22nd of Eleint (still), 1372
North of Adzo, ruins of Zhougal Keep
Attending: All
So, like I said - CLIFFHANGER! (In case you’re reading this slightly later than immediately-after-the-last-recap, you should probably read this first.) “We are the last, lost,” chants the misty form in the center. “We will welcome you in the end.”
“Roll initiative, homes,” was the best thing we could come up with on only seven days notice. Stupid deadlines! Unfortunately, the early goings made it look like we should have been less ast-fay with the initiative-ay. You see, a party bearing no magical weapons is likely to have difficulty hitting the incorporeal guy who’s tossing out CON damage like he’s a Mardi Gras float captain and we’re a nude… oh hell, you get the idea, we were clearly going to get our asses handed to us. The company had minimal damage sources at its disposal: Lu Tse could generate fire on his hands thanks to his newly-discovered abilities, but that only worked once without disengaging to recover; Grapthar had a couple expenditures of his positive energy ability left, which were mild but useful; oh, and Seydlitz MacGuffin turned out to have magic powers! With a shout of some incomprehensible tongue, fire shot from his hands and landed on the shadow-y dude. Unfortunately, it was only somewhat effective, and we were all soon left with no useful resources and an angry shado- oh fine, Rahil eventually figured out he was a wraith.
Another day, another door, another death?
Fortunately, Anniel gave up on her bow and the mace she’d scrounged up and went rummaging through the rest of the room. “Surely Fate, that bald, 6′3″ god of chance and destiny, wouldn’t just put us in here to die” she thought. Next to an overturned giant chair (or throne, perhaps?) she comes across an old backpack and a large battleaxe made entirely of metal. It is etched with the writings of a tongue she does not know, and when she hefted it she heard a gruff voice grunt approvingly, although there’s no one else around. “Nobody bothers to write on a crappy weapon,” she thought before wheeling about and charging the wraith. One mighty swing (and one max-damage roll) later, the wraith is rent and destroyed, leaving a scorched mark on the paving stones. Relief abounds. The axe, being of dwarven make, didn’t actually hold any interest to Anniel, who soon passed it over to Grapthar; when he grasped it, he heard the same gruff laughter. “That’s a female!” he exclaimed. Examining the weapon, he found a single comprehensible word, likely the name of the blade - Jorthundaul.
We scouted out the rest of the tower, finding it to be a hollow shell with a catwalk that leads to doors on the top story (probably lining up with the library and the battlement we spent time in last week) that the company just wasn’t interested in at the moment. Assessing the situation, it boiled down like so: either standing outdoors when dawn broke would safeguard the company, or it wouldn’t. That solution existed as a fallback plan and nothing could be done to alter the results. In the meantime, the options were to search for another solution (probably escape from the keep) or don’t search (because of the likely danger) and hole up and wait for the dawn. Seeing as how we get together to roleplay fantasy adventures and not, say, camping, you can guess which option we chose.
Moving forward meant going out the set of double doors oppposite the ones we came in from - the keep is in a rough “U” configuration and, having come down one side and into the middle, we were going to move up the other end. The first room we encounter is laid out essentially like the one fronting the doors on the other side, complete with skeletons that look ready to leap up yet again to rend us. Strangely enough, these skeletons stay put when we stepped in. Not trusting the dead buggers for a moment, Lu Tse proceeded to kick the skeletons apart and hide their weapons in the ruined furniture. The company quickly moved on to the next room, which contained, in no particular order: the decayed remains of an armory, completely with dozens of useless weapons (although Lu Tse upgraded his useless daggers to a useless longsword); a magic set of nunchaku which, when Lu Tse grasped them, induced the vision of a woman’s face who whispered his name (um, w00t!); and a trap in the floor which ran a gigantic serrated sword up Grapthar’s gullet, nearly butterflying him. Still, he survived the experience, and whatever doesn’t kill you makes you easier to cook evenly.
O HAI! We can haz ur flesh?
Another day, another door. Listening to it gave us a hint, but the chittering of skeletons, we had learned in the keep, still left a lot of possibilities. Rat skeletons? People skeletons? Gopher skeletons? Still, it’s not like we thought there wasn’t going to be any danger when we set out, and so Grapthar opened the door. Sure enough, he saw skeletons wandering in the room; skeletons that turned to look at him. It seemed as though he might have an opportunity to close the door before they made it to him, but he had a new, dwarf-y axe that wasn’t going to try itself out.
FIGHT! In one of our less-smart tactical moves, despite having the drop on the skelys we decided to hold until they moved, and move they did, swarming into the room. Our fool-proof response (take full attacks, whap the shit out of them!) suffered a minor setback when we all missed completely. From there, it’s a pitched battle for a couple of rounds while they get a few licks in while we thin their numbers. Then the balance tips and we’re able to finish them up. Our reward? Stairs up! That’s never been a bad idea - last time we got the key we needed, and it only cost us 6 points of Charisma.
This time, we quickly realized that we were ascending into fire, ’cause we’re super-observant. Fortunately we weren’t walking into the fire, we simply walked into a room in which there was a fire. A large fire. Which, in point of fact, was a person. With a gem in its head. So yeah, even by the really abnormal standards of the last 10 hours, this was weird. The fire guy spoke to us, and a lot of it wasn’t easy to comprehend, but between what he told us directly and what we pieced together from our shared dreams finally revealed a large part of the puzzle.
The keep (called Zhughal, we think) had been home, long ago, to people called “Binders,” who apparently bound beings from other planes in order to power great works. Shockingly, something went wrong with this plan at some point and a let’s-call-it-a-demon either got loose or was in danger of getting loose. Their last attempt at locking the thing back down “worked,” but instead of pleasantly hiding the baddy away it seems like it dragged part of the keep into the prison. In any event, the keep is now (as we’d seen) all f’ed up. “I had no choice. I paid it gladly. It must not escape.” So said the fiery guy. “You must leave.” “That’s right!” we all shouted. “But,” added Lu Tse, “we don’t know how, and in trying to escape we might err and release the demon.” “That’s right!” agreed the company. After a long, long moment we heard the distant *clank* of what had to be the front gates opening for us. Without another word we h-a-u-l-e-d–a-s-s to get there before anybody changed their mind. Sure enough, the gate was cracked, and out we scootched.
Continued tomorrow, in part two - “Wait. What?”
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