and shoulder.  He turned back around, coughing up blood, but it was already gone.Everyone tensed waiting for to re-appear.A few seconds turned into a minute and then several minutes.  Flora collapsed, gasping for breath.  She felt as if she were drowning.“Hurr, jink thish,” Kazrack said, pouring water from a skin into his rune-stein. He intoned the ‘findar’ rune and she drank. (4) “Is it gone?” Bones asked, craning his neck to look around more.Martin walked over to the spider corpse and cut free a fang, taking a sample of both its venom and its blood.They all tensed again as they heard something coming from up the hall. It was Ratchis, still invisible.“Beyond this wall is a deeper drop. It is probably thirty, thirty-five feet down on the other side,” he explained to them.  “It is wet down there, running water, and it much narrower.”They followed his voice over to the wall.  They could now see that the wall here had been made, rather than carved, as a sort of dam of the tunnel.  The wall was made of boulders, logs, rusted metal, patches of dried and rolled spider’s webs, along with bones, hair, dung and mud. Ratchis went up first and Kazrack was soon after him, grabbing blindly for the invisible half-orc’s hand.  The dwarf was yanked up atop the thick patchwork wall, when the purple and white spider appeared.  Kazrack leapt to his feet, unknowingly getting between the spider and Ratchis, who had his sword ready.  The spider bit deep in the dwarf once more, but felt a strong blow atop its head from Kazrack’s magic flail.  Screeching, it disappeared once again.“Is it dead?” Beorth called up.“No,” replied Ratchis. They waited a few more minutes, but it did not return.  The others made it to the top of the wall, and soon after they were all at the narrow cavern on the side, Ratchis was visible again.The ground beneath them here was soft dirt and the tunnel walls dripped and oozed with moisture.  It was like a pocket of muck within the overwhelming black and gray stone everything else had been carved from. The ceiling varied in height from as low as five feet to as high as seven, and as they marched along, a fetid smell grew around them.  The air was heavy with a mix of rotten meat and tavern outhouse.   They could hear churning and running water ahead of them.Up ahead the tunnel narrowed to a crack barely four feet wide.  Just beyond the crack was a rough alcove, with another patchwork dam as its rear wall.  The dam was only about ten feet high and not nearly as thick as the one they had already passed.  It oozed a black and brown swirling gritty viscous liquid, and the stench was over-powering.“We have to climb up through this,” Ratchis said, stepping through and looking up to examine the climb.  Something dripped in his mouth and he gagged and spit.  “Who goes first?”“Send Gunthar.  He likes this sort of thing,” Martin suggested, his face pinched in a permanent look of disgust.  He covered his mouth and nose with his left hand.“Not without light,” Gunthar protested.“Nuh tuches!” Kazrack warned. “Dun cun beh guses dut combust dun hurr.”Ratchis cast light upon Beorth’s helmet once again, and then hauled himself up to the top of the wall.  He pulled up Beorth next, and then the two of them helped Kazrack get over the wall.  The area beyond was a long rounded cavern.  It the floor was flooded up to a foot and a half in gray scummy water in which floated chunks of orc feces that collected among the rocks in brown sludgy floating puddles.  Sixty feet wide, the cavern was likely twice as long, but none could see the other side.  Partially submerged great black stones that directed the filth one way or the other, making the place into a maze, blocked progress across this room though none of the stones touched the ceiling.  There were several places where more filthy water splashed into room by means of narrow channels carved in the rock walls, but it also oozed and plopped from cracks in the ceiling.“Filth!  What is the flargin’ filth!” Gunthar swore as he splashed into the muck. “This is the nursery,” Beorth replied.The other came over one by one, though Bones stayed up on the wall until Dorn was over and then rode on his friend’s shoulders, as the raw sewage would have been above his waist.Ratchis hustled forward to check the room, and found the footing to be very slippery, and fell down to his knees and leapt back up splashing sewage all around.“Oh, I don’t feel well…What is that little thing?” asked Flora, spotting a small gray creature that seemed to be paddling towards Ratchis.“Merciful Isis!” Martin gasped.  “Ratchis watch out!”The Friar of Nephthys spun around to see the small thing leap at him.  It was tiny black orc, no more than a toddler, with fat baby limbs, and a bush of wiry black hair, and covering of pin-like hairs on it ashen body.  It had a snarl of glee on its piggish face as it grabbed at him to bite into his shoulder.Ratchis pushed it off and it let out a wail, and two more appeared from behind a rock.  The first was no so easily discouraged.  It came again.  Ratchis stood and drew his sword.  He skewered it as tried to bite him again.“Nephthys, forgive me,” he whispered.“I have to get out of this place,” Flora cried, horrified.“Continue tuh moof!” Kazrack said, his jaw in agony with each attempted syllable.  “If we ur fallen upon en dish room we will beh cut dun!”“Kazrack is right!” Beorth said.  “We need to move as fast as we can through this room.  The young will not be able to catch up with us.”  The two other orc infants waded through the sewage at them, mouths open.  One of them wailed incessantly.The paladin hustled around them towards the first set of tall rocks on the left, while everyone else moved more slowly, wary of slipping.“Look!” Martin cried and fire his crossbow.  On the left hand wall was the raised lip of a tunnel entrance that led to side chamber.  Standing there, mouth agape was black orc wearing naught but a long ragged burlap shirt, and woolen pants that it was trying to tie off with a long strip of rag.   It let out a grunt and turned.Kazrack and Dorn let off shots as well, but both missed.As Martin hurried to reload his crossbow, he also moved to the left of the tunnel entrance, however the orc reached out and swung his club awkwardly at the mage.  Martin avoided the blow, throing his back to the wall in time to see a horrifying site.Beorth hurried to get out of the way of tunnel opening, and hoping to find a path through the room before more orcs arrived moved to a narrow space between two of the maze stones.  He could feel the floor give way under him and there was a whooshing sound, as the hole in that spot camouflaged by sewage and long clogged with feces, muck and bone gave way under the paladin’s weight.  Everyone’s mouths dropped open as the holy warrior of Anubis dropped out of sight and the hole opened up draining sewage at an alarming rate at first and then beginning to clog back up.The light was gone, and Beorth gone with it.There seemed to be silence for a moment despite the eternal dripping and the gurgling cries of the orc babies, and then there were drums sounding the in deep.“He fell in the sh*te-hole!” Gunthar announced, and then without hesitating leapt towards the hole crawling flat through the sewage feeling for the hole and then reached his arm as far down as it could go.“We need light now,” Dorn said to Bones, who was still sitting on his shoulders, and handed a torch up to him.Not disturbed by the lack of light, Kazrack moved towards the side tunnel opening.  The orc there swung his club half-heartedly at Martin one more time and then fled down the tunnel.“You’re going down there!” Ratchis said to Gunthar reaching down and grabbing the now filthy warrior’s ankle.“You better hold on to me Snuffles!” Gunthar warned, and then he nodded and Ratchis shoved him down the hole as far as he could, lying down in the sewage himself.  He had to turn his head every few seconds to take a deep breath or aspirate the filth.“This disgusting place just isn’t right let its shame be revealed by a bit of Ra’s light!” Flora sang and in a moment her short sword gave off the light of a torch, but steady and unflickering.Kazrack waited at the tunnel entrance with is halberd at the ready certain the orc would re-emerge, perhaps with more of his kin, while Martin began a long chant, feigning drawing a circle before him with his right foot.A figure appeared in the tunnel, and Kazrack immediately shoved his pole-axe into its gut.  The figure screamed.  It was an orc with a long muzzle of a face, and pale ashen skin, only blackened in spots. Most of its hair looked as if it had been pulled out violently, leaving bloody patches of missing scalp.  It had wide round hips, and flaccid gray breasts with crusted black nipples and wore absolutely no clothes.  It was an orc female.She fell over dead; the look of fear frozen in her lifeless eyes.The male orc was behind her, and threw a javelin at Kazrack, but it struck the corner of the wall and missed.“Pass this down to Gunthar,” Flora said to Ratchis, when he came up for breath.  Bones had lit a torch.  The half-orc lifted the warrior halfway from the hole, allowing the bard to put the glowing short sword in his hand. There was a blast of flame over in front of Martin as the muck before him bubbled and steamed, and from beneath came a stony worm whose segments burned orange-white with heat.  Martin commanded it to go down the tunnel after the orc, and it obeyed.  The muck hissed as it squirmed by. (5)“My beast will take care of it,” Martin said.  “Let’s keep going.”“And leave Beorth?” Dorn asked, as he readied his crossbow at the tunnel entrance, just in case.Kazrack looked over and saw that Ratchis was struggling to keep from slipping down the hole himself, and moved over to give a hand.But suddenly the orcish drums drew louder and there was the bellow of horn from the other end of the filth-filled chamber.  He could barely make out the silhouette of a tall and broad black orc wearing a bronze breastplate standing atop a raised entrance into the room, above the level of the maze stones.  Behind him, the red glowing eyes of his minions moved about in anticipation.“Something is coming,” Dorn said.“Shumtin ish here,” Kazrack corrected.End of Session #65----------------------------------------------------Notes:(1) a scimitar.(2) DM’s Note: The orc fumbled and dropped his weapon.(3) In the Aquerra cosmology, the ethereal plane is actually the Plane of Shadow.(4) DM’s Note: Kazrack won an immediate action die for using a one-time use item (there are a limited number of runes that do not reappear for the same owner) on an NPC.(5) This was a thoqqua.</blockquote>

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