Post by Dead Greyhawk on Jul 5, 2007 20:52:31 GMT -5
The Company is escorted into the citadel and down into its lower levels where Killain Anvilsplitter and several Keepers of the Peace await them. The meeting room is spacious enough to hold the Company and the Keepers, and Killain marks a large map mounted up on one wall. The original citadel of Longspear was a motte and bailey type castle built to guard and overlook the Javan. As the town, and later the city, grew up around the citadel, the citadel grew with it. The Javan though, it grew as well, eroding the riverbanks and, in some cases, undercutting the city. The city of Longspear has settled significantly over the centuries, and what once were streets and houses are now buried beneath the current ones. Masses of catacombs link the sewers and dead spaces under the city.
Such catacombs are a threat to the city. Strange things, as the Company well knows, live and breed beneath the citizens' feet, and the passages are used as byways for travelers that fear either the light or the law. The Keepers of the Peace are tasked with securing the citadel from incursion and have regularly hired sappers, mercenaries, and itinerant investigators to search through and map the many tunnels. Most disappear eventually, either eaten or merely lost, but many fragments of maps and diagrams survive. One of the most accurate maps of a single strata of the catacombs was done by Kress Sawyer several decades earlier. Sawyer, who disappeared only a few years after the map was made, plotted a wide range of tunnels, catacombs, sewage canals, and man-made links that led throughout the city and even into the countryside beyond. It is a copy of this map that Killain points to on the wall and hands to Otto.
The map shows actual sewers that need to be crossed, a plethora of tunnels, strange rough-hewn warrens, and odd circular objects. Killain points to one end of the map, claiming that the citadel sits there, and a guarded, barricaded entrance to the catacombs is present. Here, the Company will enter the tunnels. On the far side of the map, a long straight tunnel leads to a subbasement under a now-abandoned villa. Here, if the Company exits, they will find themselves a few hundred yards from the evil priests' encampment. Killain cares not what route the Company takes to get to the exit, so long as they are ready to attack at daybreak on Godsday. The sun will rise up out of the east, behind the city, causing the undead to falter and the humanoids to face into the brightest sun. If the Company is late, their targets, the leaders of the besieging army will have dispersed throughout the troops.
Winthrop peers over Otto's shoulder and points at the odd circular objects. "What are these?" he grunts, disliking the early hour. Killain doesn't know, but claims they lie under the Silent One's octahedral building. Winthrop and Dell exchange a knowing glance, as if perhaps this will be an area to avoid, for now. The Company has a few more desultory questions to ask, but eventually all that is left is to go. Killain wishes them luck and sends Ged and Othmar to lead the Company deeper under the citadel.
The Company descends and descends down stone and iron stairwells and ladders. The passages become smaller and crookeder, and Pfiffwin cringes at the quality of the stonework, muttering to himself in gnomish at each precariously wedged keystone. Finally, certainly under the level of the city streets, the Company enter into a dank, clammy, chill guardroom. A brazier in one corner holds glowing coals and sheds weak heat and light. Three pale guardsmen stagger to attention, the foul air, the cold, and the lack of light having wreaked havoc on their health. "Your best men get placed here, I see," grumbles Otto to Ged.
Ged asks for the sergeant of the guard and is told that he's no longer available. Much shouting and questioning reveals a story of the sergeant wandering out into the catacombs, claiming he heard music and voices summoning him there. The other guards simply locked the barricade behind him and let him go. Ged is speechless.
After the mages have finished their preparatory spells, Ged leads Otto and Diego down a series of small corridors, the cross-passages bricked over and mortared shut, until they face a large portcullis blocking off the end of the passageway. A vile stench percolates through the grating. "Here's your entry," says Ged with a rueful grimace.
Back in the guard post, the Company talk with the guardsmen there about the catacombs. The guardsmen tell of strange creatures with maligned bodies creeping, crawling, and screaming out of the gloom beyond. The stonework is bad and settling, and the noises and odors that come through the wall distressing to say the least. The guardsmen are not reassuring.
Winthrop and Maximilian, who have been conversing in the back of the room, seem to come to some agreement. Since no one else wished to have it, Winthrop has stored the great iron mace found in Grugnir's trophy room in his chest. It had been discovered to be mildly enchanted, and Maximilian will be more powerful in battle with such a weapon. Winthrop clears a space and, grasping his small copy of the the chest, summons it back from its other-planar storage. When he does so, a strange two-foot-long, winged, golden-furred elephant comes along with the chest. It emerges as if from a long tunnel, rapidly increasing in size until it is present among the Company.
