Adventure Twenty Five "The Lost Tomb of Who? . . . ."
We all got back together and travelled for a couple more days, following the scroll deeper and deeper into the mountains. We were now travelling on nearly indiscernible trails that wound through the steep terrain. We saw nothing of interest until we came to an intersection of two valleys. We stopped to take lunch.
While we were gathered off to the side of the road, a small army of dwarves came marching through. We attempted to ask what they were up to but they ignored our existence. As we continued to pester the leader, he shouted out, "Present...Fingers...Left!" At which point, the entire company of marching dwarves raised their left hands, with middle fingers extended, in our direction, and continued on our way."
"How terribly rude of them," Said Mordagin in astonshed disbelief.
"Dwarves." replied Stengar as though that one word answered all questions.
We continued on, and a day later we found ourselves stoppe at the end of a valley with a large cave entrance before us. The scroll tube was pointing off to the left of the cave entrance by about 45 degrees, but seeing as we had nothing better to do, we investigated.
Inside, we came across a bunch of terribly frightening monsters living in harmony with each other, apparently just lurking in wait for us to come along. We killed great big screaming bat things, giant flying critters that lurked above, dodged globs of green slime, and nearly got killed by a clay golem that must have been programmed to kill parties in search of the Moon Gate.
The big clay thing came charging at us. We soon realized that we couldn't hurt it with any of our weapons or spells, but it was doing a good job at killing Stengar and Spada. We ran out of the caverns, with the stupid clay beast on our heels. Once outside, we were able to throw several ropes around the evil constructions neck and drag it down the trail with three of our horses. Somehow during this process, Stengar punched the rock like creature so hard that his metacarpal bones snapped and projected out of the back of his hand. My ears are still burning from the barbarian curses he let out after that. Its too bad Millie had used up all her healing that day, Stengar had to live with his hamburger hand until the next day. But I'm getting ahead of things.
We dragged the golem up the road for nearly a mile, until we finally got to a cliff that seemed tall enough to do the golem in. It must have been 70 feet high. Using some spells and luck, we managed to topple the thing over the side of the cliff, losing almost all our rope in the process. The golem smashed onto the rocks below, but still remained intact, and picked himself up. We beat a hasty retreat after that.
We went back into the caverns and explored further, only to find a cave absolutely full of bats. Being shit scared of bats, I ran screaming from the cave, I was sure they'd get in my hair. T'Rojan ran screaming as well, but when we compared notes, he claimed he'd been scared off at the sight of a mouse running along the cave floor.
The rest of the party decided that we'd not return to the caves after that, and we divied up the goods we had found. Among them, we had a set of bracer of defense, that Mordagin offered to Spada on the condition that once his magical plate armor was repaired, he'd return them to Mordagin. Spada went into a huge tizzy fit, screaming that if they weren't permanently given to him, he'd leave. So...
"Get lost then you big pussy." yelled Stengar.
"Fine leave, coward." said Mordagin.
"Go away we don't like humans anyway!" shouted Millie. That one got a lot of strange looks, since the only member of the party who wasn't full human, was myself.
"Sure go off and blow your horse, why don't you!" I yelled.
"My momma can kick your ass!" screamed T'Rojan in a high pitch, his voice cracking while attempting to annunciate "ass".
"Your mothers dead isn't she?" I asked T'Rojan.
"Oh that's right, my mistake." he replied.
So off went Spada, horse, hawk, and all, but no bracers.
We gave him a 15 minute head start, then went on our way. Stengar said that if he caught up with the coward again he'd kill him. We didn't make very good time after that, as we had a mysterious fit of "rocks" getting stuck in the hooves of our horses, and we had to constantly stop and "remove" the "rocks". Hopefully Spada was far enough ahead of us that we'd not have to test Stengar's promise. I think he was just pissed that half the bones in his right hand were exposed to the sun.
