Post by Dead Greyhawk on Apr 8, 2008 6:53:09 GMT -5
Frustrated, the Company returns back to the octagonal room. Two doors are left before them, adjacent doors. Antonus picks the left one, and Otto opens it. A passageway leads on behind it, turning to the right and ending in a door. Doors are no barrier to Otto, and he batters it down to reveal a long room with six pillars supporting the ceiling. The far end of the room contains a large door. A passage leads off immediately to the right, but to the left, at the far end of the room, gnawing on the pillar there, is a strange and fearsome beast.
Covered in stony, bony plates, the creature is three-fold symmetric with three sharp clawed arms and three strong, stubby legs. A huge maw gapes on the top of its head, consuming rock pulled from the pillar by the clawed arms. The stone flows like butter as it grabs at the pillar. The sudden appearance of the Company draws its attention, and its body spins in place, showing one eye after another in series. With a clacking sound, it raises its arms up and over its head, claws spinning dangerously in the air.
The Company has little truck with strange, fearsome beasts. Winthrop unloads a barrage of magical bolts into the creature's carapace while Raven and Diego shoot a flight of arrows at it. Al and Otto charge forth, swinging axe and sword at it. The creature is surprised by the ferocity of attack and wounded by the many blows and magic wielded against it. It emits a deep humming sound from its grinding, sharp-toothed maw and sinks into the stone floor, the stone flowing like water around and then over it. The Company stands amazed at the sight. "Tripus," says Alouicious, "gem and ore eaters. Never seen one, but they're in the lorebooks. Glad it ran, they're supposed to be hard to kill."
Seeing no other enemies, the Company investigates the passageway to the right, leaving the rest of the columned room to be searched later. The passageway winds about to a doorway that, when opened by the stalwart Otto, reveals a twenty by twenty foot room with a door on the far side. Camp gear and a small cooking stove sit in the room, and the faint marks of soot are visible on the ceiling. A small store of coal reveals that the stove and the campsite was recently in use. The camp gear are mainly traveling stools and small tables with plates and utensils on them. A cache of trail food, well preserved, is under one table while crates of greenery and dried and salted meat are next to them. "The clerics," says Hugh, intuiting the users of the site.
Hugh's intuition is further confirmed when the door is opened, exposing another square room with another door. The bedrolls and backpacks of the priests are present here, and provide the Company with much material to go through. The door leads out into the octagonal room and is the last of the unopened doors. While some of the Company rifle through the priests' equipment, Dell heads back into the columned room.
The Company goes through the door to find a short passageway that ends in an alcove. The passageway branches to the left before the alcove, but this passageway also ends shortly. The Company doubts these are unfinished passageways, but instead thinks they conceal hidden exits or entrances. Two of them are quickly found in the alcove; disk shaped hatches in the wall similar to those found at the end of the exit from Hanuman's den.
Winthrop opens the right-hand hatch while Perrin and the others continue to search the end of the passageway for hidden doors. Another doorway, this one normal in shape and size, is embedded at the end of the passageway. Otto gives it a firm kick and reveals a square room with a square stone altar in it.
He and Diego eye the brown material coating the square altar stone against the far wall. A glazed crystalline object, a hemisphere dome, sits on the altar, but the brown material is dangerously close to the altar. Diego recounts his experience of nearly freezing in the stairwell in Beoll-Dur. Dell claims to be prepared. He summons a minor elementalkin of air to serve him.
"Go pull the dome off," he tells the creature, and it scoots forward. The dome rattles slightly but does not move appreciably. "Slide it to one side," he directs. This time the dome doesn't move at all. Dell looks at the altar stone in frustration. His efforts draw the attention of the others who come to watch. The priests' belongings have revealed some Geoffish coin, but little else.
Antonus, Winthrop, and Dell debate the best use of the minor elementalkin in loud argumentative tones while the others keep watch. Al looks at the pillars and finds that fine veins of precious metals runs through the columns. Samantha, who has been mainly quiet and hidden in the back of the Company, shepherded along by Perrin, pipes up suddenly. "Something is wrong with the wall next to the altar stone," she says, pointing to a patch near the brown mold. "The wall stones line up too regularly, and the mold doesn't extend over the area." Once it is pointed out, the others see it as well, but Samantha's keen elven vision has seen what the others have missed.
