Adventure Twenty One "If Only He Wasn't Dead"
(written with the assistance of Richard M. Darling)Wow did Nevrond Nevnend suck. Well, not as bad as Pale, but everyone looked at us like we were freaks, and they spoke such a strange dialect that we couldn't understand what the hell they were saying most of the time. We only stayed two nights, but it was long enough.
Turok decided that he would take the giant baby giant back to Prosperity as soon as he could hitch up with a caravan heading south. With Turok no longer continuing with us, and the recent departure of Forge, we were in dire need of a couple of living shields for us spell caster types. If we didn't find some, myself and Millie were going to end up on the front line trying to kill all sorts of things with our crappy weapons, while T'Rojan whimpered and Mordagin tried his latest shitty spell on the enemy. Finding some fresh meat was paramount!
We quickly found a couple of meatheads that fit the bill perfectly. One was an elf with a lazy eye and an overall appearance that suggested we had found the last remaining member of the lost tribe of Inbred Elves. I'm not sure if he was born with a tongue, for I don't recall hearing him talk. The other was a human goon, who's name, I regret to inform, is Spada, he was at least capable of constructing rudimentary sentences and is the first adventurer I've ever met that actually carried a change of underwear. However, he had no idea where he was from, he just knew he wasn't from around here. In fact he didn't know how he even had gotten to where he was. We told him it was alright, we'd take him home, if he'd just stand in front of us when any monsters attacked. Both meatheads were more than agreeable to those terms.
Having acquired the necessary fleshy shields, we departed Never Never Land and headed east, for Cat-butt, last stop before the mighty Griff Mountains. We made it to Calsbut safely, having endured a three day trip in which we were able to learn that the elven meathead's favorite color was blue, and that he really liked beans. The human meathead, on the other hand, seemed to have difficulty recalling his favorite color. Just when he seemed to get it, he'd announce quite assuredly, "Aha! Now I remember, . . . my fav'rit color is red!", then seconds later would shake his head in confusion and say "Nope, I wuz wrong, I don't even like red."
We arrived in CallussedButt, got some food, then left for Thunder Pass, which cut through the Griff Mountains, leading to the Hold of the Stonefist.
We slogged through the pass for two days before running into some trolls. Crimmith was killed, bringing an end to the race of Inbred Elves at last. But he had done his job, and stood in front of the monsters, while we killed them. Soon after, we came upon a tall monosyllabic goon with a sloping forehead and bulging muscles. He was so tall, he towered above even Mordagin's ego. He went by the name of Stenngar, wore moth-eaten furs and haled from the north. He quickly stated his entire philosophy on life by proclaiming "I hate trolls and magic."
A very familiar look of panic came over T'roj's face and he began backing away from the hulking brute, leaving a trail of urine in his wake. I grabbed his collar as he neared me and said to him, loud enough for everyone to hear, and slowly enough for this barbarian idiot to understand me. "Well damn, that's good! We only use sorcery, we hate magic too."
Mordagin, wanting to assure the barbarian of our suitability, quickly chimed in, "Yes, magic is indeed evil, we would never use that, we rely solely upon sorcery. And trolls...ahg! Don't get me started. Now I may not hate them as you do, but I generally don't want one in my house, unless he's at least bathed recently, and even then, its only so I can kill him with my latest work of magi...ugh...sorcery."
The barbarian got a very confused expression on his face after hearing all this, and followed along with us as his brain slowly processed what he had just heard. He didn't say much after that, except that his village had been wiped out and that he was travelling the mountains, in search of what, I don't know. He probably didn't know either.
The higher into the mountains we got, the colder it got and eventually, it started snowing. We needed to find some shelter and spotted a cave big enough for us and the horses. We settled in for the night, having foraged up enough dry wood for a small campfire at the mouth of the cave.
I was awakened by a brilliant flash of light and a deafening blast of thunder. T'Rojan reported that a bolt of lightning had struck the ground just outside the cave entrance. What an odd combination, I thought, lighting during a snowstorm. Looking outside, I could see that the snow was really piling up. We might have to stay here for a few days, hopefully the blizzard would pass and some of the snow would melt soon. I had no desire to park my ass in a cave for too long.
