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<blockquote data-quote="shilsen" data-source="post: 2936176" data-attributes="member: 198"><p>Luna switches back to her normal form and asks Trillia, “Should we try to destroy the wall?”</p><p></p><p>“No, I don’t think there’s anything really special about the wall. I already checked and it’s not magical.” Trillia looks around at the rest, especially Nameless, and continues, “Remember my theory about there being a dimensional seal somewhere in Yarkuun Draal? The only reason there’d be one is if there’s a manifest zone to Xoriat here, in which case, the boundaries between Eberron and Xoriat are weaker here. Still, I wasn’t expecting to actually catch a glimpse of Xoriat itself.”</p><p></p><p>“Is that thing we saw, whatever it was, at all likely to end up here?” asks Six.</p><p></p><p>“Oh no! With Xoriat permanently sundered from Eberron by the magic of the Gatekeepers during the Daelkyr War, nothing can cross over between the two. This is as close as one can get. I’d heard of it, but never experienced it myself. Fascinating!”</p><p></p><p>After having ascertained that nothing similar is about to recur, the group moves around the chamber checking for anything hidden and collecting the Dhakaani artifacts. Examining the petrified hobgoblin arm that Korm is picking up, Nameless says, “I think that’s actually a backscratcher.”</p><p></p><p>“Really? I’m taking it anyway.”</p><p></p><p>“Maybe some collector might be interested in it,” says Luna.</p><p></p><p>“Do you really want to be doing business with a collector who likes mummified humanoid arms?”</p><p></p><p>Trillia, who has been examining the hobgoblin attached to the wall and murmuring the words written alongside, happens to say “Smaller” aloud in the original daelkyr. The tattooed writing on the hobgoblin’s torso immediately shrinks in size, more writing appearing at top and bottom to fill the extra space.</p><p></p><p>As the change occurs, the hobgoblin’s eyes snap open and it utters a gurgling scream. Trillia quickly steps away, but it shows no signs of having noticed her, continuing to scream. Korm promptly bats it on the head with the petrified arm, but that seems to have no effect even though it snaps the hobgoblin’s head sideways. After a couple of seconds, the screaming ends in a slack-jawed gasping, which reveals that its tongue has been nailed to the bottom of its mouth.</p><p></p><p>Carefully examining it, Trillia says, “It’s got to be an information storage device of some kind, with the writing stored in it accessible with those commands. But the changes torture it as well.”</p><p></p><p>“I can see how,” says Nameless. “I felt the tattoos. They’re like weals raised by a whip or burned by a hot iron. For the lettering to change, the old ones have to be removed and new ones appear.”</p><p></p><p>Trillia nods and adds, “The pain is quite possibly a serious benefit as far as the avolakia was concerned. Some aberrations consider the crafting of specific emotions, especially the traumatic ones, as an art form.”</p><p></p><p>“I’m really getting upset with these aberrations,” growls Luna.</p><p></p><p>“There’s a reason the Gatekeeepers exist,” says Korm, before turning to Trillia. “Can I put it out of its suffering?”</p><p></p><p>Trillia considers for a bit and says, “I’m sure there’s valuable information hidden within it, but accessing it would probably take hours of searching, and I’d be torturing it throughout. I’ll do without. You can go ahead.”</p><p></p><p>She steps away and Korm unsheathes his sword, steps forward, and splits the hobgoblin’s skull in two. He watches for a few moments to make sure that it is dead, and is as assured that it’s so by the slow fading away of the writing on its chest as by its lack of breath or movement.</p><p></p><p>The others have already stripped the room of whatever might be valuable, and the group leaves the chamber. After a short discussion about the risks of continuing onwards, they decide to continue a bit further. </p><p></p><p>Returning to the chamber where the corpses of the avolakia and the malformed goblins and bugbears still lie, the Angels head down the one tunnel they have not explored. At the next turn, the tunnel switches from the pink, apparently living material, to the stone of the city and the plateau. After another turn, the tunnel travels over two hundred feet without any openings or doorways.</p><p></p><p>The first thing that breaks the monotony of the stone is a wide archway on the right wall of the tunnel (which continues onwards), which has been bricked in. There are carvings in daelkyr on it, which read ‘Danger. Do not open.’</p><p></p><p>When Nameless translates, Korm says, “Something that the aberrations consider dangerous? That could be interesting.”</p><p></p><p>“Considering our current status, I’d rather not open this now,” says Nameless warily. “Maybe tomorrow, after we have all our spells available?”</p><p></p><p>“Actually,” says Trillia, “I was hoping not to return to this area again. I’d rather visit widely-spaced sections of the city, so that even when they find out we’ve been here - which I presume they’ll do soon enough - they won’t be able to trap us or prepare effectively enough to seriously endanger us.”