To New Horizons(2nd ed game, game thread)

[PurpleXVI]

Lorath

The shadow kept a respectful distance as before, staying below the water and well behind Lorath as he left the room. Beyond the door, the corridor stretched, as he had observed earlier, off to his left and right. Left, it dipped again, heading downwards until the water was as deep as most of the rest of the complex. There was none of the glowing fungus in that direction.

To the right, however, it sloped upwards rather sharply and was soon completely clear of the water. He had no way of telling where it lead, though, since it also curved left after a short distance in.


Ulik, Evon

Evon obeyed, as usual, and since there had neither been screams nor the grisly sound of snapping bones after half a minute, it seemed like the coast was clear. Ulik managed to follow his companion into the small room beyond without getting murdered.

Though the floor was dry, the room beyond the doorway seemed as damaged as any of the others. A few piles of foul-smelling mulch were the only remains of furniture, and some of the ceiling stones had given way to tree roots. The only exit was a corridor directly on the opposite side of the room, which curved down and left after a few feet. From far down the corridor, he could hear the sound of splashing water, as though someone was wading through it.

Aside from that, the only object of interest was a backpack which had been stashed into a niche in one corner. It didn't look to have sustained any damage.


Bas, Tamora, Anne, Balth

Balth agreed to help keep watch over the camp, then followed Tamora as she left the scene of the accident, leaving Bas alone with Anne and catching up with the ranger as she reached her pet, sitting down on the warm stone next to the animal.

"So, Tamora," he said, giving her a charming smile, "Would you like to spar? I haven't fought anything since that Thri-Kreen, and I'd hate to be rusty if something comes for us after nightfall."

[ 03-01-2007, 08:33 AM: Message edited by: PurpleXVI ]

[dplax]

Anne

She smiled her thanks at Bas for the healing spell, and then added.

"You have already done much to help me. Rest. You need it."

She closed her own eyes, hoping that the remaining bruises and blackening on her leg wasn't too serious, and that sleep would come.

[Armen]

Tamora

Despite her uncertainty over her condition Tamora grinned at Balth’s invitation. It seemed a long time since she had sparred with anyone. She carried on scratching the back of Ernie’s* head and he craned it back against her letting out a long low cluck of satisfaction. She looked at the creature affectionately then stepped away from it earning herself a reproachful squawk.

“Wait a moment”, she said to Balth. Tentatively circling her head around and then slowly stretching and twisting the rest of her body she assessed her condition. This extra flexibility was strange but otherwise she felt surprisingly well and she’d have to learn to work with it sooner rather than later.

She straightened up, hooked a toe under her spear, and flicked it up into her hand. “Right,” she said and bowed to the taller elf and then in elvish. “I accept your gracious invitation”. She stepped forward into a guard position and caught Balth’s eye. “No contact though – I do not want to get unnecessarily injured here”.

OOC: *I’ve named the erdlu

[ 03-01-2007, 06:07 PM: Message edited by: Armen ]

[Man Who Fights Like Woman]

Seeing the choices laid out in front of him, Lorath decided it would be best to go to the left. Whatever was following him it didn't seem too dangerous, and if he wanted to wait for it to move along he would probably be there for a long time. Besides, even if he went after it, the shy thing would probably back away from him. It was probably some magical creature created to keep watch on people in this temple anyways, and trying to fight it would be a totally vain and useless action.

So, yeah. He went to the left, looking for anything interesting from the water level down.

[Caleb808]

Ulik inspects the contents of the backpack.

[PurpleXVI]

Lorath

The water level rose again as Lorath splashed down the corridor, and soon it was almost up to his neck. Whatever was following him kept pace, never getting too close, but never getting out of sight either, occasionally one of it's yellow eyes on stalks would slip above the surface of the water to watch him, but it was never for long.

His general surroundings were unremarkable, looking much like the rest of the tunnels he'd spent the day walking through, but the elf did note that he seemed to be headed for a more intact section. There were less collapses, the floor was more even and it was rare that any roots forced him to duck or crawl to continue.

Ten minutes after making the turn, he eached the end of the corridor, which opened up into a large, rectangular chamber. The floor was decorated with raised stone slabs, each reaching about to Lorath's waist and all submerged. All of the slabs were perfectly uniform, about five feet long and two feet wide. They had grooves and canals in the edges which lead to gutters around their bases, rather as if their designer had expected them to regularly get very wet.