I don't know who it was, but somebody in the group found a secret door on the back wall of the cave, a very large secret door. It was about thirty feet high and twenty feet across. I'd hate to meet the fucker who needed a door that big. We managed to open it and saw it led to a long hallway, forty feet high and forty feet across. Shit, I hoped the dude who lived here was no longer among the living. There were several half-pillars carved into the rock walls. Halfway up each pillar, except one, was a large lit torch. At the end of the hall was a giant-sized set of double doors. Carved into the doors was the image of a man atop a mountain with a storm raging all around him.
Yeah, okay, so any idiot would have a great big "Storm Giant" alarm going off in their heads about now, but we're not your ordinary kind of idiots. We decided to investigate further, leaving the snoring Chultron to guard the horses.
We found a small opening near the base of the pillar that had the unlit torch. I decided to go in and check it out. I ran into some goblins, sliced them into bite size morsels, then webbed up the passage when more of the little bastards came running. I ran back out, grabbed a torch from a perplexed Mordagin, then ran back in and started a goblin barbecue by flaming up the web. They died horribly, at least their burning flesh sure smelled horrible, but I was not amused to see a shit load more of them come running toward me after the web burned away.
I made a hasty retreat back out through the entrance, yelling "Goblins!". The rest of the group was ready with weapons and I had to dodge a blow as the itchy fingered barbarian swung at the first thing he saw pop out the door. Every goblin foolish enough to pass through that door was cut down like chickens before the harvest feast. They eventually wizened up, and chose to remain within the passage, rather than come out and meet their doom.
We moved to the giant-sized doors and tried to open one. It took three of us just to open one of the doors, but we did it. Beyond the door was a curving stairway, each step over four feet in height.
"Look at the rise and run on that baby, the creature that uses these steps has gotta be easily 25 feet tall.", said Millie.
We all looked at her with that "what the hell are you talking about" look on our faces.
"Rise, and run, you know, how high each step goes up and how deep each step is." she replied.
We continued to respond with the confused blank stares.
"Forget it, you guys wouldn't know how to build a hole if I gave you a shovel." she said, shaking her head at out ignorance.
"What the 'ells wrong with yer wench?" asked Spada with a lowered voice.
"Oh she thinks she's a damn carpenter or something, claims her father taught her how to make stuff." I answered, "Me, I just think she likes to make us feel stupid."
About this time, we all started thinking that this place had been made just to impress the hell out of fools, and that a little old lady probably lived upstairs baking fresh pies and cakes, just waiting to treat her next visitors. With visions of such sweet rewards, I could really use some fresh baked apple pie, we began the tedious task of climbing, and I do mean climbing, the steps.
After nearly an hour of climbing, we reached the top of the stairs. We began searching about for a while and found this to be somebody's home, but no fresh pastries or little old ladies. We also found the remains of some adventurers, and eventually the thing responsible for killing them.
He sat on a gigantic marble bench, his back to us. A giant of some sort, a really big giant, and when he turned around, a chill ran through us all. His skin was pulled tight against his bones, dry and thin like old parchment, his eyes were points of light, sunken in his skull, and most of his greenish-blue hair was gone having fallen out in chunks taking skin with it in some spots on his skull.
No one moved for what seemed like forever. Strong gusts of wind could be heard beyond the giant, and it was freezing cold in here. The giant finally spoke, his voice deep and filled with despair and sadness.
He told us his name was Stornim and that he had been here a long time, suffering under a curse, that would not let him die nor leave this place. He was a victim of his own jealousy. He had errantly believed that his wife and his best friend had been lovers, so in a fit of jealous rage, he killed them both along with his child, believing that it was the bastard son of their affair. His sins caused a great curse to fall over him and here he was, trapped in his home, with the dead bodies of his best friend, his wife and his child to remind him of his evil act, until the end of time.
After hearing his story, he begged us to kill him, to end his long suffering misery. We agreed, and attacked. He tried to fight back, a survival instinct or part of the curse, who can say, but it did him no good. As he fell, it sounded as if he had said "release", but it could have been the wind.
