Crystal Quest Aftermath, Part 26
7-14-06
In the Rope Trick room, Atheele is peeking through the window in the room, as he has been for the last four hours, and everything appears safe outside. Shortly after Kenlow wakes up, Atheele says, without turning around, "Good morning, Kenlow."
Shortly afterwards, the rest of the party wakes up, and they discuss their options for a bit. Sarai seems distracted, while Akili considers ways of preserving the Rope Trick room, just in case he has to cast Leave shortly after heading through the portal. Every way he can think of, though, requires leaving the rope behind, which he's not too keen on. He eventually discards the idea.
Sarai pulls out a magnifying glass, and peers at the rope trick window with it. Atheele attempts to pull a Sneak, and manages to evade Sarai's notice, leaving the Rope Trick room undetected.
Kenlow makes an Int check, and realizes Atheele is missing. He asks, "Hey, were's the elf?"
Sarai looks up. "I'm here!"
Kenlow rolls his eyes. "The other elf."
Sarai looks confused. "Who?"
With some exasperation, Kenlow says, "Atheele!"
Sarai looks nonplussed. "...Who?" Clearly, she's still too distracted. Kenlow gives up on her.
Akili finally shrugs, and leaves the room. Atheele and Oyhat follow, and the rest of the party eventually follow.
Atheele, out scouting around, hears a ruckus from the vicinity of the bridge. Looking around, he spots the rest of the party, then finishes his inspection of the room he's in, and rejoins the party, which moves towards the portal.
Atheele walks through first, followed by most of the rest of the party. Sarai hangs back behind everyone, with Akili, while she investigates the edges of the portal with her glass.
Then they go through.
They emerge into a dark, roughly hewn caveish room, with a doorway at the far end, and two bulwark-type bulges adjacent to the doorway. Atheele, having entered first to scout, is hit by a pair of arrows, that seem to have come out through a pair of arrow slits that he spots about seven feet up from the ground. Atheele quick-draws a pair of Greek Fire flasks, and hurls them at the arrow slits. He hears squeals of pain from the other side of the slits.
Pulling out his bow, Atheele dashes through the doorway, out of the range of the arrow slits, and finds some targets. He fires an arrow at the closest one, and runs back to join the party, hiding just underneath one of the arrow slits, and says, "There's guys through there!" pointing from where he came.
Andune moves up to the doorway, taking partial cover from the side of the doorway, and casts Ice Storm in the area beyond the doorway, which lays out the same target Atheele shot at.
A set of arrows whoosh by Oyhat's head; another single arrow hits Kenlow.
One of the enemies, a generic Black Hand guard, moves through the doorway to attack Andune.
Akili, who had a brief glimpse into the area behind the doorway, unleashes Wild Rain into that area, trying to keep Andune beyond its area of effect, although he's quite aware that it doesn't always work that way.
Off in the distance, a metal base pops up, and four tubes pointing in each cardinal direction, begin to spin, spitting out white pellets of some sort. However, the pellets aren't shot with any particular velocity, and no one immediately appears inconvenienced by them.
Kenlow strides up to one of the arrow slits, being eight feet tall, and peers in. Another guard is standing there with an arrow nocked; behind them is another guy who is rolling around on fire. Kenlow channels Fire and attempts to ignite the bow the guard is holding, then ducks away. An arrow then goes by Oyaht's head and disappears through the magical portal the party entered through.
Sarai casts Delayed Fireblast into the area already covered with those white pellets, also making sure to keep the range on the other side of the doorway.
All of the pellets explode, throwing some kind of splinters at everything that is also being incinerated by the fireblast. Everything in the room is promptly wiped out. In the meantime, the set of tubes are still spinning and spitting out more of those pellets.
The courtyard beyond the doorway begins to sprout foilage.
Atheele retreats from his position, and stands back near Akili to peer into the arrow slits, and spots another guard. He chucks a thunderstone into that slit, and totally forgets that Kenlow has super-sensitive hearing. Kenlow promptly goes deaf, and cruples into a heap, keening in his dog-pitch squeal, which is causing Akili some pain, but not as much as Kenlow. Meanwhile, another arrow goes through the portal as the guard that was holding the bow falls back.
Kenlow manages to deal with his ringing ears for the moment to expend more Air into the rightmost arrow tower for a lightning sphere effect, and handily takes out the remaining guards.
Akili pulls out his bowl of seeds of growing, and stands next to Atheele, intending to hand him something on the next turn.
Sarai moves over to the doorway to peer into the area where all of the plants are growing.
Akili then hands three of those seeds to Atheele, and invites him to chuck them into the arrow slit on the left. He makes a perfect throw with all three, and that area bursts with thick vines from every direction. Needless to say that the guards have likely been taken care of. Atheele gives Akili an impressed look, and asks, "Do you have any more of those?" Akili hands the fourth seed to Atheele, and gives Akili another Thunderstone in return, who pockets it. Kenlow notices, and cringes.
Andune approaches the doorway to inspect the courtyard, which now has pine trees growing in it, although the ceiling isn't quite tall enough. It is currently being well-supported by their trunks, although the ceiling may soon be so well supported that it will be lifted up.
