Shemmy's Planescape Storyhour #2 (Updated x3 10-17-07)
- Thread starter Shemeska
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Shemeska
Adventurer
The clock is a' ticking...
Another stretch of hours passed as they descended the mountain and wandered back through the forest. They were mostly quiet and sullen as they made the trek, given that they had wasted their time and had nothing to show for it. Velkyn’s mood was soured even more due to the lingering effects of the undead that had attacked him earlier.
About three quarters of the way through the forest they heard the sounds of something heavy approaching. Inva, as per usual, was nowhere to be seen, and moments later Velkyn had turned the rest of them invisible as the fire giant from earlier came shambling through the wood.
“Oh hell, this guy’s back. Doesn’t look like he can see us though.” Velkyn whispered.
“Looks like the intellect devourer got control of him…” Victor said as he looked at the staggering, awkward movements of the giant and the glassy look in its eyes.
“Somebody push him into the trees…” Inva whispered harshly from somewhere seemingly in Victor’s shadow.
“Not a problem.” Ankita’s voice echoed in the others’ minds.
The fire giant took several more steps forward when an invisible blow swept its legs out from underneath of it and sent it teetering off the path and into the tree line. Given that the intellect devourer lurking somewhere inside of it was having an awkward time controlling its new and unfamiliar body, the giant had little chance to right itself and avoid toppling into the forest.
The results were sudden and immediate as the trees swarmed like rusted iron locusts over the giant’s flailing and screaming form. Blood splattered on iron as the trees began to rip the possessed giant to shreds with the preternaturally quick movement of their razor tipped limbs. It was over in under a minute and the group simply stood there and stared, slack jawed at the gory aftermath.
Under raised eyebrows and after nervously edging back from the forest’s edge they quickly made their way back to the central chamber in which they had awoken. Once there they glanced at a glowing illusion of an hourglass and the steady trickle of sand from its top to bottom chamber. Time was passing and as of yet they had little to show for it.
“Alright,” Velkyn said, “The Fool said he gave a key to a pretty woman in a pond…”
All eyes went up to the southern door and its mural of the Rusalka.
“And that would seem to be her.” The half-drow said with a chuckle.
“Lovely. This place is all full of joys.” Inva said as she swung the door open.
Past the door the passage sloped upwards at an incline with tiny rivulets of water running down the metallic walls and pooling at a small drain just before the doorway. A pale light glimmered down the hallway and reflected off of the rust-streaked walls and floor from some unseen source.
The group slowly trekked forwards till the passage reached a set of spiral stairs that ascended towards the light source somewhere high above. The source of the water was presumably in that direction as well and it dripped habitually down the length of the stairwell. The stairs themselves were made of the same metal as the rest of the passage and were fairly wide and shallow as they meandered up two complete turns till they exited somewhere above.
The group paused at the bottom of the stairs and glanced warily at a set of bones on the steps. Whatever they were from originally, they had been there for a very long period of time as evidenced by their rounded, water eroded features. There was also a metal dart among the bones.
“So I think it safe to assume that the stairs are trapped.”
“Yeah, and that would be where I come in again.” Inva said as she tentatively stepped onto the stairs and peered upwards, looking for the source of the dart if it had been a trap.
The tiefling paused and moved the bones aside. There was a pressure plate on the stair and another similar pressure plate two stairs up from it. Glancing up further there were likely others. The stairs were riddled with traps and it would be slow going if she was going to make sure that they didn’t blunder into an of them.
But then there was the metal ridge, almost an over glorified banister, that stood to either side of the stairs. It was certainly wide enough to walk upon assuming that any person doing so had a decent sense of balance. Inva glanced down at her companions and chuckled.
“The stairs are all trapped to hell. Climb up either side. Just watch yourself, the metal is wet and might be slippery. So watch yourself.”
The next thing the tiefling saw when she regained her bearings were the faces of the others looking down at her. Inva gritted her teeth from the bump on her head and grinned at the design of the stairs as she realized what had happened.
“Sons of b*tches. Clever sons of b*itches… the left banister is slicked over with and oil of slipperiness…”
“Help?” Garibaldi said from the right banister where his feet were seemingly stuck to the surface.
“And they put sovereign glue on the right side. Damn smooth design…” Inva said with genuine admiration as she hopped back up to her feet.
“It’s going to be really awkward if Garibaldi has to lose his boots here. Anyone have anything to get him unstuck?” Victor asked as he winced at the situation and dreaded having to actually go up the stairs.
Inva passed the cleric a small bottle of universal solvent, “That’ll work. And we won’t have to go up the stairs, just be careful going up the slippery side…”
“Umm… given your stunning example of how to be careful on that side, you care to run that past us again?” Marcus asked warily, given that he and the other fighters would have a hard enough time ascending wet stairs as they were weighted down with armor and weapons, much less an artificially slicked incline.
Inva grinned as she glanced up the stairs, chanted under her breath and a network of black, inky strands solidified into being like a shadowy version of some giant spider’s web.
“Just be careful on it, but that should take everyone’s weight.” Inva said as she started to climb the black network of strands like a fiendish spider.
“Don’t remind me of home.” Velkyn said as he started to climb up after the tiefling. “Spiders on everything…”
Ankita looked at the webs and shrugged before she started to levitate upwards, only using the webs or the stairs as a means to guide her ascent up to the top.
