NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 454665" data-attributes="member: 143">Glad the boards are back up; I couldn't get on for a few days and I was starting to get withdrawal symptoms.  Plus I couldn't initially find my thread, it had fallen so far on the page. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /> Anyway, here's the next update:* * * * * Book VI, Part 33Leaving the unconscious guardsman behind them—Benzan had questioned whether it wouldn’t be better to “finish him off,” but Cal shook his head—they pressed on down the corridor.  Lok had taken one of the chain shirts from the slain warriors, and slipped into it.  The armor was in poor repair, but it was better than the wool shirt he’d been wearing.  He’d also armed himself with one of their longswords, returning Cal’s smaller blade to him.  Benzan also took a spare sword, examining its edge dubiously before sliding it into his vacant scabbard.  Thus prepared, they resumed their same order, with Benzan out a distance ahead of them, cloaked by the power of his ring, while Lok and Cal followed behind.  The smell told them that they were nearing the chamber of the earlier ambush, even before they rounded a final corner and found themselves back in the pillared chamber.  The place looked empty at first glance, but as they entered they could see the pools of blood left on the floor, each surrounded by the squirming forms of thousands of tiny vermin as they fed upon the remains left from the battle.  The bodies of the fallen, however, had been carried away.  The stench of death was powerful, hanging in the air like a thick fog.  “This way,” Cal said, indicating a nearby door.  They headed into the room toward the portal, staying close to the edges of the room.  None of them wanted to walk near the bloody vermin-infested patches of floor, and they were wary of another trap.  Benzan paused for a moment, although Cal and Lok barely noticed, as the tiefling’s form was all but part of the darkness around them.  Cal’s face looked pale in the soft blue light coming from his sword, and they all looked like shadows, ghosts moving through an oppressive and eternal darkness.  Then they heard a muttered phrase, words that seemed to vanish from the memory as soon as they were heard.  Benzan’s shadowed form suddenly spun, and with a twang a white trace darted through the air, flying up into the stone rafters supporting the ceiling above them.  Cal and Lok started in surprise, turning and hefting their weapons.  They heard a choked cry from above as Benzan’s arrow hit something, then a small lump fell from the darkness above to land in a heap on the chamber floor.  They quickly moved to examine the thing, Cal poking at its unmoving form with his sword.  It wasn’t more than a foot in height, looking like a combination between a rat and a man, clad in a scrap of rags and carrying a tiny crossbow along with a quiver of thin darts.  Benzan’s arrow had transfixed him, and a rime of ice from the magical missile coated his torso where the missile had hit and penetrated his body.“Looks like we found our sniper,” Benzan said. “That was quite a shot,” Cal said.  “How did you know...”“I saw movement, out of the corner of my eye,” Benzan said.  “And I wish I could take full credit for the shot, but it was a magical spell that guided the arrow.”“Ah, true strike,” Cal observed.  “I might have to learn that one myself, someday.”Wary of any further spies watching their progress, they pressed on through the door that Cal had indicated, and into yet another long passage.  They moved swiftly and with purpose, with Cal guiding them with little hesitation whenever they encountered a choice in passages or doors.  They passed through a few additional intersections and smaller chambers, until they came to another vaulted hall.  Cal immediately turned and directed them to a nearby corner, where another side passage was partially concealed within a deep alcove fronted by a pair of thick stone pillars.  “Hold up,” Benzan’s voice came out of the nearby darkness, as Cal started into the passage.  “This is the way,” Cal said.  “I’m sure it is, but I wouldn’t suggest heading down that passage just yet.”  He turned off the power of his ring, and the shadows seemed to flow off of him like water.  The mithral links of his armor glistened in the light wherever the chainmail was visible under his cloak and the long tunic underneath.  He knelt in the entry of the passage, examining what looked to the others like a bare patch of unremarkable stone.  “Pressure plate here,” he said.  “Very nice work—a trigger for some sort of trap, I’d wager.”“Can you disarm it?” Cal asked.  “It would take time.  Better to just bypass it—here, watch where I step, and follow me.”Benzan led them into the corridor, Cal and Lok following his steps carefully.  