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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lars Frehse" data-source="post: 840564" data-attributes="member: 1674">A clever device- part 3The pain in his head got worse and worse as he closed in on the complex. First, the humming turned into a throbbing sensation. A few seconds later, this throbbing turned into a hammering pain which soon became the very centre of his being.As he was merely twenty yards away from the structure, he couldn’t go on any longer and swam away as fast as he could. Behind a building, he realized that the pain was gone again. For a short while Ben considered swimming up and telling his friends about what he had found, but eventually he came to the conclusion that he would have to come with something more than that.So he steeled himself and swam with predatory elegance to the perimetre of where he expected the pain to kick in again. Then he thrust himself forward at full speed as the pain exploded in his head again. This time however, he kept on going until he saw a large, tunnel-like opening in the square structure that connected the two towers.Blocking the pain from his conciousness, he swam into the tunnel which lead straight into the complex and turned upwards after a dozen yards. He followed it, swam up and after a few more yards, his sharkhead suddenly poked out of the water. He found himself in a small hall and to his relief, the headache was completely gone the moment his head left the water.Ben changed back into his halfling form and pulled himself out of the water. The tunnel through which he had came was a pool of water of about ten feet in diametre in a square hall which was about ten feet long and wide. Under the ceiling, there were four incorporeal orbs of light, illuminating the hall with a cold, bright light.It’s walls, floor and ceiling were equally covered with small lightgrey tiles, and there was one steel door which was apparently opened and closed by means of a big metal wheel which was fastened to it’s front. Apart from that, there wasn’t much of interest and Ben decided to pick up his friends before he would continue, and he jumped into the pool, changing back into his sharkform.An hour later, he lead his friends, on whom he had cast a spell so that they could breathe water, into the hall. They had to hold to the shark’s body, since they were blind in the darkness of the ocean’s bottom. All of them had suffered from the pain again, and Jan was even bleeding from the ears, but he too was able to go on after a cure spell from Ben and a few minutes of breathing air again.Behind the steel door, there was a short corridor with the same tiles as the first room. At the end of the corridor, there was another steel door. At first it seemed locked, but eventually they figured out that it could be opened if the first door was closed shut.They entered a big room with a high ceiling. At the far ends, to the left and right, there were doors, and a huge marble spiral staircase lead up. In the centre of the room they saw the inhabitants of the towers for the first time.There were six mansized humanoids with long arms and short legs and a frog-like head and they seemed oblivious of the presence of the heroes. Instead, all six of them were pushing and pulling on a huge iron lever which was connected to an wagon-sized hissing apparatus from which tubes lead to the floor and the ceiling.While they were working on the strange machine, the six stared ahead with dead eyes and the only parts of their bodies that moved where their arms, which went evenly up and down. Not even once did they shift their weight or talk to each other- instead they were eerily silent.Jan stepped towards them and raised his hand in greeting, but even as he cheerfully said „Greetings!“ in a voice that was way too loud in his own ears, they didn’t react. Cautiously he walked right up to one of the frogmen. All of them were uniformly dressed in light blue suits made from a slick and shining material.„Maybe they are golems“, Jan said: „They are definetly not evil“.Trepat shook his head: „Looks more like well-preserved Zombies to me. I wonder what this machine is for, though.“„Maybe it pumps air“, Niklas offered. „We should leave them alone, I think.“Ben agreed: „Sure. Let’s look around. I don’t think that they are any danger for us.“.The towers seemed deserted. There were large messhalls with row after row of stonebenches and –tables, but the friends found no sign of any recent habitation. As they went up level after level, they occassionaly encountered further frog-zombies. All of those were as unresponsive as the ones they had encountered at the pump, and they were all doing simple menial tasks like cleaning the floor with a mop or polishing the stone furniture.The only sounds they heared where those they made themselves or of an occasional undead janitor. It was all rather bizarre. „But why would anybody create those Zombies in the first place?“, Jan asked„ Maybe Kwalish didn’t die those fourty years ago and settled down here insted“, Trepat said.„That would make sense“, Ben said: „After all I could hardly imagine an archmage mopping up the floors. So he created things to do that for him.“.Niklas looked around: „It doesn’t look as if he would be exactly euphoric about our arrival, then.“„Either that“, Trepat added, „or he isn’t aware of our presence. Or maybe he is gone or dead. In any case, we won’t find out by sticking around in here!“.They walked on, searching around and going higher and higher in the process. Eventually, after having swept through countless deserted hallways, rooms and halls, they climbed yet another iron spiral staircase. It lead them to one huge circular chamber which seemed to cover this entire level of the tower.It was barren, apart from a spiral staircase in it’s middle and eight iron machines in front of it. Each of them was about mansized and mounted on two legs and they all looked roughly humanoid. Four of them had one arm which ended in a hammer which was about as big as it’s body and the other arm ended in an equally huge lobster-like claw. The other four had no heads- instead, their bodies ended in turrets and their arms ended in what looked like big drills.Before the adventurers had time to fully take in that scenario, however, a greenish forcefield appeared around the spiral staircase in the middle of the hall and over the opening through which they had come. Then, a dark, full voice came from nowwhere: „You have one minute to utter the password. If you fail to utter it within this timespan, you will be destroyed. I am sorry about any inconvinience this my create.“.For a few seconds, no one said a word. Then, Ben shouted: „Kwalish“ and seeing that nothing happened, everyone shouted the words that came to his mind, creating a kakophonia in which such words as „Apparatus“, „Mithril“ and „Donnangar“, among others were shouted at random. The friends frantically tried to come up with the word that would keep the automatons from coming to life- they looked bad enough as they were, and they didn’t intend to see them spring in action.But then, just as the last syllable of the name „Captain Strohman“ was dying on Niklas lips, the automatons came to life. Their minute was over.</blockquote>

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