Adventure Twenty Six, continued "The Tests"
We ran until we came to a room. The hallway ended in a five foot ledge looking down into a bottomless depth and up into the endless stars. On the other side of the room, about twenty feet away, was another five foot ledge with an open passageway beyond. Dividing the room was a shimmering barrier of unknown magic.
We quickly guessed that the barrier was probably one that negated magic, so flying across would be potentially fatal. Luckily I had yet to memorize some spells for the day, so I sat down and memorized Jump spell, twice. We had lost almost all our rope with the clay golem and all we had was 25 feet of rope in my pack. There were places to tie rope on this side and the other, unfortunately, they were 30 feet apart.
We quickly decided that Spada, being the largest person in the group, would be the best anchor. I of course was the best guinea pig, so I cast Jump on myself and Spada, grabbed one end of the rope, and leapt across the span. All the spell effects on me dissipated as I passed through the shimmering barrier, but luckily my momentum carried me to the far ledge safely. The other end of the line was tied off at by the entrance, and then Spada followed suit. Soon he and I were holding the line as Millie dragged herself across the rope, hanging on with legs and arms. Once safely on our side, she helped hold the rope while T'Rojan came across. It was quite tiring, and by the time Stengar's big body came across, we nearly dropped him.
Rope burned and aching arms later, the entire party was safely assembled on the far side of the room. We ran down the passageway to the next room. This time, it was a room full of large white tile squares with arrows pointing in different directions on them. Spada, who still had the jump spell in affect on him, somehow, leaped across the entire room, only to be blasted by lighting and fire spells as he crossed the open air. He landed on the other side and began taking electrical shocks on a regular basis. It soon became apparent that the way around this test was not to jump over it. Spada quickly jumped back, taking more blasts of energy along the way, and landed back on our side, nearly dead. Millie healed him up.
We looked at the room more closely. The floor was made up of black and white square tiles, about 4 feet on each side. The room was 4 tiles wide by 4 tiles long. The interesting thing, was that one of the tiles was missing. I decided to jump on the area where the missing tile was. ZAP! Bad idea. I jumped back off and got zapped some more.
Eventually we figured out that you had to stand on a tile facing the direction of the arrow and shift it and the other tiles around until you made it to the other side, safely. To make things worse, once you came against a wall, the tiles would turn, and you could only step on and off of the grid at one specific spot on either side. Every time you did something wrong, you would get blasted by electricity or fire or something. Everyone made it across, but we were all nearly killed in the process, and we ended up using every conceivable form of healing we could muster. We were in really bad shape for future dangers.
The next room was a large room full of whirling, spinning and flying projectiles. Nails, blades, chunks of steel, whirled with incredible speed across the entire expanse of this large room. The floor dropped down at least twenty feet below us and the exit was level with us, far on the other side. In the corner of the ledge we entered on was a rolled up carpet.
We quickly unrolled the magic flying carpet. Mordagin and Stengar climbed on and shot across to the other side. They made it safely. Stengar got off, and Mordagin brought the carpet back. Only this time, he got sliced up nicely by the flying debris. We each took turns flying someone across, then taking it back for the others. In the end we were all on the far side, but most of us were bleeding from several open wounds.
We made it to the next obstacle, a very large room. It looked like a slice of desert. Hot broiling sunlight, and sand. Near the entrance was a large blanket, black on one side, white on the other. In the distance we saw the exit. Fearful of what lurked beneath the sands, we decided to conjure up a few monsters and send them out. We summoned seven goblins, and sent two of them out into the sand. They didn't go far before we saw shapes moving in the sand. Strange sand worms attacked the goblins. Worse than that, we could see that their flesh was beginning to smoke from the hot sun. Spada nailed one of the sandworms with an arrow, but it did little good. There were too many of them, and the goblins were soon dragged beneath the surface.
I decided that now was the time to whip out my scroll of Tenser's floating disc. We used it as a floating chariot, since the magic carpet wouldn't operate beyond the last room, and several of us climbed aboard. We held the blanket, white side up, over our heads then proceeded across the desert room. Only problem was that Stengar refused to use the magic to cross the room. We sent the rest of the goblins out ahead of us, to attract the sandworms, then followed behind. Spada and I fired arrows at any creatures that attacked Stengar, while Mordagin and Trojan kept the blanket stretched over our group. Stengar was attacked, but we made it across safely. Stengar was a bit more damaged than he'd been before. I went back for Millie and came back across without incident. We took a few moments to sneak a kiss while under the blanket.
The next room, we found ourselves looking at a large pool of clear liquid. Stengar was about to jump in and swim across, when we warned him to wait. He said, "Its just water!" and then splashed his hand around in the highly corrosive acid for effect. Skin quickly started burning off his flesh, and his left hand was soon little more than a blackened mess of skin and bones.