Collectively they ascended to the top of the stairs and found the hint of several more traps on the stairs as evidenced by bones on the steps, and then other things stuck to the right banister of the stairs as well: boots, weapons, clothing, and even an entire skeletal foot that looked to have been crudely hacked off to free its original owner.
“By comparison I’d say we’re having a much easier ascent than the past few people.” Velkyn said as he finished his climb up to the top.
At the summit of the stairs the passage opened into a single chamber, the center of which was dominated by a twenty-foot radius shaft in both directions up and down. From above, a waterfall cascaded from the inky heights of its source and fell downwards to a brilliant sparkling blue-white light that danced and refracted off of the falling current of the water. A lip of a few feet surrounded the shaft and was decorated with numerous statues of fey creatures molded into the metal of the walls.
“Hmm…” Inva said as she looked at the shaft.
The tiefling’s eyes glanced to a single corroded iron chain that dangled from a spike that had been magically set in the floor. The chain dangled over the lip of the shaft and descended for nearly a hundred feet to the bottom. Six or seven ropes, or their rotted remnants, also dangled over the side of the shaft from where they had been anchored to the statues at the rim.
Looking to the bottom of the shaft, the waterfall fell into a large pool of indeterminate depth, making a sudden dive an uncertain prospect. From somewhere off to the side of the room the source of the magical light washed over the choppy water of the pool with brilliant intensity and a shadow of something to that same side seemed to reflect out over the water’s surface, though from their height they couldn’t make out any firm details.
“I don’t trust it. Give me a bit to check out the side of the shaft for traps.” Inva said as she quaffed a potion, paused and then began to slowly walk down the walls from the sheer, slick lip of the shaft.
“Well there’s no dweomers on the walls or the chain.” Ankita said.
“I know, but I don’t trust this place to not have mechanical triggers, or weight activated traps. It’ll just take a minute.”
Inva slowly made her way down the shaft, being certain to examine the walls for any unpleasant surprises. About a third of the way down she discovered one of them, but not the way that she had hoped as a dart shot past her and barely missed embedding itself in her side.
“Son of a…” She cursed as she traced the dart’s path back to a small, almost imperceptible spot on the wall. A moment later she had discovered a second such trap and blocked both of them.
“Alright,” she called up to the others, “Two traps so far but nothing else. Let me get a closer look down here though.”
The others nodded and watched her descend. Twenty feet more down the shaft and there was a flash of light from off to one side of the pool of water at the bottom and Inva gave a yelp as the magic binding her to the walls vanished and she plummeted downwards.
Ankita immediately jumped over the side and began to lower herself slowly down the shaft and Velkyn threw a rope down and began to quickly descend as well. Inva fell several dozen feet before managing to grab hold of the chain that dangled down from the top, snarling softly as she gripped the rusted iron with bruised, raw hands.
“Stupid dispel!” She called out to no one in specific as she turned to glance at the female figure that seemed to lurk near the source.
Velkyn quickly caught up with her as she was staring daggers in the direction of the figure, and probably close to throwing them as well.
“Hold on. Let me at least try to talk with her. She might be willing to just give it to us, or maybe bargain.”
Inva snarled and lashed her tail as Velkyn called out to the putative figure of the Rusalka.
“Greetings Madame. Could we speak with you.” Velkyn said politely to the figure that he could now clearly see was that of a slim, marble white woman with her back turned to the pool.
The Rusalka didn’t respond. Velkyn slipped from common to Sylvan and said the same. Again the Rusalka gave no reply.
Velkyn descended another fifteen feet and looked closer at the woman, finally calling out to her one final time. Still no reply, but he finally knew why.
“It’s a statue. The Rusalka is just a marble statue of one of them. No wonder she didn’t give the Fool much of a response…”
“Then she won’t mind when I break her arms off…” Inva said under her breath as she climbed to the bottom of the shaft and joined Velkyn at the slim lip of metal that surrounded the pool.
The others slowly began to climb down while Ankita slowly finished her magical descent. At the bottom of the shaft the pool’s surface was still choppy but they could make out the glimmer of a dusting of coins, possibly jewels, and a mixture of rusting and some still brilliantly gleaming weapons at the bottom of the water. Additionally, they could see dozens of skeletons of those who had presumably fallen to their deaths or been killed by the traps in the shaft.
Beyond the statue of the Rusalka the source of the gleaming light was an intact door made of some gleaming silvery metal. Opposite it was a smaller, darkness wrapped passage that seemed to serve as a drainage point for the pool.
Inva and Velkyn glanced down at the pool and then to the door as Marcus and Victor joined them, and then there was a shout from above as Garibaldi slipped on the slippery links of the chain. The fighter fell a good two dozen feet into the center of the pool and it was deep enough to cushion the force of the fall, but then the ‘water’ began to ripple and surge around him.
The fighter shouted for help as some manner of jelly or ooze that had been lurking otherwise unseen in the depths of the pool began to suffocate him. Victor and Marcus unsheathed their weapons and began to stab at the creature as best they could while Velkyn instead shouted something up to Ankita.
“Heat the metal at the bottom of the pool if you can!”
The sorceress nodded and gestured in the direction of the coins and weapons that littered not the pool, but the inside of the creature that was attempting to devour Victor’s cohort. At first there was no effect and the fighters below continued to stab at the amorphous being, but then the carpet of coins began to glow with heat and the gelatinous creature began to contort and spasm.
