[Game Thread] II. Adventures "Up the River"

[Krimchee]

"Damnit Dan, the man said to leave well enough alone in these ruins," Silas grumbled. He knew that nothing he said was likely to change Dan's mind about the cellar, especially if he had a new spell to show off. And anyway, Silaswas kind of curious himself. He was definitely not chicken. Hadn't he just killed a man to save a girls life, AND a bloody crawler? Chicken my arse, he thought.

"Lead on, tough guy. But let's be careful eh? I wouldn't want you to get eaten by a plant or anything." Silas drew his sword and followed Dan down the steps.

Perception Check Perception Dice Roll: 1d20+6 (3)+6 Total = 9

[mountainbound]

Dan merely grunts at the mention of almost becoming plant food. He topples through the broken window opening of the 'church' and then, together, the two young men approach the overgrown opening inside. As Silas cuts away a few of the vines shrouding the yawning hole, Dan takes a deep breath and then begins a low chant, which ends with a shrill command: "Shirak!" At once, the end of Dan's plain wooden staff glows with a comforting light. He lowers it near the opening and stairs can be seen. "Shall we?"

Silas leading the way, Dan walks behind the ranger on shaky legs. They were still quite numb -- more than he let on -- but the opportunity to explore was too much of a temptation. The steps come to a landing about 12' below, and then circle down a second flight. The stones were well-shaped, masterfully even, leading down and down. "I expected a cellar..." Dan says, and there is just a hint of trepidation in his voice. But this was no shallow cellar. Runes line the walls, illuminated by Dan's staff, at every landing. The boys don't pause to consider them -- drawn downward by an insatiable curiosity over where they lead. A few times Silas stops, hearing a rustle, but it's only dry leaves blown down the long stair years ago.

Finally they reach the bottom, and find the twisted remnants of metal door seemingly blown from its hinges. Inspecting the jaggedly blasted door, Dan says, "This isn't iron, or steel. Look, it's not rusted, but it seems like it shatters like crystal... it's definitely metal... glass-metal. Weird."

Beyond the door is a vast room full of wreckage. Pipes, knobs, levers, huge crocks and rods of every shape and size poke from the walls. There is a large circle in the middle of it all, and on the nearby wall is the same inscription: "'To speak upon the light, remember the Creator of Life when you look upon the sun in darkness.'" Dan reads it in a hushed voice, a tad more reverently this time. Here in the realm of the Ichvaali, with only his flimsy understanding of magic keeping the oppressive darkness at bay, the wizard isn't so brash. Above the inscription is an enormous and fanciful carving of the sun, radiating lines of power that seem to undulate in the stone.

"What do you think it's for?" he asks Silas, indicating everything in one broad gesture.

DM's Note Perception 9: The desolation of the door reminds you suddenly of the lightning-blasted tree where you placed the canoe. Please roll an unmodified d20 with your next post.

[Krimchee]

Silas traced the undulating lines with his finger. "I'm not sure, he replied, thoughtful. He looked back over at the door. "The way this door is broken reminds me of the lighning blasted tree back by the canoe. What do you think? Was the door blasted inward, or outward?" Silas moves to examine the door more carefully, looking for signs of what happened here. Was the wreckage in the room related to what happened to the door?

Unmodified roll Dice Roll: 1d20= 8

[mountainbound]

Dan checks out the strange, shattered metal of the door. "Looks inward to me. Somebody blasted their way in. Somebody the Ichvaal didn't want. Explosives would have collapsed the entire stair... this had to have been magic. Did Isiah mention them having any enemies?" Silas's mention of the tree by the river doesn't ring a bell for Dan. The wizard probably hadn't noticed the scorched willow, his mind on wine instead.

Inside the room, Silas can feel a curious power emanating. A high buzz pulses just beyond hearing, and every so often, a faint crackle can be heard echoing from the large metal tubes sticking out of the walls. Despite its wreckage, the room has an expectant feeling, like an animal awake and alert, but resting with its eyes closed, or a vast mechanism standing at the ready. If the riddle could be cracked, he's certain the secrets of the corridor might be revealed.

DM's Note Unmodified check was for Perception (8+6=14): See description.

[Krimchee]

The expectant feeling had Silas on edge. "Expectant," he muttered, "but why?" With a sudden rash and unexpected impulse, Silas reached up to pull one of the levers nearest the sun. He watched his dirt lined fingernails grasp the lever and pull, almost as if from a distance, as if it were someone else's hand and not his.