We searched the rest of the home and found the body of the wife in her bed, with the child cradled in her arms. We found the remains of Arnimar, Stornim's best friend, in with the remains of some pet griffins. His skull was missing, Stornim had said he had flung it from the mountain, we were inclined to believe that to be the truth. We also managed to find a king's ransom in gemstones and a secret vault that held a few magical trinkets, none of which were worth noting.
We finally decided that it was time to leave this gigantic home, and began the long trek down to the bottom of the stairs. As we neared the base of the stairs, we found the rest of the goblin tribe waiting for us. Mordagin launched a fireball into their midst. You should have seen the little orange bastards roast. Those not caught within the deadly flames ran fleeing for their hole in the wall. We quickly headed for the cave to see if the goblins had eaten Chultron.
Neither he nor the horses were anywhere to be seen. Spada found, what he believed to be tracks, in the windswept snow. We followed the tracks and found Cuhltong and the horses hiding in another cave. We rested up, then headed out the next day.
Finally, we made it through Thunder Pass and ventured into the lands of the Hold of the
Stonefist.
Adventure Twenty Two "The Self Guided Tour"
Having safely crossed the Griff Mountains, we made our way to the city of Purmill. It wasn't really a city, just a large grouping of poorly constructed homes with a lot of hairy people who rarely, if ever, bathed. Stenngat, the furred meathead, fit right in.
"So, Meathead, you from around here?" I asked him.
Spinning about and looking around he replied, "Round what?"
"Did...you...grow...up...here?" I asked slowly.
"No, I growed up somewhere else", he answered.
"Okay, very nice." I replied, looking desperately for some way to end this failed conversation, "Hey isn't that Santa Claus?" I said, pointing toward a crowd.
The furred meathead ran off in that direction shouting "Santa, hey wait, Santa!"
We restocked some food stuffs in Purmil, then proceeded on our way. Cuhltron's scroll tube continued to point East, so East we went.
We were one day out of Purmill, when we met a man and woman who claimed to be friends of Cuhltron. Cuhltron backed up their act, going so far as to show false affections for them and the like. I don't know who the hell he thought he was fooling, it was obvious that he had no clue who they were. Anyway, they brought word of some force of skilled ruffians trailing us, only one short day's journey behind us. Normally this wouldn't really be a big deal, if only a large army of barbarians hadn't set up camp about five miles ahead of us to the East. Our only route of escape was to the South, into the mountains.
Having nothing better to do than be steered by the whims of an unworshipped god, we rode south into the mountains. The two fake friends of Cuhltron showed us a path, and claimed that they would stay behind to "see" if we were still being followed. Yeah right, like that was why they were staying behind!
Anyway, we ended up in a narrow ravine with steep banks on either side of the trail. At this point the earth started to shake and rocks began to slowly trickle down the mountainside toward us. It became apparent that we'd soon be buried alive in a large rockfall if we didn't act quickly. Coincidentally, we just happened to be right beside the entrance to a large cave. Immediately we rushed all our horses and selves into the cave, and were quickly sealed safely within by a massive avalanche of rock. Ha! Lets see our pursuers try to find us in here!
It was dark and dust filled the air, the sounds of tumbling rock began to fade, when I heard T'Rojan start screaming, "Oh my God! We're trapped! We're All Going to DI <SMACK!> <thump>. I dropped him with a solid blow to the jaw. Luckily, no one else could see in the dark. By the time anyone got a torch lit, I was several yards away from T'Rojan's body.
Spada, the armored meathead shook him back to consciousness. "What happened? Did you trip and fall in the dark?" he asked.
"Huh? Is it already my turn for watch? I was dreaming that we were all trapped in a dark ca.." T'Rojan's eyes went wide as he appraised his surroundings, "Oh shit! We ARE trapped in a cave!"
The armored meathead helped T'roj to his feet as the rest of us contemplated our predicament.
