Hawk takes flight

Before Avalon has chance to ease himself off the spears that are impaling him, they shoot back into the wall. Fearsome of a second stabbing, the Halfling pulls the reigns on his mount and the two of them stumble back away from the trap area.

His companions help him to the ground and offer their support. The proud Halfling insists on caring for his dinosaur first though and uses the power of his Dragonmark to heal the beast, before turning his attention to his own wounds and merely cleaning them to avoid infection.

Carefully avoiding the spear trap, Hawk explores the passageway beyond it. He is frustrated to see that the passageway turns a corner and comes to a dead end after only twenty feet.

"Bloody rats crap!" he declares. "It looks like the hobgoblin words were meant to scare the stupid, and we fell for them. Let’s try the other passage.....carefully."

Stalking carefully along the 'Certain death' passage way, conscious of the sounds of the Warg howls overhead, the heroes turn a bend, descend some more steps and find themselves facing a large stone door.

A single word is written above the door, written in a strange alphabet, alien-looking to all but Janin. The young cleric casts his mind back and briefly recalls a time many seasons ago when he studied the language.

At the time he felt the guilty thrill of studying forbidden material, but he had rationalised it out in his mind, and was convinced that one day a little knowledge of the letters and language of the Abyssal creatures might prove more than just a little useful. Now it seems that it might not just prove useful, but also save all their lives.

"I know what it says. It is a word that means to 'climb' or 'go up'. Shall I speak the word?" Janin asks his companions.

With only seconds before they find the wolves at their heels, the group take a quick vote and unanimously agree that Janin should say the word. Janin nods and practices the pronunciation silently in his mind to ensure he says it correctly.

"Ascend!" he says in the Abyssal tongue. There is a flash of light and the stone door slowly swings open. Peering inwards, they see a deserted stone room with four exits from it. There is no apparent danger in front, and plenty behind, so they all enter the room, at which point the stone door slowly swings shut.

"Look at it! That door must be over one foot think! And it's solid stone!" Comments Avalon. "I think that should hold those dirty goblins off for a good while. Now, shall we find what kind of place we're in?"

Before anyone has time to move, the sounds of the Wargs and Goblinoids can be heard above them. After a few seconds there is the sound of a loud 'yelp' from a Warg. Avalon grins and pats D-Ablow gently.

After a few more seconds, dull hammering noises start on the other side of the stone door. Everyone draws weapons and braces themselves. They wait and the thudding continues. Muffled shouts and grunts are thrown in after a while, but it seems that the door is as solid as they dared hope.

Noticing that the pack mule is more than a little upset by the noises and darkness, Avalon makes soothing noises and does his best to calm it and his dinosaur while the others explore.

Taking stock of their surroundings a little more, Vaelas checks some of the exits from their current room.

"It looks like this was a sub-cellar for the building above. There are three small rooms just off it here though. They look, and smell, much like prison cells. Different architecture to them too."

Dirk has a quick look and nods his agreement. "Aye, looks like this sub-cellar was built with the original building probably a hundred and fifty years ago. These three cells and that passageway leading east were all built within the last fifty years by my reckoning."

Janin nods and suggests caution as there is no knowing who modified the cellar and for what purpose.

Going slowly and carefully, Dua proceeds east along the rough stone passageway. After forty yards he reaches a crossroads. A quick glance to the left and right show that both passages lead to a dead end after only a dozen feet or so.

"Most odd" he says to no-one in particular before carrying on along the main passage. He has gone around five feet past the junction when he hears a subtle 'click' and a large blade scythes out of the wall and misses him by a breath.

"Would anyone else care to lead?" He enquires. "Only I think that there may still be more traps around."

With no obvious volunteers to lead, the wily Kobold produces some chalk from his belt pouch and after carefully testing the floor with an old sword, he manages to trigger the scything blade trap a few times and mark out what area of the passageway it is safe to tread on.

"Avoid any area of the floor circled in chalk!" He says and boldly steps beyond the trap.

Meanwhile Hawk, Vaelas and Janin are discussing how to get the pack mule past the trap.

"We can't really get it to avoid the chalked stones. You know how stubborn and unpredictable mules can be" points out Janin.

