 DM Note: Only Allan and Derek again this week, so I have ruled that Lynien, Uruk and Bog did not come through the pentagram until after it had recharged (at the end of last session). Aimo is away and has nominated that Méabh remain in Lossal for the moment. |
As they contemplated the stairs, the effects of the scorpion's poison began to bite and Gorfang felt his strength beginning to ebb. For a momement, he seriously contemplated abandoning the expedition and attempting to return to Lossal via the pentagram, but some small nagging inner voice reminded him of something. Digging deep in his pack, he unearthed two small clay bottles; doses of scorpion antivenom! True, they hadn't been prepared with anything like the monster that had stung him in mind, but the poison was probably similar enough that it should help.
To his relief, he felt the effects of the poison ebb away. Straightening, he flung the bottles away. Eloy grinned at him; "Fancy tackling the other one now, then?" he asked. Gorfang considered it for a moment, then shook his head. "That was all the antidote I had," he pointed out. A thought struck him then, and drawing a long, keen knife he proceeded to hack the poison glands out of the dead arachnid's tail. Very carefully, he decanted the creamy, slightly sticky fluid into five small bottles. One went to Eloy, and another was emptied into a large and rather ostentatious ring the orc habitually wore; the remaining three went into his pack.
The poison's effects were healed, but Gorfang still had wounds, and the battle with the scorpion, on top of the fight at Damarus' had tired them out. The part of the pyramid they were in seemed quiet enough, as long as they stayed away from the other scorpion trap, and so they decided to make camp and rest. They prepared food - reminded as they did so, and by the results, why they liked having Bog along - and slept in turns for what they estimated was a night.
The next morning, the sounds of approaching footsteps alerted them, and they cautiously returned to the enbalming room to discover Lynien, Uruk and Bog emerging from the pentagram room. They'd waited over a day to see if Gorfang and Eloy would return, and then ventured into the pentagram themselves.
Méabh had elected to remain behind in Lossal, unsure if she trusted the pentagram and for other reasons of her own.
Once the events of the last 24 hours had been related, Lynien announced that she was eager to try obtaining a 'gift' from one of the statues of the Khabran gods, despite the fact that Gorfang had absolutely no idea if his wristband was any benefit or not. Eloy was of like mind, and the group returned to the statue halls.
Both Lynien and Eloy were drawn to the statue of Sebath, but success was not automatic, it seemed. They agreed to take turns, and in the end it was Eloy who first mounted the dias, encouraged by Gorfang's apparent easy success with Isetbashyat and Hektis. Slowly the statue shifted, then tilted to gaze down on this human insect.
Eloy swallowed. The feeling was not very similar to what Gorfang had described. Slow fear descended on him, a sensation of insecurity, that 'itch' between the shoulderblades that warns of an upcoming stab in the back. There was more than a dash of paranoia, too, and for an instant the eyes of his companions seemed to glint with distrust and hate in the lantern-light.
Then Sebath spoke, and all else was swept away. Eloy had confidently expected the same question, "Khaaten, iuimen ankhnemsenhet? Maaast nakhketbet sotis?" ('Are you Worthy?'). He had the answer Yes poised on his lips, but when the question came it was different enough to make him hesitate a moment.
"Will you pay the price for my aid?" asked the God of Deception.
Eloy gulped but showed no outward sign of doubt. "Yes," he answered, wondering what he was getting himself into.
Instantly, he felt the rush of memories begin. Again, the focus was different to that of the previous deities. Eloy was again experiencing every time he'd cheated someone, stolen something, stabbed a foe in the back, tricked people, murdered and lied. The moment when he'd pushed Bog down the stairs in Hightower to check for traps flashed past. He felt a faint flicker of approval from the power he was linked to. Then it was over.
