Post by Dead Greyhawk on Dec 3, 2007 8:18:02 GMT -5
The Company settles down without light, planning to observe the rhythm of the castle for a day to help plan their assault. Jasper, who has the morning watch, hears from the woods near him, a deep voice reach out to him. "You wouldn't happen to have any honey, would you?" the voice says in Bearish.
"Just nuts," replies Jasper in the same tongue. He strains to see the form of the bear in the shadows, but the darkness cloaks its form.
"That's too bad," says the voice. "I could use some honey or some jam, at least." Jasper and the voice discuss the high points of jam and honey, especially the kind that is made by bees near fields of clover. The voice introduces itself as Bruinlein and says that he and his three bear brothers live in the area. Bruinlein is very interested in what the Company is doing, camping here in the Oytwood, and Jasper explains how they just helped save the Great Tree and how they are going to now free the castle, once they figure out how to assault it.
A long pause ensues, and Bruinlein asks Jasper if he would be willing to come with him and his brothers. Jasper is torn between his new bearish friends and his duty to the Company. "Just let me wake somebody up," says Jasper. Bruinlein assents, and Jasper wakes Winthrop and Adrienne. "I gotta go," he says to his half-awake compatriots. "Be back soon. Visiting with some friends."
Adrienne and Winthrop, once they realize what Jasper has said to them, try to catch him, but he's already gone. Instead, they can only wake the rest of the Company. Raven is exceptionally distressed when he hears from Adrienne and Winthrop that Jasper has left to visit with some friends. "You know the man is missing some cards in his deck. He's probably got fewer cards than Eats Salmon does!" rants Raven. "You don't just let someone like that go off by himself!"
As Raven prepares his plan for assaulting the castle and recovering Jasper, who he can only imagine has been duped and captured by some creature, Jasper returns. The sun is not even up yet, and Jasper claims to know where the hidden tunnel is. "My friends showed me. They are very nice," says Jasper. "They come to the edge of the river and fish, and that is where they found the tunnel." Otto, in the morning light, searches around the camp and finds eight sets of tracks. Four are human, and four are of large bears. What he finds most odd is that the human tracks become bear prints almost in mid-stride.
The Company sets their plan in action. Dell, Adrienne, and Pfiffwin will stay behind, hidden in the forest edge, to act as a reserve. While the Company never expects a defeat, they can at least plan for it. Antonus plants the Oyt tree branch in the ground, telling Dell and the others not to leave it. Dell gathers the others close and throws an enchantment over them all, rendering them invisible. The Company grabs hold of a single, long rope, and they carefully sneak around the castle, following the path found by Jasper.
Jasper goes very slowly and eventually leads the Company to the edge of the Javan River, hidden from sight by the valley the river has carved through the land. Indeed, a series of caves are etched out of the riverbank at the edge of the Javan River, about a mile away from the castle. "Bruinlein said this one 'smelled of humans'," whispers Jasper.
Otto peers down into the river and wades slightly into it, the water forming around his invisible form. Under the water's edge, different colored soil than the rest of the river is accumulated in a wide swath. It seems the excavated materials spoke of by the dead bugbears was dumped here.
The Company carefully enters the cave, and Hugh and Otto search the floor for signs of passage. The nearby caves have the occasional footprint and remains of a long-dead fire, but this one has seen more recent, sustained passage. Tracks and trails of dirt lead out through the cave, having been dragged from further within.
The Company hikes down a long tunnel in the back of the cave that leads back into the hillside. After several hundred feet, a natural cavern with a single exit opens up before them. The cavern holds a dinghy, perhaps big enough for 8 people, stacked upon blocks. Antonus looks into the dinghy and finds four oars locked into the bottom of the dinghy. Antonus chuckles to himself and begins pulling them out of the dinghy. "Help me bury them," he says, struggling to carry the four oars all at once. Raven helps Antonus spread the oars throughout the room, digging shallow holes for them and kicking the dirt about.
"We should call this the Raven maneuver," quips Winthrop. "Burying their oars in the ground so that their beached boat can't be launched."
While the others play in the mud, Perrin and Al look at the mouths of the tunnels. It appears as if both tunnels once had portcullises, but they have been removed. Even the winching mechanism is gone, though holes in the ground show where the wooden stocks for the mechanism once were. No one comes up with a rationale for the disappearance of the portcullises and winches.