</p><p></p><p>“Yeah,” says Luna. “Let’s check it out now.”</p><p></p><p>“After all,” says Korm, unsheathing his sword, “How bad could it be?”</p><p></p><p>“A sphincter farted on me and licked him,” says Six, indicating Gareth. “Don’t say things like that.” Gareth, who has been concentrating on the archway, nods and then says, “I don’t pick up any aura of evil, for what it’s worth.”</p><p></p><p>Korm uses his greatsword to chop through the bricked-up area, its unusual material easily reducing the wall to rubble, which Luna (back in bear form) pulls out of the way. After chopping through nearly a dozen feet, Korm breaks through into an open area. </p><p></p><p>It is a short tunnel, fifteen feet long and ten feet wide, that opens into a large chamber, the far wall of which is nearly forty feet away from the tunnel’s end, and the floor of which is much lower than the tunnel’s. The entire area is lit by a pale green light that seems to have no evident source. </p><p></p><p>Once everyone can see in, Nameless points at six glyphs set into the floor of the tunnel. “They’re inactive, but someone definitely wanted some protection here.”</p><p></p><p>Korm, having moved in a little further to allow the others to enter, points into the chamber and says, “Look.” Joining him, the others see that the large chamber’s floor is about ten feet lower. The far wall has an open doorway, revealing a tunnel that turns right. The chamber’s ceiling is thirty feet above the floor, with two large circular stone protuberances, like the bottom of a stone tube, both of which have also been sealed up. </p><p></p><p>What draws their attention, however, is on the floor of the chamber. The entire floor is covered in bones. Humanoid bones, most of approximately human size, though some are slightly larger and many smaller. There must be tens of thousands of them, making the chamber a gigantic mass grave.</p><p></p><p>There is momentary silence, except for a continuous, low growl from Luna. Then Korm, who has been kneeling for a closer look, says, “Many of them are broken.” He is correct, with a large number of bones displaying fractures and breaks, with some being broken in half. </p><p></p><p>Nameless, who has been studying the walls, points out that they are covered in writing to a height of about six feet. They seem to be in dried blood and are in goblin, written in multiple hands. </p><p></p><p>Reading the sections nearby, the adventurers find them haphazard and disconnected, including things like dates (which are meaningless to the Angels), numbers, names, and even rough pictures. A constant thread is that they often break down into raving about the aberrations. </p><p></p><p>“They probably just threw them in here and left them,” says Korm somberly. “But that doesn’t explain why it was blocked up with that message.”</p><p></p><p>“Let’s see what’s in the other room,” says Six, carefully poking into the bones with his extensible pole. “They’re a little over a foot deep.”</p><p></p><p>The group carefully descends, to a litany of cracks as they step onto the incredibly old and brittle bones. Korm decides to ride Luna, which she allows him to do. Trillia stops to read more, so the others do the same.</p><p></p><p>Now that they are closer and can read much more, they quickly pick up more of a narrative from the various scrawling. The writings say that this area is where the aberrations used to throw the old, weak, pregnant, and sick goblinoids, that is, those that were considered unfit for their experiments. They did not provide food and only a little water trickled in from the surface. Eventually, the desperate and ravenous goblinoids began to eat those that died. And when the corpses ran out, they turned to the living. The scrawls refer to the weaker ones being killed and eaten by the stronger, some of whom banded together. They speak of the smaller goblins dying first, and the larger bugbears being slain while sleeping. They refer to pregnant women delivering babies and having them snatched away and torn apart. Some of the portions that seem most rambling and raving speak of hearing voices and seeing lights. A entire section simply repeats, over and over again, “They’re not dead. They’re watching us. They want revenge.” Another, larger area, simply consists of endless scrawls of “Revenge, forgive, revenge, forgive, revenge, forgive.…” </p><p></p><p>After having worked out what they can, there is little discussion as the group heads across the chamber, accompanied by the constant cracking sounds. They are halfway across the room when four spectral figures fly out of the floor around them. Each has a roughly humanoid form, though it ends in shapeless tatters. Each shape is made of a conglomeration of distorted faces that seem to be screaming soundlessly in agony, and constantly shifting and flowing around the creature’s body.</p><p></p><p>“Ghosts!” shouts Gareth, “I think.”