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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 1429378" data-attributes="member: 15470">Issue #12: Under the Lake - Episode 2 of 5Stone and Paks are sitting at the top of the stairs, chatting. Stone is slowly eating some bread and cheese. His crossbow sits in his lap, while Paks’ bow is leaned against the wall next to her. Every once in a while, Stone tosses a little cheese down and causes a scramble among the rats. The stirges are long since stripped to the bone.Suddenly, Stone nudges Paks. “Shh! Look!” he whispers, and points to the southeast corner of the rat-filled room below. A trap door opens up, and the rats scatter away from it. He sees two human-looking arms coming out of the door. He readies his crossbow. A ghoul climbs out, grabs a rat and bites the head off of it.“Should I shoot it?” Stone whispers to Paks, aiming his crossbow at it.She shakes her head. “Let the ghoul keep eating.”After devouring the rat, the ghoul starts sniffing and looking around. It looks directly at Stone, and appears to see him.With a loud mechanical noise, Stone fires his crossbow, and the bolt hits the ghoul in the chest. Paks has only just stood up, and Stone drops his crossbow. Yelling a battle cry, he rushes down the stairs towards the ghoul. He sprints into the pack of rats, running through them with single-minded determination. The rats bite at the half-orc’s ankles as he runs, but none injure him seriously.Paks yells for help, and Chuck, who was closest, rushes to the top of the stairs, shouldering past her and beginning the descent. Paks grabs her bow and follows him downstairs more cautiously. Goldpetal and Hands of Fire, further away, begin running towards the staircase from the great hall. Stone reaches the ghoul at full speed. It tries to bite him, but the half-orc lowers his shoulder and makes a flying tackle, driving the ghoul back over the trap door. They both fall through the trap door and plummet out of sight.Seeing Stone disappear, Chuck rushes into the room. He, too, is bitten by the rats as he crosses the room. He reaches the trap door, and looks down through it. In darkness ten feet below him, he can barely make out Stone and the ghoul wrestling. He calls back to Paks, “There’s a ghoul, and its got Stone!” Paks starts running back up the stairs, yelling as she goes, to summon the rest of the party.In the small corridor below the trap door, the ghoul and Stone grapple on the floor. The half-orc is faster, but the ghoul has a crushing strength. Finally, Stone unleashes a flurry of head-butts against the ghoul. Twice his forehead makes solid contact with the ghoul’s head, and the second blow crushes its skull, covering his forehead in gore. The lifeless body of the ghoul goes limp beneath him. The rats are swarming around Chuck now, getting in more bites. There’s a ladder under the trap door, and he quickly climbs down it. The rats do not follow.Moments later, Goldpetal and Hands of Fire reach the top of the stairs. They see an empty room with a lot of rats, and from their distant vantage, they do not notice the trap door in the far corner. They slow to a stop halfway down the stairs, looking for the rest of the party.Below, Chuck finds himself in a hallway with Stone and the corpse of the ghoul. “Are you okay?” he asks Stone.The half-orc clambers to his feet and wipes smashed ghoul out of his eyes. “Yeah. Fine,” he says, and looks around the hallway. It is about ten feet wide and twice as long, and leads to a great stone door at the opposite end. Stone glances up to see if the rats are coming down through the trap door, but they are not. Just as with the stairs, they seem confined to the room above. Stone begins searching the ghoul corpse, while Chuck climbs partway back up the ladder. He sticks his arm carefully up through the middle of the trapdoor, and the rats do not reach him or attack him.Across the room, Goldpetal sees a hand sticking up into the dark room, but he cannot see well enough to know if it is human or enemy. He quickly casts flare into the middle of the room. A bright light, as though from a great bonfire, appears in the center of the room. The rats scatter away from the flare, and Hands of Fire sees the trap door. With the rats scattering from the flare, he starts to run across the room to the trap door. The rats are dazzled by the light, and do not attack him, so Goldpetal follows close on his heels. Meanwhile, Paks reaches the top of the tower, breathing hard. “Ghouls!” she shouts, as she pokes her head up the ladder onto the surface of the island. “Come help!” Miriel and Novalia hurry to their feet, grabbing their things, to follow her back down.Telryn, still suffering from a concussion, is lying down. He props himself up on one elbow. “Should I come?” he asks weakly.