Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 204
The next portal they try – one of the two remaining skull-marked gateways – isn’t quite as grim as the previous two, but still is not promising. It opens into a desert, a vast, sprawling, wind-swept sea of sand as far as the eye can see. Aravis and Morningstar (the two sent on to investigate) come back a couple minutes later reporting that while they were not attacked, driven mad, or set on fire, there was nothing there that made them want to set off exploring right then.
That leaves one remaining portal – the third and final one with the skull marking on it. Losing patience, the Company just piles through en masse, expecting any number of unpleasant possibilities. What they find is – well, boring, really.
They stand on a hard gray plain. A cutting wind blows cold across it, stirring small pebbles and dead twigs. Not much light is getting through a low cover of roiling dark clouds. Thunder rolls ceaselessly across the blasted land. The only interesting feature they can see are some shadowy hills in the distance.
Snokas shivers. It’s not so much a cold chill he feels, but more of a something-scary-is-sneaking-up-on-him chill. He looks around to see that he’s not the only one who feels it; the others are glancing about nervously.
“Step?” says Ernie.
One Certain Step detects evil. He frowns, concentrating, and keeps at it for a good two minutes while the other wait for the verdict.
“I can’t tell,” he says. “It’s… there is evil, I think. There is more evil than “none,” but not as much as I would expect if even a slightly evil creature were near. That’s as well as I can explain it. It’s an… indirect evil. But, yes, there is evil here. It’s all around us.”
The awkward pause that follows this assessment is broken by Dranko, who slaps Step on the back and says heartily:
“Well. That sucks! Let’s go!”
Kay looks around for any sign of tracks, or other indication of which way they should go, but there’s nothing for her to go on.
"I hate that thunder,” Kibi remarks. He looks up, worried. “Maybe we’ll have to fight some kind of air creature.”
“Good!” says Dranko. “Kay would be in her element. So to speak. Heh, heh.”
No one is amused.
“Dranko shouldn’t try elemental humor,” notes Step gravely.
“I’m not sure I’d classify that as ‘humor,’ adds Kibi.
With no better ideas the Company heads at a walk toward the distant hills. Though Kay is confident that she could find her way back to the blue portal, Dranko leaves a trail of copper pieces behind, one every few hundred feet so that the line can be easily followed with a locate object spell.
They trudge along keeping a collective eye out in all directions, though it would be tough for anything to sneak up on them out here. The gloom settles heavily on their hearts, and the unnatural chill slowly increases. The cold wind and dull roar of thunder slacken not at all. After three hours of walking, the desert is starting to seem pretty inviting.
By this time the hills have drawn much closer. They form an wide arrowhead-shaped valley that looks as though it may narrow to a point or a pass a few miles in. Kay estimates they’ll draw even with the closest hills in about half an hour.
After Kibi makes him invisible, and Morningstar gets him on a telepathic bond, Ernie uses his shield to fly on ahead to scout. He skims along about 15 feet off the ground, thinking to the others:
“Wheeeeeee! I love to fly!”
“If we tied a rope to you, you’d be just like a big kite,” thinks Dranko.
After ten minutes of flight Ernie reaches the entrance to the valley. The hills are hundreds of feet high, so he goes up to a height of 40’ to get a better look around. He notes that the rocky hillsides of the valley are pocked with holes and cave entrances, ranging in size from snake-holes to caverns large enough for a small giant.
“Lots and lots of caves,” he reports over the mind-link.
“Any tracks going into them?” asks Dranko.
Ernie knows he doesn’t have much skill in that area, and thinks maybe he should have let Kay volunteer to scout, but he does so love to fly. He flies down lower but doesn’t see any tracks. The chill has grown significantly worse though – the hairs on his neck are all standing on end. He flies further in for several minutes until he can see where the valley pinches to a close, maybe half a mile away. At that far end he sees a glint of blue, and some large gray object that he can’t identify from this far away. Ernie reports all of this to the others, and then flies back to meet them as they approach.
The whole Company is paranoid about all the holes and caves, but there are far too many to explore. Kay checks a few of them for tracks but finds none.
“The ground is so hard and dry here, I don’t know that I’d see any tracks,” she confesses.
She peers into one low cave and gets a particularly sharp chill. Edgar starts becoming agitated.
“Grey Wolf, there’s something bad in that cave. She shouldn’t go in.”
Pewter is saying something similar to Aravis, though Scree doesn’t note anything amiss.