</p><p></p><p>As he speaks, two of the ghosts raise their arms and a series of the faces shoot away from their bodies, trailing streams of incorporeal matter. The faces shoot into and through the bodies of the adventurers, causing a wave of supernatural terror to sweep over them, followed by a painful coldness.</p><p></p><p>Aided by the aura granted Gareth by the Flame, all of them shake off the fear and most resist the coldness, but Six feels it settle around him, strangely shaking his confidence.</p><p></p><p>Even as the Angels are striking back, the third ghost releases a single face, which flies into and through Gareth. The paladin feels it sap his strength as he swings Kizmet, only to find it pass harmlessly through his enemy.</p><p></p><p>Luna, rearing up and almost unseating Korm, similarly feels her claws pass through a ghost, but she manages to bite into it and rip away a mouthful of incorporeal matter. The hole she causes remains in the ghost, which lowers its arms and lets a number of the faces fall off it and sink into the layer of bones. A second later, they erupt from the floor, accompanied by an explosion of bone shards, many of which sink painfully into Luna. Korm, who has a few cut into his leg, dismounts awkwardly and swings at the ghost, with similar lack of luck. Six, trying to tumble past a ghost, almost falling flat on his face due to the layer of bones, and then seeing his chain swing harmlessly through a ghost, can sympathize.</p><p></p><p>Trillia too fails to affect them with a spell, but Nameless has better luck, a <em>slow</em> spell affecting three of the ghosts, the flow of the faces over their forms clearly slowing, as do their overall movements. </p><p></p><p>Moments later, all four of them move forwards into the bodies of the people before them. Nameless, Korm and Six all feel a momentary darkness envelop them and then each has a fleeting vision of the chamber, but now completely full of goblinoids, pushing and arguing with each other. Accompanying the vision is a distinct impression of seeing through someone’s eyes, overlaid with emotions of pain, fear and hunger. </p><p></p><p>Then the three manage to reassert their wills, sending the ghosts spilling back out of their bodies. Gareth, the fourth target, is warded by a <em>protection from evil</em> that he put up just before entering the chamber, and the ghost that attacks him simply hits the barrier and bounces off.</p><p></p><p>The incorporeal nature of the ghosts is what draws the fight out, with many powerful blows failing to affect them, but they are not very resistant to the damage that gets through, and the Angels soon dispatch them. </p><p></p><p>Gareth shakes his head, feeling his thoughts slowed by another draining attack he was hit with, “That wasn’t fun.”</p><p></p><p>Trillia, a little paler after having suffered a slightly different one, says, “I wonder if that’s what they were trying to keep in here.”</p><p></p><p>“One way to find out,” says Six, heading for the doorway.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="shilsen, post: 2936176, member: 198"] Luna switches back to her normal form and asks Trillia, “Should we try to destroy the wall?” “No, I don’t think there’s anything really special about the wall. I already checked and it’s not magical.” Trillia looks around at the rest, especially Nameless, and continues, “Remember my theory about there being a dimensional seal somewhere in Yarkuun Draal? The only reason there’d be one is if there’s a manifest zone to Xoriat here, in which case, the boundaries between Eberron and Xoriat are weaker here. Still, I wasn’t expecting to actually catch a glimpse of Xoriat itself.” “Is that thing we saw, whatever it was, at all likely to end up here?” asks Six. “Oh no! With Xoriat permanently sundered from Eberron by the magic of the Gatekeepers during the Daelkyr War, nothing can cross over between the two. This is as close as one can get. I’d heard of it, but never experienced it myself. Fascinating!” After having ascertained that nothing similar is about to recur, the group moves around the chamber checking for anything hidden and collecting the Dhakaani artifacts. Examining the petrified hobgoblin arm that Korm is picking up, Nameless says, “I think that’s actually a backscratcher.” “Really? I’m taking it anyway.” “Maybe some collector might be interested in it,” says Luna. “Do you really want to be doing business with a collector who likes mummified humanoid arms?” Trillia, who has been examining the hobgoblin attached to the wall and murmuring the words written alongside, happens to say “Smaller” aloud in the original daelkyr. The tattooed writing on the hobgoblin’s torso immediately shrinks in size, more writing appearing at top and bottom to fill the extra space. As the change occurs, the hobgoblin’s eyes snap open and it utters a gurgling scream. Trillia quickly steps away, but it shows no signs of having noticed her, continuing to scream. Korm promptly bats it on the head with the petrified arm, but that seems to have no effect even though it snaps the hobgoblin’s head sideways. After a couple of seconds, the screaming ends in a slack-jawed gasping, which reveals that its tongue has been nailed to the bottom of its