Post by Dead Greyhawk on Apr 8, 2008 6:52:29 GMT -5
The passageway leads onwards into the dark. It seems to slope very slightly downwards and grow significantly warmer, almost unpleasantly so. The air grows humid, and then the corridor turns to the left. Around the corner, perhaps thirty feet away, it ends in a door. Otto leads the others forward toward the door when, with a popping sound, Raven and Diego, the second rank of the Company's marching order, disappear from sight. "Hold up!" shouts Winthrop. "No one move!"
Al gravely turns around and begins examining the floor, searching for a sliding block or hidden pit, but finds none. Adrienne closes her eyes and invokes her inner sight, calling on Lydia to show any enchantments in the area. Lydia's gaze reveals all, and the sightless priestess sees the stones behind Al and Otto and before Winthrop and Hugh glowing with magical power. "An enchantment of some power and duration fills those five feet, from wall to wall," she relates. "It can be spanned if one is strong of leg." She drops several copper coins in a crude line a foot away from the enchanted area. "Leap from here, but leap well," she says. With a short run, she springs over the affected area, landing safely in Otto's outstretched grasp. Antonus and Winthrop, stout and stouter, as well as the diminutive Pfiffwin have some difficulty leaping over the magicked stone, but with assistance on both ends are able to apparently clear the gap.
The Company now crowds into the twenty feet before the door, jammed in so tightly that they can barely breath without jostling each other. Otto smashes the door, which is swollen with moisture and radiates a certain unpleasant heat. The door sticks and then flies open, sending Otto stumbling forward. Steam rises up in his face as he topples toward a lake of boiling water! Hugh lashes out with his arm and grabs the teetering warrior, arresting his stumbling fall and saving him from an unpleasant boiling. "Now we know where that water came from," he comments.
A broad subterranean lake of boiling water roils before them, great bubbles of sulfurous air breaching the lake's surface. In the middle of the lake is a small island, and on the island stand two men. The men radiate a certain brightness. Diego and Raven wave at the others, glad to see them arrive. "There's another door on the opposite side of the cavern," hollers Raven, pointing his arm behind him and away from the Company. "A ledge or cave over there too," he shouts, pointing to his right, the Company's left. "Send Winthrop over as a flying creature and we'll check it out!"
Winthrop grumbles about being used as a beast of burden, but he's set the precedent already. A number of mystical passes later, Winthrop wings out to the island in the form of a hippogryph. Indeed, from the island another door opposite the one the Company stares through can be seen, and a small beach is hidden from sight from the doorway. The island itself is covered with discarded, rusted weaponry and armor. Winthrop squawks at Raven, and the two of them fly over to the beach.
The beach leads back into a large cavern covered in bones and and debris. Three large nest-like depressions are visible in the cavern, and the bones seem unfortunately humanoid. Winthrop, back in his own shape, helps Raven poke and prod in the cavern, keeping a close eye on him and one hand on his wand of steam. After a moment's thought, Winthrop wards himself against arrows. Raven looks questioningly over at the spell-casting wizard. "Looking for magic auras," says Winthrop. "None here." Indeed, it appears that any valuable items that might have been here are now gone, as only bones and rocks populate the beach and cavern.
A combination of flying and hopping gets the Company back passed the strange teleporter in the corridor and back towards the slime-filled room. They carefully traverse the room, avoiding any contact with the slime, and again Dell pauses, looking at the slime in the corner of the room. Adrienne pulls him along, back through the teleporting corners of the room. As the Company heads back towards the octagonal room, Dell whispers to Adrienne. "Something is wrong with that slime. It should have moved towards us while we were in the room," he hisses. "I think what the others thought were teleporters are actually illusions of corners in a large contiguous room, and the slime is another illusion, hiding another room."
"Do you think that enough to be dissolved by slime?" asks Adrienne. Dell shakes his head in disagreement. "We'll talk with the gnome about it later," she counsels.