As the spells continued to burn at the creature, its grip on Garibaldi loosened and his companions dragged him free of the creature’s grasp shortly before it gave its last convulsion and died as the water of pool was set to nearly a boil. As the jelly died, the water of the pool grew briefly discolored and then slowly drained away down the small side passage.
Victor quickly saw to his cohort’s injuries while the others glanced down at the various items of both mundane value and likely magical status as well that were left behind in the wake of the pool guardian’s death. Marcus put down his weapons and shucked his armor before he dove into the pool and began to collect some of the objects he could reach before having to come up for air. As well, for her part, Ankita telekinetically snatched up several items that caught her eyes.
Inva sat next to the statue of the Rusalka carving her name and an obscene epithet into the bare chest of the water fey, “You know, we can come back for this later if we have time. I’m less concerned with making money now than I am with getting done what we need to get done before our loving captor makes good on his promise to kill one of us.”
Victor nodded as Garibaldi coughed up the last of the water from his impromptu swim. “I’ve got to agree with that. We only have one key and we wasted too long going down the wrong path to begin with. Let’s keep what we have now and come back later.”
“Works for me.” Marcus said as he shook himself off and dried himself as best he could as Francesca handed him a towel from her backpack.
Inva nodded and hopped down from the base of the rock the statue had been perched upon. She walked over to the gleaming magical doorway, knelt down in front of it and glanced back at the others.
“You might want to stand back. And hope I do this right because there’s something on the door that looks keyed to go off if you botch trying to open the lock…”
The rest of the group did indeed back away from the door as the tiefling knelt down in front of the door and slowly, carefully picked the lock. Several minutes later there was a loud click and the door swung open.
Inside was a dry, barren room that seemed to have once been used as a wizard’s study, or at least made up to resemble one. If it had once been fully stocked as such, it had long since been ransacked and stripped bare of most anything valuable. A table stood in the room’s center covered in a stack of books and a cracked crystal ball. A bookshelf on one wall was littered with moldered parchments and ancient, brittle scroll cases.
Velkyn whispered a few words in draconic and scanned the room for dweomers.
“The books on the table are magical but nothing else. No traps. Seem’s safe.”
Marcus nodded, “Just so long as there’s a key.”
The group passed into the room and slowly sifted through the ruined scrolls on the shelves and examined the room itself for any hidden cubbyholes or doors. Finding nothing of note they examined the books on the table. Each of the slim books was bound in the same otherwise unremarkable leather binding, and no titles were present.
“Hmm, something written in the dust…” Inva said, pointing to a line in planar common written on the table in front of the books. “It says ‘Be Not Greedy’.”
Marcus looked at the line, then back over his shoulder at the pool of water. He sighed and walked back, tossing half of the things he had recovered from its bottom back in. The others looked at him oddly as he walked back in but he dismissed the looks and pointed to the line in the dust.
“Seems worth paying attention to. Whoever set this up is already watching us and I’d rather not tempt punishment on their part.”
Ankita shrugged and picked up one of the books. She read its first page and immediately regretted the act, as she suddenly felt ever so slightly clumsier and less dexterous.
“Damn it…” She said as she looked over at Velkyn as he too looked at the books.
The half-drow had likewise picked up one of the books, and similar to Ankita, he wished he could have taken it back as he suddenly felt weaker and less hardy. He grumbled to himself and said nothing else. Things weren’t going his way, completely outside of having no memory of how he got to where he was or what was going on, things just hadn’t been working out: First a wight ripping his health from him and causing him to lose some of his most powerful spells and now a cursed book doing almost the same.
Marcus, feeling a bit headstrong, picked up a book and felt somehow stronger as he read the first few lines on the otherwise blank page. He smiled and put the book back down on the table.
“Not all bad apparently.”
Ankita looked at the last book and snatched it up. “Let’s hope so because I didn’t have good luck the first time.”
The sorceress read a line from the final book and felt nothing immediately occur, but the others suddenly saw that her eyes seemed to glimmer more and perhaps her demeanor seemed all the slightest bit more attractive and full of presence.
Ankita shrugged and looked at the scroll that, unlike the books, wasn’t magical as far as they could tell. It was gibberish as far as she could see and so she handed it to Inva who was already trying to peer over her shoulder.
“Go ahead, it’s nonsense.”
Inva took the scroll and immediately disagreed, “No, it’s just mostly gibberish. There’s repeating lines of backwards elven in it.”
The tiefling grinned and read the lines out to the others, “Sometimes things are easier to find than not, take the past of least resistance in this case. Now we have to reset the wards on the door; a pity.”
Victor smacked his forehead. “The other tunnel where the water was flowing down. It’s probably in there and it probably isn’t even trapped…”
“But here we are breaking through warded doors. Cute.” Inva said with a smirk up towards the ceiling in case anyone was listening in on them at the moment.
Feeling a mixture of foolishness, irritation and optimism at being moments away from having one more of the keys they needed, they left the room and entered the other tunnel that led off from the pool.
The tunnel was dark and irregular, seemingly having been partially eroded from the metal by the constant flow of water through some natural fault or fissure. As they passed through the passage they searched for shelves, hidden recesses or some other such area where a key might be hidden. They found nothing until Garibaldi stepped into a hole and sank into the fetid water up to his waist.
