The second room off of the secret corridor was even more interesting. It was a simple stone-walled room, but a five-foot wide worked stone passage was visible in the far wall. It looked like the opening of a mine shaft, with wood beams reinforcing the walls and ceiling every thirty feet or so, and went to the northeast. It seemed to slope slightly downward. Halfred could feel cooler air waft from the opening, and he saw what looked like a lot of goblin tracks come out of the tunnel into the room. Any tracks going back into the tunnel were obscured by the rest of he tracks.
The group guessed that the two escaping goblins must have run out through this passage, which was most likely the "smuggling tunnel" that Ameiko had mentioned. Lighting torches and lanterns, the group decided to pursue the goblins via the tunnel. Halfred led the way. The tunnel itself was expertly constructed, fairly old (at least 20 years old, thought Ted), and very straight. After following the tunnel for about 400 feet, the party found a side tunnel leading west. That tunnel had been bricked up at some point in the past, but now the wall had been knocked in, from the side of the main tunnel. Broken bricks and mortar were scattered on the floor of the side tunnel. given the amount of dust on the fallen bricks, MacGreggor estimated that the brick wall had been down for at least a few years. Painted on the wall of the side tunnel in Varisian was the message, "Do not enter. Danger." The party decided to investigate this side passage.
The side passage went west for a few hundred feet, the bent northward. The tunnel continued northward for several hundred more feet, whn the party saw another side passage to the east. As Halfred moved to investigate this new chamber, he was suddenly attacked by two hideous creatures! The creatures were roughly humanoid, hairless, and stood on two back-bent doglike legs. Their skin was a sallow flesh tone. Their two arms seemed to have two elbows, and their hands were three-fingered talons. Their mouths were filled with canine teeth, and were flanked by tiny arms, each with a three-fingered hand. It also looked like their lower jaws could also open sidewise. Their eyes glowed red with malevolence and anger. They wore ancient-looking chain shirts and wielded ranseurs. They shouted with eerie deep resonant voices in an unknown but chillingly evil-sounding language.
A fierce fight was joined by the rest of the
party. At one point, one of the creatures bit Halfred, and his head was suddenly filled with feelings of anger and hatred, but he managed to collect his thoughts. The creatures proved to be fierce combatants, but the party outnumbered them three-to-one and prevailed with minimal damage. The victorious heroes took the creatures' weapons and armor, on the chance that they might regenerate.The cavern that the creatures had been in was apparently a natural cave that the worked passage broke into by happenstance. There was nothing of else in the cave other than interesting rock formations. Following the tunnel again, the party found another side-tunnel heading east about thirty feet ahead. Like the entrance of the original side-tunnel they had followed, the entrance to this passage seemed to have been bricked up once long ago, but the wall had been taken down some time in the past few years. They decided to follow the main tunnel this time, but found that it dead-ended in about sixty feet. Ted, who had knowledge of stoneworking, noticed that the workmanship of the passage seemed to indicate that the excavators seem to have abandoned the tunnel and simply stopped digging. They returned to the eastern side-passage.
That passage went about thirty feet and then seemed to break into the western wall of an existing chamber: the floor of the chamber was about a foot below the floor of the tunnel. The chamber was of very different construction than the tunnel: the walls and ceiling were lined with ceramic tiles, and the floor was marble. The floor was littered with lots of rubble-- some of it seemed to be debris from the side tunnel punching into the wall, and the rest seemed to be broken pottery. MacGreggor thought that the architecture had a late-period Thassilonian feel to it. There was a stone door to the north.
Larissa checked the door for traps and listened at it, and found nothing. The door opened up into a dusty hallway. Following the hallway, the group passed one side-passage, and entered into a moderately-sized room with a vaulted ceiling. In the center of the room was a finely-carved statue of a wild-eyed female warrior-mage, holding a ranseur in a threatening pose. The statue bore an inscription in ancient Thassilonian, "Alaznist: Runelord of Righteousness." Examining the statue, it was apparent that the ranseur held by the statue was not carved of marble, but was a separate item that could be fairly easily removed. The ranseur itself was a work of art.
The statue room had open passageways leading north and east, and they saw that the eastern passage ended in a staircase going upward. They went north, following the passage to another closed stone door. Larissa found no traps or heard anything through the door, and Halfred opened it. The door opened up into a much larger chamber, with a wooden platform just beyond the door. The stone floor of the chamber was ten feet below the platform, and the ceiling was 20 feet above. The room appeared to be a prison-- small cells with iron bars lined all of the walls. Two wooden staircases led down to the stone floor, and a the platform extended as a catwalk into the middle of the room, then turned right into another stone passage. Halfred went down the stairs to examine the room, and a three-clawed hand grabbed his foot from below and tried to pull him off the stairs!
Two more of the same kind of creatures encountered earlier attacked. Again, they each wore chain shirts and were armed with ranseurs. However, these fought with even more skill and ferocity than the earlier ones. Charrone and Halfred both fought one of the creatures, while the other attacked Larissa and Declan. Ted and MacGreggor were out of spells, and were throwing knives, to little effect. One of the creatures knocked Larissa's bow from her hand and closed in for the kill. In a desperate move, Larissa drew the blow-tube she'd taken from Tsuto earlier that day and blew the contents into the creature's face. The effect matched what Tsuto had done to Halfred, and the creature broke off the attack, unable to see. Larissa and Declan were able to finish off the blinded creature, then assist Halfred and Charrone. While very bloodied, the combined forces of the party managed to drop the other creature.
While looting the creatures' weapons and armor, the group decided that a retreat was prudent, and they went back through the complex to the entrance tunnel. Passing the statue of the Runelord, Larissa announced her intention to liberate the ranseur. MacGreggor did not sense any magic, Charrone did not sense any more evil than the rest of the pace, and Larissa did not find any traps, so Larissa carefully pulled the weapon from the statue. Nothing else happened, and the group left the complex, and followed the tunnels back to the Glassworks.
In the daylight, the ranseur's quality, craftsmanship, and value became apparent. The blade was made of mithril, and the haft made of darkwood, and both blade and haft were decorated with exquisite markings.
Ted instructed the guardsmen to lock the Glassworks cellar doors, and to place a double guard on them. The party was surprised to find both Mayor Deverin and Father Zantus at the Glassworks, who said that they were discussing a discreet means of burying old Lonjiku without causing undue alarm with the townsfolk. Ted mentioned the double sets of books and said that when the catacombs were cleaned out, someone could go down and retrieve them safely.
The group went to check on Ameiko, and persuaded her not to leave the safety of the town without an escort. After that, everyone went to their rooms for a well-deserved rest.
No comments:
Post a Comment