mouth. Carefully examining it, Trillia says, “It’s got to be an information storage device of some kind, with the writing stored in it accessible with those commands. But the changes torture it as well.” “I can see how,” says Nameless. “I felt the tattoos. They’re like weals raised by a whip or burned by a hot iron. For the lettering to change, the old ones have to be removed and new ones appear.” Trillia nods and adds, “The pain is quite possibly a serious benefit as far as the avolakia was concerned. Some aberrations consider the crafting of specific emotions, especially the traumatic ones, as an art form.” “I’m really getting upset with these aberrations,” growls Luna. “There’s a reason the Gatekeeepers exist,” says Korm, before turning to Trillia. “Can I put it out of its suffering?” Trillia considers for a bit and says, “I’m sure there’s valuable information hidden within it, but accessing it would probably take hours of searching, and I’d be torturing it throughout. I’ll do without. You can go ahead.” She steps away and Korm unsheathes his sword, steps forward, and splits the hobgoblin’s skull in two. He watches for a few moments to make sure that it is dead, and is as assured that it’s so by the slow fading away of the writing on its chest as by its lack of breath or movement. The others have already stripped the room of whatever might be valuable, and the group leaves the chamber. After a short discussion about the risks of continuing onwards, they decide to continue a bit further. Returning to the chamber where the corpses of the avolakia and the malformed goblins and bugbears still lie, the Angels head down the one tunnel they have not explored. At the next turn, the tunnel switches from the pink, apparently living material, to the stone of the city and the plateau. After another turn, the tunnel travels over two hundred feet without any openings or doorways. The first thing that breaks the monotony of the stone is a wide archway on the right wall of the tunnel (which continues onwards), which has been bricked in. There are carvings in daelkyr on it, which read ‘Danger. Do not open.’ When Nameless translates, Korm says, “Something that the aberrations consider dangerous? That could be interesting.” “Considering our current status, I’d rather not open this now,” says Nameless warily. “Maybe tomorrow, after we have all our spells available?” “Actually,” says Trillia, “I was hoping not to return to this area again. I’d rather visit widely-spaced sections of the city, so that even when they find out we’ve been here - which I presume they’ll do soon enough - they won’t be able to trap us or prepare effectively enough to seriously endanger us.” “Yeah,” says Luna. “Let’s check it out now.” “After all,” says Korm, unsheathing his sword, “How bad could it be?” “A sphincter farted on me and licked him,” says Six, indicating Gareth. “Don’t say things like that.” Gareth, who has been concentrating on the archway, nods and then says, “I don’t pick up any aura of evil, for what it’s worth.” Korm uses his greatsword to chop through the bricked-up area, its unusual material easily reducing the wall to rubble, which Luna (back in bear form) pulls out of the way. After chopping through nearly a dozen feet, Korm breaks through into an open area. It is a short tunnel, fifteen feet long and ten feet wide, that opens into a large chamber, the far wall of which is nearly forty feet away from the tunnel’s end, and the floor of which is much lower than the tunnel’s. The entire area is lit by a pale green light that seems to have no evident source. Once everyone can see in, Nameless points at six glyphs set into the floor of the tunnel. “They’re inactive, but someone definitely wanted some protection here.” Korm, having moved in a little further to allow the others to enter, points into the chamber and says, “Look.” Joining him, the others see that the large chamber’s floor is about ten feet lower. The far wall has an open doorway, revealing a tunnel that turns right. The chamber’s ceiling is thirty feet above the floor, with two large circular stone protuberances, like the bottom of a stone tube, both of which have also been sealed up. What draws their attention, however, is on the floor of the chamber. The entire floor is covered in bones. Humanoid bones, most of approximately human size, though some are slightly larger and many smaller. There must be tens of thousands of them, making the chamber a gigantic mass grave. There is momentary silence, except for a continuous, low growl from Luna. Then Korm, who has been kneeling for a closer look, says, “Many of them are broken.” He is correct, with a large number of bones displaying fractures and breaks, with some being broken in half. Nameless, who has been studying the walls, points out that they are covered in writing to a height of about six feet. They seem to be in dried blood and are in goblin, written in multiple hands. Reading the sections nearby, the adventurers find them haphazard and disconnected, including things like dates (which are meaningless to the Angels), numbers, names, and even rough pictures. A constant thread is that