Sebath reached down to his waist, and unclasped the golden belt, placing it on the stone before stepping back into place and going still. Without a moment's hesitation, Eloy picked it up and hinged it around his own waist, noting as he did so that it seemed just the right size after all. The ends closed with a dull golden click, and both the joint and the hinges vanished utterly. Whatever it was he'd just sworn to, he was stuck with it.
None of the others spoke Selasht, although Gorfang was slowly picking up the odd word here and there. The orc was aware that something had been different, but then Isetbashayt had asked something slightly different to Hektis. Eloy seemed no different. He shrugged. Without Méabh, they coundn't speculate as to what these items did, only hope to stumble on any powers when they needed them.
Lynien, watching this, seemed not best pleased by Eloy's success. She'd wanted the belt! Fulminating, she decided to try her luck elsewhere, and headed across the hall to the statue of Nebekheshut the Messenger.
Once again, a statue came to life, and a splinter of the power of an ancient God looked out at a modern mortal. It was Lynien's turn to feel the Presence, and it was ...strange. All the others had been comprehensible; Isetbashyat had radiated power, command and royalty; Hektis power, honour, agression; Sebath malice and untrustworthiness. All human-like emotions, that could be understood and related to. Nebekheshut had none. A deep, implacable calm and purpose, untouched by compassion or hate, enveloped Lynien. There was an infinte moment of nothingness, out of which spiraled a dead, uninflectioned voice, asking a question in Selasht.
 Lynien is not pleased - click it for larger image! |
Lynien shot an inquiring glance across to Eloy, who wondered as he considered his answer why Lynien's eyes had changed; the whites had disappeared and they were plain blood red from edge to edge.
Eloy hissed back, "He's asking 'are you worthy'," he said, "If you want to say yes the word is Tabtuttis." Lynien lifted an eyebrow, but Eloy made no further comment, and so the tiefling girl turned back to the expressionless statue and recited the word.
Nebekheshut stepped backwards. Lynien, who had been expecting the same memory reading the others had experienced, started. The god had left his silver sandals on the dias where his feet had been. She picked them up carefully. They were quite light, and rather large for her. They fitted nicely over the top of her boots, and once thonged tight were rather unobtrusive. Quite pleased with that, she stepped down from the dais. Her eyes, Eloy noted, were her normal colour again.
The next move was clearly up the stairs, so the adventurers headed back to them and began to climb. The flight was five feet wide with a 10' ceiling, and went up as far as anyone's darkvision could see. Resigned to lots of climbing, the group trudged up, alert for danger but perhaps no more than normal. However, after ten minutes of slow climbing, Gorfang suddenly called a sharp halt.
He'd noticed a step just a little bit different to the others. Lynien looked it over and declared it was probably a pressure plate - likely connected to a trap of some sort. The companions looked at each other for a moment, and then Eloy said, "Can't we just step over that step?". Gorfang looked doubtful, but Eloy stretched across it and stepped onto the tread above, lifting his other foot past the pressure plate. Nothing happend. Eloy grinned at Gorfang. "There you are, you gonving coward!" he taunted. Gorfang glared furiously at him - and then deliberately stamped hard on the pressure plate.
There was a snap and a metallic fluttering as a flight of corroded bronze darts were propelled out of the wall opposite, filling the stairwell level with the pressure plate. Eloy flung himself backwards up the flight, while Lynien - who was next in line - rolled to safety down the stairs in the other direction.
Gorfang, of course was right in the middle, and three darts struck him in different places, painfully but not fatally. Eloy's loud laughter echoed in the darkness of the stairwell as the orc ripped the missiles out and the party moved on upwards again.
Everyone was more alert now for the suspicious or out-of-place. Where there was one trap, there were likely to be more. Sure enough, five minutes later, they reached a place where a trickle of sand was running steadily and permanently from the ceiling and disappearing into a hole in the floor. Eloy's brief involvement with the Guild in Lossal had not included training in trap removal, and so Lynien unpacked her tools and tackled this one herself.