Diego, Otto, and Ged return in time to see the luminous creature flutter up into the air. The effect it has on those viewing it is quite varied. Otto and Winthrop feel peaceful in its presence, while Dell feels a bit anxious. Most of the guardsmen drop to their knees in terror. The others view it with varying degrees of contentedness and discomfort.
The strange two-foot-long, winged, golden-furred elephant trumpets, and the walls shake, dust trickling down on them all. It is a loud sound, and the tremors it sets up in the walls make those not content in its presence even more discontented. Otto, oddly happy to see the strange creature, steps forward. "Oh golden-furred elephant," he beseeches, "you seem wise and powerful. We face dire evil and are sorely beset both here and in the space around us. Have you benison or a boon for us?"
A stream of golden fireworks shoot from its trunk, and Otto is coated in molten, golden goodness. He feels blessed and centered, as if good luck was with him. His body glows a warm golden color and little droplets of light slowly drip off him, like small droplets of honey. Otto sheds enough light to read by, at least within ten feet of him. With a final trumpeting bleat, the strange two-foot-long, winged, golden-furred elephant flies off, back into the long tunnel visible only to it, off into the distance until it finally disappears.
"That was just plain weird," says Dell.
After such an event, the guardsmen are happy to be rid of the Company. They haul open the portcullis and let them through, telling them to bang on the grate if they need entry again. The tunnels beyond are just that, tunnels. Made of uneven bricking and cobblestones, they seem to connect hollows and byways through the ruins of a strange underground city. With the weight of the city pressing down on them, some of the walls are less than stable. Collapsed roofs and walls block the Company's way, and force the Company to backtrack from time to time. The map, while basically correct, no longer accurately represents the state of the catacombs.
With Pfiffwin watching for shifting stone and leading the Company past the worst of the unstable stonework, the Company makes their way along the passages to a sewage canal that bisects the map. Little rain has fallen over Longspear recently, but the sewage canal flows briskly, deep with foul waste. The sewer seems impassible. The stench is indescribable, and Pfiffwin, low to the ground and certainly with the largest nose, is overcome by the odor. While Pfiffwin convulsively vomits, Otto goes looking for another way to bridge the river of waste.
The passageway to the right looks as if it might bypass this particular malodorous intersection, but when Otto runs down it, he sees it is sealed with a glistening portcullis. The portcullis seems odd to Otto, the surface of the portcullis oddly dull where the golden light he sheds hits it, and he backs away from it. The portcullis begins to bend and lunge at him, closing like a bizarre maw and the tunnel narrows. This is a bit much for the intrepid Otto, and he runs away, back to the others.
"There's a thing back that way," pants Otto.
"I think we can get across if we can find some boards and make bridge out of them," says Winthrop.
"A portcullis-thing, blocking the passage," says Otto, trying to get the attention of the others.
"Do you see wood?" asks Dell. "Tell you what, we go outside, cut down a tree, trim it, and bring it in here to make a bridge. Oh, wait! There's an army outside! That's why we're..."
"It's got teeth!" interrupts Otto.
"Of course it's got teeth, it's a portcullis," retorts Dell, as a portcullis-thing appears out of strange tendrils snaking along the walls, floor, and ceiling. It strikes at the Company with strange sword-like appendages, while humanoid shapes spring into sight twenty feet away. As the Company attacks, the humanoid shapes appear to be flee, but the sword-like appendages continue their onslaught. Adrienne is sorely battered before the portcullis-thing is rendered into blobby paste. The humanoid shapes collapse simultaneously with the appendages and the tendrils, revealing all the parts to be connected by thin, sinewy strands.
"That was just plain weird too," says Dell.
Dell uncoils his magical rope and extends it over the sewage torrent. "No one slip, ok?" he says, as he goes hand over hand across the rope. Otto straps the limp and convulsing Pfiffwin to his back and follows. Soon the whole Company is on the other side of the sewage canal. Once Dell recovers his rope, they are ready to move on.