After a brief huddled conversation, Otto agrees to smash down the hidden door in the wall there. The cold may be biting, but he should be through it quickly. Others following behind him will only have to briefly deal with the cold. Indeed, his plan works well, as he bashes through the door with only a modicum of frost forming on him. Of course, what barely slows Otto is more than enough to slay Samantha.
The four warriors and archers agree to scout down the passageway while the rest of the Company continues their investigations here. Dell sends his minor elementalkin at the crystalline dome, trying to get it open. Winthrop turns into a bane midge and walks into the tunnel he has revealed behind the circular hatch, Pfiffwin accompanying him. The rest of the Company settles down to wait, keeping an eye on the columned room.
With a clatter and a crash, a large stone block levers in across the door leading into the columned room, almost crushing Perrin who stands their watching. "Gaah!!" he cries, wondering what has happened. Have Winthrop and Pfiffwin set off a trap, or have the warriors blundered into something? The answer is made clear soon, when the warriors return, somewhat chapped from the cold, saying they have found a door that when pushed, made a clanking sound up over the ceiling of the passageway. A close inspection of the rotating block by Al discerns a heavy chain, each link as big as a fist, that is connected to the stone block.
"Well, that'll be hard to move," says Al. "It must have a counterweight and winch. I think we'll need to find them to move that. Another hidden door down the passageway perhaps?" Those that have remained behind, except for Samantha who fears being slain by the cold, and Dell, who curses and rails at his elementalkin, agree to join him in searching for another hidden door in the corridor beyond. They dash past the freezing mold, frost riming them.
Winthrop and Pfiffwin hike on down the tunnel. What was small and cramped for the others coming back from Hanuman's den is large and spacious for the two diminutive fellows. The passage winds about and then ends, a large disk above. Both Winthrop and Pfiffwin turn themselves invisible not wishing to be surprised by a creature lying in wait. Then, Winthrop touches the hatch and wills it open.
The hatch unscrews upwards into the natural cavern covered with the corroded slag of thousands of coins and piles of metal weapons and armor. A crunching, slurping sound comes from the right side, and the two invisible members of the Company turn to see a quivering mass of flesh, huge and glistening. A slug of enormous size, easily ten feet long, slurps towards them in an undulating mass, its eyeless head questing for the sounds of its prey. Winthrop and Pfiffwin duck back into the tunnel as a huge gobbet of hissing, sizzling spittle sails through the air, barely missing them and splashing fine droplets of burning acid on them.
Winthrop tries to draw the hatch back down on them and block out the huge slug, but its boneless form is malleable enough to ooze its way through the closing space and hold the hatch open by sheer mass. Pfiffwin and Winthrop begin to retreat down the corridor, fleeing from the slug, as it bulls forward. "Enough of this!" cries Winthrop, as the end of the tunnel approaches. He turns in place and faces the slug. "I am a wizard, and I will not flee a garden creature, no matter how huge!" Muttering magical incantations, he sends bolts of lightning through the slug, the electricity arcing through its body. Pfiffwin materializes next to the lightning-wielding bane midge, throwing orbs of flashing color from his hands. The orbs carve large hunks of flesh from the slug and drive it into a frenzy. With a frightful shaking and crashing, the slug dies, plugging the tunnel completely.
Dell continues his work with the elementalkin, finally coming on the secret of the dome. "Turn it, that's right, a little more, good, good," he mutters as the air elementalkin slowly rotates the moldy dome on the altar. The dome pops loose, freeing itself from its latches, and the summoned creature moves it aside and then brings the three bone statuettes that were on top of the altar to Dell. Each of the statuettes are frightful in nature, appearing as totems of destruction, decay, and fear. "Perhaps I shouldn't touch these yet," Dell muses. He has the elementalkin carefully stow them in a small sack for him.
Perrin, again, is the key to finding the hidden door in the corridor. The Company hikes down the corridor, noting a huge chain that runs along the ceiling and then into the wall and out of sight. They all agree the chain must lead to the block and to the counterweight. The passageway leads into a strange room with six large holes in the floor. Winches with chains on them lead down into the holes, but no other exits can be seen. Most of the chains are taut, as if a heavy weight is upon them, though two are slack, one swinging slightly.
Otto moves to the nearest winch as Diego and Raven cover him. With one hand, he winches the chain upwards. The weight is significant, and even Otto's augmented strength is only barely what is necessary. The sloshing of water comes up through the hole. A large stele rises up out of the water, chains wrapped around it. Bound within the chains itself is a large horned and fanged skeleton and when Otto pulls it up, it lets loose with a great cackle and thrusts forth a hand. A gout of black light comes from the things hand, engulfing Raven and Diego in darkness. All light is lost, and Raven and Diego both scream in fear. Diego sprints back into the corridor, but Raven runs forward and plummets in through the hole in the floor into the waters below.