The Company continues on down the only unexplored passage. The passageway suddenly drops out under Otto and Jasper, dumping them into a large, spiked pit. They twist and turn as they fall and are able avoid the spikes, though not the drop. Many dead, bloated bodies, mostly human and definitely all humanoid, are in the bottom of the pit. Given their lack of armor and arms and the state of their ragged clothes, it appears likely that they are escaped slaves. The last one is about a month dead, and quite decomposed.
Hugh enchants his eyes with Trithereon's gaze and searches for another hidden trap. He finds none, and, after much searching, the Company locates a pressure plate in the floor of the passage. They reset it but then jam it in a half-depressed position. The sliding lid of the pit partially closes, providing a narrow passage along the wall. Otto tosses up one end of his rope, and the others pull him and Jasper up out of the pit.
The Company presses on. The passageway forks and forks again, each time the Company trusts in Otto's tracking and takes the passages most heavily used and showing signs of fresh dirt. The passage wends around and around until it ends in a long chamber with large mushrooms within it. Like in the Great Tree, a single clear path wends down the middle of the mushrooms. The mushrooms move slightly as the Company watches, and they look like those encountered in the sewers of Longspear: screaming mushrooms. Al looks for the strange purple growths that withered his leg, but doesn't spot any.
The Company is uncertain what to do. Should they search for another route? Should they attack the mushrooms from a distance? After protracted discussion, Hugh enchants a glowing stone with a prayer of blessed silence. Al and Otto are sent forward with this rock to slay the fungi. As the light shed by the rock falls upon the mushrooms, well before any prayers might affect them, the mushrooms begin to shriek. All of the mushrooms shriek, a horrible din erupting, of which Otto and Al are blissfully unaware. They continue forward until suddenly Otto hits Al with the back of his shield and points upward towards the ceiling of the cavern. Al drops the stone on the ground and he and Otto flee back to the tunnel, Otto leaving Al far behind.
"Spectres!" Otto gasps out as he reaches the others.
The Company sets up a fighting line as the spectres swoop in. The spectres are a variety of shapes and sizes, appearing to mostly be drained slaves and workers. Four bunch in against the fighting line of Otto, Al, and Raven. Two more fly over the top of the line and attack behind the line. These two have different a appearance, looking more like warriors then like slaves in their spectral garb. Even invisibility seems to not protect against their undead vision. Rhiannon is grasped by a spectre and slain, her life force drained from her.
Hugh stands tall against the spectres. "Back into the pits of the abyss, I command you," cries Hugh, sketching the rune of pursuit before him with his flaming broadsword. Two of the spectres flee the power of Trithereon, but the others fight on. Antonus and Perrin deploy protective magics, warding the warriors against evil, and hope not to be struck themselves. Perrin calls upon Phaulkon to bless those in battle, while Hugh prays that Trithereon's vengeance will strengthen their arms. The spectres are dangerous foes, and only the great experience of the warriors prevents their dire wounds from sucking their life's experience from their souls.
Hugh pivots to see the spectre turn from Rhiannon. Rhiannon's body is visibly fading, turning a pale color and losing tangibility. Knowing that spectres replicate themselves, Hugh grabs his holy water and pours it on the fading Rhiannon, preventing her rising as undead. Antonus, Diego, and Jasper join Hugh in facing the two older spectres, but it is Antonus who is struck. He staggers back, gray, as his memory, experience, and health is drained from his soul. Antonus feebly summons copies of himself to defray the attacks while Diego and Jasper close on the spectre.
Raven, Al, and Otto combine to attack those spectres at the line. The spectres are surprisingly tough combatants, and they withstand the Company's assault for several minutes. Raven has switched to Frostbrand, hewing side by side with Al and Otto. Otto whips his bastardsword around in increasingly complex patterns, warding off repeated blows from the spectre. The spectres trade blows with the Company, giving almost as good as they get, though all of the canny, experienced fighters know to take the spectres' blows on their armor, not their flesh. Hugh switches his attention again, as Perrin shouts for assistance. Perrin is not an experienced battle cleric, and his ability to heal wounds is much less than Hugh's.
Behind Jasper, Diego, and Antonus, Winthrop summons copies of himself and adds barrages of magical bolts to the fray. He concentrates his fire, destroying one of the spectres. The other grasps Jasper, drawing life and energy from him. Jasper falters under its touch but continues to fight.