Mordagin then chimed in, "Normally, I would consider this a bad situation, but I just so happen to have a spell on me called continual shadow that actually should be called continual dim light since in complete darkness it actually provides light, hence, I can actually see in my immediate vicinity."
"Huh?" I replied, "Aren't shadows the areas that are darker than their surrounding area?" I asked. "How can a continual shadow cast light in total darkness?"
"Well, you see it actually provides a continual shadow equivalent to the shade under a large oak tree on a bright day." replied Mordagin.
"But in complete darkness, that would be quite a strong light by comparison to the absolute darkness surrounding it, so how could it ever be considered a shadow?" I asked.
"Well because its made of shadow stuff" replied Mordagin, "and therefore you are never allowed to even attempt to bring logic into the equation."
"Oh, I see!" I replied, "that makes sense" and with one quick motion I pulled out my short sword of quickness and buried it in Mordagin's chest. He slumped to the ground and the others gathered around as his blood slowly pooled out around his body, forming a dark shadowy background in the dim light.
"Geez, he's fucking dead!" Claimed T'Rojan
"No shit." replied Millie, sarcastically, "you catch on quick."
"Why does his body have that light around it?" asked Stenngar.
"Its not light, damnit, its shadow!" I replied, "Didn't you hear a fucking word he said?"
"Uhh...hmm...no, guess not. Anyone hungry?" asked the muscular man of the north, "I'm starvin', I think we should have lunch."
We all agreed with the barbarian and sat down for a tasty lunch. While we were eating, the ranging metal wearing meathead came across a crevasse in the cave floor.
"Hey guys, look over here, I think there's a room down there", he shouted.
We all ran over and took a look. Sure enough, we could just make out what looked like a wooden floor about fifteen feet beneath a large hole in the cave floor. We quickly finished up our food, and prepared to investigate. Seeing as I was the agile member of the group, I agreed to go down first, but just to see if there were any nasty critters waiting to jump us, I dragged Mordagin's dead body over and dumped it through the hole. His body thudded solidly onto the floor below. No creatures came forward to attack it, so I dropped down as well.
As soon as I landed, I heard a disembodied voice say "Main Hallway".
"Who the fuck was that?" Shouted one of the guys above.
"Oh just a magic spell or some such shit." I replied, "It looks pretty safe down here."
The main hallway had several doors, but was otherwise empty. The rest of the party quickly made their way down, after securing one end of a rope above. Once gathered in the main hallway, we decided to open the nearest door. It opened into an old coat closet, complete with a few ratty old coats. Upon inspection, they appeared to be of no value. We turned to the door directly across the hall from it and tried that one. Unfortunately, it was locked, magically, wizard locked most likely.
The big ass barbarian decided to bash the door in using brute strength, while I tried the next door down the hallway. It was also locked in similar fashion.
The northman burst his door open, and was greeted by a fresh blast of fire for his trouble, apparently the door was warded as well. He patted out the flames on his furs, and the hallway filled with the stench of singed hair. The metal wearing meathead decided he'd try his luck on the other door, while I moved away from the potential blast radius, Millie grabbed me by the hand and pulled me into the closet, shutting the door behind us.
She quickly pulled up her leather skirt, and in seconds I had her pinned against the back wall, humping at a frenetic pace. We must have tripped something in our activities, for all of a sudden, a secret door popped open directly behind Millie, dropping our heaving bodies into the room beyond. As we fell, arms and legs akimbo, a flash of fire scorched our flesh and I heard a voice say, "Library". We landed hard on the ground. My flesh was painfully seared.
"Oh baby, you were something!" shouted Millie gleefully.
Much as I would have liked to take credit for the fireworks, I was in too much pain and needed her curative ministrations. "Ow...that wasn't me" I moaned, "it was a damn fire warding or something. You think you could heal up some of these burns?" I asked weakly.
"Sure baby, anything for you." she said, and began healing me.
Meanwhile, I could hear some commotion going on in the main hallway. Once she finished her healing, we gathered ourselves and went to see what was going on.