[mountainbound]

As Silas pulls, Dan stands in the middle of the circle on the floor, looking at the sun... thinking about the sun. And then, whether it was triggered by the soundless lever or the wizard's thought, the pattern below the boys' feet flashes white, and then a brilliant ruby. Dan looks at Silas in astonishment. There they stand, frozen for a moment, staring at each other.

Then they watch the other fall to the floor, yet, neither has fallen. A bubble seems to encase the two friends, eagerly enveloping them within itself, as though it had an intelligence of its own, and was ever so ready to make contact with someone once again. Silas sees Dan's form crumple, and then looks down to see his own body lying on the floor beside the pulled lever. Arcs of light spring from the various pipes and vents lining the walls, jumping crazily and meeting with the bubble -- the bubble that somehow contains both Silas and Dan's essences.

In another instant, the friends are rocketed through a thousand feet of dirt and stone and are once again on the surface. In another moment, they're a thousand feet above the trees, looking down with curious detachment, safely disembodied within the strange bubble of the Ichvaali. Neither can speak, only look. The sky to the west is purple with the last of the sunset, and the myriad stars blanket the sky above. Silas looks toward the sunset, and in a flash, the bubble begins racing over forest and hill, river and lake, climbing thousands of feet more into the sky, sailing after the sun. It takes only a few breaths, if the two boys had lungs to breathe with, and quickly they descend, directly down toward a broken pillar surrounded by oaks grotesque with age. It's another Ichvaali sacred area, but being so far from Lehman's Hollow, neither of the young men have ever seen or even heard of it. Then once again the bubble races into the air, zipping westward at breakneck speed -- and miraculously, the sun rises again before their eyes. In the sky around you, strange and bizarre shapes soar past. Shimmering, ungainly forms of enormous size, as well as white streaks of condensed power. The heavens are filled with these... spiritual beings, though with your mortal eyes, you never imagined it could be so. But perhaps you're seeing through the eyes of an Ichvaali now.

The bubble takes you to another old ruins, this one larger, a collection of buildings near a river. But it's deserted like all the others, and the bubble takes off again... and again... and again. So many times it bounces high into the night -- or day -- sky that neither Dan nor Silas can ever recount the number of places they visited. But both remember the last: It seems somewhere within the dense wilderness to the west, since in this place the sun is just setting. The bubble races down toward a large stone building with an in-tact dome roof, and there are other graceful buildings as well. They're coated with bright paint, seemingly well kept, and showing the designs of beasts and beautiful runes -- Ichvaali once again.

But this time the boys see something else as well. A man lays against a cracked fir tree, bleeding his life away. Around him are the corpses of several small black creatures -- with horns as long as their arms. The warrior looks up, and his face is instantly recognizable. It's Isaiah. But no, though he looks almost the same as the bearded man with the mountain lion who left your camp just a few hours ago, it can't be. This man has a patch over his left eye, and his hair is shorter. He looks up, wide eyed, and seems to see the bubble. He raises a bloody hand -- the other clutching a deep wound in his side -- and calls something out to you. Protected by the Ichvaali bubble, you can't hear his plea though. In another moment, the enchantment rockets you up, up, up and away from the domed building and the dying man.

You don't really remember returning to the room with the lever, but you wake up lethargic and thirsty. The only light is the ruddy glow of the runes upon the floor. By the taste in your mouth, you must have been out for quite a while. Dan moans groggily, rubbing his eyes. There is fear and wonder in his tone: "What just happened? Was that... Isaiah?"

DM's Note Despite being groggy from the experience, you have regained full HP.

[Krimchee]

Silas woke up, groggily scratching his head and running a tongue over dry, parched lips. It took him a moment to register Dan's words. "Isaiah".....he said, looking around the room, taking in the glow from the runes. The dream, was it a dream? starting to register in fractured pieces in his brain. "Isaiah", he said again, more firmly this time. His throat was dry, and he had to focus to get it to work properly. Another piece of the dream flashed through his head. It registered with a flash. The tree. Fear and urgency flashed through him.He looked at Dan. "Dan, the tree! That was Isaiah there. We've got to..."

Not even waiting for Dan, Silas dashed out of the room and up the steps, dimly noting how wobbly his steps were. The tree.....Isaiah. He instinctively checked to make sure his blade was there, one hand securing the hilt so the blade didn't flap off his thigh. The tree, Silas thought. He had to get to the tree.