Otto lets go of the winch, sending the stele back down into the water and jumps through the hole, plunging down after Raven. After a moment's delay, a shocked Al joins him. The water below is a pit of stygian darkness, and Al flounders for a moment, trying to reorient himself and his heat sight. A burst of something flies by him and a gasping form breaks the surface. "Glowing stones!" shouts Otto. "Toss more glowing stones!"
As glowing stones begin to be dropped down from above, Al feels a bony hand wrap around his leg and drag him downwards. In the new light of the stones, Al and Otto strike out against those creatures chained to the stele. They vomit forth black light, obliterating the glowing stones, but their distraction allows the two warriors to focus their efforts on unprotected prey.
Their bony foes are relatively frail, and Al is able to free first himself and then Raven from the creatures' grasp. Raven flounders about, eyes rolling wildly in his head, as he splashes in a panic to the surface. Otto focuses on smashing the last of the beasts, crushing their bones into dust between the chain and stone. Finally, the Company is safe.
Otto drags himself up to the surface, where Al supports a moaning Raven. "I think I saw more chains and a submerged exit," pants Otto, the exertion of keeping himself above water rather draining. "I'll check it out. You get Raven up onto land." With that Otto sinks back down through the slightly glowing water.
Otto scoops up one of the remaining glowing stones and swims over to the passage he saw before. It is a man-height corridor leading away from this strange room. He finds it slopes upward, rising out of the waters. He follows the narrow passageway until it branches to the right and left, a large chain embedded in the ceiling. To the right, the passage ends in a vertical shaft that rises upwards, the chain disappearing upwards into the ceiling. To the left though leads to a small room with a large winch and a small lever in it.
Otto gingerly uses Giantslayer to push the lever. It provides some resistance before swinging into place. A section of the opposite wall swings inward, revealing the passageway the Company used to reach the room of chains. Nodding to himself, Otto looks at the winch. The vertical shaft could be the location of a raised counterweight, and the winch is certainly large enough to accommodate the massive chain attached to the stone block. Otto grabs the winch lever and begins turning it, the chain wrapping itself around the winch's barrel. Otto's muscles strain with the effort, as he does a job that likely many men do together. Finally, the winch does not move further, and Otto locks it in place.
Covered in stony, bony plates, the creature is three-fold symmetric with three sharp clawed arms and three strong, stubby legs. A huge maw gapes on the top of its head, consuming rock pulled from the pillar by the clawed arms. The stone flows like butter as it grabs at the pillar. The sudden appearance of the Company draws its attention, and its body spins in place, showing one eye after another in series. With a clacking sound, it raises its arms up and over its head, claws spinning dangerously in the air.
The Company has little truck with strange, fearsome beasts. Winthrop unloads a barrage of magical bolts into the creature's carapace while Raven and Diego shoot a flight of arrows at it. Al and Otto charge forth, swinging axe and sword at it. The creature is surprised by the ferocity of attack and wounded by the many blows and magic wielded against it. It emits a deep humming sound from its grinding, sharp-toothed maw and sinks into the stone floor, the stone flowing like water around and then over it. The Company stands amazed at the sight. "Tripus," says Alouicious, "gem and ore eaters. Never seen one, but they're in the lorebooks. Glad it ran, they're supposed to be hard to kill."
Seeing no other enemies, the Company investigates the passageway to the right, leaving the rest of the columned room to be searched later. The passageway winds about to a doorway that, when opened by the stalwart Otto, reveals a twenty by twenty foot room with a door on the far side. Camp gear and a small cooking stove sit in the room, and the faint marks of soot are visible on the ceiling. A small store of coal reveals that the stove and the campsite was recently in use. The camp gear are mainly traveling stools and small tables with plates and utensils on them. A cache of trail food, well preserved, is under one table while crates of greenery and dried and salted meat are next to them. "The clerics," says Hugh, intuiting the users of the site.
Hugh's intuition is further confirmed when the door is opened, exposing another square room with another door. The bedrolls and backpacks of the priests are present here, and provide the Company with much material to go through. The door leads out into the octagonal room and is the last of the unopened doors. While some of the Company rifle through the priests' equipment, Dell heads back into the columned room.
