The Adventures of the Knights of Spellforge Keep
- Thread starter Dr Midnight
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Cheiromancer
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I just checked the number of views, and it is 18211 views. If you have only 5 readers, they sure are hitting refresh a lot.
Breakstone
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I don't know if anyone's noticed, but I'm still a fan. 
Dr Midnight
Explorer
Last time: Shade shot lightning and acid into a lever panel, then found it wasn't such a good idea when it set a heat plate uncontrollably to overheating.
“Damn.” Gryph looked out over a thirty-foot section of incredibly hot metal. “Anyone got a fly spell handy?”
“One or two,” Kizz said, concentrating. “Maybe we can use levitation to…”
Orthos shouted “Ahh, nuts to that, love! Watch me go!” He sprinted over the metal as quickly as his stout little legs could carry him. At the other side, he huffed triumphantly, but did take a moment to sit on the floor, to allow his heels to cool.
Kizzlorn rolled her eyes and simply flew over while the boys proved just how manly they were by running across the hot plate. Gryph was still a frost giant, so the heat hurt him a bit more than it would have if he were in another form, but he grunted and dealt with the pain as only a strong frost giant might… by biting his bottom lip and trying very hard to not scream.
They were through. This immense room had no opponents or creatures of any kind... just doors. Different exits. “You’d think an army in a mountain would take greater pains to defend themselves,” Orthos mused.
“What’s this?” Gryph walked over to a circular iron portcullis guarding a small twenty by twenty foot room. “This door’s different from the others.”
Shade said “Well, lift up the portcullis, let’s go in and see what’s worth guarding in an empty room.”
Gryph nodded and lifted on the iron gate. It didn’t budge. He got angry, and pushed harder. It stayed. “What kind of sorry, stupid portcullis IS this?”
“It looks to be iron. Can we simply bend it and slip through?”
“It’s worth a try.” Gryph put his big, meaty frost giant hands around the bars and began to pull backward. He braced a leg on the wall. The tendons in his neck stood out. CRNNNNKKKK… The circular iron grate began to bow outwards. “Help me!”
Orthos and Shade stepped up to pull as best they could. The metal continued to give, and soon, the iron grating was entirely convex. Gryph braced his hands against the sides of one of the grating holes and pushed. RRRRUNNNK! The hole became big enough for a small person to fit through. “Here, you go in,” Gryph shouted. He picked Shade up and shoved him head first through the hole. The astonished swordsman rolled to his feet and looked around. He smacked his forehead.
Orthos asked “What is it?”
“Directions for opening the portcullis. It apparently rolled into the wall.”
“Well, that’s helpful.” Gryph looked at the gate. He could see it, now… simply push the gate to the left or right, and it would have rolled easily. Of course it was too late. The mangled grate would never fit into its thin wall housing again. The frost giant sighed and ripped the gate wide open, making a jagged tunnel to walk through. They stepped into the room. “So, what is this?”
They looked at a series of pictograms carved into the wall to the right of the gate. Beside them was a large stone lever, not unlike the ones Shade had destroyed. The lever was positioned at halfway in the vertical slot, so that it was perpendicular to the wall. Jo’nas used a spell and the words on the wall became clear to him. “it seems this is a moving room. If we push the lever up, we’ll travel upward towards the ‘Home’ and ‘Royal’ levels… and down, we’ll go to the ‘Dungeon’ level. It looks like we’re on the main level right now.”
Kizzlorn was impressed. “So these giants managed to construct a room that effectively does what a Levitate spell does, through a series of machinations? Ingenious. Not that we shouldn’t’ kill them, but still…”
“Let’s go to the Royal level,” Shade said. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t seen a speck of treasure among any these creatures. I’m betting a level lavish enough to be called ‘Royal’ is bound to have some goodies.” It sounded as good a reason as any to go someplace, so they pressed the lever up.
The room began moving upwards in a series of jerky motions, then a smoother ride. They watched as hundreds of feet of stone crawled down, right outside the door. Then, a series of carved words slid by. “Home level,” Jo’nas reported. The level flashed past, an open area, a hole in the endless crawling stone. Then, the stone was back. Before long, another series of words. “Royal level.” They pushed the lever down slightly to slow it, and stopped it entirely when they came to the new level. They stepped out.