The meatheads and T'Rojan stood in front of the smashed in doorway staring at the ground scratching their heads. Cuhltron sat quietly at one end of hallway lost in the exploration of one of his nasal cavities. He had sunk two knuckles of his index finger into the nostril in search of its elusive prey.
I sidled up to T'rojan and asked what was going on.
"Well, we were concerned about more traps, so we decided to toss Mordagin's body into the room and see what would happen. Sure enough, a pit opened in the floor and he fell into it." he answered.
"So what's the big deal?" I asked, "that's as good a place as any for his final resting place."
"Well, we're trying to decide whether its worth getting his body out of there so we can use it to check for traps in the future, plus I think he's still got a couple of potions on him."
"Hmm...I see your dillemna." I replied. "His body could still prove useful in death. Why not let those meatheads smash the floor up and drag him out. They're good at smashing things."
"Ok, sounds like a good idea." replied T'rojan, and we proceeded to break the floor up and free the body of Mordagin.
The pit trap turned out to be a locking pit that filled with water, nasty little trap actually. We would have to be real careful to avoid traps like those in the future. While the brawny brutes were destroying the floor, T'Rojan told me that the room had said "War room" when they had leaned in to toss Mordagin's body forward. What the hell was a war room I wondered. I told him about the library, and he got very excited.
As soon as the mage's carcass was free, the metal wearing goon walked over to a table in the war room, turned around, grew to approximately half again his normal height, and pulled his sword and attacked the barbarian.
"What the fuck is going on?" I asked to no one in particular.
The two goons began to fight each other, as I prepared a spell. Millie was able to charm the armored goon, but was only able to slightly reduce his desire to slay all before him. Finally, T'Rojan knocked the fool unconscious with a spell, and we were able to tie him up.
With the strangely behaving oversized ranger tied up on the floor, we decided to investigate the library. Surely no harm could come from a library. Right?
Moments after entering the library, T'Rojan was struck frozen by a Sepia Snake sigil. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the spell, it traps the target in a stasis for several days. I'd studied the spell to use in my own laboratory, but had yet to master it.
"Just great," I exclaimed, "look at that dumb bastard. We'll be here for a week waiting for that damn spell to wear off."
"He not move." Stated the barbarian, "maybe I pick him up and carry him."
"Don't bother," I said, but the barbarian proceeded to waste his time trying to pick the mage up anyway. Once caught by a snake sigil, the body was completely impossible to move in any way.
"Nobody read anything in here," I said, "until I get the chance to check for more of those snake sigils. It was just about that time, that the metal wearing goon came charging into the room, with sword in hand, rage in his eyes, and launched yet another attack at the barbarian.
"For the love of Rudd!" I exclaimed, "can we please keep this asshole tied up!"
Millie and I jumped on the ranger from behind and the barbarian joined in and we were able to overbear him and tie his limbs back together. It probably wouldn't have worked if Millie hadn't still had him under her charm.
With the metallic meathead safely tied up, and T'Rojan frozen like a statue, we set in for a long wait and a much deserved rest. We slept in the hallway, and eventually the ranger came out of his spell induced rage. In the morning, we were able to begin looking about our surroundings again.
While we waited for the spell to wear off T'Rojan, we spent a great deal of time checking out our surroundings, detecting magical traps, and the like, but decided not to proceed any further, until we had the entire party back among the moving. I detected a few more magical traps, most likely sepia sigils, in the library. I also discovered that the other doors in our vicinity were wizard locked as well. Along the way I had found a book of spells, not a complete volume by any means, but it had a few decent spells in it.
It was five long days before T'Rojan was finally freed of his stasis. When he came too, he appeared to be somewhat disturbed by the crude phrases that had mysteriously appeared written all over his body during his stasis. We had all assumed that it was just part of the spells normal proggression for phrases like, "T'Roje smokes a mean pole" to appear on one's forearm, or "Cheese Sucks" to appear written on one's forehead. He had a bitch of a time trying to rub the charcoal lettering off his skin.
Once T'rojan was fit to travel, we went and opened the next door. Inside was a room that appeared to be a bedroom. Scanning the immediate vicinity for traps, I was confident that no pit trap, as we had run into earlier, was here. I entered the room, and was instantly transported to a dark cell.
