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The Realmsian Jaunt, a Forgotten Realms Story Hour (re-updated May 10th)
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<blockquote data-quote="NiTessine" data-source="post: 2813620" data-attributes="member: 475"><p>Here we go again, the only instalment lost in the database crash. I endeavour to have another up soon, but I'm currently studying for the university entrance exams and most of my time is being taken up by English philology.</p><p></p><p>I'll be soon starting up a Rogues' Gallery thread. The party's stats will be posted there as well as some choice NPCs, and there will also eventually be a thread in House Rules where I put the rules items I've written up for the game. There's gonna be a lot of those in a couple of chapters.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><strong><u>Chapter 2: The Deep Cells</u></strong></p><p></p><p></p><p>The cells were cool and bare but for a lumpy cot of elderly straw at the back wall. Fortunately, they went against the stereotype in that they were dry.</p><p></p><p>Gus struggled against the ropes that bound him hand and foot. A block of wood stuffed in his mouth and tied in place with another length of rope forced his tongue down and his jaws apart. Apparently, his midnight robes had marked him as a spellcaster to the bandits. Of course, his own particular brand of magic was hardly impeded by such material constraints, though they were greatly inconvenient in their own way.</p><p></p><p>His speech thus impeded, he had to settle for a triumphant raising of his eyebrows when, after but a few short moments of feeling the knots with his fingers he discovered that the particularly malodorous individual who’d tied them mere minutes before hadn’t grasped the concept of a handcuff any better than he had that of personal hygiene.</p><p></p><p>After verifying that there was nothing staring at him behind the bars but an attentive Wulgar staring at him from the cell across the corridor. Either the dwarf hadn’t been bound as tightly or he had already come free of his ropes. Nimbly, Gus followed suit, wriggling the loose ropes from his wrists and ankles. Quietly, he placed the wooden gag on his cot, nodded at Wulgar, and turned to examine his surroundings.</p><p></p><p>The cell was roughly ten feet square, with walls of grey stone. The stonework was smooth and skilful, and the angles of the corners were straight. The doorway was closed off with a wooden grate of haphazard construction, barred with a primitive but effective method.</p><p></p><p>Pressing his face against the wooden bars, Gus carefully scanned the outside of the cell. To the right, a stone wall. His and Wulgar’s were the last cells in the corridor. To the left, there was another cell door some ten feet down the way. No guard, or, indeed, another living soul, was evident.</p><p></p><p>“Dorn, are you there? Evendur?” Gus spoke out aloud. Affirmative answers were sounded.</p><p>“OY! Be quiet in there, ya rats!” shouted a guttural voice. “Ya don’t want me to stand up!”</p><p></p><p>A grin split the gnome’s face, his white teeth startlingly bright in the dimly-lit cell block.</p><p>“Sorry, but might I be accommodated in another room? The curtains are the wrong colour,” the gnome called out in reply. His grin widened as he heard a grumble, the sound of moving furniture, and then heavy, dragging steps.</p><p>“Okay, which one of ya worms was it?” the voice asked in the corridor.</p><p>“Me, sir,” Gus replied.</p><p></p><p>The steps approached his cell, and were predictably revealed to belong to an exceptionally ugly half-orc, with a misshapen face and a nose that had, at some point in the creature’s no doubt colourful past, been subjected to a beating so severe it bore more resemblance to a pair of small manholes than any items normally found on a person’s face. Then, Gus reflected, he was probably not dealing with a creature intelligent enough to technically fulfil the definition of ‘a person’. Their gaoler wore only stained breeches, tied around his wide girth with a frayed length of hemp rope. He held an old cudgel in his right hand.</p><p></p><p>The gnome locked his clear, blue eyes with the murky, piggish gaze of the half-orc, who hadn’t yet even had time to be surprised that the prisoner had shaken off his ropes. A moment passed. The half-orc went “Huh?” and Gus grinned even more broadly.</p><p></p><p>“Hi there. I’m Gus,” the gnome offered.</p><p>“Korben,” came the terse reply.</p><p>“Nice to meet you, Korben. Could you unlock the door, please? I need to stretch my feet a bit.”