Episode 4- Into the Dark

Beneath the cemetery, Mersscene, Iselamore. Tuesday, Afternoon.

Soh descends into the darkness below. Elves have the ability to see as well in complete darkness as they do in broad daylight, making him the logical choice to lead the way. Dozens of feet below the surface, the ladder stopped. Soh turned to see an extremely long hallway the stretched out before him, with several doors leading to the left and to the right. With no dangers apparent, he calls to the rest to follow him down. Raziel, also blessed with darkvision, comes down next. As the others reach the lower level, he produces a magical orb of light for each of them so that they can help explore the area as well. Soh enters the room on the immediate right. As leaves the main hall, he catches a glimpse of a thin wire before him. Looking up, he notices that the wire is tied to a shelf containing substantial rocks that would fall on top of him as he walked. Warning the others to stay back, he leaps over the tripwire and investigates this room on his own. It looks to be sleeping quarters, and he finding four vials of an unknown liquid marked with the sigil of Alnorum. Dodging the trap once more on his way out, he produced the vials for the group to see. At Fried’s insistence, Soh gives them to him to examine. Upon closer inspection, Fried declares that they are vials of holy water and distributes them to the group. Soh, being the one who risked the trap to retrieve them, forces Fried to return one of them. Finders keepers, you know. Soh then moves to the out the second room. Not noticing anything out of the ordinary, he walks straight in. He steps on a tile, triggering a similar trap in this room. Soh dashes forward to avoid being crushed beneath the falling rocks. Fortunately, the pile is not large enough to seal him in, and Raziel is able to follow him into the room after Fried blows the boulders into rubble. A stockroom of sorts, it is mainly filled with long-spoiled food items. But Raz is able to find a magical bag of dust. Unfortunately, neither he nor Soh can identify what it does, so they must return to Fried once more. He declares it is the “Dust of illusion” and allows someone to change their appearance for a time. He places it in the hands of Soh, thinking for some ineffable reason that he would benefit most from its possession.

The band continues down the hall. Soh tries the door on the left again, inviting Edriar to join him. There are no traps in this room, and it appears to be a wine cellar (filled primarily with beer). Knowing that this is an area of Fried’s expertise, they call him in. Fried, interested in the quality of the product, pops the cork on one of the kegs and drinks heartily. The others watch in confusion, since by Dechard’s best guess this temple has remained hidden for hundreds of years and any beer left was likely spoiled. Fried soon learns the truth of this sentiment, becoming violently ill and promptly vomits on the floor. Disgusted, the others leave the room, while Fried stops to examine a wonderfully crafted healer's kit, which he quickly pockets.

Issac follows Soh to the next door. As Soh opens it, he hears a soft click, and quickly drops to the floor. Issac, not so quick in his reaction, is hit square in the chest by a falling log trap. The force of the blow pushes him straight across the hall, sending him tumbling down the short stair and straight into the pool of Fried’s vomit. The young paladin is completely mortified at his predicament as an extremely apologetic Fried nurses his wounds an gingerly cleans puke from his armor. Containing his amusement, Soh continues into the room, which is apparently a master suite of sorts. This room contains a magical amulet, which Raziel picks up, not even bothering to ask Fried what benefits were to be gained by doing so. Dechard is uniquely interested in this room, as there are several crumbling, dusty old tomes within. Pausing a moment to allow him to peruse them, the group starts as Dechard cries out with joy! These books tell him (to no one’s surprise) that they are in an old subterranean church. More interestingly, it is a Temple to the Eight, a long lost religious haven where all current members of the Nine except Doluneas were worshiped as a pantheon. Such a place had not been heard of in centuries, much less visited. Fried and Dechard practically dance with the joy of their archaeological discovery, while the remainder of the party shuffles forward, leaving them to their historical fanatics.

At the end of the hall, the find a locked gate with no key leading to a stairwell at one end, and a strange mechanism on the other. Soh looks it up and down; apparently a large stone cube attached by a sturdy chain to something on the other side of a wall. Fried studies some scratches along the ground and determines that it has been pushed to and from the wall several times. Not knowing what to expect, the group decides to push the block, letting Edriar bear the brunt of the load. Once the block is flush with the wall, the gate at their back opens, and they are able to continue. Before they come to the stairs, there is an alcove to the side. Soh peeks in and finds a plethora of alchemical ingredients, which he quickly raids before moving on.

Descending a small set of stairs, the six find themselves in a large sanctuary, complete with rotted broken pews and shrines. 8 beautiful statues stand in a circle at the far end, depicting the Eight in all their magnificence. Finally, a bloodstained altar behind these statues rises up at the base of a giant stained glass window depicting Alnorum giving birth to the world. Fried rushes to the altar and characteristically begins sketching everything in sight in his book. Th others gravitate towards what suits them most: Dechard to the shrine of Polis, Issac to the altar of Antares, Raziel to the dais of Alnorum, and Soh to the large locked door on the far side of the room. Edriar, dissatisfied with this sanctuary, carries a rack to the center of the room, plants it firmly in the stone floor, and carves the mark of Deadalus into it, adding his god to the others. Soh chuckles. “It's a temple to the Nine after all.”