“I think you found the path of least resistance there.” Inva said with a smirk as she looked down at the fighter. “Can you feel anything down there with your feet?”
Garibaldi muttered about the water and then paused, feeling around with his feet in the depression till he brushed against something. “Yeah, there’s something down here. Feels like a box actually.”
And indeed it was. A slim, watertight box about a foot long revealed itself as they pulled it out of the depression and brought it back into the well lit room with the pool. Inside, much to their relief was a slim metallic tile similar to the one that they already possessed.
“Two down. Hot damn.” Velkyn said as the all grinned at one another.
Back in the center chamber once again they glanced at the remaining doors as their elation at some small measure of success was still freshly on their minds. There was still the unmarked, ice-covered door, the door with the mural of a man holding a shield defensively, and then there was the passage leading up. Velkyn was looking up at the mural of the rearing, entwined dragons that were fighting on the mural above the upper passage. The half-drow scratched his head and took a hard glance at the mural again.
Velkyn had grown up with his father having several wyrmling shadow dragons and so he was somewhat familiar with dragons in general from them. The dragons on the mural weren’t fighting…
“Those two dragons are f*cking each other.”
Six sets of incredulous eyes turned to Velkyn.
“Say what?!” Victor said as he looked up at the mural.
Ankita snickered as she glanced at the mural. True enough the two ‘fighting’ dragons were copulating in the utter depths of passion with one another. It certainly put a different spin upon what they might expect up above.
“Like I said, they’re f*cking each other. Look!” Velkyn said as he pointed up at the mural. “I’ve seen dragons before, and well, it sort of looks like they’re fighting if you don’t know what’s going on.”
“Ankita? Can you levitate up there and send down a rope so the rest of us can climb up there?” Marcus asked as his cohort Francesca tried to suppress an awkward giggle at the cavorting dragons.
Ankita nodded, “Not a problem.”
She took the rope that Marcus handed to her and slowly rose into the air as she concentrated. The sorceress passed up the passage and after a decent thirty-foot ascent she let down the rope and called out for them to follow.
“Couple problems though. There’s nothing for me to tie the rope to, so please send up someone light so they can help me with the rest of you. I’m not exactly the strongest person here. Plus… hope you don’t have any attachment to your armor…”
“Huh?” Marcus shouted up the shaft.
“One of that pair is a rust dragon…”
“Cr*p…” Came the collective reply of the fighters and the cleric.
Once they had all awkwardly ascended to the top of the shaft, they emerged into a large metallic cavern that was covered to at least an inch in a reddish-brown carpet of rust. Bit of weapons and armor and oddly scorched bones littered the floor of the chamber with unsettling regularity while various sets of tracks, both newer and more ancient, crisscrossed the blanketing layer of oxidized metal.
Leading out of the chamber were two tunnels, one to the left and one to the right, both directly opposite from the other, and both with tracks leading into or out of them.
Inva sniffed at the air and made a face, “Ozone.”
True enough, the acrid and pungent reek of ozone gently wafted out of the left passage and on closer inspection the blanket of rust was thicker to the right.
“Probably a blue and a rust then. Mating? Screwed up kids…” Velkyn muttered.
“Well presumably one of them has the key we need, though the gods only know how we’re supposed to kill them to get it. Maybe they’re in a bargaining mood…” Marcus said as he glanced at the carbonized bones.
“I’m all for the blue one, it’s less likely to wreck our weapons if we then have to take on the other one.” Inva said.
The others agreed and slowly, carefully began to make their way through the left tunnel. It emerged into another cavern littered with scorched bones and there was a reaction almost immediately as the bones rattled, joined together and animated with their approach.
Victor grinned and raised his holy symbol. It was over in seconds.
“The right god, huh?” Velkyn repeated as he recalled their earlier experience with the wights.
Victor kissed the symbol of his deity and glanced down at the inanimate bones, their unholy energies scoured clean by the might of his god.
“Well, that wasn’t so bad at all. Now we just need to find… oh…” Marcus said, trailing off as a sapphire blue reptilian head as big around as he was descended out of the murky gloom at the rear of the cavern.
The dragon blinked and snorted derisively, sending a current of reeking ozone to wash over the group while tiny flickers of static discharged across its hide. The wyrm moved forward and the gentle rustle from the shifting of its bed of coins echoed across the cavern.
It narrowed its yellow, luminous eyes and snarled, “I suppose that I’ll have to reanimate those little puppets now. Wonderful…”
He snorted again in irritation and his lips retreated slightly over ivory fangs the size of daggers, “So, did my b*tch of a wife send you? What does that old fat sow want this time? Because she isn’t getting it till I have back what’s mine.”
Another stretch of hours passed as they descended the mountain and wandered back through the forest. They were mostly quiet and sullen as they made the trek, given that they had wasted their time and had nothing to show for it. Velkyn’s mood was soured even more due to the lingering effects of the undead that had attacked him earlier.
About three quarters of the way through the forest they heard the sounds of something heavy approaching. Inva, as per usual, was nowhere to be seen, and moments later Velkyn had turned the rest of them invisible as the fire giant from earlier came shambling through the wood.
“Oh hell, this guy’s back. Doesn’t look like he can see us though.” Velkyn whispered.
“Looks like the intellect devourer got control of him…” Victor said as he looked at the staggering, awkward movements of the giant and the glassy look in its eyes.
“Somebody push him into the trees…” Inva whispered harshly from somewhere seemingly in Victor’s shadow.