“No,” says Miriel. “Stay and rest. We may need you later.”Underneath, in the corridor below the trap door, Stone tells Chuck, “Bring my sack.” Without waiting to see if the Vigilant obeys, the half-orc walks up to the stone door. The door is large, with a wheel carved in the stone, but over it some unholy symbol is marked in charcoal and blood. Chills run up his spine as he contemplates it. Chuck climbs partway up the ladder and sticks his head out, calling, “Bring Stone’s sack!” He reaches the top of the ladder just as Hands of Fire and Goldpetal get across the room. Hands of Fire, at a full run, leaps over Chuck and down the hole, where he lands gracefully on his feet. Stone whirls around at the sudden motion behind him, and is very impressed by the lizard man’s catlike balance. Goldpetal slips past Chuck, as Chuck comes up into the room with the rats.Paks and Miriel begin to run down into the tower, while Novalia casts a spell on herself: expeditious retreat. She runs after the other two women, but, magically fleet of foot thanks to the spell, she quickly outpaces them. Miriel, wearing less armor, and not having run as far, also catches Paks and passes her as they follow Novalia below. Novalia reaches the top of the stairs. She sees the flare, the swarm of rats, and Chuck standing in the middle of it. He has some rope out, and is trying to figure out if he can construct a rope bridge above the rats while they are stunned. Seeing that he is unharmed, she bolts across the room and slips down the trapdoor. Miriel and Paks reach the bottom of the staircase and also start to run across the room. Miriel goes straight to the trapdoor and down through it, but Paks notices that the rats are not attacking her, so she stops to look around. When Miriel gets to the bottom, she asks, “Where are the ghouls?” Stone, who was listening at the stone door, turns and shakes his head. His face is gruesome, and Miriel gasps. The monk points to the mess on the floor, and Miriel and Novalia relax a bit. In the room with the rats, Chuck finds that there are no good supports to which he can tie a rope, especially on the trap-door side of the room, and he also realizes that his fifty-foot rope won’t stretch diagonally across a room which is fifty feet on a side. He abandons his rope bridge idea, and jogs back to the staircase to pick up Stone’s sack.Paks steps over to some of the ruined crates and barrels. From the debris, she guesses that this was once a storeroom. Thinking that there might be something of value left in the crates, she grabs one of them and tries to pick it up. It falls apart under her touch. Anything once contained within has long since rotted. She checks one or two of the other crates, but they seem to be all likewise decayed.The rats are beginning to get over being stunned, and are starting to nose around as though looking for food again. From the room underneath, Stone picks up the dead ghoul and throws it up through the trap door and into the rat’s room. Paks and Chuck start rushing across the room, as the rats begin to sniff at the ghoul corpse. As the flare expires, the rats begin to swarm over the corpse, devouring it. Chuck and Paks are the last two down the stairs.“Here,” Chuck says, handing Stone the half-orc’s sack. “Thanks,” Stone says. He fishes in his pack and pulls out his flask of water. He washes his face with water from his sack, removing the last of the gore from his countenance. We’re all gathered in the twenty foot long corridor. It is freezing cold down at this level. Even those who have just completed the long run from the surface are chilly. The cold is beyond the normal chill one might expect from being underground, and seems to emanate from the stone door. Goldpetal begins knocking on the walls, looking for hidden doors, while Hands of Fire and Novalia watch back up the trap door. Miriel walks up to the stone door, and examines the blood and charcoal symbol. Stone and Paks accompany her.“This is a symbol of Chern,” the priestess says, “And relatively freshly made.” “Be careful,” Paks warns her. “I’ve got a very bad feeling about all this. There is great evil, here.”“I’ve seen a warding glyph,” Stone says, “Which looked something like that, but struck a priest dead when he tried to open it.”