Good morning,
Yes we're gaming tonight!
You set off from the Spider Temple to “location 9”, choosing a roundabout trip staying outside of Good Toad Food and the “chaos jungle” of location 10. That morning, Boamund spotted a pit-trap ahead of him and noticed that it seemed to have already been sprung. He peered in and saw a Monster-Spider impaled atop a tree-root-spike. You were unsure if it was alive but figured either way it posed no threat and you should move on, so you did; leaving the swampy-jungly area into the drier, blasted interior zone of Good Toad Food's location 9. And soon again the mists revealed the hulking form of the ruin, so you skirted around the eastern side, seeing no further entrances, and came to the northern side where a clean cobbled path led through two old bronze portcullises into a misty covered courtyard.
Bog threw a Might spell and lifted one portcullis high, and Miguel blocked it temporarily open with some rocks stuck in the vertical grooves that the portcullis slid along. But two shimmering spiritual orbs had appeared, again, and began casting Avert spells. Bog gave up on opening the second portcullis so Fraud and Boamund worked together to do it, and you slipped into the courtyard. For the most part it was bare dirt overlying ancient cobblestones, but tall, rank weeds grew up in the corners. Thousands of beetle shells lay scattered on the floors extending from the entrance to the room's centre. In the centre of the room were old, corroding, overturned tables of bronze and wood. At the north end was the a large gatehouse to the outside, whence you'd entered. There was a worn, cracked wooden door on either side of this gateway; each loose on its hinges. Opposite the gatehouse was a pair of huge double doors made of iron. The eastern door displayed fine workmanship on its slightly tarnished bronze, depicting a great walled city on an island, with a titanic statue standing in the midst of its many tall towers. (Bog later recognized that as Zazistor, the Clanking City of distant Dragon Pass/Kethaela in his time and, in ruined state, yours).
Miguel moved a table to block the portcullis open but then a bubbling sheet of hungry, glowing green ooze slid from under the western doorway and went after Bog- he dodged behind Boamund, then Boamund behind him, and Fraud hit it with a Curse Chaos spell (which turned out to have no effect?!), then it grabbed Bog and began digesting his right leg. It was an awful fight as those anti-magic spirits kept blocking your spells, causing you to burn much mana. Finally, with a combination of Disrupts, Darkstrikes and Bog's Frost-flail (while Miguel kept Bog alive with Heals), you froze it to death and it shattered. You investigated the guardrooms to either side of the gates and found corroded remnants of the portcullis winches and a terrible pickled-sweet smell (from the pseudo-gorp thing) but nothing else.
So you went to the eastern door with carvings. Beyond there lay a narrow stone passage that led to a northern doorway into an open, misty courtyard. This part of the complex was a newer structure, generally 3m tall, with thinner stone walls that have fractured heavily. Boamund opened the corroded bronze door and noticed that the dense mists had a bitter metallic reek to them. A pathway of cobblestones led across the courtyard between the two heavily corroded bronze doors. Around the pathway, the ground was more bare except where yawning cavities opened up; each about 1-2m in irregular diameter and covered by robust but corroded bronze meshwork. You did not like the dark mists that gathered around those vents. But worse yet, as Boamund entered the courtyard with the rest of you following, three demonic winged entities made of acrid steam congealed in mid-air and assaulted him and you with steam-breath and scalding talons. Fortunately they were weak enough and only caused some burns from their breath, and Fraud whipped out the Foestopper fan and conjured a powerful gust (critical usage!) that blasted them all screaming away and cleared the courtyard of mists temporarily.
You crossed and forced the other door open. A screeching sound like tortured wailing was audible from outside. It was a large chamber of younger (still 2nd Age) construction; like much of this eastern wing of the ruin; and with thinner walls than most of the rest of the complex to the southwest. Six stone tables, heavily inscribed with many runes, had squat stone benches perched before them in the room's centre. Six mechanical undead figures in scholar robes were sitting at the stone tables, staring at texts inscribed on bronze scrolls. Their hands were mechamagical implants ending in sharp claws for inscribing the bronze scrolls, which they were scratching at, producing the terrible shrieks heard outside. Bog quailed at them and turned away, and they stood up shrieking hungrily at you, approaching-but Boamund invoked the power of Karkovoch's shield and kept them at bay.
