<u>Ulik</u>

As Ulik fell face-first unto the floor atop the stairs, his last thought before unconsciousness was that maybe adventuring hadn't been the best choice of career for a narcoleptic.


<u>Lorath</u>

The water reached halfway up Lorath's torso as he reached the bottom of the stairs. Occasionally, splashes would echo from somewhere else within the tunnels, betraying movement, but no growls, cries or words ever came to his ears.

Around the corner the tunnel for a few more yards and then ended at a room, there had once been a door blocking the way into it, but the only remnants were rusting hinges. The room beyond the doorway was rectangular, with the door being halfway along one of the long sides, and it was just as drowned in water as the tunnel Lorath was coming from, but it seemed somehow darker.

Looking left and right, he could see doorways at either end of the room, with the one to his right being empty, while the one to the left was blocked by a blackened, rotting, water-swollen wooden door. Something unidentifiable about the size of a human hand was floating in the water near it.


<u>Anne, Bas, Gan, Tamora</u>

Despite never having extracted poison from a Thri-Kreen before, Anne was surprisingly succesful at it. After a false start which only produced blood, she pierced the venom sac, which caused a syrup-thick, translucent substance to pour out unto the piece of bark. It seemed like it would require an air-tight container, like a corked bottle, to transport it, though. As soon as it stopped moving, it started hardening, developing a crystalline crust within seconds.

Balth watched with mild interest while he continued to field the onslaught of questions from Bas and Tamora, "The Thri-Kreen don't have magic, except for that of druids and mages," he told Bas, "When I say the Will, I speak of mindbenders, psionicists, if you wish to be formal. Not all of them are such, but even those who aren't trained in that art tend to have a few minor tricks up their sleeve."

"Wezer globes," was his reply to the ranger, "This particular bug must've raided one of their hives on the way, the light ones tend to be full of water and the dark ones some sort of thick syrupy junk that will sate your thirst, but which isn't quite my idea of a good time. I suggest you keep them in a separate bag from your other equipment, they have a tendency to melt and burst in warm weather. After the first time you open your pack to find all of your rations and equipment covered in Wezer syrup, you learn not to make that mistake again, let me tell you."

<font color=silver>Gan Vahnsen

<font color=skblue>“If you're done,”</font> Gan murmured, watching Anne with accute though veiled interest, <font color=skblue>“I suggest that perhaps we move.”</font> He shrugged, then added with a grin, <font color=skblue>“Nicely done, by the way.”</font>

Without another word, he began to walk in the direction of the cliffs.</font>

As Lorath progressed through the flooded corridor he held the torch above his head so that it could cast enough light for him to see. His gear was probably getting wet now, and he was very glad that his spellbook was kept wrapped in a water-proof container. He generally followed the habit of going clockwise, and didn't see any reason to stop this now. He went to the left, inspecting the small object and using whatever method was possible to open the door.

Some people discouraged Ulik from adventuring because of his narcolepsy, but to hell with them, he'd show everyone that he was handi-capable! He awoke from his nap feeling refreshed and ready to take on the world.

Ulik grabs the Ankh and belt pouch off the corpse then examines the pouch's contents. Once that's done, he'll go back to find Evon and drag him in to the building. If the zombie-like Evon doesn't provide any resistance, Ulik will push him ahead as he explores the nearest right corridor.

[ 02-14-2007, 06:55 AM: Message edited by: Caleb808 ]

Bas stepped into motion as Gan headed for the cliffs. As the group started moving the druid focused his attention on the surrounding plant life, trying to find matches for the vegetation back home.

Tamora

As Gan and Bas started moving, Tamora gestured to Anne and Balth to follow on as she would take the rear position to keep one eye on their back trail and as much as she could spare of the other one on Balth. As the tall elf drew near to her she passed him one of the lighter globes, “You must be thirsty”, she said. Leaving the darker one where it was she put the other into the empty satchel she had taken from big bird and with a glance around to see if he was still following them left the clearing after the others.

<u>Lorath</u>

Lorath stepped into the room and immediately learned why the water had seemed darker: It was deeper, a lot deeper. The moment he was beyond the doorway the floor disappeared beneath him and he went under, for a panicked few seconds he was trying to keep the torch aloft, not drop his shield and not get his lungs filled with swamp water at the same time, it was a doomed struggle.