[mountainbound]

Silas begins running up the long, dark stairs leading back up from the Ichvaali chamber buried so far underground. Behind him, Dan struggles to his feet, hastily whispering his incantation to create light, and then shouts after his friend. "Silas! Wait! I... we don't know that it was really Isaiah! We don't know if it was a dream or... Wait!" But Silas is hellbent on getting to the tree, or at any rate, getting out of the strange Ichvaali temple.

With Dan, puffing hard and providing some light behind him, Silas races up the stairs and soon meets with a chill wind. Indeed, rather than darkness he expects, the ranger can see daylight ahead. And in a few more steps... the stairs crunch under his feet.

"Snow!" Dan gasps, as Silas stops short at the top of the opening. Indeed, a pristine layer of snow several inches deep blankets the area around the collapsed door leading underground. The thick brambles that snagged the boys just... what, a few hours ago?... are buried under the snow.

Turning to Dan, it's Silas' turn to gasp. The wizard is sporting a beard now, not terribly long, but scraggly and altogether unbecoming. Touching his own face, Silas feels a similar growth.

"How... how long were we asleep for?" Dan ventures. It was high summer -- or should be, at least. He puts his hand over his eyes to gaze up at the sun, which is hanging much lower in the sky than it had yesterday.

[Krimchee]

"Blood and bloody ashes!" Silas swore, as he watched a little swirl of snow drift into the doorway on a tiny gust of wind. Silas squinted, the slanted winter sunlight burned his eyes as it blazed off the pristine snow. He scratched at his beard. The bloodly thing itched like it had fleas. It bloody well might for all I flaming know, he thought irritibly. He looked at Dan, ignoring his question. "How is this possible? It was flaming well the middle of summer a few minutes ago!" Silas scratched at his beard again, reminding him full well that more than a few minutes had passed.

A thought occured to him. He spoke before he even realized what he was saying. "What we saw....with Isaiah. He was wearing a patch. Was that the future then? Or is it now past and we've slept through it?

As Silas spoke, the parched skin on his top lip streched, and cracked. The saltiness of the thin trickle of blood that resulted reminded him of his thirst, and he suspected, hunger, once his stomach unknotted anyway. Ever the pragmatist, Silas began to think of making camp, stamping down his doubts and trepidations for later. He grabbed a handful of snow and took a small mouthful. Inside his mouth the snow compacted into a snowball as he worked it with his tongue and it melted. He licked his lips, grateful for the moisture. "Dan, if this IS winter, we need to think about making a camp. We can probably shelter down here for a day or two until we figure out what to do. But we need to take care of this now. This kind of weather can kill a man in a single night if he's not prepared. Silas pondered a minute, staring out into the blinding light. "You check our supplies. I'm going to go scout around for a few minutes. With any luck maybe I can get us some kind of small game along the way. If these beards are any indication, we're like to be hungry soon.

Wrapping his cloak around him, Silas exited the cave, the snow crunching squeekily under his weight. He stopped a few paces out, squinting, to string his bow.

Perception and Survival Check Perception Dice Roll: 1d20+6 (13)+6 Total = 19 Survival Dice Roll: 1d20+6 (10)+6

[mountainbound]

In a daze, Dan stumbles down the path from the Ichvaali structures atop the hill. The few inches of snow soak through his thin leather boots in seconds, and the wizard is miserable in exactly as much time. But his spirits brighten when he spied Geoff's old canoe sitting exactly where the boys left it, up above the roaring Yackawanna under the lightning-blasted willow. Beneath the snow, it's covered in what seems like ages worth of fallen leaves. The brown leaves blanket it so deeply that Dan has to grab several wet armfulls up of them in order to reach the grimy bottom of the vessel. And there he finds their bags, riddled with holes from mice and forest creatures, stiff with frost and neglect, their rations long since devoured by enterprising vermin. "F***!!!" very accurately sums up his reaction to the situation.

The word echoes through the pristine forest, causing crows to complain and smaller birds to take flight at the sudden outburst. A quail hidden in a thicket is similarly spooked, and launches into the air, just feet in front of Silas. In mid-wince at the wizard’s shout, the ranger’s senses take over. He draws and releases his bow quicker than thought. In an instant, a plump pheasant lies fluttering in the snow, its breast pierced by an arrow slick with blood.