Only a few hundred feet further, past a series of corners and bends the catacomb begins to sink into water. The water appears to be quite deep eventually, rising up to perhaps two-thirds of the fifteen-foot high passage. Otto checks on several of the alternate passages that might lead around the flooding but discovers they are equally flooded. The Company is quite vexed, as they must pass through this area if they are to use this route to achieve their goal.
"I hate water," mutters Dell. "Stand back." Dell pulls forth a wand engraved with snowflakes and points it at the water. Speaking a word of power, "Aerosi," he creates a thick ice flow in the shallow water. "We can use this as a raft," he says.
The ice raft is an ingenious solution, wide enough to be mostly stable, long enough to hold all of the Company. The Company boards and pushes along the ceiling and the walls of the corridor to slowly propel the melting raft forward. "Something's in the water," mutters Winthrop, pointing to a dark wake that flees ahead of the Company's light. Diego keeps an arrow knocked and an eye on the dark form, waiting for it to show itself.
All is well until the ice raft comes upon the first sharp corner. The rectangular raft is too big for the turn and wedges, jammed between the walls. Maximilian and Otto begin hewing at the edges of the ice, shaping the raft into a smaller platform with a tighter turning radius, when the shadow reveals itself.
A giant snail with flail-like tentacles rises up out of the water next to the raft and attacks. The wake from its surfacing is not enough to overturn the wedged raft, but Otto, always somewhat less well-balanced than the others, has a queasy moment. The giant snail is not very impressive, with Diego shooting an arrow straight through one of the flail-like tentacles, crippling it. The Company draws forth their weapons and prepares for butchery, but then Winthrop shoots it with a barrage of magical bolts.
The magical bolts reflect off of the snail's shell, back at Winthrop, and the shell starts scintillating and swirling in color. The swirling pattern is both eye-catching and mind-numbing. Unfortunately, the only people who do not succumb to the hypnotic swirling, scintillation are Oaklock and Winthrop. The rest of the Company stands there on the melting ice, staring slack-jawed at the shell. The snail continues flailing away, crushing Maximilian.
Winthrop and Oaklock's feeble attempts to injure the snail fail, but induce it to shift away from Maximilian and over to Dell. The snail appears to have an undying hatred of Dell. Perhaps Dell feasted on too many escargot as a child, because the snail flails Dell repeatedly. Winthrop summons a sphere of fire and settles it down on top of the snail, trying to burn through its glowing shell. The magical fire causes the shell to glow more brightly and suddenly the corridor is quiet except for the rhythmic thumping of the snail's flailing of Dell. The entire Company calmly stands and stares at the scintillating, swirling shell as the snail flails Dell into pulp. Dell dies.
The snail moves along to its next target, flailing away, but this moves it out from under the sphere of fire. Additionally, those members of the Company that initially fell prey to the enthralling lights begin to shake off the hypnotic trance the lights induced. They are, of course, shocked to find Dell's broken body by them. Diego and Otto attack the snail, doing it grievous harm, while Oaklock, perhaps foolishly, sends magical bolts into the snail. The bolts ricochet off the snail's shell, into Maximilian, but the snail begins to flee nonetheless, having been sorely injured by the warriors.
Diego is unable to give chase, as he stands drooling at the pretty lights coming from the shell again, but Otto leaps off into the water, happily discovering that it is only shoulder-deep. Ducking under the flaming sphere, Otto strikes out after the snail. Wearing the boots taken from the evil priest, Otto easily catches up with the fleeing snail, flips the the shell over, and strikes deep within with his sword, a giant-slaying bastard sword recovered from the glacial rift. The snail makes a high-pitched squeal as it dies, spitted by Otto.
The lights fade from sight, and the Company returns to their senses. The ice raft has melted further and little additional work is necessary to free it from the corner and continue onwards. With the clerics counter-weighting the ice, Diego hauls Otto back up onto the raft as it floats by him. Pfiffwin, still weak from his nausea, stirs. "I hear a roaring," he grits out in a thin voice.
Indeed, the Company begins to hear a loud roaring sound from the corridor ahead of them. Otto frowns and begins uncoiling his rope and attaching his grappling hook to it. "I don't like the sound of that," he says, peering out before them. The ice raft begins to pick up speed, as if a slight current in the water has intensified. The water-filled passage continues on a few hundred feet more, but several cross-passages begin to become visible. The nearer, to the left, is turbulent and appears to have water running into it from ahead. The further, appears more static, with water running in and out of it in equal amounts. "I think a waterfall is down the left corridor!" shouts Otto over the noise. "Hold on tight! Don't let Dell slide off!"