</p><p>The half-orc, its small mind under the sway of Gus’ mental powers, complied.</p><p>“And please, let out my associates as well. We need to talk.”</p><p></p><p>One by one, the half-orc dutifully opened the cell doors, and the released prisoners gathered with their erstwhile guard into a large guardroom with a single table and a selection of closed wooden doors. Two of the cells in the block had yielded a pair of new faces, a halfling clad in leather and earth tones, and a muscular half-orc tattooed with a trio of lightning bolts on his chest. The tall, bald man glared balefully at Korben under his brow, but said nothing.</p><p></p><p>“So, Korben, know where our kit and gear were taken?” Gus asked, conversationally, sitting on the only chair in the room.</p><p>“They’re loot, they’ll be in the wares. Argan took the priest’s symbol,” Korben replied, gesturing at the grey-robed Dorn.</p><p>“Who’s this Argan? Your leader?” Gus pried further.</p><p>“Argan is the priest. Laegon is our boss.”</p><p>“Priest of whom?”</p><p>“Orcus.”</p><p>Gus glanced at Dorn, who raised a meaningful eyebrow.</p><p>“Now, Korben, we can’t go meet your boss Laegon half-dressed. Could you nip down to wherever our stuff is stored and get them for us?”</p><p>The half-orc’s expression became reserved.</p><p>“I could get in a lot of trouble for that. I’m not allowed to leave you on my shift…” he hesitated.</p><p>“Well, then… Where would the wares be?”</p><p>“You get there through the great hall. Just go down the cell block and turn left at the guard post.”</p><p>“And where can we find Laegon?”</p><p>“Turn right at the guard post, and go up the stairs.”</p><p>“I see. Where’s the exit from this place?”</p><p>“Go to the big hall, up the stairs and then right.”</p><p>“Good. Thank you, Korben. You’ve been a great help. I’m sorry to slight your hospitality like this, but I’m afraid we must depart now.”</p><p></p><p>Gus rose up from the chair, and nodded at Wulgar. The dwarf nodded back, and promptly punched Korben in the gut. It was a good, strong punch, that left from the hip and built up force like a rolling wave as it travelled up his arm and connected with the fat half-orc with a satisfying, meaty slam, followed by Korben’s groan as the air was blown out of his lungs. It did not last long, as the bald, muscular prisoner grasped the gaoler’s ugly head and gave it a sharp, sideways yank, accompanied by an audible crack.</p><p></p><p>They set the dead Korben on the chair, so as to appear sleeping to the casual observer. Wulgar confiscated the cudgel and nodded at the tall half-orc.</p><p>“That was a clean kill,” he commented.</p><p>“Yes. It is one of the twelve ways to kill a man unarmed.”</p><p>“Know the other eleven, do ye?” Wulgar queried.</p><p>“Yes, and variations.”</p><p>“Ye might yet get to give a show. I’m Wulgar.”</p><p>“Arh Garhan.”</p><p>The two shook hands.</p><p></p><p>“And who are you, then?” Gus asked, turning to the halfling woman.</p><p>“I’m Lavinia Thorngage. I’m a druid.”</p><p>“Gus.”</p><p></p><p>After introductions were over and done with, they checked out their immediate surroundings. There were two wooden doors right next to each other, and the corridor to the cell block. The cell corridor terminated in one end to a stone wall and in the other, a heavy curtain, under which light shone out.</p><p></p><p>After careful listening at the doors in Korben’s room, Wulgar opened the door on the right and glanced inside. He scowled.</p><p></p><p>“A bloody torture chamber.”</p><p></p><p>The door was shut. The door next to it led to a small chamber mostly filled with rubble, and with small, narrow tunnels just wide enough for a man to pass hewn through the stone walls. The workmanship was crude and unrefined, marking the tunnels as later additions. The sound of voices and carousing emanated from one of the tunnels. After some careful scouting, it was established to come from a great hall, occupied by several of the bandits.</p><p></p><p>“More than we can take, I’m thinking. We’ll want to play this slow and quiet,” Gus said to the others in a low voice. “And where did that half-orc go?”</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">* * *</p><p></p><p>Arh Garhan slowly advanced down the corridor to the wooden door. After pausing briefly to listen, he continued onwards to the curtain at the end. He could distinguish two voices, apparently discussing some nuance of a game they were playing to while away the hours.