The spectres fighting the Company are finally slain, but a great, hateful spectre, dressed in somewhat outmoded armor, floats in behind them. The source of this blight, it charges in towards the Company. Winthrop and Antonus do not hesitate a moment before launching wave after wave of magical bolts into the unlife, disrupting it and dispelling its unholy existence.
The Company does not move on, but instead awaits the return of the two spectres turned by Trithereon's sigil. Winthrop lobs another glowing stone into the mushrooms before the Company, hoping to see the spectres as they approach. It is a wise maneuver, as the two spectres fly into sight some distance from the Company. Winthrop launches a great ball of fire into the two spectres, incinerating them both.
The Company binds their wounds and dispenses holy prayers in healing themselves. Rhiannon's body is a withered, sunken thing, and Hugh doubts even Cedrus's dwarven rod could return her to life. With surprise lost, Diego, Perrin, and Raven use their bows to slay the screaming fungi from a distance. Once the fungi stop their hideous noise, the Company slowly moves forward. Coins, in a variety of types and styles, including some Geoffish and archaic Keoish coins, are found spread amidst the fungi, and a mold-covered metal flask protrudes from under the largest of the fungus.
Though Antonus wishes merely to leave, the Company pushes on. Another long passage ends in a roughly square cavern. A shaft at the far end of the room runs through both the ceiling and the floor. Marks on the floor indicate that a ladder often sits there. Jasper climbs up the shaft and finds that it has rungs embedded in the wall of the shaft, but it is covered by a wooden trapdoor. He climbs back down and tells the other before climbing into the shaft in the floor. The shaft that leads downward is slick, and Jasper slips while climbing into it. He plummets fifty or so feet into foul water that eats at him, as if corroding his soul. Jasper pulls himself up out of the water and then drags himself up the shaft into the chamber. Jasper's skin is bright red and sheets of it slough from him, but Hugh is able to heal the worst of the damage.
Jasper climbs up again to the shaft in the ceiling, dragging a rope up into the shaft, and attaches it to the rungs that are in the shaft. He climbs back down and nods at Otto. Otto climbs up the rope into the shaft, until he can place his hands and feet on the rung in the wall. The trapdoor is not an impediment to him as he smashes it open. Poking his head and shield up into the room, he looks around to see an oddly trapezoidal-shaped room with two wells, both with covers, and two buckets, one next to each well. A single door leads out of the room. "All clear," he quietly says down the shaft.
"Just nuts," replies Jasper in the same tongue. He strains to see the form of the bear in the shadows, but the darkness cloaks its form.
"That's too bad," says the voice. "I could use some honey or some jam, at least." Jasper and the voice discuss the high points of jam and honey, especially the kind that is made by bees near fields of clover. The voice introduces itself as Bruinlein and says that he and his three bear brothers live in the area. Bruinlein is very interested in what the Company is doing, camping here in the Oytwood, and Jasper explains how they just helped save the Great Tree and how they are going to now free the castle, once they figure out how to assault it.
A long pause ensues, and Bruinlein asks Jasper if he would be willing to come with him and his brothers. Jasper is torn between his new bearish friends and his duty to the Company. "Just let me wake somebody up," says Jasper. Bruinlein assents, and Jasper wakes Winthrop and Adrienne. "I gotta go," he says to his half-awake compatriots. "Be back soon. Visiting with some friends."
Adrienne and Winthrop, once they realize what Jasper has said to them, try to catch him, but he's already gone. Instead, they can only wake the rest of the Company. Raven is exceptionally distressed when he hears from Adrienne and Winthrop that Jasper has left to visit with some friends. "You know the man is missing some cards in his deck. He's probably got fewer cards than Eats Salmon does!" rants Raven. "You don't just let someone like that go off by himself!"
As Raven prepares his plan for assaulting the castle and recovering Jasper, who he can only imagine has been duped and captured by some creature, Jasper returns. The sun is not even up yet, and Jasper claims to know where the hidden tunnel is. "My friends showed me. They are very nice," says Jasper. "They come to the edge of the river and fish, and that is where they found the tunnel." Otto, in the morning light, searches around the camp and finds eight sets of tracks. Four are human, and four are of large bears. What he finds most odd is that the human tracks become bear prints almost in mid-stride.