In the interest of brevity, a summary of the hour or so spent into this room seems prudent. Let it be noted that the door to proceed forward could only be unlocked by giving a jewel to the godly statues specific to their persons, and that these stones would only be revealed when a rite particular to that god was observed. Alnorum and Antares mercifully already held their stones, and as such did not need to be sated. These rituals and the heroes that performed them are as follows: Fried offering a bit of plant life to Bahlum, deity of nature. Edriar swings a forge hammer mightily into an anvil. Issac makes a blood offering to Covalla, and is embraced against his will by Dechard which expresses love to Ahleah, appeasing her. Soh reaches into a crevice in Romulus' shrine that contains a hidden blade, impaling himself and appeasing the warrior god. He also scales a bell tower to find Polis' crystal. After such deeds were performed, the gems collected and offered to the statues, the door swings aside and allows our 5 men and the machine to press further down into the church.

The next room they reach is not really a room, but a passage dug into the earth departing from the stone hallway. Soh turns in and is greeted with the sight of a dozen “deceased” Deadalins. Calling Edriar forward, he stands back. Edriar bellows out a terrible, mournful sound at the sight of his dead brethren, and nearly falls to his knees. He begs to be left alone with his fallen brothers, and the others quietly slide out of the room. After praying for a time over their frames, he kneels before each one. As he reaches out to them, a slight flicker, an ember of life or functionality inside them, slowly fades away and into himself. As he looks at the bodies, he realizes that most seem to have died from self-neglect... as if they'd lost hope of living down here in the dark with no escape. Devastated by this realization, he crouches before the final frame of his kinsman. However, this one still possessed a spark of life, however faint. Expending it, the Deadalin reaches out, pressing a small scrap of paper into Edriar's hand before freezing in place, never to move again. Taking it, Edriar sees that it is a page from a journal, but written in such a way that he cannot read it. The mark of his father-god, Deadalus, is visible in the corner. Carefully folding this scrap, this precious scripture that his comrade died to bequeath to him, he pries a set of fine metal bracers from the machine before him and affixes them to his own arms, so that this friend he never knew could continue to defend this precious memento. Leaving this tomb, he exits and solemnly bars any further entrance by methodically filling its entrance with stone and earth.

After Edriar finished his grave task, they walk forward once again. Before them is a wide chasm, that separates this part of the corridor from the next. Fried drops a lit torch down to gauge its depth, and is very disappointed to see that not only is the small canyon perilously deep, but that there is a rushing river at the base. By the look and sound it, anything caught inside the water will be quickly swept away even farther underground. The group elects to tie a rope to Raziel, being the lightest and most athletic, and let him scale down the wall. He looses his grip on the wall on his way down, and is quite nearly lost tho the river, but the rope held by all his friends keeps him on the narrow riverbank. Leaping across, he begins the slow climb up the slippery wall. Tying his end of the rope to a large projecting stone outcropping, he awaits his friends. Soh ties his end of the rope to a heavy metal sconce fixed firmly in the wall, the group now has a means across the gap. Using further ropes for safety precautions, the party passes the pit with varying degrees of ease, culminating with the elf strolling easily across it. Now able to continue, they press on.

The group comes to a fork, with an open gate on their right and more hallway before them. Going right, the only things in the next room are another barred gate a lever. Their elven scout seeing no immediate danger, they enter. Tiring of risking his own neck at each potentially dangerous obstacle, Soh suggests someone else risk their neck. Fried volunteers, promptly stepping up and throwing the lever. Three things happen when he does. Firstly, a single enormous spike falls from the ceiling above his head. Second, the gate they just walked through slams shut, splitting the party in two. Finally, the door before them springs open. Just as it looked like Fried would be impaled, he seemed to be supernaturally shoved out of the way. The spike fell to the floor, but Fried remained unscathed. “Somebody ‘down there’ must like you.” Soh, said. Fried tries the lever again, and is pleased to see that it toggles the gates on either side of the room. With two quick pulls, he allows the rest of the party to join back with him and then reopens the path ahead.

The next room is a large one, with piles of derelict armor on the floor. Though none of the armor seems to be of any use, Fried points out a magical aura he senses coming from what appears to the others to be an ordinary bag. Recognizing it as a Bag of Holding, he hands it to the elf, saying “Drop the dust in.” Wondering why he should put one bag in another, Soh still complies. The dark void inside the bag swallows the bag of dust. Soh turns it upside down to retrieve it, but nothing falls out. Confused, Soh becomes irritated with Fried for making him lose his newfound item.

“Reach in and grab it,” says Fried, calmly. Soh, wary of putting his hand into small, dark places after being impaled at the shrine to Romulus, refuses, and shoves the bag back to Fried. Smiling, Fried deftly reaches inside and produces the dust as if it were the only thing inside. Soh's elven eyes grow wide as he snatches the bag back, and begins unceremoniously pouring all his possessions into the tiny sack. When he is finished, the party walks down a final stairwell into the very bowel of the church.