Though he managed to surface again, and even to keep his shield, his torch had been extinguished, leaving him in complete darkness and with no clue where in the room he was. Then he heard it, far off, but approaching fast, a rapid succesion of splashes, something moving through the water, heading for him. Thanks to the echoes of the tunnels, it was impossible to tell where it was coming from. He didn't even know whether it was one noisy thing, or a swarm of hungy creatures.


<u>Ulik, Evon</u>(Sort of)

The body's pockets and pouches held little, though what little they held was peculiar. There were several scrolls, all too damaged by water to read, some rotting dry-rations and a stoppered bottle full of clear water. Floating in the water was what looked like miniature jellyfish, each vaguely blue-ish with bright red spots. They didn't appear to be moving, but nor did they seem to be dead and decaying.

After looting the corpse Ulik shoved the comatose Evon into the water and got a happy surprise: The man was extremely bouyant, supplying Ulik with a passable raft, even though he had to almost lay flat as he paddled into the tunnels ahead.

As he headed into the tunnel on the right, a series of loud splashes came from the tunnel Lorath had headed down, it sounded like a horde of piranhas devouring a live cow, but without the mooing. He was, however, distracted from this by discovering the source of the glow. It seemed that handily luminescent fungi was glowing in scattered patches both above and below the water, casting a pure white light on to their their surroundings. It didn't reach far, but it allowed Ulik to find his way without sailing into the walls.

The part of the tunnels he was headed into seemed to be in a considerably worse condition than the area near the entrance, he passed several branching corridors which had been blocked by collapses, and the glowing fungus revealed stone blocks that had fallen out of the walls and were lying on the tunnel floor.

He had made his way down the tunnel, navigating a few turns, for about five minutes when he finally reached something particularly interesting. It was a large, round chamber with a domed ceiling. The fungus, which was even more prevalent there than in the areas he'd passed so far, revealed that the part of the room underwater was also hemispherical, meaning that was it drained of water, Ulik would be standing in a fully spherical room.

The floor of the room was covered with crystal globes, some broken, some intact. Each appeared to have a seam of sorts around it's "equator," as though it had either been made to be broken apart there, or had been fused together there. A quick count numbered at least fifty, with about a third of them broken. They were a foot across, and inside most of the intact ones, Ulik could see dark shapes, though it wasn't possible to tell what they were.

In the center of the room there was a raised pillar with a flat top which rose just above the surface of the water, on it, Ulik could see what looked like a lizardman corpse. While it was heavily decayed, it was possible to tell that death appeared to have ensued from a myriad holes each about as big as the tip of one of Ulik's fingers. The holes were everywhere, along the limbs, up and down the torso and even on the head. Each seemed to have been dug deep into the lizardman's body. What equipment remained identifiable were a warhammers lying next to the corpse, any armor, clothes or bags had long since decayed, or been plundered by others.

The only exit was a tunnel on the opposite side of the room, the prevalence of glowing fungus seemed to drop in that direction, and Ulik could hear a roar, like the sound of a waterfall, coming from there as well.


<u>Anne, Gan, Bas, Tamora</u>

Balth seemed to perk up considerably simply by them being moving, rather than sitting around in the clearing, and he accepted the sphere from Tamora with an exaggerated bow, though it was obviously born of high spirits, not mocking.

As they travelled he pointed out plants that were easy to get tangled in, fruits that shouldn't be eaten because they were poisonous and, on the occasion that an animal didn't run from them, whether it was to be petted or avoided. Most things were to be avoided, the exception was a herd of what Balth called "Kanks," horse-sized ants, that crossed their path at one point. They were quite docile, though not domesticated, and the elf told them that in the lands he came from, many people raised herds of them for food, and even as mounts.

None of the plants they passed reminded Bas much of home, they were of course still variations on the same theme, trunks with leaves and branches, occasionally broken by the colourful presence of fruit or flowers, but there was nothing he recognized. A few plants could be distant cousins of vines or trees from Achen, but none were the same.