The Company sets their plan in action. Dell, Adrienne, and Pfiffwin will stay behind, hidden in the forest edge, to act as a reserve. While the Company never expects a defeat, they can at least plan for it. Antonus plants the Oyt tree branch in the ground, telling Dell and the others not to leave it. Dell gathers the others close and throws an enchantment over them all, rendering them invisible. The Company grabs hold of a single, long rope, and they carefully sneak around the castle, following the path found by Jasper.
Jasper goes very slowly and eventually leads the Company to the edge of the Javan River, hidden from sight by the valley the river has carved through the land. Indeed, a series of caves are etched out of the riverbank at the edge of the Javan River, about a mile away from the castle. "Bruinlein said this one 'smelled of humans'," whispers Jasper.
Otto peers down into the river and wades slightly into it, the water forming around his invisible form. Under the water's edge, different colored soil than the rest of the river is accumulated in a wide swath. It seems the excavated materials spoke of by the dead bugbears was dumped here.
The Company carefully enters the cave, and Hugh and Otto search the floor for signs of passage. The nearby caves have the occasional footprint and remains of a long-dead fire, but this one has seen more recent, sustained passage. Tracks and trails of dirt lead out through the cave, having been dragged from further within.
The Company hikes down a long tunnel in the back of the cave that leads back into the hillside. After several hundred feet, a natural cavern with a single exit opens up before them. The cavern holds a dinghy, perhaps big enough for 8 people, stacked upon blocks. Antonus looks into the dinghy and finds four oars locked into the bottom of the dinghy. Antonus chuckles to himself and begins pulling them out of the dinghy. "Help me bury them," he says, struggling to carry the four oars all at once. Raven helps Antonus spread the oars throughout the room, digging shallow holes for them and kicking the dirt about.
"We should call this the Raven maneuver," quips Winthrop. "Burying their oars in the ground so that their beached boat can't be launched."
While the others play in the mud, Perrin and Al look at the mouths of the tunnels. It appears as if both tunnels once had portcullises, but they have been removed. Even the winching mechanism is gone, though holes in the ground show where the wooden stocks for the mechanism once were. No one comes up with a rationale for the disappearance of the portcullises and winches.
The Company continues on down the only unexplored passage. The passageway suddenly drops out under Otto and Jasper, dumping them into a large, spiked pit. They twist and turn as they fall and are able avoid the spikes, though not the drop. Many dead, bloated bodies, mostly human and definitely all humanoid, are in the bottom of the pit. Given their lack of armor and arms and the state of their ragged clothes, it appears likely that they are escaped slaves. The last one is about a month dead, and quite decomposed.
Hugh enchants his eyes with Trithereon's gaze and searches for another hidden trap. He finds none, and, after much searching, the Company locates a pressure plate in the floor of the passage. They reset it but then jam it in a half-depressed position. The sliding lid of the pit partially closes, providing a narrow passage along the wall. Otto tosses up one end of his rope, and the others pull him and Jasper up out of the pit.
The Company presses on. The passageway forks and forks again, each time the Company trusts in Otto's tracking and takes the passages most heavily used and showing signs of fresh dirt. The passage wends around and around until it ends in a long chamber with large mushrooms within it. Like in the Great Tree, a single clear path wends down the middle of the mushrooms. The mushrooms move slightly as the Company watches, and they look like those encountered in the sewers of Longspear: screaming mushrooms. Al looks for the strange purple growths that withered his leg, but doesn't spot any.
The Company is uncertain what to do. Should they search for another route? Should they attack the mushrooms from a distance? After protracted discussion, Hugh enchants a glowing stone with a prayer of blessed silence. Al and Otto are sent forward with this rock to slay the fungi. As the light shed by the rock falls upon the mushrooms, well before any prayers might affect them, the mushrooms begin to shriek. All of the mushrooms shriek, a horrible din erupting, of which Otto and Al are blissfully unaware. They continue forward until suddenly Otto hits Al with the back of his shield and points upward towards the ceiling of the cavern. Al drops the stone on the ground and he and Otto flee back to the tunnel, Otto leaving Al far behind.
"Spectres!" Otto gasps out as he reaches the others.
The Company sets up a fighting line as the spectres swoop in. The spectres are a variety of shapes and sizes, appearing to mostly be drained slaves and workers. Four bunch in against the fighting line of Otto, Al, and Raven. Two more fly over the top of the line and attack behind the line. These two have different a appearance, looking more like warriors then like slaves in their spectral garb. Even invisibility seems to not protect against their undead vision. Rhiannon is grasped by a spectre and slain, her life force drained from her.