“Kay,” says Aravis, “stay away from that cave. Pewter senses something.”
Step walks up to stand next to Kay, and senses palpable evil emanating from the dark hole. It’s only three feet wide, and low enough that the Company would have to crawl into it one at a time, with no guarantee of room to stand beyond the opening. Morningstar casts detect thoughts and leans down, but senses no minds within the darkness.
“It’s mindless evil then,” notes Aravis.
They press on, leaving that cave behind and passing by dozens more. Goose flesh rises on all of their arms. The chill grows ever more severe.
“Hey, up there!” says Dranko, pointing.
About a hundred feet up the sloping hillside to their left is a glowing blue portal. Heads turn to look at Ernie the Flying Scout.
“Er, gosh, how’d I miss that?” he says sheepishly.
Dranko scrambles up the hillside to check it out. It’s a steep climb, but there are crags and handholds, so he makes it up without much difficulty. As he ascends, though, the chill starts to get much, much worse. By fifty feet up it’s finally starting to affect him physically – he starts to shiver violently enough that he fears losing his balance. It’s both a physical and spiritual sensation, rattling him to the core. He squints up toward the blue doorway above and can see that there are small black spots on its face.
“Aravis,” he thinks over the mind-link, “you know how there was a plane of fire back there? Tell me: is there a elemental plane of evil death and undead cold?”
“Er… there’s the Negative Material Plane,” says Aravis.
“Right. That’s what’s up here. I’m coming down.”
“How do you know that?” asks Ernie.
“The blue portal here has black splotches on it, it’s draining away my strength, and I’m very, very cold. I’m coming down.”
Down he comes.
“What is the point of this place?” wonders Morningstar out loud.
“To drive us around the bend, as far as I can tell,” says Ernie.
“It’s like the Crosser’s Maze.” mutters Morningstar. “Pointless yet dangerous.”
The chill eases up a little as they leave the spotty portal behind. The valley gets narrower and narrower, and eventually the party gets close enough to see the blue portal at the end. Next to it (off to the side) is an enormous gray portal, 30’ wide and 20’ high.
For some reason this prompts Dranko and Aravis to stop and make a map. They unroll some parchment and draw in all the portal-connections they know about so far. Ernie uses this opportunity to prepare a meal, and is unhappy to find that it all tastes funny.
“This place is interfering with my enjoyment of food,” he says. “I officially hate it.”
Finally they come to the end of the valley. The two portals wait there, the smaller blue one and the larger gray one, tilted at a slight angle. On the rocky ground in front of the portals are scattered bones, and directly beneath and around the blue portal are large chunks of worked stone. It looks like some kind of structure had once been built around or next to the portal but has since crumbled or been smashed. Dranko casts know age on a piece of stone and learns that it is twelve years old. He also notes that there isn’t enough of the stone to account for a whole building, even one only large enough to house the smaller portal and nothing else.
Kay examines the bones.
“They’re of a number of different types of creatures. There aren’t whole skeletons. There are some human bones, some other humanoid bones, some bones I don’t recognize.”
Something looks like the lower jaw bone of a creature, whose whole size would be several times the size of a person. She also finds a rib of something about the size of a bear.
Morningstar shoos everyone away from the blue portal and casts thought capture. She picks up a weary-sounding thought: “I hope this one gets us out of here.” She casts again. The second thought is of abject terror by someone who’s being chewed to death.
Dranko casts detect magic and throws his rope through the gray portal. It flops out the other side, and there’s faint magic coming out off the part of the rope that passed through. After twenty seconds it dissipates. He pulls the rope back through and it acquires more magic. In other words, it acts just like the last gray gate with which they experimented.
Next they fling the rope into the blue portal. A few seconds later they haul it back. It’s not burned, cut, magic, yanked away, chewed, or affected by anything. Since it looks like their choices are now this blue portal, the negative material plane, or the desert, they ready weapons and step through.
There is the blackness, the pulling sensation, and the Company stumbles out into a bedroom.
Er… what?
Yup, it’s a bedroom. A large, elegantly-appointed bedroom more than 30’ on a side, with a human sized four-posted bed with yellow silk curtains around it. There’s a large bureau, a free-standing wardrobe, and fine paintings and tapestries on the walls. There’s a small night-table next to the bed on the far side.
“Let’s camp here,” says Aravis quickly. “Dibs on the bed!”
Ernie opens the closet to find it filled with dresses, gowns and shoes.