Some time later the friends meet back at Isaiah’s camp – or rather, the rough circle of stones covered with snow. The warmth of the strange, talking fire is now long-dead memory. Silas is already ripping the feathers from the quail when Dan slogs back to the top of the hill, clutching his arms and shivering. “Bloody mice ate all our food, f***ing devoured my only pack! Yours too! The only good thing is that Dad’s wine is still in tact.” He sighs, “But our leather mugs are all rotted. Bloody hell, Silas, what the hell happened?”

The wizard looks on as Silas clears the snow from Isahas fire pit. Forgetting his mystification as the wind whips snow in a whirlwind among the ruins, he says, “You… you think you can get a fire started? I’m freezing.”

Once the fire is lit, Dan warms his hand, still thinking about the wine. "I say we head to Archeebald. The centipede plates are still there as well -- we'll need 'em now to buy some bloody cloaks."

DM's Note Perception 19: Silas is quite certain that it’s not a trick… it’s truly winter, though he has no explanation for it. He doesn’t hear or sense anything out of the ordinary at the moment, though he is aware that it’s only an hour shy of dusk (3:30pm). He would guess by the slant of the sun that its about a week before or after the winter solstice. The boys set out when it was the equivalent of July, so needless to say, they are woefully ill equipped for winter. You’re half a day from Archeebald, and a full day from Lehman’s Hollow, via the river.

[Krimchee]

Sitting by the crackling fire, Silas worked on the pheasant he caught for dinner. The routine act of cleaning the kill and preparing it for the fire soothed his reeling mind. It was good to just focus on a mundane task like this, to let the dust settle in his mind. Once the dust cleared, Silas was usually better able to assess a problem and choose a course of action. So Silas let his hands work, intent on the task while Dan's words washed over him.

After dinner, Silas packed some snow into a cookpot and set it on the fire to melt. Warm water to drink was better than snow. "I think going to Archeebald is a good idea. But we'll never make it tonight. I think our best best is to camp here tonight and set out at first light. Let's gather enough wood to keep this fire blazing tonight. We'll take turns on watch. This fire is the only way we'll make it through the night I think."

[mountainbound]

Dan helps Silas gather wood, trudging through the forest in his soaked boots. The wizard is eager to take off the sodden equipment and let it steam by the fire as the stars burn into light upon the evening sky. One thing was certain, his legs were no longer numb from the strangle-vine from yesterday.

While Silas was skilled in woodlore, Dan knew a thing or two about the mysteries of the world. Not much, but his mother used to tell of the rumors of what the early settlers found when they came to the new world. "Did you know that there were lots of other sites like this?" he asks Silas. "Back, 40 years ago, when our people came to this continent... there were a lot of places like the Pillars, and even this place, scattered around. But the settlers knocked them down to use the stone. My mom told me that some of the ship-sorceresses had spells that allowed them to read the carvings on the stone -- spells just like the one I used."

He's silent for a while, taking out his pipe and running his dagger along the inside of the bowl to clean it. "I'd say we stumbled on some powerful magic. The Ichvaali -- whoever they were -- had a lot of magic. They had to have been really powerful to build things like this... to send us flying all over the world, and then put us to sleep for God-knows how long." He shakes his head. "I wonder what really happened to them..."

Dan announces he'll take second watch, and is soon nodding with his head toward the fire, a meager blanket clutched about him. "Can't wait to get to Archeebald... sell those crawler plates... get some food... beer..." and he's asleep.

Soon Dan's snores and the crackle of the fire are Silas' only distractions. The voice he heard by the river is on the ranger's mind, and memory of the eyes glaring at him back in the woods, and the black-horned figures he saw scattered around Isaiah... Surrounded by the ruins of a vanished civilization, they were uncomfortable thoughts on a bitter night.

DM's Note The night passes uneventfully.

[Krimchee]

Dan woke Silas in the early hours of morning. Silas got up, his clothes stiff with frost on the side of him that faced away from the fire. He was parched, and the heavy smell of woodsmoke emanating from his clothes made him almost nauseaus. The night had been miserable, the truth be told. Silas had laid down some pine bows in an effort to keep his body off the cold ground, but it had been anything but comfortable.

Silas stood and stretched, trying unsuccessfully to work out a kink in his neck. He was not looking forward to the day. But he knew that the only way to end this misery was to get moving, and get to Archeebald. Best get to it then.