Badly rusted metal cylinders, two at each end, were also attached to the slabs. They looked as though they could, back when they were freshly made, be opened and closed. They were roughly large enough that most people could fit their wrist or ankle in them.

Lorath's entrance was in the center of one of the short sides, to his left, a few yards along one of the long sides, was another door that lead to a very similar-looking corridor. Placed centrally along the long wall on his right was another exit, though this one was different. It was blocked by a large, wooden door which seemed to have been made of interwoven roots. Unlike all of the other wood Lorath had encountered in the place so far, this wasn't rotten, in fact it almost looked like it was still alive. The roots were covered in bark, and unless his eyes deceived him, they occasionally moved very slightly.

There was no obvious way to open the door, but right in the center it had a round hole that looked suspiciously like a mouth.


Ulik, Evon

Evon "kept watch" while Ulik examined his latest pieces of loot. Within the backpack he found a plethora of fascinating things:

Two small, ruby-coloured spheres, each about the size of a plum with a smaller sphere inside them, they looked extremely fragile, as though made from glass, and any movement at all caused the internal spheres to bounce about, resulting in a high-pitched noise.

Five wax-sealed scrolls, which looked to him like they were spell scrolls, he could understand the writing and use the scrolls, but the spells were unfamiliar to him and could do just about anything, the only things he could decipher were the names, though sitting down to spend a few hours studying them somewhere safe would probably teach him more.

A weird metal object made from something that looked like brass, it was hard to describe, but it was reminiscent of a birdcage that had been stomped flat, providing that the birdcage had originally been four-dimensional and covered in small, rounded protrusions. A few experimental pulls suggested that it could be unfolded, but that it might require several people working together to accomplish, seeing as how many of the parts were constantly trying to collapse back in on themselves again as soon as they were pulled out of their original positions. Folded, it was about the size of a buckler, there was no telling how big it would be unfolded.

The final object in the backpack was a small, leather-bound notebook, it looked water-damaged, but some of it was still readable.


Balth, Tamora

"No contact, of course," replied Balth, drawing his scimitar and flashing her a grin, "It would be like something out of a bad story if you were to survive your ordeal within the cliffs only to be accidentially slain by a friend immediately afterwards."

They started out mildly, both warming up and testing each other with simple blows and parries before launching into more complex attacks and feints. Tamora noted that Balth seemed a bit uncomfortable fighting with blade and shield, as though it was not usual for him, he also seemed to be restraining himself a lot. Several of the openings he left her with at the beginning were obviously intentional, almost as though he was testing her.

The period of amnesty did not continue for long, he soon began to unleash a more complex repetoire of moves, and she began to be hard pressed to hold him back. If he was testing her, though, examining the way she fought, he was not alone, she, too, was learning a good few things from the way he attacked. In the past, she had met several people, both as allies and opponents, who had wielded two weapons, and the way Balth fought was very reminiscent of that.

At the start of the fight, her opponent had been quite open and cheerful, joking and smiling even as she used holes in his defense to force him into a surrender. But as things heated up and it turned out she was quite an even match for him, he got more grim, almost angry, increasingly aggressive. Every time she managed to turn aside a serious attack or get through his defenses, he got worse.

Balth began to make attacks which, if she had not parried and dodged them, looked like they would most definitely have made contact. Not necessarily killing blows, but definitely ones that would have left her with bruises and gashes.

Before the fight could continue, however, a shrill cry rose up from the forest beyond the clearing, the sound of some animal meeting a grisly end. With some predator close by, both Balth and Tamora decided to stop their sparring session and resume standing guard. They had been fighting back and forth across the clearing for almost an hour, and their companions were both well asleep by that point.

In the end, nothing leapt out from the treeline to disembowel them, and as the morning came, their friends began to stir and awaken from their sleep.


Bas

It had been an exerting day for Bas, and the calmness brought on by his meditation left him in a half-dreaming, half-meditating state. The spirit of the area communed with him readily, lending him power to replenish his spells and half-speaking into his mind. The spirit, which was of the clearing and the area surrounding the cliffs, seemed more open to him than the spirits of any of the land they'd passed through so far. It seemed that it was not long since it had last been awakened, by another druid or some creature close to the forest. Though it was as ancient as the world itself there was little it could tell him, for most of what seemed important to mortals was over in the blink of an eye to it.

