Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lars Frehse" data-source="post: 828058" data-attributes="member: 1674">A clever device- part 2Chel Azatan provided them with the name of the captain who had brought Kwalish to where the archmage had disappeared in the red dephts of the blood sea. This had been over fourty years ago now, but fortunately for them, this captain, a man called Strohman, had even been a resident of Mithril at that time. With that information, the friends went down to the harbor and asked around whether anybody knew him. Immediately, they were pointed to one big fisherboat in front of which four sailors had their catch of the day examined by two paladins who were checking the fish for signs of the taint of Khadum.After the paladins had their assistants remove the tainted fish, about one fifth of the catch, the captain, a big, redhaired man in his thirties, started bartering with the local merchants who would eventually sell it on the fish market to the people of Mithril. When they were done, and after the captain had passed some of the silver on to his men, Jan adressed him:" Good day! We had been asking around for Captain Strohman and were pointed to you. Is he still under deck?"The red bearded man laughed:"Why should he be standing under deck? I am Captain Strohman!"Jan was confused:" And you have been ferrying the archmage Kwalish fourty years ago?""No, of course not. That was my father, may his sould rest in peace. Why do you ask?"Hoping to prevent any further blunders of their Paladin, Trepat took hold of the conversation: "We would like to go to the point of the sea where he had dropped Kwalish and his apparatus into the ocean, since we would like to reclaim it.":"I see. Well, I still got a copy of the journal of my father... Used to have the original, but then this strange Calastian bookworm offered me good gold for it...", Strohman said, his voice trailing away as he wondered how anybody in his right mind would pay so much money for the log of a fisherman. Suddenly, his face lit up with cheer, as he had an idea:" Anyway, I will be able to tell you as precisely as possible for a mortal where they had stopped. The wizard had given rather precise orders, but since there are no real points of orientation of the high sea, I can only lead you to the approximate position where the Apparatus had been dropped. But I am wondering: Have you got a boat to retrieve the apparatus with?"Trepat shook his head and the captain went on:" We could use the Nelly 2, the spitting image of my father's ship, the Nelly.. I still have the plans how my dad had modified his Nelly with a crane to lower and pull the heavy iron apparatus. I could modify my ship and without any fish in it's haul, there will even be place for bunks for you men under deck. What do you think?"Coming to terms with the cheerful fisherman was an easy and friendly affair. Obviously, all four of them were looking forward to have a change from their daily lives, and waiting for people who were moving around was far easier than the back breaking work of pulling in the heavy nets full of fish. This left the friends with one week in which the Nelly 2 would be modified. It was another break from their near constant travelling of the last two years and well needed. But when the week was over, they all were eager to get going again and met in the harbor at the first light of dawn.The fisherboat was twentyfive feet long and looked round and chubby. It had one mast in the middle and it was here that the modification had taken place. Originally, there had been two long poles to which the nets had been attached. Out at sea, the poles would be folded out and the nets would hit the water. Now, there was one movable rod sticking out a right angle from the mast. At the end of it, there were two block and tackles. The idea was that once the friends had found the apparatus, they would fasten the ropes around the apparatus and that it would then be lifted with this crane.They sailed out into a clouded morning, the morning sky as crimson as the ocean below them. As the sun rose, the weather held and it turned out to be a cool but calm autumm day. The air smelled of salt and the ship was rocking gently in the water when the captain decided that they had reached their target.An anchor was dropped and Ben turned to his friends, telling them he would take a look. They knew what would happen next, but since they forgot to tell the crew, the fishermen all gaped in awe as the halfling suddenly jumped over the rail into the cold water, and then, just as he was about to hit the surface, changed his form into that of a fifteen foot long shark. By now Ben had remembered another one of his pastlife forms, an incarnation in which he had hunted in the depths of the oceans as a cold, remorseless predator. Now, as he hit the water, he took hold of those long lost instincts as confidently as if there hadn't been ages between his life as a shark and his life as a halfling.He swam down into the depths of the sea until he reached the oceanfloor at about threehundred feet. It was dark here- hardly any light penetrated that deeply through the bloodred oceanwater, and he had to rely on his sense of smell. After looking around for a short whil and finding nothing of interest on the muddy ocean ground, he approached a squi.  The creature showed no sign of fear of the shark since the wolfskull, which retained it's powers even when Ben changed his form, made all animals see a wolf when they saw Ben- and since the squid had no idea what a wolf was, it did not think of hiding away from the predator.When Ben asked him whether there was anything unusual nearby, the squid described an area of collums and domes nearby, but when Ben described the apparatus, the squid couldn't remember having ever seen anything like that.Following the squid's directions, Ben finally reached a valley on the oceanground. There, hardly visible in the dim light, Ben saw towers, spires and domes. Right away, he noticed that the place had fallen to ruins- the towers and spires were broken, the stones of their upper parts strewn over the ground and the domes were all cracked open. Cautiously, he swam into the ruined city, and now that he was able to take a closer look, he soon found the tell tale signs of a battle- there were broken weapons and armor, and every now and then, there were skeletons of froglike humanoids.Then, around one corner, crushed under a fallen column, he saw the skeletal remnants of pisceans, their broken harpoons still clutched in their fleshless hands. From that and what he had seen elsewhere, they must have been the attackers, and since there were many more remains of the frog-creatures and the city was completely ruined, they must have delivered a crushing defeat to the froglike creatures.The ruins, the broken weapons and pots and the skeletons were all covered by corals of different shades of red and brown- whatever the battle had been about, it had been decades ago, possibly forgotten by all but those who had participated and survived to remember. As he swam deeper and deeper into the maze of ruins, Ben suddenly noticed a faint, but unpleasant humming in his head. He turned and swam a bit towrds a big square structure that was crowned by two pointed towers, and the humming became stronger. He was still at least two hundred feet away from it, and in the darkness he could hardly make out any details, but there was no evidence that it had taken any damage whatsoever, and it looked like it was the only intact building down here.At the very least, the unknown source of the unpleasant sensation in Ben's head was in that building, and he had a hunch that if he wanted to find the apparatus of Kwalish, he would have to search there.</blockquote>

Verification