“There’s no one here,” Gryph observed sadly. He turned into a rust monster and used his orange antennae to eat through the iron doors they found.
They walked through several rooms, and were distressed by how little resistance they met. For a “Royal level”, this certainly was not well-defended. The Knights were well-disciplined warriors for what was right, but they began to hunger for two things: combat and treasure. These things tend to attract the fledgling adventurer to the career, but after that, successful adventurers look beyond these things to the greater good of the realm. Still, an accomplished party needs those two staples of dungeoneering to keep from going mad.
They opened another door, and found a room with a great chair in it, and several dozen giant-sized greatswords hanging on the wall. Admiring them was an especially large Jirrock. He wore furs and a series of wire-wrapped carved stones around the crown of his head. He had time to notice the door opening, and turned to see a redheaded human running towards him with a sword. Then, after a SWISH noise, he saw the floor tumbling up to meet him. There he landed, and he stared up at his falling headless body for a moment before he died.
“Just one,” Shade sighed. He wiped the blood from his blade and placed it back in its sheath. He looked back at the giant chair in the room. “Wait,” he said. “was that the king?”
Kizzlorn asked “What?” then looked. The chair was ornate and carved from stone. The giant’s severed head was wrapped crudely with wire and stone. A throne, a crown, and on the “Royal” level.
Gryph turned back into a giant, and his jaw hung open. “I can’t believe it. How… what… what kind of King is so poorly defended? We just walked in and killed him without a problem. The big villain of a decent dungeon should AT LEAST take twenty seconds to defeat.”
“Maybe he’s not the big villain…” Jo’nas suggested. “The fire giants have everyone in the area under the control of the honey mead. Suppose the giants are under that same control, themselves? Suppose they’re also pawns under some larger foe?”
Kizzlorn said “It’s feasible. I mean, mind control mead isn’t really a fire giant kind of thing, now, is it? Let’s move on. Maybe we’ll run into a decent combat, yet.”
The next room was a curiosity- it was 120 feet long on each side. The floor was forty feet below, and the ceiling was forty feet overhead. A ten foot wide catwalk skirted the pit around to the other side. Hanging from the ceiling above were several large bowls of fire, ranging from ten to forty feet in diameter. The levels of the fire bowls were staggered, so that no two bowls were at the same elevation. The room was incredibly hot.
“I don’t like this,” Gryph said. He began to sweat as they walked through. He was finding life as a frost giant among the fire giants to be rather harsh.
Then, figures stood up amidst the flames. Some hurled large chunks of fiery rock. Shade rolled out of the way and shouted “LOOK OUT!” The rocks smashed into Kizzlorn and Orthos.
Fire giants were standing in the fire pots. They must have heard the noise of their king being killed, and hidden to ambush the heroes. The Knights couldn’t reach them without flying over the pit… only Kizzlorn was flying, and she didn’t dare fly up to melee range. Grumbar shouted “Kizz, make me float!”
Kizzlorn cast Levitation on the half-orc and watched as he floated up to the level of the closest flame bowl.
Meanwhile, Jo’nas did some quick thinking and cast a spell that conjured an immense, spinning wheel of blades. He positioned it just so that it sawed through three of the bowls, and the giants within them. The bowls’ chains were severed, so they and their contents spilled down sixty feet to the rock floor of the pit. The giants smashed there and screamed, but quickly got up to climb the pit’s walls.
Grumbar hooked his grappling line around the nearest bowl’s chain and pulled himself along. When he reached the bowl, he began hacking at the giant there.
Orthos shouted “Grumbar, move! Get out of there!” He mumbled a prayer and held his hands above his head, aimed at the ceiling. Grumbar looked up and saw plumes of dust drifting down from cracks that were growing across the stone. He kicked off the giant and drifted back just as the localized earthquake Orthos had summoned into the stone above the pit gave way. With a thunderous roar, the ceiling fell in. Hundreds of tons of igneous rock plummeted in, crushing the giants and the bowls to the bottom of the pit. The debris just missed the group, thanks to Orthos’ careful planning. It filled the forty foot deep pit all the way to the top.