</p><p></p><p>He turned to return to the others, moving slowly, quietly. Gus’ face appeared from the side tunnel leading to the gaoler’s room, with a bemused expression. Arh raised a finger to his lips, gestured at the curtain, and raised up two fingers. The gnome nodded and beckoned the half-orc to the side tunnel.</p><p></p><p>“You should not go off on your own,” the gnome admonished.</p><p>“I go where I go, little man. We should not tarry. There are two guards behind that curtain, but none I could hear behind the door.”</p><p>Gus nodded.</p><p></p><p>Feeling naked and exposed without their gear, the group quietly and quickly worked their way to the door and, after taking the precautions of listening and checking for traps, through it. Deprived as they were of their kit, though, they did move a good deal quieter than they would had Wulgar been in full armour. The dwarf and gnome led the way, followed by Evendur, who carried a torch liberated from a wall sconce. Then came Arh and the halfling. Dorn forlornly kept up the rear. Deprived of his holy symbol, the spellcaster was of remarkably little use.</p><p></p><p>Beyond, there was a narrow corridor with walls of rough stone. A side tunnel had been carved out of the rock by later and cruder worksmen, and at the end of the corridor there was a broad and imposing door of metal that looked like it’d taken quite a beating at some point in time. A cracked and bent ring of steel was set in the door.</p><p></p><p>Wulgar spat out a curse and rushed forward.</p><p>“’Tis a foul desecration!” he hissed.</p><p>“What do you mean?” Gus asked, stepping forward.</p><p>“Can’t ye see? Look, damn ye!” Wulgar said, gesturing at the door’s marred surface.</p><p></p><p>“There’s something carved here, a symbol. It’s hard to see with all the dents.”</p><p>“’Tis the Twin Axes of Clangeddin, gnome! We be in a dwarfhold of old, and this be a desecrated temple o’ the Rock o’ Battle!”</p><p></p><p>“Let’s hide in there. This crossroads is not safe,” Arh put in.</p><p></p><p>The door was examined, and in the absence of a lock, visible hinges, or any sound from beyond, given a gentle push. It did not budge.</p><p></p><p>Wulgar rolled his eyes, grasped the ring, and pulled. The door swung out soundlessly.</p><p>“First rule o’ dwarven temple architecture. Doors always open up outward. Defensibility, see?”</p><p>Gus nodded silently, and they filed in through the door, drawing it shut behind them.</p><p></p><p>As they had surmised, it was – or had been – a temple of Clangeddin, but it was devastated. The other half of the room had been elevated and a pair of stairs ran up to it. Short tunnesl ran from the elevated part of the room to left and right, both terminating in sturdy wooden doors. Carvings on the walls had been marred by strikes of picks and hammers, rubble covered the floor, and the great statue of Clangeddin himself that had stood behind the altar had been toppled. One of its arms had broken off upon tumbling from the pedestal.</p><p></p><p>The air in the room was cooler than in the corridor outside, and somehow fresher. Despite this, there was an oppressive feeling to the room, the shadows drawing in closer than they should have. Evendur’s torch did little to illuminate their surroundings, instead casting even darker shadows across the room.</p><p></p><p>“What foulness was wrought here?” Wulgar broke the silence after a moment.</p><p>“I feel anger,” Gus said. “It is heavy in this place. Displeasure. Hatred. But not toward us.”</p><p>“Interesting,” Dorn said.</p><p>“How so?” Wulgar asked.</p><p>“It’d seem you can take Clangeddin from the temple but you can’t take the temple from Clangeddin. The physical dimension is broken, but this remains yet the house of your god.”</p><p></p><p>“Well, come and help me, then,” Wulgar said, and walked to the fallen statue. With Arh, Evendur and Dorn helping, they managed to raise the heavy stone dwarf upright and back to its pedestal.</p><p></p><p>“We’ll take a short breather. I feel we’ll be safe here, at least for a short time. Then we’ll have to decide which door to pick,” Gus said, eying the two exits.</p><p></p><p>“This one is locked,” Arh whispered from the left door. “Looks to be a heavy one. Can’t be broken quietly or quickly.”</p><p>“That’s decided for us, then,” Gus said, frowning at Arh.</p><p></p><p>Wulgar knelt before the statue of Clangeddin, and whispered prayers in the language of his people under his breath. This soon faded to a background drone as Gus and Arh examined the other door.</p><p></p><p>“There’s no lock that I can see. It should open outwards judging by the placement of hinges. I cannot hear anyone in the room beyond, but the door looks stout,” Gus said quietly.