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

[PurpleXVI]

Lorath

The large cavern filled with the eerie echoes of Lorath's chanting as he cast his spells, but nothing came swarming to cut off the noise and he was left in peace to make his lasso. Even with his magically boosted skills, it took him a few tries before he managed to wrap it around the nearest pillar.

His rope creaked alarmingly as the current grabbed him, but he managed to make his way to the first pillar. And so it went, as he made his way across, by the end of it, he had hitting the next pillar with his lasso down to a science, but his arms were also aching. Slow-moving as the river was, dragging himself along with only his skinny arms was a challenge. He also was also finding himself getting winded abnormally easily, it didn't help that he was soaked and freezing, either.

On the opposite side of the river, the corridor much resembled the one he'd come from, same width, same construction, same lack of decoration. The only noticeable difference was that a bit of the luminescent fungi grew there, which made it easier for him to find his way, but also ruined his night sight, meaning that anything that he might have seen a glint of at a distance, he wasn't going to see now.

Advancing slowly, he found that the corridor rose gently, which meant that he was finding himself a good bit lower in the water just a few tens of yards in. Now only submerged to the waist, he found the going a bit easier. Something worrying was going on, though. Intermittently he would catch faint splashes behind him, well behind him, they would always stop when he stopped to listen to them, and they seemed to keep their distance, but they didn't leave him.

Whenever he looked behind him, the glare of the fungus prevented him from seeing anything beyond a few yards behind.

Before he could get too worried, though, a passage opened up on his right, while the main corridor continued on forwards. The passage lead to a spherical room, the bottom being arranged into steps, rather than smooth, the floor of which was covered in shards of crystal. The shards seemed similar to the curved piece Lorath had found earlier. The only decoration aside from the shards was a large pillar in the center, which reached a foot or so above the water.

On the other side of the chamber, a doorway opened into another corridor, also going left to right, same as the one the elf was currently in, though it looked like the path to the right was curving, away from the chamber, in the direction down-river.


Ulik, Evon

Ulik was lulled to sleep by Evon's rhythmic puffing and the faint echoes of arcane syllables coming to him from up-river.


Bas, Balth, Anne, Tamora

Anne got about ten feet up the cliff before her first mishap. The rocks turned out to be smoother than she imagined, though this side of the cliff had been somewhat sheltered from the brief storm they'd weathered earlier, there was still a bit of water which hadn't dried up yet. Her hand slipped, her feet scrabbled for purchase and she fell. Thankfully it was a short fall and the soft ground meant she wasn't hurt, though she did have the wind knocked from her as she landed on her back.

Uninjured and having learned to be a bit more careful, Anne thought it seemed possible to give the climb another try, as she spotted a path of handholds and outcroppings that lead around the wet part.

This time her ascent was more agile and swift, she went up like a spider, her hands instantly finding places to hold where it seemed like there weren't possibly any. She got well above the tree-tops, and managed to scout out the landscape for a while. Assuming that the general line of the mountains was correct, even if they weren't entirely to scale, the group was still somewhere southwest of the route marked on the map, and even the foothills of the mountains were still several days away. If the scale wasn't completely insane, it would probably take them a half-week to get to the trail, and a week to reach the mountains.

As she was about to get down, though, her luck failed her again. She was about fifty feet off the ground when a loose rock slipped under her feet, she tried to grab a hold of something before she fell, but it was too late. Tumbling head over heels she fell towards the ground, only just managing to right herself from a fall on her head a half-second before impact.

She hit the ground feet-first with a sickening crunch and a popping sound, falling to her knees as her legs crumbled under her. It felt as though her shinbones had been slammed up into her kneecaps, and something had definitely broken in the right one. Sharp points of splintered bone were pressing against the skin of her lower leg, clearly visible from the outside, and very tangible to Anne. Almost as soon as she landed, her leg was a mix of red and purple bruise colours.

Balth didn't quite seem to know what to do as she hit the ground, either that or he was waiting for the others to take action first.

Gan had disappeared while the others had been watching Anne climb, somewhere in the distance, carried to them by the wind, they could hear the cry of an eagle.

(Anne loses 16 out of 30 HP, she has 14 Health remaining.)