“Not a problem.” Ankita’s voice echoed in the others’ minds.
The fire giant took several more steps forward when an invisible blow swept its legs out from underneath of it and sent it teetering off the path and into the tree line. Given that the intellect devourer lurking somewhere inside of it was having an awkward time controlling its new and unfamiliar body, the giant had little chance to right itself and avoid toppling into the forest.
The results were sudden and immediate as the trees swarmed like rusted iron locusts over the giant’s flailing and screaming form. Blood splattered on iron as the trees began to rip the possessed giant to shreds with the preternaturally quick movement of their razor tipped limbs. It was over in under a minute and the group simply stood there and stared, slack jawed at the gory aftermath.
***
Under raised eyebrows and after nervously edging back from the forest’s edge they quickly made their way back to the central chamber in which they had awoken. Once there they glanced at a glowing illusion of an hourglass and the steady trickle of sand from its top to bottom chamber. Time was passing and as of yet they had little to show for it.
“Alright,” Velkyn said, “The Fool said he gave a key to a pretty woman in a pond…”
All eyes went up to the southern door and its mural of the Rusalka.
“And that would seem to be her.” The half-drow said with a chuckle.
“Lovely. This place is all full of joys.” Inva said as she swung the door open.
Past the door the passage sloped upwards at an incline with tiny rivulets of water running down the metallic walls and pooling at a small drain just before the doorway. A pale light glimmered down the hallway and reflected off of the rust-streaked walls and floor from some unseen source.
The group slowly trekked forwards till the passage reached a set of spiral stairs that ascended towards the light source somewhere high above. The source of the water was presumably in that direction as well and it dripped habitually down the length of the stairwell. The stairs themselves were made of the same metal as the rest of the passage and were fairly wide and shallow as they meandered up two complete turns till they exited somewhere above.
The group paused at the bottom of the stairs and glanced warily at a set of bones on the steps. Whatever they were from originally, they had been there for a very long period of time as evidenced by their rounded, water eroded features. There was also a metal dart among the bones.
“So I think it safe to assume that the stairs are trapped.”
“Yeah, and that would be where I come in again.” Inva said as she tentatively stepped onto the stairs and peered upwards, looking for the source of the dart if it had been a trap.
The tiefling paused and moved the bones aside. There was a pressure plate on the stair and another similar pressure plate two stairs up from it. Glancing up further there were likely others. The stairs were riddled with traps and it would be slow going if she was going to make sure that they didn’t blunder into an of them.
But then there was the metal ridge, almost an over glorified banister, that stood to either side of the stairs. It was certainly wide enough to walk upon assuming that any person doing so had a decent sense of balance. Inva glanced down at her companions and chuckled.
“The stairs are all trapped to hell. Climb up either side. Just watch yourself, the metal is wet and might be slippery. So watch yourself.”
The next thing the tiefling saw when she regained her bearings were the faces of the others looking down at her. Inva gritted her teeth from the bump on her head and grinned at the design of the stairs as she realized what had happened.
“Sons of b*tches. Clever sons of b*itches… the left banister is slicked over with and oil of slipperiness…”
“Help?” Garibaldi said from the right banister where his feet were seemingly stuck to the surface.
“And they put sovereign glue on the right side. Damn smooth design…” Inva said with genuine admiration as she hopped back up to her feet.
“It’s going to be really awkward if Garibaldi has to lose his boots here. Anyone have anything to get him unstuck?” Victor asked as he winced at the situation and dreaded having to actually go up the stairs.
Inva passed the cleric a small bottle of universal solvent, “That’ll work. And we won’t have to go up the stairs, just be careful going up the slippery side…”
“Umm… given your stunning example of how to be careful on that side, you care to run that past us again?” Marcus asked warily, given that he and the other fighters would have a hard enough time ascending wet stairs as they were weighted down with armor and weapons, much less an artificially slicked incline.
Inva grinned as she glanced up the stairs, chanted under her breath and a network of black, inky strands solidified into being like a shadowy version of some giant spider’s web.
“Just be careful on it, but that should take everyone’s weight.” Inva said as she started to climb the black network of strands like a fiendish spider.
“Don’t remind me of home.” Velkyn said as he started to climb up after the tiefling. “Spiders on everything…”
Ankita looked at the webs and shrugged before she started to levitate upwards, only using the webs or the stairs as a means to guide her ascent up to the top.
Collectively they ascended to the top of the stairs and found the hint of several more traps on the stairs as evidenced by bones on the steps, and then other things stuck to the right banister of the stairs as well: boots, weapons, clothing, and even an entire skeletal foot that looked to have been crudely hacked off to free its original owner.
“By comparison I’d say we’re having a much easier ascent than the past few people.” Velkyn said as he finished his climb up to the top.
At the summit of the stairs the passage opened into a single chamber, the center of which was dominated by a twenty-foot radius shaft in both directions up and down. From above, a waterfall cascaded from the inky heights of its source and fell downwards to a brilliant sparkling blue-white light that danced and refracted off of the falling current of the water. A lip of a few feet surrounded the shaft and was decorated with numerous statues of fey creatures molded into the metal of the walls.
“Hmm…” Inva said as she looked at the shaft.