Silas was in a foul mood as he wordlessly began breaking down what little camp they had. Most of his efforts consisited of dousing the fire with snow. Not that it was likely to go anywhere in this gods-forsaken weather. To Dan's wish of "good morning", Silas merely grunted. He just wanted to get on the road, er lake, or river, or whatever you call the fool thing. With my bloody luck I'm like to fall straight in the flaming thing, he thought grumpily. At least it'll be a quick end to this misery and we can get on with it.

Once they had their meger possesions together and the fire safely (or safely enough) doused, Silas croaked, more than said, "let's get on with it then," and began trudging toward the river, his misery wrapped around him like a cloak.

[mountainbound]

The two friends spend the night shivering by the light of the fire. During the evening, the stars were swept away by clouds. By the first gray light of morning, the wind was whipping snow over the ruins atop the hill. Dan didn’t need to kick Silas to wake him, the ranger barely slept, and was more than ready to get moving when the sky began to lighten. “Bugger this place,” Dan says glumly. “Let’s get to Archeebald. We might be there in time for lunch. Kris Mayday said there are two inns in town, and one of them has a decent lamb stew.”

And so they take their ragged packs and make the trek back down to Geoff’s canoe. The wine is mercifully still there, and Silas is able to inspect the vessel quickly, announcing it looked fit to travel.

The only problem was that, in the summer, the river was wide and warm; but in the winter, it was crusted with ice along the edges, and the water was lower, with rocks much closer to the surface. It would not be an easy last leg to their trip – the boys’ gloveless hands, hatless heads, and cloakless backs were likely to make the next few hours on the frozen river a real misery.

After a thorough drenching in the river, cracking through the ice to get into the center current, both Dan and Silas sit grim and shivering, each paddling to have something to keep the blood pumping. The time goes by surprisingly quickly, and Silas, sitting at the front of the canoe, is first to see a stone bridge spanning the river in the distance: the Archeebald bridge!

With their faces red and chapped from the blowing snow, the boys redouble their efforts to paddle hard toward the end of their journey. But as they near the bridge, perhaps 40’ away from it, Dan points up at the underside of the stone. “What’s that!?”

Silas quickly sees it too: On the right bank, under the cover of the stone bridge there is movement. Someone is squatting next to a big, white bag. Then both boys realize something is wrong. They notice a pale hand is poking out of the bag, and then the squatting figure turns to gaze at them as they float past. Its body is akin to a man’s, but its arms are stunted and deformed. And its head… Dan wretches audibly at the sight. Instead of a man’s face, the thing has the head of a centipede swaying atop a scaly, foot-long neck, with great bulbous eyes and large mandibles. Above the howling snow, the friends can hear the creature’s jaws hiss and clack in anticipation of its meal.

DM's Note Perception or other checks might reveal more. The canoe is currently directly under the span of the bridge, which is about 15' high. In another round, you'll be 20' beyond the bridge, floating on toward Archeebald. You'll have to figure out how to stop the canoe if you want to linger. The creature is on the right bank, beneath the bridge. It sees you, but seems more interested in what's in its "bag."

[Krimchee]

Dwelling on his own frozen misery, all Silas' attention was focused on the bone-deep pain in his hands from where he gripped the oars. His knuckles felt like they might explode with the cold. His bones hurt.Some dim part of his mind knew that the pain was a good thing, and that once it fled he would truely need to worry. Deep in his misery though, the thought brought him no comfort at all. He simply tried to row gently, so as not to splash onto his bare skin. He'd made that mistake earlier, and the cold water on his tender skin hurt like fire. The irony of that was not lost on him. If he thought he could get away with it, he'd have started a fire right in the middle of the ruddy canoe. It's starting to sound like a fine idea.

Silas looked up at the sound of Dan's voice, his eyes looking to where Dan pointed. "What the...." His mind going numb for a second, a kind of delay while his brain processed an image of what it knew should not be. "What the eff?..... But what his mind thought on some primal level was Abomination! Before Silas even knew really what he was doing he'd set his oar in the canoe and was fumbling with fingers that didn't seem to work so well to knock an arrow. He drew, the tension from the strain on his frozen knuckles eliciting a groan of pain, and released. The bowstring leaving the tips of his fingers burned as if it'd taken all the skin off with it. He looked to his fingers to check even before he looked to see what became of his shot.

Attack Attack Dice Roll: 1d20+4 (10)+4 Total = 14