As the Company hunkers down, Otto swings the grappling hook over his head, letting out loops of coil. With a great heave, he throws the grappling hook into the wall of the far passage, the hook dragging along the irregular bricks until it finally catches. "Over here!" yells Diego, pointing at where he has jammed his bastard sword through the thinning ice sheet. Otto loops the rope around the hilt and pommel of the sword and hopes that it holds while he draws in the slack.
The ice raft careens into the near passage. Otto is correct, his fears well warranted. A gaping hole in the floor of this strata of catacombs is the exit for a vast stream of water, both from this corridor, a parallel corridor, and a sewage canal from some higher level. The sewage sails down from the ceiling, out a great shaft. Otto holds tight to the rope as the rest of the Company holds him, and themselves, to the icy surface. The ice creaks, the rope squeaks, and Otto groans as he takes the full weight of the raft and the Company on the rope.
Diego scuttles over to the rope and begins pulling it in, hand over hand, the two warriors pulling the ice raft up towards the far corridor. It is a long, arduous climb, mooring the raft into the corridor, and everyone fears the ice raft will disintegrate before they reach the corridor. Their fears are not met, and the raft, still several inches thick, is drawn up onto dry land.
The Company counts heads and makes sure that no one was lost to a watery grave. Reassured, they begin curing the wounds they took from fighting the snail. "Can you use the rod on Dell?" asks Otto.
Much to everyone's amazement, Hugh shakes his head. "Cedrus took the rod with him to the Knot." The Company stares at Dell's broken body. One of the strengths of their plan was the sudden appearance of three wizards at the rear of the invading army. With Dell lost, their plan is now in dire jeopardy. Hugh rummages around in Dell's backpack searching for his Waters of Life, but then recalls that they were used during the Company's defeat in the ruins of Nosnra's steading. Hugh sighs, deeply, and pulls out his flask from the Knot. "Dell better be vengeful after this," he mutters, as he pours the Waters of Life onto Dell's broken body.
Dell's injuries heal and his broken body mends itself. He takes a deep, wracking breath and begins to cough heavily. Even while in a blinding, coughing seizure he immediately checks that he has retained his possessions. "What happened?" he sputters.
"You were only mostly dead. Catch your breath, we've got to get going," says Otto, his glowing form lighting the gloom around them.
Such catacombs are a threat to the city. Strange things, as the Company well knows, live and breed beneath the citizens' feet, and the passages are used as byways for travelers that fear either the light or the law. The Keepers of the Peace are tasked with securing the citadel from incursion and have regularly hired sappers, mercenaries, and itinerant investigators to search through and map the many tunnels. Most disappear eventually, either eaten or merely lost, but many fragments of maps and diagrams survive. One of the most accurate maps of a single strata of the catacombs was done by Kress Sawyer several decades earlier. Sawyer, who disappeared only a few years after the map was made, plotted a wide range of tunnels, catacombs, sewage canals, and man-made links that led throughout the city and even into the countryside beyond. It is a copy of this map that Killain points to on the wall and hands to Otto.
The map shows actual sewers that need to be crossed, a plethora of tunnels, strange rough-hewn warrens, and odd circular objects. Killain points to one end of the map, claiming that the citadel sits there, and a guarded, barricaded entrance to the catacombs is present. Here, the Company will enter the tunnels. On the far side of the map, a long straight tunnel leads to a subbasement under a now-abandoned villa. Here, if the Company exits, they will find themselves a few hundred yards from the evil priests' encampment. Killain cares not what route the Company takes to get to the exit, so long as they are ready to attack at daybreak on Godsday. The sun will rise up out of the east, behind the city, causing the undead to falter and the humanoids to face into the brightest sun. If the Company is late, their targets, the leaders of the besieging army will have dispersed throughout the troops.
Winthrop peers over Otto's shoulder and points at the odd circular objects. "What are these?" he grunts, disliking the early hour. Killain doesn't know, but claims they lie under the Silent One's octahedral building. Winthrop and Dell exchange a knowing glance, as if perhaps this will be an area to avoid, for now. The Company has a few more desultory questions to ask, but eventually all that is left is to go. Killain wishes them luck and sends Ged and Othmar to lead the Company deeper under the citadel.