The only meaningful fact he managed to glean from the spirit was that there had once been a great exodus of druids from the jungles and forests, they had gathered and set off for the lands east of the mountains. With the spirit's immortal time-frame it was hard to judge how long ago it had been, but to Bas it felt like decades had passed since then. In the end, the spirit's whispers lulled him to sleep and he woke in the morning feeling as refreshed as his companions.


Anne

Even the sounds of Balth and Tamora's sparring could not prevent Anne easily drifting off to a deep, dreamless sleep only seconds after she laid down. The rogue woke once, in the middle of the night, because a worryingly large insect was trying to climb up her left nostril, but aside from that, she woke up to find her leg was still attached and looking slightly better. The only turn for the worse was that she had amassed an impressive collection of mosquito bites overnight.

(Anne regains 4 HP, 26 HP remaining.)

[ 03-02-2007, 01:33 PM: Message edited by: PurpleXVI ]

[Armen]

Tamora

Tamora walked over to Bas and squatted down next to him. She looked down stroking her hand over the mossy floor of the clearing. “Learned One,” she said eventually. “what do you wish to do? We have come to the cliffs and I feel learned all we are going to learn safely. Gan has disappeared and, “here she lowered her voice to a whisper, "I remain unsure about Balth. I wondered about returning to the village on the lake to seek word of the others to see if they have learned anything but I don’t know”.

She looked up at the druid and frowned, “I am sorry to burden you just as you wake but I have been thinking of this throughout the night without resolution. Perhaps if you shared what you are trying to achieve in this world . . .” Tamora trailed off becoming quiet as if she felt she had asked too much, returned to her examination of the ground and waited for Bas’ response.

[Kazilan]

Bas wiped sleep from his eyes and squinted at the rising sun, trying to imagine a large group of druids heading off in that direction. He nodded as Tamora finished voicing her questions and concerns.

"Balth is a mystery, but he has proven helpful so far. I'm not skilled in reading people, so it is difficult for me to make a judgment of his character. I will defer to your instincts on that matter."

The druid paused to stretch out his arms as he considered Tamora's request regarding his mission.

"I suppose my purpose here is not something to hide, especially not to another servant of nature. I am investigating this world on orders from the druids of our own. Of highest importance is contacting whatever druidic hierarchy exists here. In regards to that, I communed with the spirit of this place last night and it sent me a memory of an exodus of druids from this place, heading east. I don't know when it took place, but it was at least many years ago."

Bas frowned for a moment. "I don't know what would be the best course of action. Obviously, heading east would make sense for my mission, but there is no telling if we would find anything. In addition, this information alone would interest my superiors. As far as meeting the others, it could not hurt to travel in a larger group, given the dangers we have faced so far."

Bas shrugged and offered a tight smile. "After all that, I don't really know what our next move should be. East? Or rejoin the others, and see if they have found anything?"

He stood, grasping his staff firmly in his right hand. "And Tamora, you can call me Bas from now on. If we are to travel together, we shouldn't hold to formalities."

[Man Who Fights Like Woman]

Lorath approached the door with extreme caution. The room was apparently a prison room, with manacles for binding people while they were subjected to various tortures involving water. Looking behind him for the eye stalk that seemed to be following him, he tried to think of a plan. His materials were soaked, and he wouldn't be able to burn the door down. It looked like it would be impervious to his Reduce spell, and unfortunately the hole didn't go all the way through. With no plan and his curiosity building, he resolved to do what could very well be a terrible idea - something was going in the hole. Out of frustration, he decided it was his hand, and hoped that whatever gods were watching would be less obvious with their attempts to harm him.

[Armen]

Tamora

The young hunter smiled at Bas’ invitation to familiarity. “Then I think we should return to the village on the lake. After my experience in the cliffs I am less reluctant now to consult the Great Sage there and we may be able to put some more specific questions about the druid exodus. Also that way is home for Balth, he has already said he won’t travel further east.” She glanced over to Balth who seemed occupied with some camp related task or other. “We should aim to miss the canyon to the north as we did before and would be best to avoid . . . our point of arrival. We can skirt north of that and pick up the river and follow it to the lake.” She looked over to see Anne awake and listening. “How’s the leg?” she asked, “can you walk do you think? And do you think the idea of returning to the village is a good one?”