“Well, she’s a lady,” says Ernie. “Or a man with very strange tastes.”
The walls and floor are stone, though there are luxurious (if a bit dusty) carpets on most of the floor. The walls are a well-tooled gray stone with a blue-stone diamond pattern inset. Dranko checks the chamber pot, which hasn’t been used in more than months. There’s some dust on all the surfaces, but not as much as they expect. The bed has been hastily made. Grey Wolf casts detect magic and detects only the blue portal through which they’ve come. There’s one door in the room, a fancy wooden door on the far wall.
Morningstar casts yet another thought capture. She picks up a petulant, whiny thought: “I can’t wait until he’s done and I can leave this horrid place!”
Dranko begins a methodical search of the premises, and the others join in helping him. Ernie listens at the door and hears nothing. Aravis notes that one of the portraits on the wall is of a distinguished man who looks distinctly Djawish.
On the night-table are four objects. Firstly there is a hand mirror, completely round, whose frame is a black circle made of jet. Next there is a small book with a tattered bookmark and a brown cover. The language looks related to Kivian Common; Aravis thinks the title is simply “poetry.” Thirdly, there’s a small kinetic sculpture. It consists of a bent piece of metal shaped like an integral sign, with a black circle at one end and a metal rose at the other end. An attached rod protrudes from the center of the metal piece, where it rests in a metal stand such that the whole thing balances perfectly and can spin around on the rod. Lastly there is a folded-up piece of paper that was tucked under the book.
Dranko palms the kinetic toy.
The paper is a hand-written letter. Grey Wolf takes it and reads it, translating the archaic turns of phrase into Charagan common. He editorializes with side comments such as, “God, this is MUSHY!” and his reading gets more and more mockingly dramatic. The letter reads:
Dearest Bella, I know how curious you are about our great project, and how soon we can return to Djaw. You know I will do most anything for you. Not a day goes by when I don’t thank the Circle that you decided to come with me, to be by my side as we approach the culmination of our life’s work. But please, darling, for your own safety more than anything, please stay out of the rotunda while the experiments are running. The Source has been having instability issues these recent weeks and I would perish of grief if you were swept away to the Abyss because of a power surge. As a lesser matter, Master Invhad has expressed a rather strong preference that the rotunda remain empty during all trials. You know what a grouch he can be! If anything exciting happens I’ll make sure you are the first to know. Love you always. Clouds.
That gets everyone speculating wildly, particularly about the rotunda. Aravis and Grey Wolf think it might be the place with the eight gates where they met the orcs, though Dranko thinks that unlikely.
“So this is Bella’s room,” says Grey Wolf. “Morningstar, that would explain the thought you picked up. Her Black Circle boyfriend dragged her here.”
Flicker climbs in the bed.
“Ooooh, this is comfy.”
“Flick, you realize you’re taking your life into your own hands?” asks Dranko.
“No. Why?”
“Cause Aravis already said dibs on the bed.”
“There’s room for more than one person here,” Flicker protests.
“True,” says Dranko. “Cannonball!”
He jumps on the bed, reaches over to the table, and grabs the brown book. It’s full of mushy poetry, but he can’t find anything raunchy in it.
“It’s not very good,” he concludes.
Flicker checks the door, which he declares is neither locked nor trapped. Slowly he pulls it open. Beyond is a dark corridor that vanishes into the shadows. At least, that’s what he sees. Dranko thinks the corridor is lit by torches. Morningstar thinks it turns left after only ten feet. Ernie thinks the door opens into a small changing room. And none of the party can actually will themselves to walk through the door at all. Conclusion: it’s the edge of the world, and this entire plane consists of only this bedroom.
Dranko wants to go keep first watch outside, so that nothing can come through the blue portal and surprise everyone. Aravis has some misgivings about anyone being out there alone.
“I just want to make sure there aren’t a jillion monsters waiting for us on the other side,” says Dranko laughing. He hops through the portal.
There aren’t a jillion monsters waiting on the other side.
There’s just one extremely large one.
…to be continued…
), and I've finished catching up in the past two days.
Oh well.)
For those who don't realize: the early parts of the campaign diary were never meant for public consumption. I wrote them for my own benefit so that I wouldn't forget later what happened during the runs. For the most part it's crude, uninteresting shorthand, and I wouldn't pretend otherwise. Only later, when I started posting here, did I begin to describe the campaign in true narrative fashion.