</p><p>“We go in quick. Yank the door open, charge in, silence all within before alarm can be sounded,” said Arh, kneeling next to the gnome.</p><p>“What if there are more than we can handle?” Evendur asked, bowing low to join their huddle.</p><p>“That is a risk we’ll have to take,” Arh replied.</p><p></p><p>At that moment, the door swung inward noiselessly, and three mouths spoke as one:</p><p>“Merely out of curiosity… how many do you think you can take?”</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="NiTessine, post: 2813620, member: 475"] Here we go again, the only instalment lost in the database crash. I endeavour to have another up soon, but I'm currently studying for the university entrance exams and most of my time is being taken up by English philology. I'll be soon starting up a Rogues' Gallery thread. The party's stats will be posted there as well as some choice NPCs, and there will also eventually be a thread in House Rules where I put the rules items I've written up for the game. There's gonna be a lot of those in a couple of chapters. [center][b][u]Chapter 2: The Deep Cells[/u][/b][/center][b][u][/u][/b][u][/u] The cells were cool and bare but for a lumpy cot of elderly straw at the back wall. Fortunately, they went against the stereotype in that they were dry. Gus struggled against the ropes that bound him hand and foot. A block of wood stuffed in his mouth and tied in place with another length of rope forced his tongue down and his jaws apart. Apparently, his midnight robes had marked him as a spellcaster to the bandits. Of course, his own particular brand of magic was hardly impeded by such material constraints, though they were greatly inconvenient in their own way. His speech thus impeded, he had to settle for a triumphant raising of his eyebrows when, after but a few short moments of feeling the knots with his fingers he discovered that the particularly malodorous individual who’d tied them mere minutes before hadn’t grasped the concept of a handcuff any better than he had that of personal hygiene. After verifying that there was nothing staring at him behind the bars but an attentive Wulgar staring at him from the cell across the corridor. Either the dwarf hadn’t been bound as tightly or he had already come free of his ropes. Nimbly, Gus followed suit, wriggling the loose ropes from his wrists and ankles. Quietly, he placed the wooden gag on his cot, nodded at Wulgar, and turned to examine his surroundings. The cell was roughly ten feet square, with walls of grey stone. The stonework was smooth and skilful, and the angles of the corners were straight. The doorway was closed off with a wooden grate of haphazard construction, barred with a primitive but effective method. Pressing his face against the wooden bars, Gus carefully scanned the outside of the cell. To the right, a stone wall. His and Wulgar’s were the last cells in the corridor. To the left, there was another cell door some ten feet down the way. No guard, or, indeed, another living soul, was evident. “Dorn, are you there? Evendur?” Gus spoke out aloud. Affirmative answers were sounded. “OY! Be quiet in there, ya rats!” shouted a guttural voice. “Ya don’t want me to stand up!” A grin split the gnome’s face, his white teeth startlingly bright in the dimly-lit cell block. “Sorry, but might I be accommodated in another room? The curtains are the wrong colour,” the gnome called out in reply. His grin widened as he heard a grumble, the sound of moving furniture, and then heavy, dragging steps. “Okay, which one of ya worms was it?” the voice asked in the corridor. “Me, sir,” Gus replied. The steps approached his cell, and were predictably revealed to belong to an exceptionally ugly half-orc, with a misshapen face and a nose that had, at some point in the creature’s no doubt colourful past, been subjected to a beating so severe it bore more resemblance to a pair of small manholes than any items normally found on a person’s face. Then, Gus reflected, he was probably not dealing with a creature intelligent enough to technically fulfil the definition of ‘a person’. Their gaoler wore only stained breeches, tied around his wide girth with a frayed length of hemp rope. He held an old cudgel in his right hand. The gnome locked his clear, blue eyes with the murky, piggish gaze of the half-orc, who hadn’t yet even had time to be surprised that the prisoner had shaken off his ropes. A moment passed. The half-orc went “Huh?” and Gus grinned even more broadly. “Hi there. I’m Gus,” the gnome