The Company goes through the door to find a short passageway that ends in an alcove. The passageway branches to the left before the alcove, but this passageway also ends shortly. The Company doubts these are unfinished passageways, but instead thinks they conceal hidden exits or entrances. Two of them are quickly found in the alcove; disk shaped hatches in the wall similar to those found at the end of the exit from Hanuman's den.
Winthrop opens the right-hand hatch while Perrin and the others continue to search the end of the passageway for hidden doors. Another doorway, this one normal in shape and size, is embedded at the end of the passageway. Otto gives it a firm kick and reveals a square room with a square stone altar in it.
He and Diego eye the brown material coating the square altar stone against the far wall. A glazed crystalline object, a hemisphere dome, sits on the altar, but the brown material is dangerously close to the altar. Diego recounts his experience of nearly freezing in the stairwell in Beoll-Dur. Dell claims to be prepared. He summons a minor elementalkin of air to serve him.
"Go pull the dome off," he tells the creature, and it scoots forward. The dome rattles slightly but does not move appreciably. "Slide it to one side," he directs. This time the dome doesn't move at all. Dell looks at the altar stone in frustration. His efforts draw the attention of the others who come to watch. The priests' belongings have revealed some Geoffish coin, but little else.
Antonus, Winthrop, and Dell debate the best use of the minor elementalkin in loud argumentative tones while the others keep watch. Al looks at the pillars and finds that fine veins of precious metals runs through the columns. Samantha, who has been mainly quiet and hidden in the back of the Company, shepherded along by Perrin, pipes up suddenly. "Something is wrong with the wall next to the altar stone," she says, pointing to a patch near the brown mold. "The wall stones line up too regularly, and the mold doesn't extend over the area." Once it is pointed out, the others see it as well, but Samantha's keen elven vision has seen what the others have missed.
After a brief huddled conversation, Otto agrees to smash down the hidden door in the wall there. The cold may be biting, but he should be through it quickly. Others following behind him will only have to briefly deal with the cold. Indeed, his plan works well, as he bashes through the door with only a modicum of frost forming on him. Of course, what barely slows Otto is more than enough to slay Samantha.
The four warriors and archers agree to scout down the passageway while the rest of the Company continues their investigations here. Dell sends his minor elementalkin at the crystalline dome, trying to get it open. Winthrop turns into a bane midge and walks into the tunnel he has revealed behind the circular hatch, Pfiffwin accompanying him. The rest of the Company settles down to wait, keeping an eye on the columned room.
With a clatter and a crash, a large stone block levers in across the door leading into the columned room, almost crushing Perrin who stands their watching. "Gaah!!" he cries, wondering what has happened. Have Winthrop and Pfiffwin set off a trap, or have the warriors blundered into something? The answer is made clear soon, when the warriors return, somewhat chapped from the cold, saying they have found a door that when pushed, made a clanking sound up over the ceiling of the passageway. A close inspection of the rotating block by Al discerns a heavy chain, each link as big as a fist, that is connected to the stone block.
"Well, that'll be hard to move," says Al. "It must have a counterweight and winch. I think we'll need to find them to move that. Another hidden door down the passageway perhaps?" Those that have remained behind, except for Samantha who fears being slain by the cold, and Dell, who curses and rails at his elementalkin, agree to join him in searching for another hidden door in the corridor beyond. They dash past the freezing mold, frost riming them.
Winthrop and Pfiffwin hike on down the tunnel. What was small and cramped for the others coming back from Hanuman's den is large and spacious for the two diminutive fellows. The passage winds about and then ends, a large disk above. Both Winthrop and Pfiffwin turn themselves invisible not wishing to be surprised by a creature lying in wait. Then, Winthrop touches the hatch and wills it open.
The hatch unscrews upwards into the natural cavern covered with the corroded slag of thousands of coins and piles of metal weapons and armor. A crunching, slurping sound comes from the right side, and the two invisible members of the Company turn to see a quivering mass of flesh, huge and glistening. A slug of enormous size, easily ten feet long, slurps towards them in an undulating mass, its eyeless head questing for the sounds of its prey. Winthrop and Pfiffwin duck back into the tunnel as a huge gobbet of hissing, sizzling spittle sails through the air, barely missing them and splashing fine droplets of burning acid on them.