The Company stares at the doors in the octagonal room again. Two of the doors have been opened and explored by the Company: the door from the temple and the wells; the door to the minotaurs and the boiling lake. Three of the doors have been opened and only partially explored: the door that led back from Hanuman's lair, from which the giant joined the battle; the door from which the nagas erupted; and the door that led to the three teleporting doors. Three of the doors are still closed. "Let's finish the open doors first," suggests Perrin, pointing at the door the nagas came from. The Company agrees, and they head in that direction.
The passage seems like the others, carved and supported with dressed stone. It, like the passage past the minotaurs, seems to sink slightly downwards. A reddish glow becomes visible ahead, and its source becomes readily apparent. A crevasse splits the passage, and molten lava in the bottom of the crevasse sends its eerie light up above. The crevasse is deep, perhaps five-hundred feet or more, and quite wide, at least twenty feet across. On the far side of the crevasse, the passage continues on and then turns to the right.
"I've got this one," says Winthrop, transforming into a gargoyle and taking to the air. On great stone wings he flaps forward over the crevasse and around the corner. After a few moments, he flaps back to the Company. "It ends in a door that blocks the corridor," he grates, his stony voice harsh to the ears. "The door is wet and hot. I think it is the other door to the boiling lake." The Company sees little gain in continuing on past the crevasse and returns to the octagonal room.
The Company turns their attention to where the giant came from, the door which also held the escape passage from Hanuman's lair. The Company hikes down the familiar passage, noting where they had climbed up through the circular hatch that now blends seamlessly with the floor. Winthrop reaches down and grasps the hatch, testing that he can still open it. Indeed, it rotates under his touch, unscrewing and opening under his will.
Closing the hatch, the Company continues down the corridor past it. After perhaps forty feet, the flooring beneath Hugh, Winthrop, Antonus, and Perrin's feet suddenly lurches upwards! A large stone block, ten feet square, rises upwards towards the ceiling. Hugh and Winthrop throw themselves forward after the warriors and archers who have already passed the block, while Perrin and Antonus scurry backwards to the rest of the Company. They tumble to the ground and stare at the dust showering them from the stone block that has split the Company in two.
Raven, Al, Diego, Otto, Winthrop, and Hugh stare at the other side of the block and then look down the corridor. "Come on," says Raven. "We're Team A. We'll go explore while they try to get the block down."
"You aren't going to shoot me in the head again, right?" asks Al. Raven grimaces and ignores the comment, much to Al's displeasure. The passageway continues onwards for a bit and then turns to the left, descending down sweeping, broad steps. Alabaster pillars hold up the thirty-foot ceiling and a great white throne sits on a raised dais. The impression is of a great underground forum or agora. "That giant was a couple of gemstones short a necklace," mutters Al, taking in the sight. "Most of this stonework is new," he says, running his hands over the pillars. "This was put up well after these tunnels were hewed."
"It's a nice addition to Castle Diego!" says Diego. "I shall make it a place for parties, festivals, and formal balls!" Diego sweeps his arms about and does a short dance with his horsebow as a partner.
"Right after you finish dealing with the evil temple in the basement," mocks Raven. "Come on, let's check the throne." The six of them carefully move forward, Al watching for more mobile stonework. They carefully search the room and the throne for anything of interest. Behind the throne, Al finds a number of skillfully crafted stone mechanisms. One is a large lever. The other is a flat stone that appears as a paving stone but actually hides a compartment. He and Otto struggle to lift it from the floor and find beneath it a large bearskin sack.
"Shall we open it?" asks Raven. Hugh calls upon Trithereon to provide warning of inimical mechanisms embedded in the sack and finds it safe to open. Raven opens the sack and paws among the objects within. The sack contains mainly clothing and cosmetics, but a large note, folded but with a broken seal, seems to be hidden within. The seal appears similar to that on the frost giant coins, but not exactly the same. Raven and Otto squint at it, trying to make out the difference, until they realize that the axe on the seal has only one blade, while that on the coins had two.