"How about a lift in my magic disk this time, you dumb fuggin meat head." I offered kindly.
"Okay, that sounds like a good idea." said the stubborn barbarian.
We were across the room in no time, safe as could be.
The final test awaited us. The sphinx.
You guessed it, we had to answer some riddles.
I don't remember them, but, just to make things fair, the sphinx pelted us with monsters while we were trying to solve each riddle. Try solving a riddle while you're being attacked by a Will'O'wisp. I can assure you, its no fun. Four, or five riddles later, we had beaten the final challenge, and the entire party was on its last legs. The sphinx let us spin on the "wheel of fortune" for completing the tests.
We each took some spins and gained some minor abilities and powers. I gained the ability to insult anyone at will. Millie got erect nipples, T'rojan, a sack full of lead pellets, Mordagin, an all you can eat coupon at the Rot Grub Tavern, Spada the ability to wear ones hair with a part in the center, and finally Stengar gained the ability to perform extremely stupid acts, but look really cool while doing so.
Now it was time to leave the Celestial Hall. We were magically told of all the events of both Damascus past and Damascus present. He was an evil tyrant that was defeated by a group of people, Cuhltron being one of them. They used several special weapons in conjunction to do this. Among these weapons, one of them was the Moon Gate ring. There were a couple other magical pieces of jewelry that would decrease Damascus' spell resistance and powers, if we got close enough. We were also told that he was building a new kingdom on an island east of the Great Kingdom. Our mission, which we had no choice but to accept, was to kill Damnasskisser.
Adventure Twenty Seven "Dumb Ass Kiss"
Having completed the tests of the Celestial Hall, and received our just rewards, we found ourselves looking at a portal. We stepped through, and found ourselves in a weird plane. Possibly the astral or ethereal, I'm not sure exactly, but we felt ourselves being refreshed, healed and our spell abilities charged back up.
We came out in some castle type place. We snuck into the castle through some secret entrance. How we knew where to find it, is a mystery to me. Once inside, we jumped some guards and stole their uniforms. Spada and I dressed up in the uniforms and pretended that Stengar was our prisoner. We proceeded deeper into the castle, surprising and taking out a few more guards along the way, finally we made it to a large thrown room. Peaking inside, we saw what must be the Damnaskis himself, acting like some megalomaniac ruler type, thrown and all, with your typical retinue of spell casters, priests, and warriors at his side. Beneath his dais were the typical rabble that rulers like to impress.
We decided that now was the time to attack, since we could get them all at once. And everyone knows its easier to kill a whole group of powerful characters, than it is to take them out one at a time. So I started the show off with the crowd pleasing fireball spell. Boy did it please the crowd. Many of the rabble were charred to cinders, served them right for getting so close and trying to kiss Damascus' ass. Unfortunately, Dumaskis was in some type of protective shell, and the spell did not reach him.
Meanwhile, T'Roj had summoned some goblins, and Spada and Stengar charged. A fight ensued, as well as a storm of raining acid. We were all covered with the burning stuff, the fight was fierce, we were getting torn up. I was flying around and zapping guards with a wand of lighting. Millie was doing her best to heal the wounded. T'Rojan and Mordagin were trying to keep from dying while laying down some wand magic. Stengar and Spada were doing their best to cut Dumaskiss' cronies to shreds. Just as it looked like we were about to win, another herd of bad guys joined the party. It was Zach and the remainder of his retainers, who'd survived that cold night in the mountains.
We were dead for sure, but from the other side of the room, we gained allies from an unknown source. A woman sprayed a cone of cold over Damascus and company. All hell broke loose after that. Ice storms, chain lightning, spells I'd never even heard of, were going off. People were falling and getting back up. I did my best to inflict maximum casualties with the spells in my retinue. When the smoke finally cleared, Damascus and his gang were dead, and so was Spada.
Our group gathered around Spadas body and prepared to say a prayer for the deceased, when T'Rojan interjected, "What the hell are we doing, its just Spada."
We all quickly stopped our praying, feeling stupid at our momentary loss of reason, and went back to looting the bodies. We took the Damascus sword, as well as the other Moon Gate items and sent them off to some plane of non-existence by saying some magic words over the lot of them. The rest the stuff we kept. The two people who had helped us, introduced themselves as Nora, a female with extremely lopsided breasts, and Tire an invisible creature who wore visible robes. They both claimed to be from Trin. No one had any idea where that was.
We gathered up our booty, and high-tailed it for the docks. We were able to bribe our way onto a ship, and paid the captain a really large amount of money to leave his cargo and shove off. In two days time, we sailed into Roland, near the Gull Cliffs, of the Great Kingdom.