When the dust cleared, Gryph coughed and looked over to Orthos. He hesitated, then said what seemed most fitting. “Nice one.”
NEXT: Revelations
“Damn.” Gryph looked out over a thirty-foot section of incredibly hot metal. “Anyone got a fly spell handy?”
“One or two,” Kizz said, concentrating. “Maybe we can use levitation to…”
Orthos shouted “Ahh, nuts to that, love! Watch me go!” He sprinted over the metal as quickly as his stout little legs could carry him. At the other side, he huffed triumphantly, but did take a moment to sit on the floor, to allow his heels to cool.
Kizzlorn rolled her eyes and simply flew over while the boys proved just how manly they were by running across the hot plate. Gryph was still a frost giant, so the heat hurt him a bit more than it would have if he were in another form, but he grunted and dealt with the pain as only a strong frost giant might… by biting his bottom lip and trying very hard to not scream.
They were through. This immense room had no opponents or creatures of any kind... just doors. Different exits. “You’d think an army in a mountain would take greater pains to defend themselves,” Orthos mused.
“What’s this?” Gryph walked over to a circular iron portcullis guarding a small twenty by twenty foot room. “This door’s different from the others.”
Shade said “Well, lift up the portcullis, let’s go in and see what’s worth guarding in an empty room.”
Gryph nodded and lifted on the iron gate. It didn’t budge. He got angry, and pushed harder. It stayed. “What kind of sorry, stupid portcullis IS this?”
“It looks to be iron. Can we simply bend it and slip through?”
“It’s worth a try.” Gryph put his big, meaty frost giant hands around the bars and began to pull backward. He braced a leg on the wall. The tendons in his neck stood out. CRNNNNKKKK… The circular iron grate began to bow outwards. “Help me!”
Orthos and Shade stepped up to pull as best they could. The metal continued to give, and soon, the iron grating was entirely convex. Gryph braced his hands against the sides of one of the grating holes and pushed. RRRRUNNNK! The hole became big enough for a small person to fit through. “Here, you go in,” Gryph shouted. He picked Shade up and shoved him head first through the hole. The astonished swordsman rolled to his feet and looked around. He smacked his forehead.
Orthos asked “What is it?”
“Directions for opening the portcullis. It apparently rolled into the wall.”
“Well, that’s helpful.” Gryph looked at the gate. He could see it, now… simply push the gate to the left or right, and it would have rolled easily. Of course it was too late. The mangled grate would never fit into its thin wall housing again. The frost giant sighed and ripped the gate wide open, making a jagged tunnel to walk through. They stepped into the room. “So, what is this?”
They looked at a series of pictograms carved into the wall to the right of the gate. Beside them was a large stone lever, not unlike the ones Shade had destroyed. The lever was positioned at halfway in the vertical slot, so that it was perpendicular to the wall. Jo’nas used a spell and the words on the wall became clear to him. “it seems this is a moving room. If we push the lever up, we’ll travel upward towards the ‘Home’ and ‘Royal’ levels… and down, we’ll go to the ‘Dungeon’ level. It looks like we’re on the main level right now.”
Kizzlorn was impressed. “So these giants managed to construct a room that effectively does what a Levitate spell does, through a series of machinations? Ingenious. Not that we shouldn’t’ kill them, but still…”
“Let’s go to the Royal level,” Shade said. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t seen a speck of treasure among any these creatures. I’m betting a level lavish enough to be called ‘Royal’ is bound to have some goodies.” It sounded as good a reason as any to go someplace, so they pressed the lever up.
The room began moving upwards in a series of jerky motions, then a smoother ride. They watched as hundreds of feet of stone crawled down, right outside the door. Then, a series of carved words slid by. “Home level,” Jo’nas reported. The level flashed past, an open area, a hole in the endless crawling stone. Then, the stone was back. Before long, another series of words. “Royal level.” They pushed the lever down slightly to slow it, and stopped it entirely when they came to the new level. They stepped out.
“There’s no one here,” Gryph observed sadly. He turned into a rust monster and used his orange antennae to eat through the iron doors they found.