The Company descends and descends down stone and iron stairwells and ladders. The passages become smaller and crookeder, and Pfiffwin cringes at the quality of the stonework, muttering to himself in gnomish at each precariously wedged keystone. Finally, certainly under the level of the city streets, the Company enter into a dank, clammy, chill guardroom. A brazier in one corner holds glowing coals and sheds weak heat and light. Three pale guardsmen stagger to attention, the foul air, the cold, and the lack of light having wreaked havoc on their health. "Your best men get placed here, I see," grumbles Otto to Ged.
Ged asks for the sergeant of the guard and is told that he's no longer available. Much shouting and questioning reveals a story of the sergeant wandering out into the catacombs, claiming he heard music and voices summoning him there. The other guards simply locked the barricade behind him and let him go. Ged is speechless.
After the mages have finished their preparatory spells, Ged leads Otto and Diego down a series of small corridors, the cross-passages bricked over and mortared shut, until they face a large portcullis blocking off the end of the passageway. A vile stench percolates through the grating. "Here's your entry," says Ged with a rueful grimace.
Back in the guard post, the Company talk with the guardsmen there about the catacombs. The guardsmen tell of strange creatures with maligned bodies creeping, crawling, and screaming out of the gloom beyond. The stonework is bad and settling, and the noises and odors that come through the wall distressing to say the least. The guardsmen are not reassuring.
Winthrop and Maximilian, who have been conversing in the back of the room, seem to come to some agreement. Since no one else wished to have it, Winthrop has stored the great iron mace found in Grugnir's trophy room in his chest. It had been discovered to be mildly enchanted, and Maximilian will be more powerful in battle with such a weapon. Winthrop clears a space and, grasping his small copy of the the chest, summons it back from its other-planar storage. When he does so, a strange two-foot-long, winged, golden-furred elephant comes along with the chest. It emerges as if from a long tunnel, rapidly increasing in size until it is present among the Company.
Diego, Otto, and Ged return in time to see the luminous creature flutter up into the air. The effect it has on those viewing it is quite varied. Otto and Winthrop feel peaceful in its presence, while Dell feels a bit anxious. Most of the guardsmen drop to their knees in terror. The others view it with varying degrees of contentedness and discomfort.
The strange two-foot-long, winged, golden-furred elephant trumpets, and the walls shake, dust trickling down on them all. It is a loud sound, and the tremors it sets up in the walls make those not content in its presence even more discontented. Otto, oddly happy to see the strange creature, steps forward. "Oh golden-furred elephant," he beseeches, "you seem wise and powerful. We face dire evil and are sorely beset both here and in the space around us. Have you benison or a boon for us?"
A stream of golden fireworks shoot from its trunk, and Otto is coated in molten, golden goodness. He feels blessed and centered, as if good luck was with him. His body glows a warm golden color and little droplets of light slowly drip off him, like small droplets of honey. Otto sheds enough light to read by, at least within ten feet of him. With a final trumpeting bleat, the strange two-foot-long, winged, golden-furred elephant flies off, back into the long tunnel visible only to it, off into the distance until it finally disappears.
"That was just plain weird," says Dell.
After such an event, the guardsmen are happy to be rid of the Company. They haul open the portcullis and let them through, telling them to bang on the grate if they need entry again. The tunnels beyond are just that, tunnels. Made of uneven bricking and cobblestones, they seem to connect hollows and byways through the ruins of a strange underground city. With the weight of the city pressing down on them, some of the walls are less than stable. Collapsed roofs and walls block the Company's way, and force the Company to backtrack from time to time. The map, while basically correct, no longer accurately represents the state of the catacombs.
With Pfiffwin watching for shifting stone and leading the Company past the worst of the unstable stonework, the Company makes their way along the passages to a sewage canal that bisects the map. Little rain has fallen over Longspear recently, but the sewage canal flows briskly, deep with foul waste. The sewer seems impassible. The stench is indescribable, and Pfiffwin, low to the ground and certainly with the largest nose, is overcome by the odor. While Pfiffwin convulsively vomits, Otto goes looking for another way to bridge the river of waste.