Raven unfolds the paper carefully and reads it aloud, using his helm. "Tindamir," he reads, "The defeat of cousin Grugnir has been a boon and a loss to our people. His mammoth-sized ego is gone, and his foolhardy notions of tactics cease to slay our best warriors. But with him have gone the ice of the warrior caste. We must buy time to augment our strength. I go to rally the clans at the ruin, where I plan to excavate a new stronghold. You, brother, must reach out to our other giant kin – even those of only half-giantish blood." Raven looks around at the others to see if they make more sense of this note than he. Seeing the same vacant look on the faces of the others, he continues to read. "The giantess Olganni argues against us, but many will follow the lead of our elder brethren, who she has not yet convinced. Perhaps you can use their inaction to your advantage. I provide you with these body servants and the coins they bring. Use them well and return with strong allies ready to do my bidding," closes Raven. "Thyrm’s icy hand hold you. Gungir, Jarl of the Ice Lands."
Hugh, who has been looking at the large lever, announces that it is safe to move, and Al, seeing no reason not to, hauls on it. The lever moves surprisingly smoothly, and a rumbling sound echoes from beneath their feet. Gathering the note up, the six of them head back down the corridor towards the rest of the Company. As they surmised, the rumbling was the block sliding back downwards, and the Company is once again made whole. Raven reads the note to the rest of them, but no sudden insights are received, or at least voiced.
Returning to the octagonal room, the Company faces the last of the previously opened doors. The door, they know, leads down to a circling corridor and a room with three doors. One of these doors sent those that touched it into the den of Hanuman by teleportation. "I'd rather try a different door," says Antonus. "We know we're going to get split up by those doors. We may as well do that last." The others agree, and the Company chooses one of the doors that are still unopened.
The passageway beyond the door continues forward and then splits, turning right and left. Each passage extends and then turns a corner in the same direction, leftward down the right corridor and rightward down the left corridor. Seeing no real difference, the Company turns to the left. Reaching the door, Otto smashes it open and enters the room. With a sudden hissing, the floor drops out from underneath them. This time, Dell is prepared. Uttering a curt syllable, he makes those falling be almost weightless, as light as a feather. They float softly down the pit in and among the spikes that line its bottom, ichor and gore smearing their surface. A number of bloated, blackened bodies fill the bottom of the pit, apparent captives who met their doom here. With effort, Otto tosses a rope up, and the Company is able to haul their armored warriors up out of the pit. A more careful approach to the other door leads to the same results: a room with a hidden pit in it.
Al gravely turns around and begins examining the floor, searching for a sliding block or hidden pit, but finds none. Adrienne closes her eyes and invokes her inner sight, calling on Lydia to show any enchantments in the area. Lydia's gaze reveals all, and the sightless priestess sees the stones behind Al and Otto and before Winthrop and Hugh glowing with magical power. "An enchantment of some power and duration fills those five feet, from wall to wall," she relates. "It can be spanned if one is strong of leg." She drops several copper coins in a crude line a foot away from the enchanted area. "Leap from here, but leap well," she says. With a short run, she springs over the affected area, landing safely in Otto's outstretched grasp. Antonus and Winthrop, stout and stouter, as well as the diminutive Pfiffwin have some difficulty leaping over the magicked stone, but with assistance on both ends are able to apparently clear the gap.
The Company now crowds into the twenty feet before the door, jammed in so tightly that they can barely breath without jostling each other. Otto smashes the door, which is swollen with moisture and radiates a certain unpleasant heat. The door sticks and then flies open, sending Otto stumbling forward. Steam rises up in his face as he topples toward a lake of boiling water! Hugh lashes out with his arm and grabs the teetering warrior, arresting his stumbling fall and saving him from an unpleasant boiling. "Now we know where that water came from," he comments.
A broad subterranean lake of boiling water roils before them, great bubbles of sulfurous air breaching the lake's surface. In the middle of the lake is a small island, and on the island stand two men. The men radiate a certain brightness. Diego and Raven wave at the others, glad to see them arrive. "There's another door on the opposite side of the cavern," hollers Raven, pointing his arm behind him and away from the Company. "A ledge or cave over there too," he shouts, pointing to his right, the Company's left. "Send Winthrop over as a flying creature and we'll check it out!"