“Good point,” Miriel says. “I’ll check.” She steps back, and casts detect magic on the door and the two symbols. “It’s not magical,” she says, “So it should be safe to open.”Meanwhile, Goldpetal turns around. “It sounds hollow, here,” he says, “Perhaps there’s a secret door.” He knocks again, demonstrating the hollow spot and showing how it sounds different from the wall next to it. We all gather around to look, but nobody can find the trigger. Finally, Goldpetal looks at an empty torch bracket, off to the side of the door. He pulls on it. As soon as he does, a five-foot wide slab of stone slides open. He can see a rough-hewn passageway through it. It’s five feet wide, and leads off diagonally, away from the door with the symbol of Chern. Goldpetal draws his bow, and knocks an arrow. Without warning, he fires an arrow down the passage. It hits a wall at the end, and breaks.“Shh!” Paks hisses, grabbing his arm and shaking her head. “That just made a sound, to warn anything down there that we’re coming.”“We should explore it before we continue on,” he says. That suggestion meets with acclaim, and we begin preparing to go down the passage, making sure that we have two torches lit, and discussing what order to walk in. Miriel suggests, “Let’s close the trap door so the rats can’t come down.” As Chuck goes to take care of it, she adds, “Wedge it with a dead torch, so it can be opened more easily.”Stone begins heading down the corridor, through the secret door. Paks and Goldpetal follow, with Hands of Fire, Miriel and Novalia behind them, and Chuck bringing up the rear.  The passage is quite long, winding around for about a hundred and twenty feet. Its width varies irregularly, but is never quite wide enough for two humans to walk abreast.Finally, the corridor opens up into a big natural cavern, fifty feet wide. A large pool of deep, still water fills the room, with the nearest portion providing a small, rock beach. There are numerous stalactites and stalagmites, and even Stone’s eyes can’t see the other end of the cavern. Most of the group stays up the beach, near the mouth of the passage, looking around, but Chuck and Stone walk to the edge of the pool to examine the water. “It just looks like a pool of water,” Stone says.Chuck holds his nose. “Yeah, with a great putrid stink,” he adds. Even those standing behind can smell the foulness of that water, and up close it is almost overpowering to Chuck’s human nostrils. The half-orc doesn’t seem bothered by it. He pulls out his ten-foot pole and pokes it into the water, disturbing the surface. As though in response, a giant crayfish climbs out of the water. It is taller than a man, and fully fifteen feet long, with the pink sheen of a lobster, and a hard, segmented external carapace. Two giant claws protrude in front of it, and it has beady black eyes and several thick waving feelers or antennae. It rushes out of the shallow water towards Stone and Chuck with lightning speed.Stone yells out, “Butter!” but before either of them can react more than that, the crayfish grabs both of them, one with each claw. It pins each of them in a vise-like grip, and begins backing into the water, pulling them with it. Chuck pulls out his magical dagger, and stabs at the crayfish. The glowing blade slices through the hard pink exoskeleton of the giant beast, wounding it. Stone tries to pry open the claw, but the crayfish is much stronger than he is. It drags them both out over the water, and they can feel the water up to their knees already.On shore, after a brief moment of consternation, Goldpetal, Paks, and Novalia all draw their bows and fire. Goldpetal and Paks hit the hard exoskeleton, and their arrows bounce harmlessly away. Novalia aims for the head and vulnerable eyes, but her shot whizzes narrowly over it.Stone writhes around until he can get his feet close to its head, and aims a flurry of kicks at its head. One foot connects, breaking the carapace with a loud crunching sound. The crayfish looks stunned, and drops Stone. He lands in shallow water, about thigh deep, but the crayfish scuttles further back, dragging Chuck completely underwater.Miriel rushes over to Stone. “Madriel, heal this man!” she shouts, and the healing powers course through her fingers, knitting Stone’s flesh beneath her hand.  