"If only it was a Valenar War Horse, it could leap over the stones and carry us all with it." Suggests Vaelas wistfully.

"Dua said that we found a magic potion to make things float. Perhaps we could give that to the mule and push it past the trap." Suggests Hawk solemnly.

Vaelas and Janin exchange looks, unsure if the Shifter is trying to be serious or funny. Once they get past the mental image of a floating mule, they soon realise that it might actually work.

"Oooops." Says Avalon as he hears another 'click' noise, followed by a low grinding noise near the scything blade trap.

"I was just checking these two side passages and when I entered the second one, the north one, there was a click noise."

Dua heads back to the trap and tries to trigger it with the old sword. It seems that the trap has been disabled. So they ignore the levitating donkey idea for now and usher everyone past the trap. They just about pass it when another low grinding noise is heard and they conclude that the trap has rearmed itself.

With the sounds of hammering on the stone door getting slightly more distant, they continue along the rough-stone passageway and emerge into an eight-sided room that looks like it could be very meagre living-quarters.

"Bed with rags, table with chair, wooden drinking cup, bowl and cutlery. All the domestic signs one would expect." Concludes Dua. They quickly search the room but find nothing unusual, and continue along the passageway out the far end of the room.

The passageway continues east for ten foot beyond the room before turning southwards. Heading south they soon find a split in the passage. It continues south but a new passage heads west too.

Peering westwards they soon conclude that something magical must be preventing them from seeing more than five foot along the passageway. Their Darkvision spells from Dua's wand seem to be working still, but they simply cannot see anything but darkness.

Avalon picks up a stone from the passageway floor and tosses it gently into the darkness. It continues for a while and seems to come to a natural stop. He picks up and tosses a second stone a good bit harder. That stone skips along for a while and then sounds to stop more suddenly.

"I reckon that the passageway continues for around forty to fifty feet." He concludes. They all agree but decide to leave the dark passageway and continue south instead.

After sixty foot they find the south passage abruptly ending at another stone door with another Abyssal word written above it. All eyes turn to Janin expectantly.

"I can read it. It is a word that means to search or to find new places. The previous word seemed to prove harmless enough. Do you all agree that I should say this one?"

After a brief discussion they all agree that they seem to have little option and Janin says the word.

"Explore!" He spits out authoratively. More than one of his companions feel a shiver traverse their spine at the sound of the harsh tongue. The door lights up briefly and slowly swings open to reveal another room beyond.

"End of the road." Says Hawk, noting that there are no exits from the new room. Stepping in cautiously they look around the new room.

Just beyond the entrance they find a strange U-shaped stone plinth and just beyond it a smooth, circular, concave dent in the room floor. Strange signs and shapes adorn the cave walls, drawn in chalk with little precision or detail.

"The ramblings of a madman, or the thoughts of a genius?" Muses Vaelas. "I guess that we will never know." Dua, who has been examining the room using magic, offers his thoughts.

"There is definitely some kind of method to the madness. I see feint, inactive veins of magic running from the stone plinth to the floor dent. It is a magical device of some description; although what it does I am not sure. I can detect subtle hints of Conjuration magic, but it is a...flavour that I have not seen before. Let me try something."

The Kobold stands in the centre of the U-shaped stone plinth, stares directly at the concave dent. He seems ready to say something, but pauses, rolls up his sleeves and focuses again. Finally in his most commanding voice he speaks.

"Come forth fiend of fire! Emerge elemental entity! Appear alarming abberation!!!" Nothing appears to happen. The kobold relaxes a little and scratches his head.

"I guess that's not how it works then." He concludes.

"Perhaps something in here will help us out." Says Vaelas pointing to the wall behind him. His companions all look at the wall behind him, then back at the elf and finally back at the wall. Dirk is the first to speak up.

"Oh, that concealed room? Yeah, I was going to mention that. I spotted it when we came in of course. Dodgy stone work like that...never fool me for a moment."

Rolling his eyes, Vaelas suggests that Dirk shows them how to open the room and demonstrate just how dodgy the stonework is. The dwarf, looking rather uncomfortable at the prospect steps over to the wall and begins tapping it and prodding it. Within a few seconds he has a big grin on his face and a concealed door in the cavern wall pops open.