The tiefling’s eyes glanced to a single corroded iron chain that dangled from a spike that had been magically set in the floor. The chain dangled over the lip of the shaft and descended for nearly a hundred feet to the bottom. Six or seven ropes, or their rotted remnants, also dangled over the side of the shaft from where they had been anchored to the statues at the rim.
Looking to the bottom of the shaft, the waterfall fell into a large pool of indeterminate depth, making a sudden dive an uncertain prospect. From somewhere off to the side of the room the source of the magical light washed over the choppy water of the pool with brilliant intensity and a shadow of something to that same side seemed to reflect out over the water’s surface, though from their height they couldn’t make out any firm details.
“I don’t trust it. Give me a bit to check out the side of the shaft for traps.” Inva said as she quaffed a potion, paused and then began to slowly walk down the walls from the sheer, slick lip of the shaft.
“Well there’s no dweomers on the walls or the chain.” Ankita said.
“I know, but I don’t trust this place to not have mechanical triggers, or weight activated traps. It’ll just take a minute.”
Inva slowly made her way down the shaft, being certain to examine the walls for any unpleasant surprises. About a third of the way down she discovered one of them, but not the way that she had hoped as a dart shot past her and barely missed embedding itself in her side.
“Son of a…” She cursed as she traced the dart’s path back to a small, almost imperceptible spot on the wall. A moment later she had discovered a second such trap and blocked both of them.
“Alright,” she called up to the others, “Two traps so far but nothing else. Let me get a closer look down here though.”
The others nodded and watched her descend. Twenty feet more down the shaft and there was a flash of light from off to one side of the pool of water at the bottom and Inva gave a yelp as the magic binding her to the walls vanished and she plummeted downwards.
Ankita immediately jumped over the side and began to lower herself slowly down the shaft and Velkyn threw a rope down and began to quickly descend as well. Inva fell several dozen feet before managing to grab hold of the chain that dangled down from the top, snarling softly as she gripped the rusted iron with bruised, raw hands.
“Stupid dispel!” She called out to no one in specific as she turned to glance at the female figure that seemed to lurk near the source.
Velkyn quickly caught up with her as she was staring daggers in the direction of the figure, and probably close to throwing them as well.
“Hold on. Let me at least try to talk with her. She might be willing to just give it to us, or maybe bargain.”
Inva snarled and lashed her tail as Velkyn called out to the putative figure of the Rusalka.
“Greetings Madame. Could we speak with you.” Velkyn said politely to the figure that he could now clearly see was that of a slim, marble white woman with her back turned to the pool.
The Rusalka didn’t respond. Velkyn slipped from common to Sylvan and said the same. Again the Rusalka gave no reply.
Velkyn descended another fifteen feet and looked closer at the woman, finally calling out to her one final time. Still no reply, but he finally knew why.
“It’s a statue. The Rusalka is just a marble statue of one of them. No wonder she didn’t give the Fool much of a response…”
“Then she won’t mind when I break her arms off…” Inva said under her breath as she climbed to the bottom of the shaft and joined Velkyn at the slim lip of metal that surrounded the pool.
The others slowly began to climb down while Ankita slowly finished her magical descent. At the bottom of the shaft the pool’s surface was still choppy but they could make out the glimmer of a dusting of coins, possibly jewels, and a mixture of rusting and some still brilliantly gleaming weapons at the bottom of the water. Additionally, they could see dozens of skeletons of those who had presumably fallen to their deaths or been killed by the traps in the shaft.
Beyond the statue of the Rusalka the source of the gleaming light was an intact door made of some gleaming silvery metal. Opposite it was a smaller, darkness wrapped passage that seemed to serve as a drainage point for the pool.
Inva and Velkyn glanced down at the pool and then to the door as Marcus and Victor joined them, and then there was a shout from above as Garibaldi slipped on the slippery links of the chain. The fighter fell a good two dozen feet into the center of the pool and it was deep enough to cushion the force of the fall, but then the ‘water’ began to ripple and surge around him.
The fighter shouted for help as some manner of jelly or ooze that had been lurking otherwise unseen in the depths of the pool began to suffocate him. Victor and Marcus unsheathed their weapons and began to stab at the creature as best they could while Velkyn instead shouted something up to Ankita.
“Heat the metal at the bottom of the pool if you can!”
The sorceress nodded and gestured in the direction of the coins and weapons that littered not the pool, but the inside of the creature that was attempting to devour Victor’s cohort. At first there was no effect and the fighters below continued to stab at the amorphous being, but then the carpet of coins began to glow with heat and the gelatinous creature began to contort and spasm.
As the spells continued to burn at the creature, its grip on Garibaldi loosened and his companions dragged him free of the creature’s grasp shortly before it gave its last convulsion and died as the water of pool was set to nearly a boil. As the jelly died, the water of the pool grew briefly discolored and then slowly drained away down the small side passage.
Victor quickly saw to his cohort’s injuries while the others glanced down at the various items of both mundane value and likely magical status as well that were left behind in the wake of the pool guardian’s death. Marcus put down his weapons and shucked his armor before he dove into the pool and began to collect some of the objects he could reach before having to come up for air. As well, for her part, Ankita telekinetically snatched up several items that caught her eyes.
Inva sat next to the statue of the Rusalka carving her name and an obscene epithet into the bare chest of the water fey, “You know, we can come back for this later if we have time. I’m less concerned with making money now than I am with getting done what we need to get done before our loving captor makes good on his promise to kill one of us.”