Adventure Twenty Six "Follow the Yellow Brick Road"
We travelled for another day, through the snow covered mountains, going higher and higher up, when all of a sudden, we were ambushed by furry apish creatures. I webbed several of them up against the side of the mountain and we preceeded to beat the bloody dickens out of them. Man did we kick the tar out those friggers. We beat and punched and stabbed and slashed and chopped and cast and just beat the hell out of them. Oh it was a damn good fight, let me tell you. So after brutalizing these odd beasts, we healed up our wounds, and then found their lair. It was a snow cave filled with some furry remains of their recent meals, and little else. We were out of the elements, so we chose it as our nights resting spot. We even got the horses inside.
The next day we finally reached the top of a plateau. This is where the Moon Gate was supposed to be claimed Cuhltron. An hour later we found Spada shivering on his horse, lips blue and hands trembling.
"Damn you look cold, pussy" said Millie, "need some help?"
"Uh, no thanks" stuttered the shivering ranger.
We continued on our way, and Spada joined in ranks with us. We basically ignored him for the first couple of days. We wandered around the plateau for two days looking for the Moon Gate. The scroll tube started acting real strange. One minute it would be pointing straight ahead, the next it would be pointing behind us. Back and forth we went, following the tube to nowhere. Finally, I realized that something was magically moving us further than we were actually travelling.
We set about defining the perimiter of this magical area, by casting detect magic spells and using the scroll tube to tell us if we were within the area. When we were inside the magical area, the scroll tube would point in the direction we faced. When we were outside the area, it would point at a nearly constant location, usually perpendicular or nearly perpendicualr to our present direction of travel.
We finally determined that we were transiting a large magical circle. We marked the edge of the perimeter, it must have been at least a mile across, until we found a gap in the magic. A quick detect magic spell showed us a "tunnel" through the magic boundary. We led our horses and raced through the tunnel.
All of a sudden, we were in Shan'gri'la, or was it Oz? We suddenly burst into a place of permanent spring. Where once there was just cold barren snow swept plateau, there now was trees, grass, and flowers. In the center of this, about a mile from our location, was a tall obelisk marking the center of this magical haven. The air was warm and fresh smelling of sweet nectar and blossoms.
Stengar took off running for the obelisk, only to fall flat only yards into the flowers. Several of us ran to get him and succumbed to some weird sleepiness. I'm not sure of the exact details of events, but eventually we woke up and dragged or got dragged back out of the sleep inducing flowers. Even the horses that strayed into the flowers fell asleep. We each used our own methods to get to the obelisk. I chose to fly and carrie Millie, as did everyone else except Stengar, Cuhltron and his stupid friend.
Stengar took an hour to cross the field, as he'd take several running strides and then fall unconscious, get up ten minutes later and repeat the process again, eventually he made it to the obelisk. Cuhltron ran the entire distance, apparently immune to the effects of the flowers.
The obelisk was a tall stone object, a hundred feet tall and only about six feet wide at the base. It was covered in strange runes, which we did not understand. Finally, I spotted some of the strange type markings that were on the Moon Gate ring. Culhtron deciphered them. They said something about entering during the full moon. Well it was three days until the next full moon, so we waited.
Life was pretty nice in this haven of warmth and beauty. We spent the next few days knitting sweaters, catching butterflies, and weaving baskets. Finally the day had arrived. We loaded up on all our most useless spells and waited for the full moon to reach its pinnacle.
Several hours after sunset, the moon was in the proper position, and Cuhltron chanted the proper words. A doorway opened up at the base of the spire. Hesitantly, we entered, in single file. Cuhltron's freind stayed behind to care for the horses.
Once inside, we found ourselves in a hallway made from the starry night sky. The floor and walls and ceiling were all made of a material that looked like the night sky, but somehow held us up. We moved onward, until we came across a very large man. If stories were accurate, we were looking at a Titan.
"Halt, You may not pass", said the titan, titanic halberd in hand.
"Okay, that's good enough for me," I said, "I'm going back."
Suddenly Cuhltron started babbling, "Damascus must still live, you must find the hall of heroes and then journey on and defeat Damascus!" Having said that, he grabbed Spada's shortsword and attacked the Titan, while growing in size. "Hurry!" he yelled.
We took the opportunity to run past the Titan. We ran like hell as Cuhltron continued to grow in size until he nearly matched the height of the titan.