Muttering something about "sheer luck", Vaelas steps into the new room. It seems that the new room is something of a vault or storage room. It doesn't hold a large cache of items, but it does contain a few treasures.

They quickly look through the items and Dua catalogues what they find.

"Some red and gold boots that are magical, a wooden staff that is also magical." As Dua picks the six-foot staff up, it shrinks in his hand to become three-foot long. He puts the staff back down but notes that it stays the new size.

"That dagger there is Adamantium!" Comments Dirk. "It'll cut through steel as if it were paper. Bloody good job that those hobgoblins haven’t got it or they'd be through that stone door by now."

"Oooh my word, and those," Dirk adds pointing to a collection of five wooden figurines of hobgoblins, "those are collectors items. Only worth about a hundred each on the open market, but find the right collector and he'll owe you a favour worth more than ten times their gold value. I'll happily forgo my share of any treasure for those alone." The others in the group see no reason to dispute the information or deny him the figurines, so they agree.

The group discuss what to do next, eventually they decide to try venturing into the darkness. They agree that first Dua will try to 'dispel' the darkness using a scroll they had found previously. Unfortunately the darkness spell seems more powerful than the scroll, and the darkness persists.

Eventually Hawk volunteers to go into the darkness. He ties one end of a rope around his waist, gets down on his hands and knees, and slowly crawls forward into the darkness.

With his sight denied to him, he concentrates as hard as he can on his other remaining sense. There are no obvious smells nearby, other than the dry air that fills the whole subterranean complex. No sounds other than his companions quietly waiting behind him. Trying to taste anything seems foolish, so he relies on his sense of touch.

There is no change in the feel of the rough stonework of the passageway. It still feels uneven and crude in form; slightly dustier maybe. The passageway does feel to get wider after only a few feet though. A few inches further and Hawk can feel that he is no longer in the passageway, but in a room instead. Thinking back to Avalon's stone throw, he opts to continue crawling in the same direction.

After about forty foot of crawling, he notes his movement sounds slightly different. Reach to the sides he realises that it is because he is now in a five-foot wide passageway again. He crawls another couple of feet and emerges from the magical darkness into normal darkness.

"I'm through!" He calls back to his companions. "The darkness ends after forty feet; there is some kind of room between here and there. I suggest that we check the dark room out more thoroughly."

Vaelas ties a rope around his own waist and the Elf and Shifter both feel their way around one edge of the room each. They soon discover that the room seems to be a pretty featureless thirty foot wide round room. Unsure what to make of the darkness, they explore the passageway beyond it.

The passage continues for around twenty foot and opens up into a grimy room that contains several broken wooden crates. The ancient remains of rotted food can just about be detected in some of the crates. Miscellaneous junk are in others, possibly belongings scavenged from the ruins above. None of it looks worth salvaging, except for a small collection of six scrolls that are tightly bound up.

Dua eagerly examines them and discovers that three of them are arcane and three are divine in nature. He gives the divine scrolls to Janin and puts the arcane ones in his own backpack to examine later.

With their avenues of exploration now exhausted, the group discuss what to do next. Dua returns to examine the three cells at the start of the underground area. His experience as a domestic servant, under his former master allows him to identify six different types of excrement in the various cells. He soon concludes that this extra fact is not going to help them escape their current confinement. Eventually Hawk comes up with an unusually enlightened suggestion.

"Dua, try placing your hands on the stone plinth and channelling your magical energies into it."

With a little uncertainty everyone gathers behind Dua as he stands in the middle of the U-shaped stone plinth and slowly lowers his hands until they come to rest on the cold stone. He immediately feels the plinth sucking magical energies from him. Flashes of light arc from the plinth, across the floor and gather around the circular dent in the floor.

Suddenly a orb-shaped scene of night sky appears above the circular dent. Without a word Hawk steps past his companions, leaps into the night sky and vanishes. A distant "Arrrrrrgggghhhhhhhh!" can be heard, follow by a very distant "Thud!".

If this was a cartoon, a small circular cloud of dust would be seen rising from the ground.