Hidden City

With Sack still remaining stubbornly on the ceiling, convinced that their mission here was now complete, they moved down the corridor to the end, where a door parallel to the one they'd just emerged from was visible.

Opening it with caution, they discovered a smiliar-shaped area to the room where they'd found the necromantic laboratory, a central walkway lined with arches giving into open areas beyond. On this side, however, steel bars ran across the rooms from wall to wall about 1' below the ceiling, with steel hooks attached at intervals, and human bodies dangling from the hooks. Around a hundred pitiful human corpses swayed and moved gently in the slight air currents caused by the party's arrival. It was a horrific sight.

At the far end was a door, and if the symmetry of the complex held up, this would lead into a square anteroom similar to the one where they'd encountered five iron skeletons. Therefore, while Surya listened at the door for tell-tale sounds, Hildraft cast a Meld into Stone spell (which worked, rather to his surprise) and slithered through the wall just far enough to allow his face to emerge and give him a view of the room beyond.

Occupying the room - and illuminating it - were five skeletal forms, slightly larger than human, each with a crowning crest of moving flames... but where the winterwight's flames were blue, these were red. One spotted Hildraft almost immediately, and the dwarf retreated.

Back with the others, he cast the spells Negative Plane Protection and Protection from Elements (Fire) on himself, Surya and Ingamin, and looked around for Sack to do the same for him. Unable to see the half-orc - his own skills of strealth added to the inherent powers of Bramandin's armour made it nearly impossible - he called out to him.

This was a mistake.

The door suddenly started to open away from Surya.

Feeling no more planning was required, the Tellaran kicked it mightily, slamming it back and into whatever was opening it, and sprang through, followed by Hildraft and Ingamin. Sack,still imperceptible, crawled through the doorway on the ceiling and across the room.

Engaging one of the undead monsters, Surya could feel the radiance of an intense heat even through Hildraft's magical protection, and was thankful for it. His blade slashed at it, inflicting some damage - though not as much as it should have done, the creatures were preternaturally tough - and received some wounds himself, another worrying sign. Ingamin, wedged behind Surya and Hildraft, was unable to act initially, but yelled encouragement to the fighting warriors.

Claws sizzling with heat lashed out, and one struck Hildraft in the head, sending him staggering - another strike like that and he'd be dead! Hurriedly, he suppressed the spell he'd been about to cast and replaced it with a Quickened Heal, pulling himself back from the brink. Angered, he whirled the Axe of Glass and dealt out some damage in return.

From the ceiling, Sack watched events unfold, secure in his powers of concealment. Suddenly, one of the firewights looked up - it had noticed him! Touching the pommel of the Blade of the Sun, he released the Sunburst. Most of the firewights were unaffected, but the one that'd looked up was looking straight into the blast and stumbled back stunned. Driving in to press the advantage, Surya smashed it down with a well-placed succession of blows.

As Hildraft took down the next Lavawight and Ingamin moved to attack, Sack slipped across to the far corner of the room, where he'd spotted something interesting. Ignoring the battle raging behind him, he examined it - as he'd suspected, a secret door. Cracking it open, he peered inside, and saw spiral stairs leading downwards. He groaned. Just what he didn't want - an opportunity to stay here even longer! Quickly he sealed it up again; with luck, the others would never find it... Then he sneaked off back to the main entrance, and amused himself by pitching the remaining members of Heldin and Bargas' guard details into the pool outside. Planning to leave, he donned his Helm of Teleportation, but was disappointed to find that it did not operate.

Behind him, Hildraft had taken an almost identical second strike to the head, and this time had used a Mass Heal to erase both that and Surya's wounds at the same time. Surya accounted for the last of the monsters at the same time.

The ferocity of the lavawights was enough to convince Hildraft that he wanted to leave as well. He tried to invoke the Word of Recall spell he had laid on Khundrukar, but to his dismay it did not function either.

Sack, all innocence, caught them up just as they entered the Dark Temple in the centre of the complex. Benches were arranged in ranks in this mighty vaulted hall, facing a knee-high stage at the far end. Three steps led up to it, and a green curtain backdropped it after 6' or so. Scenes of depravity, grave-robbing, darkness and evil were painted on the walls, appalling all but the most hardened of viewers. On the stage stood an image, carved in stone and painted, of a humanoid figure, armoured in heavy and baroque plate armour and cloaked in some sort of scaled material or hide.