Even compared to the rest of the underground temple, this room seems especially dark. The stairs end on a large balcony that wraps around the entire room, gazing down on a lower floor too far down to reach without the aid of some stairs that Soh and Raziel's can see at the far end of the room. As they make their way to it, clinging to stone columns and leaping over broken sections of the floor,  one of them accidentally breaks off a piece of the fragile flooring clattering down to the floor below. The sound alerts a large creature sleeping in the blackness beneath them, and the beast hurls a volley of large spines at Soh, which he narrowly evades. The horror lifts itself from the ground and lumbers toward the group as they try to take positions to fight it. Raziel sends his floating stars down to reveal the monstrosity beneath. It is a lizard nearly two stories tall and five times as long. It shuffles quickly forward on eight legs, with large, thick spikes covering its armored hide. But all of this paled in comparison to a mouth that made up most of its terrible face, which leaked venom between rows of razor sharp teeth. As Soh loads arrows poisoned arrows into his new crossbows and Edriar readies his heavy arbalest for its first combat, Fried shouts to Dechard, who ran from the room upon seeing the beast “WHAT THE HELLS IS THAT THING?”

Dechard shouts over his shoulder as he takes the stairs three at a time. “IT'S A BASILISK! DON'T LET IT BITE YOU!” And with that, the party enters the fight of their lives.

Arrows from Soh and Edriar pepper the Basilisk's hide, but do little to halt its advance. Fried, strafing along the second floor, sends bolt after bolt of flame at the basilisk, which seem to have a greater effect on it, even causing it to be visibly shaken. Raziel flicks his chain whip at the creature as it advances on him, but the creature is quicker than it looks, and evades it. Abandoning the safer ranged strategy, Raziel and Edriar leap forward from the second story to fight the basilisk head on. Issac, the last to enter the room, is obviously shaken at the sight of such a beast. Gripping his heirloom sword tightly, he runs for the stairs on his shaking legs. The beast darts forward and leaps at the balcony Fried is perched upon, breaking it to pieces and sending the warlock plummeting down 30 feet to its level. Fried manages to land safely, but is cornered by the creature. As Issac rushes forward to draw its attention with a flurry of sword strokes, Soh has a daring and perilous thought. Leaping over the gap in the broken balcony, he jumps high into the air, abandoning his ranged weaponry in favor of his swords. Holding them high, he lands neatly between the sharp spines on the creatures back and drives both blades deep into the flesh between the basilisk's shoulder blades. The beast roars in pain and Soh twists his blades and attempts to ride it as it trashes back and forth in pain, wearing an impish grin on his face. With his attacker suitably diverted, Fried rushes to the relative safety of the far end of the room.

Raziel and Edriar exchange a nod, and begin to tenderize the creature's neck with well placed flurries of metal fists and slashes from Raziel's wolf claws. The creature, bloodied and enraged, lashes out in all directions. Raziel and Edriar are swatted away with two of its either legs, and Soh is obliged to abandon his swords in the creatures back as it bucks him from his perch. Turning to the paladin, its massive jaws clamp down on his shield arm. The venom in its maw leaks into the wound, and Issac feels a new and awful malady coursing through his veins.

The group quickly and wordlessly rallies, and strikes violently back in unison, focusing their various offensive talents on its head and neck. Along with the poison, the blood of Issac's prestigious heritage is flowing within him, and boils to the surface. Raising his father's sword high with his free arm, he musters all his strength and, crying out, brings the sword slicing down with everything he had on the monster's injured neck. All of them hold their breath (except the lung-less Edriar, who simply stands in silence, as usual) for an eternity of a moment... followed by the sickening thud of a giant head leaving its body and squishing to the floor.

The held breath is followed by a concert of relieved sighs (except, again, from Edriar). Dechard returns to the room incredibly excited, explaining that basilisk hide, spines, teeth, and claws are all supremely valuable to traders and craftsmen in the town above. As Edriar, Raziel, and Soh begin to loot the beast for such prizes, Fried inspects Issac's wound. He is dismayed to announce that his friend is being slowly but surely petrified  by the basilisk's final attack. The group gathers around their wounded ally, and forms a plan to rush him to the Blue Herb in hopes that Savannah and Soh could make some manner of cure for this ailment. Before they leave, though, Dechard and Fried approach the dais to investigate what this final chamber might contain that the cultists were so eager to find. Able to sense magical auras, Friend and Raziel see an object so radiant with arcane power that it is almost hard to look at. A metal device, or half of one, that Edriar claims to be an astrolabe: a navigational device primarily used at sea. Fried steps forward to collect the relic, but as soon as his fingertips touch its surface, there is a brilliant flash of light and then utter blackness. All present feel their consciousness slip away as they simultaneously slump to the floor.