Kenlow wanders into the forest, and considers marking his territory to piss off Matro (how appropriate), but decides against it. Sarai follows him in. The pipes have finished spewing their pellets, and has since disappeared.
Akili also enters the courtyard and digs through some of the foilage to look for any remaining white pellets to pocket one, but doesn't spot any.
The party eventually moves on. Atheele investigates the area for tracks, and thinks he might have found the tracks of an adolescent green dragon, but he's not sure.
Atheele investigates the tracks, and follows them until Kenlow is in the way. There is a bit of confused conversation between the two, until Akili points out to Atheele that he's pretty sure Kenlow is deaf, and judging from the timing, it was as a result of the Thunderstone Atheele threw earlier. Atheele looks... sheepish, and says, "Oops." Akili also advises Atheele to not tell Kenlow that. In the meantime, Kenlow moves on, saying that he's sniffing out what's ahead of them. Atheele follows, still going after the tracks.
One of the bone-cat things pops out of the wall that was lined with bones, and Atheele notices in time to not be caught surprised, or flat-footed.
Atheele quick-draws his bow, and starts pumping it full of arrows. He remembers that it is resistant to arrows, but it is his most damaging weapon. Unfortunately, every single shot bounces off, and the bone-cat golem swats Atheele for a pretty impressive 34 points of damage.
Atheele stows his bow, draws his bastard sword, and tries again. One of his shots connects, and does some minor damage.
Akili decides this is worthwhile, draws his wand of polymorph any object, and successfully turns the bone cat into a single bone. Kenlow pounces on it, and starts gnawing it.
Akili, however, is worried about the fact that it came out of the wall. "We're going to have to be on guard for these things." Sarai agrees, and investigates the wall it came out of to determine how it might have looked different from other walls.
Andune casts a spell to detect secret doors and passages, she senses another hidden bone cat, as well as a secret door, which she goes to investigate. Atheele notices it too, once Andune points it out.
Kenlow asks if anyone wants the bone from the cat. Sarai says, "Yeah, I'll take it." Akili warns them to snap it in half first. Kenlow shrugs, snaps it in half, and hands both bits to Sarai, who spellcrafts it. She is able to visualize the entire creature from the bone, and realizes that it reminds her of Kenlow, minus the wings and the wolf-ness.
Akili investigates the door, and determines that it sealed with the wizard lock spell, contingent upon having a certain magical item that is not in his possession. After determining that there is a larger spell in the wall of the door that seems to be holding it together, Akili shrugs, and ignites his plasma blade, and puts it into the door. The blade easily goes thorugh, so he simply cuts the door out. Atheele comes back with a bag of marbles, and after a moment, tosses one into the corridor. There is a metallic clank, which might either be the door opening, or... the impact of the marble against the mass of purple-black metal that Matro has been harvesting.
Sarai comes in to investigate the metal, and through a mightly planar knowledge check, she determines that it is a superb metal to work with. Furthermore, it is exceptionally aligned to magic. She finally determines that this fits right into portal and teleportation magic, and that if one was to move a world... you could make the engine out of this. She starts packing all of the metal into her Super Bag of Holding.
>>> Atheele says, "Do you think we can take all of this?" Sarai considers, and says, "Yeah, I can take a little." She investigates it a little, and her eyes light up, and she says, "Yeah, I'll take some." She investigates a bit more urgently, and her entire face brighens up, and she starts cramming it into her back. She obtains 3500 pounds of Matrite. <<<
Andune realizes that the bone cat has retreated into the wall, and is no longer detectable by any means. She considers this, then goes down the hall. Atheele follows her, and then so does everyone else.
They move down the corridor, and after a couple curves, it splits into T. Off to the right, it's caved in, and it appears that it was natural, and that it caved in about an hour ago. Sarai and Akili spellcraft it. Sarai doesn't see anything, but Akili senses an illusion spell of some sort. He goes up to touch it, and the wall seems to be there. He turns around to tell the party that there's a spell there, and realizes he can't hear himself. He retreats a little, and tries again with the same result. Returning to the party, he regains his voice, and realizes that there is a pretty strong silence spell in that area, that was deliberately set to mask the sound of the cave-in.
They shortly realize that they don't have a good way to dig through it, and they go down the other way. They soon come to another cave-in, and another silence spell.
"Well, this is a problem," Akili states unnecessarily. They discuss things, and realize that if there's any gaps in the stone, the Wind Walk spell of Oyhat's that turns them into gaseous forms will allow them to slip through.
They decide to do so, and Andune and Oyhat slip through, and since they have the advantage of Wind Walk's speed, they do some scouting ahead. She finds a passage all the way to the outdoors, and reveals what she saw: A world resembling the one they originally arrived on, with hills of bone, and paved roads lined with bone. There is a major road leading from the doorway of this cave to a giant palace, all made out of Matrite. To either side of the palace are large reptillian statues, resembling dragons. Also, way off on one side is a break in the perpetual stormy clouds in the sky, with a single pillar of light shining on a patch of grass, with a tree growing there.
Andune returns and attempts to investigate the path in the other direction, but it is too closed off to slip through. They shift back to their solid forms, and describe what they saw.
The game is paused here.