Cautiously, they examined the temple, finally arriving at the stage and statue. Adding up the facial cast, what they'd already seen, odd scraps of description in some tomes such as Cheftan van Helsing's, they deduced that this was almost certainly a passable depiction of Cain himself. Sack was interested in spite of himself; to the Renders of the Dark, such a depiction was priceless. Hildraft examined the statue for a few minutes, then unpacked Grispere's Hammer and smacked it smartly once at neck level. The head tumbled off, and Sack caught it and tucked it into his Bag of Holding.

Surya, meanwhile, was examining the green curtain at the back of the stage. There seemed nothing remarkable about it, so he swept it aside to see what was beyond, and was shocked as it came away from the ceiling and started to fall down on him. Desperately he twisted out of the way, and the mass of green struck the stage and splattered rather than draping into folds as cloth should. Green slime splashed onto his armour, and a sizzling sound arose as it began to try and eat through Elverandil's peerless metal. Hastily he scraped and washed the area, and managed to dislodge the stuff before it caused more than slight damage to the finish.

Beyond the curtain was... nothing. A blank rectangular area of stone room. Baffled, the companions searched around, and located a barely-concealed trapdoor in the floor. Underneath it was a 5' pit containing some gold, some potions and a mediocre magical sword.

Gazing at these gew-gaws, the group let their cynical minds add up the evidence. Faked necromantic laboratories; token treasure; tough but not insuperable guardians; minimal response from the hordes of undead presumably under the graves outside to their intrusion.

The whole place was a decoy.

A noble-but-dim group of heroes, following the inevitable leads created by the recruiters, coming here, would fight their way in, destroy what they found, take the "treasure", and go home, happily convinced they'd destroyed the "army of the dead". Only the world-weary, sceptical Wyrmslayers would look deeper and see the ruse. A repeat search was in order. Sack rolled his eyes. He knew what was going to happen.

Sure enough, about an hour later, Hildraft stumbled on the secret door, and the stairs were "discovered". Cautiously descending through increasing and unnatural cold, the heroes discovered a real oddity; the stairs descended into a pool of blue radiance, cutting across the stairwell like a plane. This they regarded with grave suspicion for a while, until Sack took the plunge, jumping in to find himself standing where stairs would be if they carried on through the plane.

His feet and shins were warmer, but unharmed, and he climbed back out without difficulty. Heartened, he stepped back down. A tingle of transition was perceptible where the plane intersected his body, but he proceeded without difficulty until he was completely through, and the others followed him.

Below, they discovered the stairs continuing for around ten turns, in a distinctly warmer atmosphere. Then they emerged onto a platform jutting out into a vast cavern, miles across. A flight of parapetless stone stairs fifty feet wide led down from the platform, descending at least a mile into the dimness.

Below, spread out across the floor of the cavern, was a city.

It was huge. If it had been a human city of comparable size, its' population would have been somewhere between ten and thirty thousand. Surya scanned it with his spyglass, discerning moving figures in the distance, but they were too distant to make out clearly. After around half the stairway was descended, however, he could see better.

The creatures occupying the city were rather bigger than human - about seven or eight feet tall - and were almost certainly of the same kind as those depicted in the murals in the upper complex. Once. Now, they were horribly metamorphosed, twisted, tortured and it appeared somehow merged with their armour, making it part of their bodies. Although no detection spells could work at such a distance, Surya felt somehow sure these creatures were of the undead, although their movements were purposeful and intelligent, not the shambling of zombies.

Beside him he heard a loud twang from Asildur's Bow. Sack, ever direct, had unleashed an arrow towards one of the distant figures. No normal archer could have made that shot. A quarter of a mile up, and almost the same diagonal distance, downwards and in poor visibility. For several seconds they waited, and then suddenly one of the armoured figures toppled over backwards, skewered through the face by the arrow from nowhere.

As the companions concealed themselves as best they could, more of the creatures converged on the scene of the murder, and started gazing wildly around, seeking the source of the missile. To none of them did it seem to occur that it could have come from the stairs...