Even with a native who knew some of the ways of the jungle and two rangers leading the way, the going was slow. The vegetation seemed to get denser and darker with every step they took, with even the agile bird that Tamora had brought along occasionally getting tangled in a vine and needing help getting free.

It wasn't until well past noon, by the time the sun was headed for the horizon and things were getting chillier, that the going got easier. But they soon encountered other difficulties. First, jungle around them became colder, much colder, far colder, in fact, than it should even have been in the depth of the night. The sky above them also seemed to become darkened, as though something was in between them and it, blocking out the sun. Finally, it began to snow, or at least that was what they thought at first. Thick, puffy flakes of gray began to rain down, covering them, sticking to their equipment and bearing down the plants around them. It was part of why the going got easier, at first, those of the surrounding plants that hadn't collapsed under the gray stuff had been choked by it.

Even Balth, the native, seemed puzzled by it, saying he hadn't encountered the phenomena anywhere else in the jungle, or anywhere else in the world, for that matter. It took a few moments of head-scratching and pondering before they worked it out: It was ash.

The farther they advanced, the heavier it fell from the sky and blanketed the ground, rising up in large gray clouds as they moved. It made breathing difficult, but worse than that, it froze them to their marrow. It wasn't impossible to keep going, but it was certainly unpleasant.

The heart of the ash rain seemed to be somewhere ahead, as it was intensifying with every step they took, but it was impossible to see the source since the remains of trees covered by the ask formed a barrier in all directions. Though it killed the trees, the ash also prevented rot from taking hold and bringing them down. It was possible to move past the trees, they had done so for the last hour, but they limited their view greatly.

"W-what the hell is this?" Gasped Balth, through chattering teeth, "I've never seen anything like it, it can't possibly be natural. There's no doubt some magical beast or mage at the heart of this, I say we turn back or find a way around." He was attempting to rub some life into his arms as he spoke, his good mood having evaporated swiftly as they marched into the ash.

To Bas, the situation felt at once natural and unnatural, what they were wading through, what they were advancing on was something natural, but not something natural for this place. Something transplanted from elsewhere, by magic or mishap, and having a destructive effect through it's disharmony with the jungle.

OOC: backtracking a slight bit

Anne

She had no interest in carrying a large quantity of the poison with her. Taking her dagger, she coated one of its edges with the poison, taking care to leave the other edge untouched by the thick liquid.

When the ash started falling, it took Anne, along with the others, quite a few moments to realise what it truly was. Yet on they went, against the cold and the falling ash. The temperature was especially hard on Anne, for all the clothes she had were those that she wore.

"Is there a volcano around here, which could be spewing all this ash?" she asked, her teeth chattering as much if not more as Balth.

"Anyone have a spare cloak they don't plan on using?" she added as an afterthought.

Ulik pushes the lizardman corpse off the pillar and sets himself and Evon up on it. Enticed by the globes, but thinking that the holes in the corpse may have been caused by something similar to the parasite that attached itself to him earlier, Ulik decides to test the waters before diving down to grab one. He grabs Evon's arm and slaps the surface of the water with it for a few seconds. If nothing takes the bait, Ulik will grab one of the crystal globes and sit on the pillar to study the things he's collected so far.

He noted the earlier splashing sounds from Lorath's directions and listened intently for any battle cries, pleas for help, death throes or involuntary bowel movements from his comrade, who in deciding to go it alone in their current location had shown that he evidently wasn't a fan of the horror genre. He could only hope that the gods had a humorous fate in store for him.

Tamora

Tamora swung her hooded cloak around her shoulders against the cold and at Anne’s request offered her blanket to the woman, “This might help although I’d rather you didn’t cut holes in it just yet”. She brushed her arms and with a trace of irony in her tone said to Gan, “I think we might be close to the ‘Chasm of Choking Ash’ that you say the Sage spoke of. That means that we’re going the right way but unfortunately it also means that we need to carry on this way”. This latter was aimed mainly at Balth following his ststed desire to remove themselves from the ash. She thought for a moment. “We could start skirting around the affected area now but we don’t know how far we are from the chasm yet nor how long it is or if it easy to cross. We might end up walking an enormous circle unnecessarily and risk getting lost so I think we should continue on.”

[ 02-15-2007, 10:59 AM: Message edited by: Armen ]