The passageway to the right looks as if it might bypass this particular malodorous intersection, but when Otto runs down it, he sees it is sealed with a glistening portcullis. The portcullis seems odd to Otto, the surface of the portcullis oddly dull where the golden light he sheds hits it, and he backs away from it. The portcullis begins to bend and lunge at him, closing like a bizarre maw and the tunnel narrows. This is a bit much for the intrepid Otto, and he runs away, back to the others.
"There's a thing back that way," pants Otto.
"I think we can get across if we can find some boards and make bridge out of them," says Winthrop.
"A portcullis-thing, blocking the passage," says Otto, trying to get the attention of the others.
"Do you see wood?" asks Dell. "Tell you what, we go outside, cut down a tree, trim it, and bring it in here to make a bridge. Oh, wait! There's an army outside! That's why we're..."
"It's got teeth!" interrupts Otto.
"Of course it's got teeth, it's a portcullis," retorts Dell, as a portcullis-thing appears out of strange tendrils snaking along the walls, floor, and ceiling. It strikes at the Company with strange sword-like appendages, while humanoid shapes spring into sight twenty feet away. As the Company attacks, the humanoid shapes appear to be flee, but the sword-like appendages continue their onslaught. Adrienne is sorely battered before the portcullis-thing is rendered into blobby paste. The humanoid shapes collapse simultaneously with the appendages and the tendrils, revealing all the parts to be connected by thin, sinewy strands.
"That was just plain weird too," says Dell.
Dell uncoils his magical rope and extends it over the sewage torrent. "No one slip, ok?" he says, as he goes hand over hand across the rope. Otto straps the limp and convulsing Pfiffwin to his back and follows. Soon the whole Company is on the other side of the sewage canal. Once Dell recovers his rope, they are ready to move on.
Only a few hundred feet further, past a series of corners and bends the catacomb begins to sink into water. The water appears to be quite deep eventually, rising up to perhaps two-thirds of the fifteen-foot high passage. Otto checks on several of the alternate passages that might lead around the flooding but discovers they are equally flooded. The Company is quite vexed, as they must pass through this area if they are to use this route to achieve their goal.
"I hate water," mutters Dell. "Stand back." Dell pulls forth a wand engraved with snowflakes and points it at the water. Speaking a word of power, "Aerosi," he creates a thick ice flow in the shallow water. "We can use this as a raft," he says.
The ice raft is an ingenious solution, wide enough to be mostly stable, long enough to hold all of the Company. The Company boards and pushes along the ceiling and the walls of the corridor to slowly propel the melting raft forward. "Something's in the water," mutters Winthrop, pointing to a dark wake that flees ahead of the Company's light. Diego keeps an arrow knocked and an eye on the dark form, waiting for it to show itself.
All is well until the ice raft comes upon the first sharp corner. The rectangular raft is too big for the turn and wedges, jammed between the walls. Maximilian and Otto begin hewing at the edges of the ice, shaping the raft into a smaller platform with a tighter turning radius, when the shadow reveals itself.
A giant snail with flail-like tentacles rises up out of the water next to the raft and attacks. The wake from its surfacing is not enough to overturn the wedged raft, but Otto, always somewhat less well-balanced than the others, has a queasy moment. The giant snail is not very impressive, with Diego shooting an arrow straight through one of the flail-like tentacles, crippling it. The Company draws forth their weapons and prepares for butchery, but then Winthrop shoots it with a barrage of magical bolts.
The magical bolts reflect off of the snail's shell, back at Winthrop, and the shell starts scintillating and swirling in color. The swirling pattern is both eye-catching and mind-numbing. Unfortunately, the only people who do not succumb to the hypnotic swirling, scintillation are Oaklock and Winthrop. The rest of the Company stands there on the melting ice, staring slack-jawed at the shell. The snail continues flailing away, crushing Maximilian.
Winthrop and Oaklock's feeble attempts to injure the snail fail, but induce it to shift away from Maximilian and over to Dell. The snail appears to have an undying hatred of Dell. Perhaps Dell feasted on too many escargot as a child, because the snail flails Dell repeatedly. Winthrop summons a sphere of fire and settles it down on top of the snail, trying to burn through its glowing shell. The magical fire causes the shell to glow more brightly and suddenly the corridor is quiet except for the rhythmic thumping of the snail's flailing of Dell. The entire Company calmly stands and stares at the scintillating, swirling shell as the snail flails Dell into pulp. Dell dies.