Winthrop grumbles about being used as a beast of burden, but he's set the precedent already. A number of mystical passes later, Winthrop wings out to the island in the form of a hippogryph. Indeed, from the island another door opposite the one the Company stares through can be seen, and a small beach is hidden from sight from the doorway. The island itself is covered with discarded, rusted weaponry and armor. Winthrop squawks at Raven, and the two of them fly over to the beach.
The beach leads back into a large cavern covered in bones and and debris. Three large nest-like depressions are visible in the cavern, and the bones seem unfortunately humanoid. Winthrop, back in his own shape, helps Raven poke and prod in the cavern, keeping a close eye on him and one hand on his wand of steam. After a moment's thought, Winthrop wards himself against arrows. Raven looks questioningly over at the spell-casting wizard. "Looking for magic auras," says Winthrop. "None here." Indeed, it appears that any valuable items that might have been here are now gone, as only bones and rocks populate the beach and cavern.
A combination of flying and hopping gets the Company back passed the strange teleporter in the corridor and back towards the slime-filled room. They carefully traverse the room, avoiding any contact with the slime, and again Dell pauses, looking at the slime in the corner of the room. Adrienne pulls him along, back through the teleporting corners of the room. As the Company heads back towards the octagonal room, Dell whispers to Adrienne. "Something is wrong with that slime. It should have moved towards us while we were in the room," he hisses. "I think what the others thought were teleporters are actually illusions of corners in a large contiguous room, and the slime is another illusion, hiding another room."
"Do you think that enough to be dissolved by slime?" asks Adrienne. Dell shakes his head in disagreement. "We'll talk with the gnome about it later," she counsels.
The Company stares at the doors in the octagonal room again. Two of the doors have been opened and explored by the Company: the door from the temple and the wells; the door to the minotaurs and the boiling lake. Three of the doors have been opened and only partially explored: the door that led back from Hanuman's lair, from which the giant joined the battle; the door from which the nagas erupted; and the door that led to the three teleporting doors. Three of the doors are still closed. "Let's finish the open doors first," suggests Perrin, pointing at the door the nagas came from. The Company agrees, and they head in that direction.
The passage seems like the others, carved and supported with dressed stone. It, like the passage past the minotaurs, seems to sink slightly downwards. A reddish glow becomes visible ahead, and its source becomes readily apparent. A crevasse splits the passage, and molten lava in the bottom of the crevasse sends its eerie light up above. The crevasse is deep, perhaps five-hundred feet or more, and quite wide, at least twenty feet across. On the far side of the crevasse, the passage continues on and then turns to the right.
"I've got this one," says Winthrop, transforming into a gargoyle and taking to the air. On great stone wings he flaps forward over the crevasse and around the corner. After a few moments, he flaps back to the Company. "It ends in a door that blocks the corridor," he grates, his stony voice harsh to the ears. "The door is wet and hot. I think it is the other door to the boiling lake." The Company sees little gain in continuing on past the crevasse and returns to the octagonal room.
The Company turns their attention to where the giant came from, the door which also held the escape passage from Hanuman's lair. The Company hikes down the familiar passage, noting where they had climbed up through the circular hatch that now blends seamlessly with the floor. Winthrop reaches down and grasps the hatch, testing that he can still open it. Indeed, it rotates under his touch, unscrewing and opening under his will.
Closing the hatch, the Company continues down the corridor past it. After perhaps forty feet, the flooring beneath Hugh, Winthrop, Antonus, and Perrin's feet suddenly lurches upwards! A large stone block, ten feet square, rises upwards towards the ceiling. Hugh and Winthrop throw themselves forward after the warriors and archers who have already passed the block, while Perrin and Antonus scurry backwards to the rest of the Company. They tumble to the ground and stare at the dust showering them from the stone block that has split the Company in two.
Raven, Al, Diego, Otto, Winthrop, and Hugh stare at the other side of the block and then look down the corridor. "Come on," says Raven. "We're Team A. We'll go explore while they try to get the block down."