Ten minutes' work and she had opened the false step under the stream, and disabled the clever mechanism that would have detected an interruption to the fall. Stepping back, she picked up Callia's halfspear from her pile of discarded equipment and poked it into the sand-fall. Nothing happened, and she grinned. Eloy squared his shoulders and stepped through the trickle, and apart from sand on his armour nothing happened.
Enboldened, the party carried on. They were looking constantly, of course, but no-one saw the next pressure plate until Eloy stepped on it.
The simple clunk of the mechanism under the step was followed by a much louder rumbling from above their heads, and with no further warning, a massive grid of spears dropped from the ceiling to stab through anything in their path and into the floor.
Gorfang leaped backwards down the stairs to where Bog and Uruk stood. Eloy stumbled upwards and out of the way by a hair's breadth. Lynien, in the centre of the party, was caught uncharacteristically flat-footed and trapped under the grid as it dropped. Three of the spears impaled her, driving completely through her left thigh and through her chest and belly, though fortunately not through anything vital. Skewered and pinned, she hung helpless and cursing in the mesh of steel shafts.
Gorfang 
took hold of the metal grid and flexed his muscles, trying to heave it back up. The pain from his wounds from the fight with the scorpion and the previous trap troubled him and he couldn't move it. He rounded on Bog; "Give me Boom Boom!" he demanded. Bog, looking distinctly nervous, shrugged. "None left," he said apologetically, and it was true; he'd not had time to brew any more. Gorfang snarled at him. "Then what use are you to us?" he said ominously.
The little creature flinched. He knew Gorfang's temper and that this was not just rhetoric; if he was of no use to the orc he was without a protector. He sighed and squared his small shoulders in the manner of a man about to cross an important line. Then he reached up, touched Gorfang's side, and muttered a swift spell. Most of Gorfang's wounds closed up and vanished. In the dead silence that followed, the plink as a bronze dart pushed out of Gorfang's head by the closing wound hit the steps was the only sound.
Bog could do magic!
"He's a priest!" muttered Gorfang with some disgust. "No, no, no Gods," replied Bog. "Bg just knows a thing or two." Eloy's voice rang from above. "How many times has he saved your life, and then you talk to him like that?" he demanded. "You owe him an apology!" It was fortunate that the mass of the trap lay between them, for Gorfang fingered his hilt and snarled; but said no more.
Laying hold of the trap again, he heaved upwards, and the spears lifted from the floor. Lynien twisted herself off the points - shedding more blood in the process - and escaped up the stairs from under. Bog and Uruk followed her, and then Uruk and Gorfang smashed the mesh around until it was conclusively jammed before Gorfang came through as well. His immediate fury taken out on the metal, he spoke to Eloy rather than simply attacking.
"Shall we continue this argument?" he asked dangerously. Eloy looked at Bog. "Are you offended?" he asked. Bog glanced back and forth between them anxiously, and settled for; "No, no, not offended, everything fine, Bog is happy," and a big glassy smile. Gorfang and Eloy dropped the matter.
Lynien had several wounds, including one in a very intimate place, and Eloy appeared at her side like magic with the lid off his ointment pot and a big grin. "Can I rub you better?" he asked hopefully. She looked at him balefully and extended her leg. With a shrug, he applied the medicament, and she sighed in relief as the wound closed - then pointedly stood up and walked away. The rest she could deal with herself.
Five minutes later, another trap went off. Amid more clunks and rattles, Eloy heard a sullen 'whoosh' by his left ear, and a gust of air blew over him. It smelled sandy, and stale... and of nothing else. The poison gas it was supposed to deliver was long escaped. That was the last trap before they reached the next floor up.
| DM Note: I'm using North South East and West to refer to directions as drawn on the map. The characters of course have no idea where North is or even if there's a magnetic field where they are! |
The stairs ended in a smallish room, no more than 30' square, without heiroglyphs but with a high, vaulted ceiling. Three archways led from it, and without hesitation Gorfang chose the west one. It led to a long, narrow passage that turned once and then led away beyond even Gorfang's darkvision range. They worked their cautious way down it, and as they did so, Eloy noticed that Uruk and Bog appeared uncomfortable. They didn't say anything, so they moved on. Twenty feet later, Uruk and Bog dropped like stones, unconscious.