they often break down into raving about the aberrations. “They probably just threw them in here and left them,” says Korm somberly. “But that doesn’t explain why it was blocked up with that message.” “Let’s see what’s in the other room,” says Six, carefully poking into the bones with his extensible pole. “They’re a little over a foot deep.” The group carefully descends, to a litany of cracks as they step onto the incredibly old and brittle bones. Korm decides to ride Luna, which she allows him to do. Trillia stops to read more, so the others do the same. Now that they are closer and can read much more, they quickly pick up more of a narrative from the various scrawling. The writings say that this area is where the aberrations used to throw the old, weak, pregnant, and sick goblinoids, that is, those that were considered unfit for their experiments. They did not provide food and only a little water trickled in from the surface. Eventually, the desperate and ravenous goblinoids began to eat those that died. And when the corpses ran out, they turned to the living. The scrawls refer to the weaker ones being killed and eaten by the stronger, some of whom banded together. They speak of the smaller goblins dying first, and the larger bugbears being slain while sleeping. They refer to pregnant women delivering babies and having them snatched away and torn apart. Some of the portions that seem most rambling and raving speak of hearing voices and seeing lights. A entire section simply repeats, over and over again, “They’re not dead. They’re watching us. They want revenge.” Another, larger area, simply consists of endless scrawls of “Revenge, forgive, revenge, forgive, revenge, forgive.…” After having worked out what they can, there is little discussion as the group heads across the chamber, accompanied by the constant cracking sounds. They are halfway across the room when four spectral figures fly out of the floor around them. Each has a roughly humanoid form, though it ends in shapeless tatters. Each shape is made of a conglomeration of distorted faces that seem to be screaming soundlessly in agony, and constantly shifting and flowing around the creature’s body. “Ghosts!” shouts Gareth, “I think.” As he speaks, two of the ghosts raise their arms and a series of the faces shoot away from their bodies, trailing streams of incorporeal matter. The faces shoot into and through the bodies of the adventurers, causing a wave of supernatural terror to sweep over them, followed by a painful coldness. Aided by the aura granted Gareth by the Flame, all of them shake off the fear and most resist the coldness, but Six feels it settle around him, strangely shaking his confidence. Even as the Angels are striking back, the third ghost releases a single face, which flies into and through Gareth. The paladin feels it sap his strength as he swings Kizmet, only to find it pass harmlessly through his enemy. Luna, rearing up and almost unseating Korm, similarly feels her claws pass through a ghost, but she manages to bite into it and rip away a mouthful of incorporeal matter. The hole she causes remains in the ghost, which lowers its arms and lets a number of the faces fall off it and sink into the layer of bones. A second later, they erupt from the floor, accompanied by an explosion of bone shards, many of which sink painfully into Luna. Korm, who has a few cut into his leg, dismounts awkwardly and swings at the ghost, with similar lack of luck. Six, trying to tumble past a ghost, almost falling flat on his face due to the layer of bones, and then seeing his chain swing harmlessly through a ghost, can sympathize. Trillia too fails to affect them with a spell, but Nameless has better luck, a [I]slow[/I] spell affecting three of the ghosts, the flow of the faces over their forms clearly slowing, as do their overall movements. Moments later, all four of them move forwards into the bodies of the people before them. Nameless, Korm and Six all feel a momentary darkness envelop them and then each has a fleeting vision of the chamber, but now completely full of goblinoids, pushing and arguing with each other. Accompanying the vision is a distinct impression of seeing through someone’s eyes, overlaid with emotions of pain, fear and hunger. Then the three manage to reassert their wills, sending the ghosts spilling back out of their bodies. Gareth, the fourth target, is warded by a [I]protection from evil[/I] that he put up just before entering the chamber, and the ghost that attacks him simply hits the barrier and bounces off. The incorporeal nature of the ghosts is what draws the fight out, with many powerful blows failing to affect them, but they are not very resistant to the damage that gets through, and the Angels soon dispatch them. Gareth shakes his head, feeling his thoughts slowed by another draining attack he was hit with, “That wasn’t fun.” Trillia, a little paler after having suffered a slightly different one, says, “I wonder if that’s what they were trying to keep in here.” “One way to find out,” says Six, heading for the doorway. [/QUOTE]
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