Fraud checked out the scrolls the things had been scratching at– The scrolls read: 1. “We will catalogue, categorise and comprehend everything in the world so that Zistor can break it down and restructure the world along more perfect schematics. The work is not yet done. ” Repeated three times then scratched out. (And rewritten later) 2. “This catalogue is out of date.” Repeated endlessly. 3. The Hunger/Undeath rune repeated endlessly. 4. “Zistor prays to his father Zazistor. We write to Zistor in prayer but there is no answer.” Repeated many times. 5. “The devices urgently need repairs. This is resupply request number 94,372,118,004,386.” (numbers continually scratched out then revised) 6. “CHAOS IS HERE.” repeated endlessly. Hmm.
You crossed the room to an eastern door, opened it and left, with Boamund keeping the ghoul-things away with his shield. The door opened into a north-south passage, again very narrow, and the southern end had a floor collapsed into a flooded sewer-like basement. This corridor was narrow, plastered stone, and roofed by an arched ceiling. Heavy wooden beams formed arches every 3m. The collapse extended for 20m south. At the end, 5m above the water line was a door set in the end of the passage. The water was moving as fast as a man can run, and was about knee deep. Debris floated northwards and disappeared through a narrow opening under the collapsed edge of the corridor on your end. The air was foul and smelled of chemicals.
You turned back north, and opened a door on the west side into a long room that was narrow and claustrophobic; more like a long, wide corridor than a proper chamber, and crowded with furniture. Its length was dominated by old bronze benches, once elaborately carved but now worn by the centuries. Above those benches the walls supported old bronze shelves, cluttered with small pieces of metal and other materials, and small tools or other implements of unclear purpose; there was a side alcove packed with more shelves and stuff. At the benches sat six mechanical zombie-things, busy at work and not noticing you. The first zombie (closest to door) pre-assembled a device and handed it to the next, that zombie added more pieces and fine-tuned it, and then the third zombie paused as if confused, then disassembled it all and returns it to the first zombie. You closed the door and headed back north up the passage; they did not accost you.
Finally, you came to another eastern door from the passage, which then dead-ended to the north. The square chamber had but a single entrance via a bronze door inscribed with marred but still identifiable Purification rune of Zistor, which Bog recognized. The chamber was ringed by teetering old bronze shelving units, full of metallic implements. The centre of the room held a great round iron table strewn with more implements, which outwardly seemed like junk. At the back of the room behind the table was a Mummy Zzaburi festooned with mechamagical implants, who was gesticulating wildly in attempts to command its underlings to get their endless work done. Five mechaskeleton workers, coated in bronze veneer and with right hands ending in tools, worked on repairing broken mechamagical devices at the table. You decided to take them down and so you charged in– the mechamummy's eyes blazed with fury and it ordered its workers to “purify the factory of these flaws ”. It did not go well for you! The skeletons were not strong but they kept you busy while the Zzaburi conjured a protection magic for itself, then a Smother spell that caused all but Boamund to collapse helplessly, choking. Boamund one by one cut the heads off the skeletons, finding that his sword's Cold rune magic made short work of them, and then charged the mummy. But they were evenly matched and while they traded blows for a good minute, his friends all stopped breathing. He finally managed to stave in the mummy's head with his sword after tripping it, and was relieved to find the rest of you barely clinging to life (party hero pts = 0 to save Bog! Everyone else used their last Luck pts too!). So he barricaded the door, soon hearing the mecha-ghouls clawing at it, and settled down on guard while his asphyxiated comrades recovered. He noticed some interesting mechanical implements in the room in the meantime: some valuable bronze and other metal bits; a mechamagical hand implant; a mechamagical self-writing ink quill that transcribes speech; a mechamagical handsaw that sprouts bracing legs and saws away once it is started; and maybe more. The room was littered with such junk.
© Copyright - 2000-2024 - John Hutchinson, Tim Evans, Pete Nash, Colin Driver and Gordon Alford