The others halted, and looked for a cause of this collapse. Nothing was visible, so they dragged the pair back down the corridor. Twenty feet further back, both revived, complaining that they felt 'unwelcome'. Gorfang suggested that they wait where they were as a rearguard and both readily accepted.
Returning to the place where they had collapsed, Gorfang, Eloy and Lynien continued on until the passage opened into a large room.
It was dominated by a heavy stone altar and a golden statue of Isetbashyt behind it. The walls were painted and inscribed, expensive furniture was placed for the faithful to worship, and gold, silver and bronze vessels of equisite workmanship and some intrinsic value rested on the altar. Everything was coated in dust and sand, but there was an immense air of sanctity about the shrine. All three of them could feel it - probably due to their wearing of the items of Regalia - and with the sanctity came a powerful sensation of abandonment and despair.
All three realized that these ancient Gods were Lost Gods - deities whose worshippers had died out or abandoned them. Gods - and devils, and demons - drew their power from the faith of their followers, and most especially from the souls of those who lived and died in their ways. The flow of those souls to the outer planes, the Soul Harvest, was life or death to Gods and Demons alike. The dreadful Blood War was fought eternally over the Soul Harvest of the lower planes...
But for Isetbashyt and his kin, there was no harvest. No faithful, no sacrifices, no honour, no mighty priests or holy warriors. Just the endless wind drifting the sand over the empty and abandoned places that once were holy.
Touched by this tragedy, and always alert for the chance of advantage, Eloy knelt briefly before the altar and recited one of the prayers he'd read from the walls. For a brief instant, he felt a tiny flicker of a response.
 Eloy and Gorfang study the walls - click it for larger image! |
Following the northern passage from the room with the stairs brought them to another hall, again with three archways, and with another flight of stairs leading upwards once more. Exploring down the passages brought them to more shrines, like Isetbashyt's but smaller, each of which had been smashed, desecrated and robbed. No unnecessary damage had been done, but anything of intrinsic value, especially gold, had been removed without care or subtlety.
Gorfang paused in Hektis' shrine, looking at the murals. They depicted the warrior god and his faithful fighting and triumphing over a variety of foes. All were strange to the orc, as were many of the weapons - the bows and swords were a very odd shape! - but the ethos was familiar. More than ever, he felt he had donned the Regalia of the correct god.
The last passage led further than the others. It turned several corners, and as they walked Gorfang realized that he could feel a light current of air. This contrasted to the still, heavy, stale atmosphere of the rest of the pyramid. They rounded the next turn and ahead of them was bright sunlight, streaming in through a square portal at the top of a sand-clogged slope.
A brief slog through the sand brought them to the top of the slope, and out into the daylight. The sun was like a hammer of heat; all five, dressed for an April in Tarlanor and armoured to boot, were instantly drenched in sweat. All around, as they sloshed down the slope outside the doorway, all they could see was sand and sky. As they'd guessed, they were in the midst of a desert of unguessable extents.
Turning to look back, all five stopped dead in awe. Towering above them was the shape of the Pyramid of Anshenkehra. They had all grasped the idea that they were in a building, and it was pyramidal (though none of them had ever seen a building that shape before), but the scale and majesty of the reality took their breath away.
After 
the initial shock, they began to notice details. Gorfang gazed at the sun for a moment; it looked very much like the sun he was used to, and there was only one of them, so he presumed they might still be in Alair... somewhere. Eloy eyed the top of the pyramid. The top fifty feet or so seemed to be clad in some kind of panels, possibly made of metal; their purpose was anyone's guess.
Bog gazed out across the desert. "Well," he said quietly, "we not going to be walking home, then."
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