Hands of Fire dives into the lake. He swims after the crayfish, attacking it with his naked claws and teeth. He hits it with one claw, and bites it hard, in its vulnerable underbelly. It starts thrashing around in the water, and tries to attack him with its free claw, but the lizard man is a phenomenal swimmer, and dodges easily. In desperation, Chuck tries to stick his dagger in the claw joint. He gets the dagger in deep, and slices the claw completely off! The crayfish sinks into the water. Chuck pries his way out of the severed claw, and kicks himself up to the top of the water, but he’s injured and having trouble swimming. Stone rushes out to chest-high depth, and holds out the ten-foot pole towards him. The Vigilant is able to grab it with one arm, and Stone pulls him slowly back towards shore. Miriel helps him as soon as they reach her.Hands of Fire swims down to the bottom, where he finds that the crayfish is dead. He swims back diagonally up towards shore, which he reaches about the same time as Chuck and Stone do.“Here, lay down,” Miriel tells Chuck. “Let me look at that.” He has a bad wound, with one arm broken, but Miriel again begs the healing power of Madriel, and the bone knits beneath her fingers. “There,” she says, after several minutes. “That should do. Goldpetal, why don’t you give one healing potion to Paks and another to Chuck, so that they are distributed around the party better?” As Goldpetal distributes the healing potions, Miriel examines Chuck, Stone, and Hands of Fire for signs of disease. The first two are fine, but after examining Hands of Fire, she says, “I see a color in the eyes of Hands of Fire that makes me think he might have come down with Slimy Doom from swimming in the lake. Everyone to stay away from Hands of Fire, and stay away from the lake.” She repeats the instruction to the lizard man with hand gestures. Next, Miriel examines the lake water, which appears thoroughly defiled. Paks walks up behind her, and offers a small crystal vial filled with clear liquid. “Here,” she says. “I bought a vial of holy water at your temple. I think you should pour it into the lake and offer up Madriel's blessing.”“Thank you,” Miriel says, “But I fear purifying this ill is beyond my abilities alone. Perhaps if we all help, we can manage something.” “It can’t hurt to try,” Goldpetal says.“I’ll help,” Novalia offers.“And I,” Paks says. “Though I’m not sure what help I will be.”“We’ll stand watch,” Stone says, gesturing to Hands of Fire and Chuck. They stand guard over the others, and Chuck, who smells awful after his immersion in the lake, changes his clothes. The leather armor he wears may be beyond assistance, but at least his outer garments are fresh and clean.Miriel, Goldpetal, Paks, and Novalia gather at the edge of the water, holding hands. They each close their eyes, and stand in silence for a moment. Then, Goldpetal begins to chant, and each of the others joins in. They each invoke their deities, Madriel, Denev, and Tanil, and ask them to purify the water. At first, each speech feels syncopated, out of rhythm, but the longer they work together, the more it begins to feel like a ritual, and a rhythm to their chant becomes clear even to those listening. It sounds almost like a song, and at the height, Miriel pours Paks’ holy water into the lake. After almost an hour, the ritual draws to a close. Again silence descends on the cavern, and the foursome open their eyes. Goldpetal looks around at each of the others, catching their gaze with his intense purple eyes. “I have a good feeling about that,” he says. Paks nods. “Me too.” Miriel takes a deep breath, holds it for a moment, and exhales with a sigh. “The lake doesn't smell as disease-ridden anymore,” she observes.Goldpetal nods.“I’ll need to rest before we go on,” Miriel says. “Let’s rest in that narrow corridor,” Paks says. “It should be easily defensible.”“I think we’ll be safer if we go all the way back outside,” Novalia says. After a brief discussion, Stone, Chuck, and Paks all agree that the defensibility of the narrow corridor is best, and the other defer to the wisdom of their warriors. We make a quick campsite inside the corridor, with Stone and Hands of Fire watching at the lake entrance of the corridor. Paks and Chuck walk up to the secret door, and after a few minutes of examination, figure out how to open it from this side. Assured of a way out, Paks closes it, and the two of them remain near the door as guards. Miriel, Goldpetal, and Novalia rest after the exhausting ritual. About forty minutes into our rest, Hands of Fire grabs Stone. He cannot speak, but he makes it clear with hand gestures that he is feeling very unwell. Stone goes up to the door, and gets Chuck. Monk and Vigilant confer, but they decide not to disrupt Miriel, whose eyes are closed in silent meditation. They pantomime rest to Hands of Fire, who nods wearily, and lies down to sleep. Chuck shifts down to the lake side of the corridor, leaving Paks alone at the secret door.</blockquote>

Verification