The snail moves along to its next target, flailing away, but this moves it out from under the sphere of fire. Additionally, those members of the Company that initially fell prey to the enthralling lights begin to shake off the hypnotic trance the lights induced. They are, of course, shocked to find Dell's broken body by them. Diego and Otto attack the snail, doing it grievous harm, while Oaklock, perhaps foolishly, sends magical bolts into the snail. The bolts ricochet off the snail's shell, into Maximilian, but the snail begins to flee nonetheless, having been sorely injured by the warriors.
Diego is unable to give chase, as he stands drooling at the pretty lights coming from the shell again, but Otto leaps off into the water, happily discovering that it is only shoulder-deep. Ducking under the flaming sphere, Otto strikes out after the snail. Wearing the boots taken from the evil priest, Otto easily catches up with the fleeing snail, flips the the shell over, and strikes deep within with his sword, a giant-slaying bastard sword recovered from the glacial rift. The snail makes a high-pitched squeal as it dies, spitted by Otto.
The lights fade from sight, and the Company returns to their senses. The ice raft has melted further and little additional work is necessary to free it from the corner and continue onwards. With the clerics counter-weighting the ice, Diego hauls Otto back up onto the raft as it floats by him. Pfiffwin, still weak from his nausea, stirs. "I hear a roaring," he grits out in a thin voice.
Indeed, the Company begins to hear a loud roaring sound from the corridor ahead of them. Otto frowns and begins uncoiling his rope and attaching his grappling hook to it. "I don't like the sound of that," he says, peering out before them. The ice raft begins to pick up speed, as if a slight current in the water has intensified. The water-filled passage continues on a few hundred feet more, but several cross-passages begin to become visible. The nearer, to the left, is turbulent and appears to have water running into it from ahead. The further, appears more static, with water running in and out of it in equal amounts. "I think a waterfall is down the left corridor!" shouts Otto over the noise. "Hold on tight! Don't let Dell slide off!"
As the Company hunkers down, Otto swings the grappling hook over his head, letting out loops of coil. With a great heave, he throws the grappling hook into the wall of the far passage, the hook dragging along the irregular bricks until it finally catches. "Over here!" yells Diego, pointing at where he has jammed his bastard sword through the thinning ice sheet. Otto loops the rope around the hilt and pommel of the sword and hopes that it holds while he draws in the slack.
The ice raft careens into the near passage. Otto is correct, his fears well warranted. A gaping hole in the floor of this strata of catacombs is the exit for a vast stream of water, both from this corridor, a parallel corridor, and a sewage canal from some higher level. The sewage sails down from the ceiling, out a great shaft. Otto holds tight to the rope as the rest of the Company holds him, and themselves, to the icy surface. The ice creaks, the rope squeaks, and Otto groans as he takes the full weight of the raft and the Company on the rope.
Diego scuttles over to the rope and begins pulling it in, hand over hand, the two warriors pulling the ice raft up towards the far corridor. It is a long, arduous climb, mooring the raft into the corridor, and everyone fears the ice raft will disintegrate before they reach the corridor. Their fears are not met, and the raft, still several inches thick, is drawn up onto dry land.
The Company counts heads and makes sure that no one was lost to a watery grave. Reassured, they begin curing the wounds they took from fighting the snail. "Can you use the rod on Dell?" asks Otto.
Much to everyone's amazement, Hugh shakes his head. "Cedrus took the rod with him to the Knot." The Company stares at Dell's broken body. One of the strengths of their plan was the sudden appearance of three wizards at the rear of the invading army. With Dell lost, their plan is now in dire jeopardy. Hugh rummages around in Dell's backpack searching for his Waters of Life, but then recalls that they were used during the Company's defeat in the ruins of Nosnra's steading. Hugh sighs, deeply, and pulls out his flask from the Knot. "Dell better be vengeful after this," he mutters, as he pours the Waters of Life onto Dell's broken body.
Dell's injuries heal and his broken body mends itself. He takes a deep, wracking breath and begins to cough heavily. Even while in a blinding, coughing seizure he immediately checks that he has retained his possessions. "What happened?" he sputters.
"You were only mostly dead. Catch your breath, we've got to get going," says Otto, his glowing form lighting the gloom around them.