Winthrop tries to draw the hatch back down on them and block out the huge slug, but its boneless form is malleable enough to ooze its way through the closing space and hold the hatch open by sheer mass. Pfiffwin and Winthrop begin to retreat down the corridor, fleeing from the slug, as it bulls forward. "Enough of this!" cries Winthrop, as the end of the tunnel approaches. He turns in place and faces the slug. "I am a wizard, and I will not flee a garden creature, no matter how huge!" Muttering magical incantations, he sends bolts of lightning through the slug, the electricity arcing through its body. Pfiffwin materializes next to the lightning-wielding bane midge, throwing orbs of flashing color from his hands. The orbs carve large hunks of flesh from the slug and drive it into a frenzy. With a frightful shaking and crashing, the slug dies, plugging the tunnel completely.
Dell continues his work with the elementalkin, finally coming on the secret of the dome. "Turn it, that's right, a little more, good, good," he mutters as the air elementalkin slowly rotates the moldy dome on the altar. The dome pops loose, freeing itself from its latches, and the summoned creature moves it aside and then brings the three bone statuettes that were on top of the altar to Dell. Each of the statuettes are frightful in nature, appearing as totems of destruction, decay, and fear. "Perhaps I shouldn't touch these yet," Dell muses. He has the elementalkin carefully stow them in a small sack for him.
Perrin, again, is the key to finding the hidden door in the corridor. The Company hikes down the corridor, noting a huge chain that runs along the ceiling and then into the wall and out of sight. They all agree the chain must lead to the block and to the counterweight. The passageway leads into a strange room with six large holes in the floor. Winches with chains on them lead down into the holes, but no other exits can be seen. Most of the chains are taut, as if a heavy weight is upon them, though two are slack, one swinging slightly.
Otto moves to the nearest winch as Diego and Raven cover him. With one hand, he winches the chain upwards. The weight is significant, and even Otto's augmented strength is only barely what is necessary. The sloshing of water comes up through the hole. A large stele rises up out of the water, chains wrapped around it. Bound within the chains itself is a large horned and fanged skeleton and when Otto pulls it up, it lets loose with a great cackle and thrusts forth a hand. A gout of black light comes from the things hand, engulfing Raven and Diego in darkness. All light is lost, and Raven and Diego both scream in fear. Diego sprints back into the corridor, but Raven runs forward and plummets in through the hole in the floor into the waters below.
Otto lets go of the winch, sending the stele back down into the water and jumps through the hole, plunging down after Raven. After a moment's delay, a shocked Al joins him. The water below is a pit of stygian darkness, and Al flounders for a moment, trying to reorient himself and his heat sight. A burst of something flies by him and a gasping form breaks the surface. "Glowing stones!" shouts Otto. "Toss more glowing stones!"
As glowing stones begin to be dropped down from above, Al feels a bony hand wrap around his leg and drag him downwards. In the new light of the stones, Al and Otto strike out against those creatures chained to the stele. They vomit forth black light, obliterating the glowing stones, but their distraction allows the two warriors to focus their efforts on unprotected prey.
Their bony foes are relatively frail, and Al is able to free first himself and then Raven from the creatures' grasp. Raven flounders about, eyes rolling wildly in his head, as he splashes in a panic to the surface. Otto focuses on smashing the last of the beasts, crushing their bones into dust between the chain and stone. Finally, the Company is safe.
Otto drags himself up to the surface, where Al supports a moaning Raven. "I think I saw more chains and a submerged exit," pants Otto, the exertion of keeping himself above water rather draining. "I'll check it out. You get Raven up onto land." With that Otto sinks back down through the slightly glowing water.
Otto scoops up one of the remaining glowing stones and swims over to the passage he saw before. It is a man-height corridor leading away from this strange room. He finds it slopes upward, rising out of the waters. He follows the narrow passageway until it branches to the right and left, a large chain embedded in the ceiling. To the right, the passage ends in a vertical shaft that rises upwards, the chain disappearing upwards into the ceiling. To the left though leads to a small room with a large winch and a small lever in it.
Otto gingerly uses Giantslayer to push the lever. It provides some resistance before swinging into place. A section of the opposite wall swings inward, revealing the passageway the Company used to reach the room of chains. Nodding to himself, Otto looks at the winch. The vertical shaft could be the location of a raised counterweight, and the winch is certainly large enough to accommodate the massive chain attached to the stone block. Otto grabs the winch lever and begins turning it, the chain wrapping itself around the winch's barrel. Otto's muscles strain with the effort, as he does a job that likely many men do together. Finally, the winch does not move further, and Otto locks it in place.