The corridor widened slightly once they were beyond the initial threshold, until it was wide enough for the three of them to travel abreast, if they were so inclined.  Benzan summoned the power of his ring once again and moved ahead of them, scouting carefully for any additional traps.  He didn’t find anything, however, and soon the passage turned sharply to the left, and a bright glow became visible up ahead.  “Wait here,” Benzan whispered.  “I’ll check it out.”“Hold a second,” Cal returned.  “Where are you?”Benzan dropped his cloak of shadows briefly, revealing his position.“I know your ring makes you virtually invisible, but why not have the real thing?”  The gnome cast a quick spell, and Benzan faded from sight.“Thanks.”“It’ll last for up to an hour, but any sort of attack will cancel the invisibility.”“I’ll keep that in mind.  Be right back.”Silently the tiefling headed down the passageway, while Cal and Lok waited near the bend in the passage.  Cal had sheathed all but an inch or two of his sword, leaving them in almost pure blackness.  Lok could see, of course, but to Cal, even with his exceptional vision, everything around him was just a vague shadow, different shades of black jumbled together. “Once we get done with all this, you’ll have to tell me what’s happened to you since we parted,” Cal whispered to Lok.“Indeed,” the genasi replied.  They waited there in silence as the seconds drifted into minutes.  At one point Cal thought he heard noises back down the passage behind them, but no foes entered the passage where they crouched waiting.  Just when they were contemplating heading after Benzan, the tiefling’s voice startled them out of nowhere.“Hey, did you miss me?”“We were starting to.  What did you discover?” Cal asked.  “It doesn’t look good.  There’s a chamber up ahead, and it the back part of it has been turned into another of those defensive fortifications.  There’s what looks like a heavily reinforced masonry wall blocking off a large archway in the back, with a pair of massive stone doors recessed under the arch.  But that’s just where it gets started.  The floor’s been excavated in front of the walls, forming a sloping trench that’s been filled with a veritable forest of sharp metal spikes.  Then there’s the wall, a good ten feet high, the top of which has also been set with spikes, along with a series of defensive emplacements where an archer could sit with nearly total cover and take potshots at anyone in the room.  There’s torches mounted above the arch behind the wall, enough so that there aren’t many shadows to hide in as you approach the wall.  If you hadn’t cast that spell on me, I doubt I’d have been able to get close at all.”“No break in the wall?” Lok asked.“No, there’s an iron gate, and what looks like a retractable plank bridge to cross the trench.  The gate is recessed deep in the wall under an overhang, and it’s flanked by a pair of arrow slits.”“Did you see anything about the defenders?” Cal asked.They couldn’t see his wry grin, but they knew him well enough to know that it was there as he spoke.  “Well, of course—I wouldn’t be the master scout that I am if I didn’t climb over there and take a look, would I?”“And?”The tiefling’s voice became more serious.  “It’s well defended, at least a dozen, same sort of almost random mix of creatures as before.  I saw a few of our friends from before—that dwarf, and the dark elf.  I only caught a glimpse of the others, but they looked like a hobgoblins and humans, mostly, maybe a kobold or two in the mix.”“Why didn’t you just kill them all and open the gate for us, then?” Cal chided him.  “Hah.  I know you know this already, Cal, but these guys mean business.  They’re alert, and they’re expecting trouble.  They couldn’t see me, but I think a few of them sensed that something was there when I took a quick look through one of their arrow slits.  I wasn’t going to wait around to find out; I made my way back through the trench—very carefully, those spikes are sharp, and covered with poison to boot, I think—and hurried back here.”“This isn’t going to be easy, not with just the three of us,” he added.  “These guys have gotten the jump on us twice now, and we’re not exactly at full strength now.”Cal straightened.  “Nonetheless, we have a few surprises left,” he said.  He reached down and open his belt pouch, taking out the cache of scrolls that Alera had given him.  He drew his sword fully from its scabbard, surrounding them in a ring of pale blue light. “What we’ve come for is behind those stone doors,” he told his friends.  “We came here to get Nelan, and now we have to find Pelanther as well.  Whoever these bastards are, you’re right, Benzan, they’ve gotten the better of us, but now it’s time to return the favor, with interest.”And as they drew close around him, he outlined his plan.</blockquote>

Verification