offered. “Korben,” came the terse reply. “Nice to meet you, Korben. Could you unlock the door, please? I need to stretch my feet a bit.” The half-orc, its small mind under the sway of Gus’ mental powers, complied. “And please, let out my associates as well. We need to talk.” One by one, the half-orc dutifully opened the cell doors, and the released prisoners gathered with their erstwhile guard into a large guardroom with a single table and a selection of closed wooden doors. Two of the cells in the block had yielded a pair of new faces, a halfling clad in leather and earth tones, and a muscular half-orc tattooed with a trio of lightning bolts on his chest. The tall, bald man glared balefully at Korben under his brow, but said nothing. “So, Korben, know where our kit and gear were taken?” Gus asked, conversationally, sitting on the only chair in the room. “They’re loot, they’ll be in the wares. Argan took the priest’s symbol,” Korben replied, gesturing at the grey-robed Dorn. “Who’s this Argan? Your leader?” Gus pried further. “Argan is the priest. Laegon is our boss.” “Priest of whom?” “Orcus.” Gus glanced at Dorn, who raised a meaningful eyebrow. “Now, Korben, we can’t go meet your boss Laegon half-dressed. Could you nip down to wherever our stuff is stored and get them for us?” The half-orc’s expression became reserved. “I could get in a lot of trouble for that. I’m not allowed to leave you on my shift…” he hesitated. “Well, then… Where would the wares be?” “You get there through the great hall. Just go down the cell block and turn left at the guard post.” “And where can we find Laegon?” “Turn right at the guard post, and go up the stairs.” “I see. Where’s the exit from this place?” “Go to the big hall, up the stairs and then right.” “Good. Thank you, Korben. You’ve been a great help. I’m sorry to slight your hospitality like this, but I’m afraid we must depart now.” Gus rose up from the chair, and nodded at Wulgar. The dwarf nodded back, and promptly punched Korben in the gut. It was a good, strong punch, that left from the hip and built up force like a rolling wave as it travelled up his arm and connected with the fat half-orc with a satisfying, meaty slam, followed by Korben’s groan as the air was blown out of his lungs. It did not last long, as the bald, muscular prisoner grasped the gaoler’s ugly head and gave it a sharp, sideways yank, accompanied by an audible crack. They set the dead Korben on the chair, so as to appear sleeping to the casual observer. Wulgar confiscated the cudgel and nodded at the tall half-orc. “That was a clean kill,” he commented. “Yes. It is one of the twelve ways to kill a man unarmed.” “Know the other eleven, do ye?” Wulgar queried. “Yes, and variations.” “Ye might yet get to give a show. I’m Wulgar.” “Arh Garhan.” The two shook hands. “And who are you, then?” Gus asked, turning to the halfling woman. “I’m Lavinia Thorngage. I’m a druid.” “Gus.” After introductions were over and done with, they checked out their immediate surroundings. There were two wooden doors right next to each other, and the corridor to the cell block. The cell corridor terminated in one end to a stone wall and in the other, a heavy curtain, under which light shone out. After careful listening at the doors in Korben’s room, Wulgar opened the door on the right and glanced inside. He scowled. “A bloody torture chamber.” The door was shut. The door next to it led to a small chamber mostly filled with rubble, and with small, narrow tunnels just wide enough for a man to pass hewn through the stone walls. The workmanship was crude and unrefined, marking the tunnels as later additions. The sound of voices and carousing emanated from one of the tunnels. After some careful scouting, it was established to come from a great hall, occupied by several of the bandits. “More than we can take, I’m thinking. We’ll want to play this slow and quiet,” Gus said to the others in a low voice. “And where did that half-orc go?” [center]* * *[/center] Arh Garhan slowly advanced down the corridor to the wooden door. After pausing briefly to listen, he continued onwards to the curtain at the end. He could distinguish two voices, apparently discussing some nuance of a game they were playing to while away the hours. He turned to return to the others, moving slowly, quietly. Gus’ face appeared from the side tunnel leading to the gaoler’s room, with a bemused expression. Arh raised a finger to his lips, gestured at the curtain, and raised up two fingers. The gnome nodded and beckoned the half-orc to the side tunnel. “You should not go off