"You aren't going to shoot me in the head again, right?" asks Al. Raven grimaces and ignores the comment, much to Al's displeasure. The passageway continues onwards for a bit and then turns to the left, descending down sweeping, broad steps. Alabaster pillars hold up the thirty-foot ceiling and a great white throne sits on a raised dais. The impression is of a great underground forum or agora. "That giant was a couple of gemstones short a necklace," mutters Al, taking in the sight. "Most of this stonework is new," he says, running his hands over the pillars. "This was put up well after these tunnels were hewed."
"It's a nice addition to Castle Diego!" says Diego. "I shall make it a place for parties, festivals, and formal balls!" Diego sweeps his arms about and does a short dance with his horsebow as a partner.
"Right after you finish dealing with the evil temple in the basement," mocks Raven. "Come on, let's check the throne." The six of them carefully move forward, Al watching for more mobile stonework. They carefully search the room and the throne for anything of interest. Behind the throne, Al finds a number of skillfully crafted stone mechanisms. One is a large lever. The other is a flat stone that appears as a paving stone but actually hides a compartment. He and Otto struggle to lift it from the floor and find beneath it a large bearskin sack.
"Shall we open it?" asks Raven. Hugh calls upon Trithereon to provide warning of inimical mechanisms embedded in the sack and finds it safe to open. Raven opens the sack and paws among the objects within. The sack contains mainly clothing and cosmetics, but a large note, folded but with a broken seal, seems to be hidden within. The seal appears similar to that on the frost giant coins, but not exactly the same. Raven and Otto squint at it, trying to make out the difference, until they realize that the axe on the seal has only one blade, while that on the coins had two.
Raven unfolds the paper carefully and reads it aloud, using his helm. "Tindamir," he reads, "The defeat of cousin Grugnir has been a boon and a loss to our people. His mammoth-sized ego is gone, and his foolhardy notions of tactics cease to slay our best warriors. But with him have gone the ice of the warrior caste. We must buy time to augment our strength. I go to rally the clans at the ruin, where I plan to excavate a new stronghold. You, brother, must reach out to our other giant kin – even those of only half-giantish blood." Raven looks around at the others to see if they make more sense of this note than he. Seeing the same vacant look on the faces of the others, he continues to read. "The giantess Olganni argues against us, but many will follow the lead of our elder brethren, who she has not yet convinced. Perhaps you can use their inaction to your advantage. I provide you with these body servants and the coins they bring. Use them well and return with strong allies ready to do my bidding," closes Raven. "Thyrm’s icy hand hold you. Gungir, Jarl of the Ice Lands."
Hugh, who has been looking at the large lever, announces that it is safe to move, and Al, seeing no reason not to, hauls on it. The lever moves surprisingly smoothly, and a rumbling sound echoes from beneath their feet. Gathering the note up, the six of them head back down the corridor towards the rest of the Company. As they surmised, the rumbling was the block sliding back downwards, and the Company is once again made whole. Raven reads the note to the rest of them, but no sudden insights are received, or at least voiced.
Returning to the octagonal room, the Company faces the last of the previously opened doors. The door, they know, leads down to a circling corridor and a room with three doors. One of these doors sent those that touched it into the den of Hanuman by teleportation. "I'd rather try a different door," says Antonus. "We know we're going to get split up by those doors. We may as well do that last." The others agree, and the Company chooses one of the doors that are still unopened.
The passageway beyond the door continues forward and then splits, turning right and left. Each passage extends and then turns a corner in the same direction, leftward down the right corridor and rightward down the left corridor. Seeing no real difference, the Company turns to the left. Reaching the door, Otto smashes it open and enters the room. With a sudden hissing, the floor drops out from underneath them. This time, Dell is prepared. Uttering a curt syllable, he makes those falling be almost weightless, as light as a feather. They float softly down the pit in and among the spikes that line its bottom, ichor and gore smearing their surface. A number of bloated, blackened bodies fill the bottom of the pit, apparent captives who met their doom here. With effort, Otto tosses a rope up, and the Company is able to haul their armored warriors up out of the pit. A more careful approach to the other door leads to the same results: a room with a hidden pit in it.