They walked through several rooms, and were distressed by how little resistance they met. For a “Royal level”, this certainly was not well-defended. The Knights were well-disciplined warriors for what was right, but they began to hunger for two things: combat and treasure. These things tend to attract the fledgling adventurer to the career, but after that, successful adventurers look beyond these things to the greater good of the realm. Still, an accomplished party needs those two staples of dungeoneering to keep from going mad.
They opened another door, and found a room with a great chair in it, and several dozen giant-sized greatswords hanging on the wall. Admiring them was an especially large Jirrock. He wore furs and a series of wire-wrapped carved stones around the crown of his head. He had time to notice the door opening, and turned to see a redheaded human running towards him with a sword. Then, after a SWISH noise, he saw the floor tumbling up to meet him. There he landed, and he stared up at his falling headless body for a moment before he died.
“Just one,” Shade sighed. He wiped the blood from his blade and placed it back in its sheath. He looked back at the giant chair in the room. “Wait,” he said. “was that the king?”
Kizzlorn asked “What?” then looked. The chair was ornate and carved from stone. The giant’s severed head was wrapped crudely with wire and stone. A throne, a crown, and on the “Royal” level.
Gryph turned back into a giant, and his jaw hung open. “I can’t believe it. How… what… what kind of King is so poorly defended? We just walked in and killed him without a problem. The big villain of a decent dungeon should AT LEAST take twenty seconds to defeat.”
“Maybe he’s not the big villain…” Jo’nas suggested. “The fire giants have everyone in the area under the control of the honey mead. Suppose the giants are under that same control, themselves? Suppose they’re also pawns under some larger foe?”
Kizzlorn said “It’s feasible. I mean, mind control mead isn’t really a fire giant kind of thing, now, is it? Let’s move on. Maybe we’ll run into a decent combat, yet.”
The next room was a curiosity- it was 120 feet long on each side. The floor was forty feet below, and the ceiling was forty feet overhead. A ten foot wide catwalk skirted the pit around to the other side. Hanging from the ceiling above were several large bowls of fire, ranging from ten to forty feet in diameter. The levels of the fire bowls were staggered, so that no two bowls were at the same elevation. The room was incredibly hot.
“I don’t like this,” Gryph said. He began to sweat as they walked through. He was finding life as a frost giant among the fire giants to be rather harsh.
Then, figures stood up amidst the flames. Some hurled large chunks of fiery rock. Shade rolled out of the way and shouted “LOOK OUT!” The rocks smashed into Kizzlorn and Orthos.
Fire giants were standing in the fire pots. They must have heard the noise of their king being killed, and hidden to ambush the heroes. The Knights couldn’t reach them without flying over the pit… only Kizzlorn was flying, and she didn’t dare fly up to melee range. Grumbar shouted “Kizz, make me float!”
Kizzlorn cast Levitation on the half-orc and watched as he floated up to the level of the closest flame bowl.
Meanwhile, Jo’nas did some quick thinking and cast a spell that conjured an immense, spinning wheel of blades. He positioned it just so that it sawed through three of the bowls, and the giants within them. The bowls’ chains were severed, so they and their contents spilled down sixty feet to the rock floor of the pit. The giants smashed there and screamed, but quickly got up to climb the pit’s walls.
Grumbar hooked his grappling line around the nearest bowl’s chain and pulled himself along. When he reached the bowl, he began hacking at the giant there.
Orthos shouted “Grumbar, move! Get out of there!” He mumbled a prayer and held his hands above his head, aimed at the ceiling. Grumbar looked up and saw plumes of dust drifting down from cracks that were growing across the stone. He kicked off the giant and drifted back just as the localized earthquake Orthos had summoned into the stone above the pit gave way. With a thunderous roar, the ceiling fell in. Hundreds of tons of igneous rock plummeted in, crushing the giants and the bowls to the bottom of the pit. The debris just missed the group, thanks to Orthos’ careful planning. It filled the forty foot deep pit all the way to the top.
When the dust cleared, Gryph coughed and looked over to Orthos. He hesitated, then said what seemed most fitting. “Nice one.”
NEXT: Revelations
Last edited:
Jon Potter
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Dr Midnight said:Just how many of my readers do I have LEFT since Dartan and Vek went away and we started this module? I think maybe five of you remain...
Make that six. I'm still following along.
I guess I haven't been following along closely enough. I missed all the suckiness.
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