Not only was I in a dark cell, but my arms and legs were in manacles and I was pinned to a wall. Not a very comfortable position to be in, I can assure you. As I began to test my bonds, I could hear the nearby groans and yells of my fellow adventurers as they one by one fell into the same trap. I couldn't believe how stupid those idiots were. Carefully, I was able to slide my wand of teleport object up from its wrist sheath and into my hand. Once I had a firm grasp on it, I was able to teleport the manacles away from my left hand, and then my right. Once my hands were free, I picked the locks on my feet, and freed myself from the cell. Time to go see who else needed to be set free.
I stepped into a hallway with many doors set on either side. Behind each door was a prison cell, and occupying each cell was one of my comrades. I set about letting them all free, and we looked forward to getting out of this damn magical dungeon.
To make a long and boring story, slightly less boring, I'll skip some of details. We got out of the cells, and proceeded to trip off several more traps, resulting in the two meatheads getting seriously electrocuted. They survived, but were severely damaged from multiple zaps. A few more traps later and we ended up getting flooded when we set off a trap that opened up an entire lake's worth of water on us. Millie almost drowned during that sequence, and was saved by Culhtron, who drank a potion of polymorph, turned into an umber hulk and dug her out of a water filled pit. It was actually a blessing in disguise, for Culhtron, now umber hulk, was able to dig a passage back into the main hallway, from where we had entered.
After getting out of harms way, we finally found the old mage's treasure vault, from which lots of valuable and magical items were found. I picked up a nice magical shortsword and a ring of protection. The others were able to find a few items to their liking as well, but the best item we found was a token that could teleport us out of here.
We spent a great deal of time investigating the token, it appeared to be a token of mass teleport. We decided that the best thing to do would be to teleport back to Rel Mord, drop off Mordagin's dead body to his sugar daddy, the transmuter, and drop off all these platinum coins we had gotten our hands on. Then, we'd use the token to teleport back to Purmill and continue on our quest. Unfortunately, when the token was used, only about half of the party teleported away, the other half of us were still standing around in the dark cave, having not moved an inch.
"Damnit! We're still in this damn cave!" I said to Millie and the armored meathead, who had been left behind along with me.
"I'm not worried," said Millie, "T'Rojan will just teleport back here and get the rest of us."
"Hmm, I hope so." I replied.
We waited, and waited, a day must have passed before a flash of light blazed before us. A gateway of light opened in the cave, and out of the misty portal walked Mordagin's transmuting sugar daddy. Damn, I'd have to remember his name one of these days.
"Hello there people. Your comrades and I made a deal. I get all the remaining treasure in this here place, and you guys get to go back to Rel Mord. Any questions?", stated the transmuter in quite a matter of fact tone.
"Well, that sounds like a fair deal," said the meathead who knew not where he was from.
"Good, now get the hell off my property." Responded the transmuter.
We quickly grabbed the reigns off our horses and lead them through the gateway. We came out in the courtyard of the transmuter's home. T'Rojan and the rest of the gang were waiting for us when we got there.
"Why didn't you use the damn token and come back and get us?" I asked.
"The crappy piece of shit broke after I used it once." said T'rohan.
"Oh, well in that case, I guess you made a good deal then. Thanks for getting us out of there." I grabbed Millie and hugged her too me, we were both happy to be free of that cavern at last.
"I'm going back to the Slatern in case you need me. Come by tomorrow and we'll discuss going back up north." I said to T'Rojan, as Millie and I mounted our horses and headed for the gate. Then I turned to the meatheads, "Hey meatheads, if you need a place to stay, come with me, I can put you up. If you want comfortable and clean living, stay at Mordagin's bone smuggling palace, T'Rojan can show you the way. And if you like wine, cheese and incest, go home with T'Rojan."
The two goons appeared to be frightened into indecision by the offers, then the less dim light of the group answered, "I think we'll just get a room at a local Inn, thank you for the hospitality though."
"Whatever you wish." and with that Millie and I rode back to what I
loosely consider my home.