Victor nodded as Garibaldi coughed up the last of the water from his impromptu swim. “I’ve got to agree with that. We only have one key and we wasted too long going down the wrong path to begin with. Let’s keep what we have now and come back later.”
“Works for me.” Marcus said as he shook himself off and dried himself as best he could as Francesca handed him a towel from her backpack.
Inva nodded and hopped down from the base of the rock the statue had been perched upon. She walked over to the gleaming magical doorway, knelt down in front of it and glanced back at the others.
“You might want to stand back. And hope I do this right because there’s something on the door that looks keyed to go off if you botch trying to open the lock…”
The rest of the group did indeed back away from the door as the tiefling knelt down in front of the door and slowly, carefully picked the lock. Several minutes later there was a loud click and the door swung open.
Inside was a dry, barren room that seemed to have once been used as a wizard’s study, or at least made up to resemble one. If it had once been fully stocked as such, it had long since been ransacked and stripped bare of most anything valuable. A table stood in the room’s center covered in a stack of books and a cracked crystal ball. A bookshelf on one wall was littered with moldered parchments and ancient, brittle scroll cases.
Velkyn whispered a few words in draconic and scanned the room for dweomers.
“The books on the table are magical but nothing else. No traps. Seem’s safe.”
Marcus nodded, “Just so long as there’s a key.”
The group passed into the room and slowly sifted through the ruined scrolls on the shelves and examined the room itself for any hidden cubbyholes or doors. Finding nothing of note they examined the books on the table. Each of the slim books was bound in the same otherwise unremarkable leather binding, and no titles were present.
“Hmm, something written in the dust…” Inva said, pointing to a line in planar common written on the table in front of the books. “It says ‘Be Not Greedy’.”
Marcus looked at the line, then back over his shoulder at the pool of water. He sighed and walked back, tossing half of the things he had recovered from its bottom back in. The others looked at him oddly as he walked back in but he dismissed the looks and pointed to the line in the dust.
“Seems worth paying attention to. Whoever set this up is already watching us and I’d rather not tempt punishment on their part.”
Ankita shrugged and picked up one of the books. She read its first page and immediately regretted the act, as she suddenly felt ever so slightly clumsier and less dexterous.
“Damn it…” She said as she looked over at Velkyn as he too looked at the books.
The half-drow had likewise picked up one of the books, and similar to Ankita, he wished he could have taken it back as he suddenly felt weaker and less hardy. He grumbled to himself and said nothing else. Things weren’t going his way, completely outside of having no memory of how he got to where he was or what was going on, things just hadn’t been working out: First a wight ripping his health from him and causing him to lose some of his most powerful spells and now a cursed book doing almost the same.
Marcus, feeling a bit headstrong, picked up a book and felt somehow stronger as he read the first few lines on the otherwise blank page. He smiled and put the book back down on the table.
“Not all bad apparently.”
Ankita looked at the last book and snatched it up. “Let’s hope so because I didn’t have good luck the first time.”
The sorceress read a line from the final book and felt nothing immediately occur, but the others suddenly saw that her eyes seemed to glimmer more and perhaps her demeanor seemed all the slightest bit more attractive and full of presence.
Ankita shrugged and looked at the scroll that, unlike the books, wasn’t magical as far as they could tell. It was gibberish as far as she could see and so she handed it to Inva who was already trying to peer over her shoulder.
“Go ahead, it’s nonsense.”
Inva took the scroll and immediately disagreed, “No, it’s just mostly gibberish. There’s repeating lines of backwards elven in it.”
The tiefling grinned and read the lines out to the others, “Sometimes things are easier to find than not, take the past of least resistance in this case. Now we have to reset the wards on the door; a pity.”
Victor smacked his forehead. “The other tunnel where the water was flowing down. It’s probably in there and it probably isn’t even trapped…”
“But here we are breaking through warded doors. Cute.” Inva said with a smirk up towards the ceiling in case anyone was listening in on them at the moment.
Feeling a mixture of foolishness, irritation and optimism at being moments away from having one more of the keys they needed, they left the room and entered the other tunnel that led off from the pool.
The tunnel was dark and irregular, seemingly having been partially eroded from the metal by the constant flow of water through some natural fault or fissure. As they passed through the passage they searched for shelves, hidden recesses or some other such area where a key might be hidden. They found nothing until Garibaldi stepped into a hole and sank into the fetid water up to his waist.
“I think you found the path of least resistance there.” Inva said with a smirk as she looked down at the fighter. “Can you feel anything down there with your feet?”
Garibaldi muttered about the water and then paused, feeling around with his feet in the depression till he brushed against something. “Yeah, there’s something down here. Feels like a box actually.”
And indeed it was. A slim, watertight box about a foot long revealed itself as they pulled it out of the depression and brought it back into the well lit room with the pool. Inside, much to their relief was a slim metallic tile similar to the one that they already possessed.
“Two down. Hot damn.” Velkyn said as the all grinned at one another.
***
Back in the center chamber once again they glanced at the remaining doors as their elation at some small measure of success was still freshly on their minds. There was still the unmarked, ice-covered door, the door with the mural of a man holding a shield defensively, and then there was the passage leading up. Velkyn was looking up at the mural of the rearing, entwined dragons that were fighting on the mural above the upper passage. The half-drow scratched his head and took a hard glance at the mural again.