on your own,” the gnome admonished. “I go where I go, little man. We should not tarry. There are two guards behind that curtain, but none I could hear behind the door.” Gus nodded. Feeling naked and exposed without their gear, the group quietly and quickly worked their way to the door and, after taking the precautions of listening and checking for traps, through it. Deprived as they were of their kit, though, they did move a good deal quieter than they would had Wulgar been in full armour. The dwarf and gnome led the way, followed by Evendur, who carried a torch liberated from a wall sconce. Then came Arh and the halfling. Dorn forlornly kept up the rear. Deprived of his holy symbol, the spellcaster was of remarkably little use. Beyond, there was a narrow corridor with walls of rough stone. A side tunnel had been carved out of the rock by later and cruder worksmen, and at the end of the corridor there was a broad and imposing door of metal that looked like it’d taken quite a beating at some point in time. A cracked and bent ring of steel was set in the door. Wulgar spat out a curse and rushed forward. “’Tis a foul desecration!” he hissed. “What do you mean?” Gus asked, stepping forward. “Can’t ye see? Look, damn ye!” Wulgar said, gesturing at the door’s marred surface. “There’s something carved here, a symbol. It’s hard to see with all the dents.” “’Tis the Twin Axes of Clangeddin, gnome! We be in a dwarfhold of old, and this be a desecrated temple o’ the Rock o’ Battle!” “Let’s hide in there. This crossroads is not safe,” Arh put in. The door was examined, and in the absence of a lock, visible hinges, or any sound from beyond, given a gentle push. It did not budge. Wulgar rolled his eyes, grasped the ring, and pulled. The door swung out soundlessly. “First rule o’ dwarven temple architecture. Doors always open up outward. Defensibility, see?” Gus nodded silently, and they filed in through the door, drawing it shut behind them. As they had surmised, it was – or had been – a temple of Clangeddin, but it was devastated. The other half of the room had been elevated and a pair of stairs ran up to it. Short tunnesl ran from the elevated part of the room to left and right, both terminating in sturdy wooden doors. Carvings on the walls had been marred by strikes of picks and hammers, rubble covered the floor, and the great statue of Clangeddin himself that had stood behind the altar had been toppled. One of its arms had broken off upon tumbling from the pedestal. The air in the room was cooler than in the corridor outside, and somehow fresher. Despite this, there was an oppressive feeling to the room, the shadows drawing in closer than they should have. Evendur’s torch did little to illuminate their surroundings, instead casting even darker shadows across the room. “What foulness was wrought here?” Wulgar broke the silence after a moment. “I feel anger,” Gus said. “It is heavy in this place. Displeasure. Hatred. But not toward us.” “Interesting,” Dorn said. “How so?” Wulgar asked. “It’d seem you can take Clangeddin from the temple but you can’t take the temple from Clangeddin. The physical dimension is broken, but this remains yet the house of your god.” “Well, come and help me, then,” Wulgar said, and walked to the fallen statue. With Arh, Evendur and Dorn helping, they managed to raise the heavy stone dwarf upright and back to its pedestal. “We’ll take a short breather. I feel we’ll be safe here, at least for a short time. Then we’ll have to decide which door to pick,” Gus said, eying the two exits. “This one is locked,” Arh whispered from the left door. “Looks to be a heavy one. Can’t be broken quietly or quickly.” “That’s decided for us, then,” Gus said, frowning at Arh. Wulgar knelt before the statue of Clangeddin, and whispered prayers in the language of his people under his breath. This soon faded to a background drone as Gus and Arh examined the other door. “There’s no lock that I can see. It should open outwards judging by the placement of hinges. I cannot hear anyone in the room beyond, but the door looks stout,” Gus said quietly. “We go in quick. Yank the door open, charge in, silence all within before alarm can be sounded,” said Arh, kneeling next to the gnome. “What if there are more than we can handle?” Evendur asked, bowing low to join their huddle. “That is a risk we’ll have to take,” Arh replied. At that moment, the door swung inward noiselessly, and three mouths spoke as one: “Merely out of curiosity… how many do you think you can take?” [/QUOTE]
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