Aethra Chatoyant [Magic-User 1 – apprentice of a famous master / elf-sister]; Ayleton the Cat [Familiar 1 – animal familiar / ship cat of unknown port]; Oland [Rogue 1 – Spy / personal keyword not yet defined]; Brömm [Dwarf 1 – Dwarf-raised / Bonded Clockwork Guilds-dwarf]
The quartet discuss the various advantages of the customs
house stairs vs. the sward ward gate, ultimately deciding to retrace their
steps. Returning to the ballroom they find the doo they had spiked shut to the
east had been hammered open from the other side, restoring passage into and out
of these rooms. Oland pocketed the spikes and they moved east. The space
contains a dozen or so fire beetles who immediately scatter – some running in
circles, some back past the adventurers, some to through the open door and then
turning west. As expected from the clerk’s journal this was the Ramp Room,
dominated with a circular ramp that would lead to the surface were it not for
the rubble up top. A closed door lies to the south, an open one to the north,
but no passage further east to the hoped for East Storage Room that is supposed
to have the lift down to the vault.
A cautious 10 minutes allows Brömm to confirm that the ramp
and room are solid, for Ayleton to listen and sniff at the south door and hear
nothing but smell canal water, and for Oland and Aethra to explore north, where
the room past contains broken-to-destroyed crates, two archways leading west
(behind the ballroom) and east (to parts unknown) and the door to the room
holds anti-water wards. Before the pair can explore further Oland hears
something large approaching from the west and the group hunkers down in the
ramp room with their lantern closed.
A large male figure, stoop shouldered but with a powerful
build in a hooded cloak covering a silver facemask, holding an amorpha in one
hand and an oil-bowl lamp the other, enters the room of broken crates, drops to
one knee before the east archway, places his amorpha on the ground and raise
that hand over his head in a curved shape. That done he picks up the amorpha
and passes through the arch. The adventurers mark a hundred count and then
check out the room with as little light as possible. Aethra finds two runes in
the keystone – ‘pray’ and ‘enter’ – and Ayleton points out the curved shape is
a crude crescent moon. The figure left a scent of soap and incense. Perhaps
this is one of the pilgrims they’ve been hypothesizing about. Oland notes that
none of the fire beetles went east. The group opts to follow the figure, all
repeating the prayer motion (save for the cat), before entering. They feel
energy wash over them but nothing happens. Aethra checks the far side of the
arch and sees no runes; she hopes this means if they have to flee back through
that direction of passage is safe.
The passage turns out to be the Customs House Road, and spending
an hour moving at a cautious pace to cover what should have been 20 minutes of
walking before they hit a bend in the road – at the edges of their light it
turns to the northeast while a ramp runs to the southeast off the passage. The
light glistens off some sort of puddles, one coppery red and one shiny. “Is
that blood?” Brömm asks. “Maybe he performed a ritual? Was the amorpha full of
blood?” Aethra speculates. At 20 feet removed Brömm and Aethra hunker down in
the dark and wait while Oland and Ayleton approach with the bullseye lantern
giving a sliver of light. “That’s blood,” Ayleton’s nose confirms, “and oil.”
Oland is able to make out two shapes on the floor further up – one a
hemispherical bulge, the other a small pile of goo.
“What the hell happened here?” Brömm wonders. The cat treads
around the puddle to explore the goo pile while Oland sweeps the light across
the ramp, finding a trail of blood up it into a space full of crates – some
sort of rest and storage space on the customs house road. Is this the east
storage room? That doesn’t seem likely. Did the stooped figure perform the
ritual and then climb the ramp? Ayleton reaches the goo to find it a pile of
brains and skull bits knocked some distance away from the pool by something….
Oland spots a figure looming in the crates and flips the lantern aperture wide,
temporarily blinding the ogre in the shadows preparing to leap at them from the
cover of the crates!
Ayleton runs back to his master with all speed while Oland
backpedals furiously, trying to keep the light on the ogre to both slow it and
make it a clear target for his allies. Brömm prepares to throw his hand axe but
never sees a clear shot; in the moment he is struck with the relative slowness
of the ogre, and the writhing shapes moving under the beast’s skin. It should
have easily outmatched Olands backpedaling speed, but it hasn’t yet caught up. Something
is weakening the beast, which might be their only chance at survival….
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