Hugh stands tall against the spectres. "Back into the pits of the abyss, I command you," cries Hugh, sketching the rune of pursuit before him with his flaming broadsword. Two of the spectres flee the power of Trithereon, but the others fight on. Antonus and Perrin deploy protective magics, warding the warriors against evil, and hope not to be struck themselves. Perrin calls upon Phaulkon to bless those in battle, while Hugh prays that Trithereon's vengeance will strengthen their arms. The spectres are dangerous foes, and only the great experience of the warriors prevents their dire wounds from sucking their life's experience from their souls.
Hugh pivots to see the spectre turn from Rhiannon. Rhiannon's body is visibly fading, turning a pale color and losing tangibility. Knowing that spectres replicate themselves, Hugh grabs his holy water and pours it on the fading Rhiannon, preventing her rising as undead. Antonus, Diego, and Jasper join Hugh in facing the two older spectres, but it is Antonus who is struck. He staggers back, gray, as his memory, experience, and health is drained from his soul. Antonus feebly summons copies of himself to defray the attacks while Diego and Jasper close on the spectre.
Raven, Al, and Otto combine to attack those spectres at the line. The spectres are surprisingly tough combatants, and they withstand the Company's assault for several minutes. Raven has switched to Frostbrand, hewing side by side with Al and Otto. Otto whips his bastardsword around in increasingly complex patterns, warding off repeated blows from the spectre. The spectres trade blows with the Company, giving almost as good as they get, though all of the canny, experienced fighters know to take the spectres' blows on their armor, not their flesh. Hugh switches his attention again, as Perrin shouts for assistance. Perrin is not an experienced battle cleric, and his ability to heal wounds is much less than Hugh's.
Behind Jasper, Diego, and Antonus, Winthrop summons copies of himself and adds barrages of magical bolts to the fray. He concentrates his fire, destroying one of the spectres. The other grasps Jasper, drawing life and energy from him. Jasper falters under its touch but continues to fight.
The spectres fighting the Company are finally slain, but a great, hateful spectre, dressed in somewhat outmoded armor, floats in behind them. The source of this blight, it charges in towards the Company. Winthrop and Antonus do not hesitate a moment before launching wave after wave of magical bolts into the unlife, disrupting it and dispelling its unholy existence.
The Company does not move on, but instead awaits the return of the two spectres turned by Trithereon's sigil. Winthrop lobs another glowing stone into the mushrooms before the Company, hoping to see the spectres as they approach. It is a wise maneuver, as the two spectres fly into sight some distance from the Company. Winthrop launches a great ball of fire into the two spectres, incinerating them both.
The Company binds their wounds and dispenses holy prayers in healing themselves. Rhiannon's body is a withered, sunken thing, and Hugh doubts even Cedrus's dwarven rod could return her to life. With surprise lost, Diego, Perrin, and Raven use their bows to slay the screaming fungi from a distance. Once the fungi stop their hideous noise, the Company slowly moves forward. Coins, in a variety of types and styles, including some Geoffish and archaic Keoish coins, are found spread amidst the fungi, and a mold-covered metal flask protrudes from under the largest of the fungus.
Though Antonus wishes merely to leave, the Company pushes on. Another long passage ends in a roughly square cavern. A shaft at the far end of the room runs through both the ceiling and the floor. Marks on the floor indicate that a ladder often sits there. Jasper climbs up the shaft and finds that it has rungs embedded in the wall of the shaft, but it is covered by a wooden trapdoor. He climbs back down and tells the other before climbing into the shaft in the floor. The shaft that leads downward is slick, and Jasper slips while climbing into it. He plummets fifty or so feet into foul water that eats at him, as if corroding his soul. Jasper pulls himself up out of the water and then drags himself up the shaft into the chamber. Jasper's skin is bright red and sheets of it slough from him, but Hugh is able to heal the worst of the damage.
Jasper climbs up again to the shaft in the ceiling, dragging a rope up into the shaft, and attaches it to the rungs that are in the shaft. He climbs back down and nods at Otto. Otto climbs up the rope into the shaft, until he can place his hands and feet on the rung in the wall. The trapdoor is not an impediment to him as he smashes it open. Poking his head and shield up into the room, he looks around to see an oddly trapezoidal-shaped room with two wells, both with covers, and two buckets, one next to each well. A single door leads out of the room. "All clear," he quietly says down the shaft.