Velkyn had grown up with his father having several wyrmling shadow dragons and so he was somewhat familiar with dragons in general from them. The dragons on the mural weren’t fighting…
“Those two dragons are f*cking each other.”
Six sets of incredulous eyes turned to Velkyn.
“Say what?!” Victor said as he looked up at the mural.
Ankita snickered as she glanced at the mural. True enough the two ‘fighting’ dragons were copulating in the utter depths of passion with one another. It certainly put a different spin upon what they might expect up above.
“Like I said, they’re f*cking each other. Look!” Velkyn said as he pointed up at the mural. “I’ve seen dragons before, and well, it sort of looks like they’re fighting if you don’t know what’s going on.”
“Ankita? Can you levitate up there and send down a rope so the rest of us can climb up there?” Marcus asked as his cohort Francesca tried to suppress an awkward giggle at the cavorting dragons.
Ankita nodded, “Not a problem.”
She took the rope that Marcus handed to her and slowly rose into the air as she concentrated. The sorceress passed up the passage and after a decent thirty-foot ascent she let down the rope and called out for them to follow.
“Couple problems though. There’s nothing for me to tie the rope to, so please send up someone light so they can help me with the rest of you. I’m not exactly the strongest person here. Plus… hope you don’t have any attachment to your armor…”
“Huh?” Marcus shouted up the shaft.
“One of that pair is a rust dragon…”
“Cr*p…” Came the collective reply of the fighters and the cleric.
Once they had all awkwardly ascended to the top of the shaft, they emerged into a large metallic cavern that was covered to at least an inch in a reddish-brown carpet of rust. Bit of weapons and armor and oddly scorched bones littered the floor of the chamber with unsettling regularity while various sets of tracks, both newer and more ancient, crisscrossed the blanketing layer of oxidized metal.
Leading out of the chamber were two tunnels, one to the left and one to the right, both directly opposite from the other, and both with tracks leading into or out of them.
Inva sniffed at the air and made a face, “Ozone.”
True enough, the acrid and pungent reek of ozone gently wafted out of the left passage and on closer inspection the blanket of rust was thicker to the right.
“Probably a blue and a rust then. Mating? Screwed up kids…” Velkyn muttered.
“Well presumably one of them has the key we need, though the gods only know how we’re supposed to kill them to get it. Maybe they’re in a bargaining mood…” Marcus said as he glanced at the carbonized bones.
“I’m all for the blue one, it’s less likely to wreck our weapons if we then have to take on the other one.” Inva said.
The others agreed and slowly, carefully began to make their way through the left tunnel. It emerged into another cavern littered with scorched bones and there was a reaction almost immediately as the bones rattled, joined together and animated with their approach.
Victor grinned and raised his holy symbol. It was over in seconds.
“The right god, huh?” Velkyn repeated as he recalled their earlier experience with the wights.
Victor kissed the symbol of his deity and glanced down at the inanimate bones, their unholy energies scoured clean by the might of his god.
“Well, that wasn’t so bad at all. Now we just need to find… oh…” Marcus said, trailing off as a sapphire blue reptilian head as big around as he was descended out of the murky gloom at the rear of the cavern.
The dragon blinked and snorted derisively, sending a current of reeking ozone to wash over the group while tiny flickers of static discharged across its hide. The wyrm moved forward and the gentle rustle from the shifting of its bed of coins echoed across the cavern.
It narrowed its yellow, luminous eyes and snarled, “I suppose that I’ll have to reanimate those little puppets now. Wonderful…”
He snorted again in irritation and his lips retreated slightly over ivory fangs the size of daggers, “So, did my b*tch of a wife send you? What does that old fat sow want this time? Because she isn’t getting it till I have back what’s mine.”
Gez
First Post
Cool update.
Poor giant. It really wasn't his day. First ridiculed, then mind-controlled by a monster that ate its brain, and then, to add insult to injury, telekinetically pushed into a grove of flaying trees.
And yeah, it's always fun to get entangled into the affairs of creatures like great wyrms.
Oh yeah. Editing time. “The books on the table are magical but nothing else. No traps. Seem’s seems safe.” There, it's over.
Poor giant. It really wasn't his day. First ridiculed, then mind-controlled by a monster that ate its brain, and then, to add insult to injury, telekinetically pushed into a grove of flaying trees.
And yeah, it's always fun to get entangled into the affairs of creatures like great wyrms.
Oh yeah. Editing time. “The books on the table are magical but nothing else. No traps. Seem’s seems safe.” There, it's over.
demiurge1138
Inventor of Super-Toast
I do feel sorry for that fire giant... his only crime was being big and stupid and wanting to kill the PCs... OK, so that's reason enough. But he died in a really bad way.
And I love the idea of unwary adventurers caught up in the aftermath of a messy draconic relationship.
Demiurge out.
And I love the idea of unwary adventurers caught up in the aftermath of a messy draconic relationship.
Demiurge out.
Gerzel
First Post
Lets see
Next episode we get into the big kobald conspiracey
Also we see some wrap-ups from the first game. Like what color of women's panties does Vorkey Really perfer, and how his marrage with Shylara has been going (not too well).
If you belive that then can I sell you a Dabus?
Next episode we get into the big kobald conspiracey
Also we see some wrap-ups from the first game. Like what color of women's panties does Vorkey Really perfer, and how his marrage with Shylara has been going (not too well).
If you belive that then can I sell you a Dabus?
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