[ 02-26-2007, 09:49 PM: Message edited by: PurpleXVI ]

[Armen]

Tamora

Tamora was shaken out of her rest by the sound of Anne’s fall from the cliff and turned only in time to see her companion badly injured and clearly in pain. She cursed her current weakness and the idle question about climbing the cliffs that she now recalled asking Anne out of curiosity more than anything. She went over to Anne and knelt beside her finding Bas already there. The grimace on Anne’s face clearly spoke of the agony she was feeling and recalled to Tamora all to clearly her recent experience in the cliffs. An idea seemed to occur to her and she looked up and caught Bas’ eye. “Can you heal this?” she asked, “maybe we can draw on the power of this place. The spirit of the clearing healed Gan and I. Maybe we could call on it to heal Anne now.” She thought briefly of attempting to put Anne through the cliffs as she had been but shook her head to herself – she could not willingly subject another to that.

Waiting for Bas’ answer she looked around the clearing still feeling like she was thinking at half speed. With a start she realised that Gan was missing – where was he? She recalled that he hadn’t spoken since emerging from the cliffs and she had been too concerned with herself to find out how he had been affected. “Balth”, she said, “did you see that happened to Gan?” She would have to hope that the ranger could look after himself for a little while – she could hardly leave Anne now.

[dplax]

Anne

There was barely time to scream. Barely time to adjust her fall. To minimise the damage. After the initial few painful seconds, it only got worse. The agony grew and every look she shot to her leg showed her what she had gotten herself into. She cursed her foolishness for attempting the climb now and not in the morning.

She swallowed, trying to memorise what she had seen above all the pain the nerves in her leg were sending her. The time to tell it to the others was not now, but she did not want to forget what she had seen. That would make the fall a vain sacrifice of her own health.

She managed a weak smile at Tamora, but did not try speaking. The only sound, which could have come out would have been a groan...

[Kazilan]

Bas raced to Anne's side and inspected her wounds. He glanced at Tamora as the ranger voiced her questions.

"I can cast a healing spell, although I doubt it will heal this completely. As for the power of this clearing, I would rather leave it untouched for now. If my spells aren't enough, perhaps then we can investigate that option."

Bas reached his hands towards Anne's damaged legs and began casting a cure light wounds spell, with a second ready to follow the first.

[Man Who Fights Like Woman]

Lorath wasn't surprised that his plan had worked. It was, after all, a great plan, as all of the ones he came up with were. Now that he was on the other side though, he was very tired. At least he was getting to an area where the water level was lower.

The corridor off to his right intrigued him. He ducked into there, and went for the pillar in the center. If he could, he'd stand on the pillar and look around the room, especially behind him, hoping to see who or what had been following him since he came to this side.

[PurpleXVI]

Lorath

The flat top of the pillar was easy for Lorath to pull himself up on to, and from his new vantage point he had a good view of the room and the corridor behind him. Lurking back in the corridor that he had turned right from was a dark shadow under the water, it seemed to sense him watching and withdrew out of sight, but after a few seconds, what looked like a yellow pair of eyes on narrow, red stalks snuck their way around the corner to watch him.

There was no way for the elf to tell what the vague shadow was, though it looked to have been about as large as Ulik, and maybe then some.

The room he was in was rather unremarkable, the floor was covered in a large amount of crystal shards, and that was about the only decoration. The shards looked like they might have come from crystal globes, judging by their curved shapes, and like they had been broken recently, since the water hadn't dulled the edges yet. There were enough of them for the layer to be around a foot thick, anyone who tried to walk across it would probably find their feet sliced apart by the sharp crystal.

As Lorath looked around, though, he spotted something on the floor, half-buried under the crystal. It looked like a slightly curved, point-less shortsword. It was nearest the entryway he hadn't come in through.


Ulik, Evon

Ulik slept on, having odd, nonsensical dreams wherein it seemed perfectly sensible to spend half an hour arguing with someone about whether proper apples were red or green.


Bas, Anne, Tamora, Balth

Balth took a few seconds to answer, seeming to look around the clearing before he did so, "No, I've no clue," he told Tamora, as he joined the others around the fallen Anne, sprinting there despite the short distance, he watched intently as Bas worked his healing magic, "But at the moment I'd say we've got more important things to worry about, don't you?"

Though Anne's pain was already intense, the healing spells almost seemed to make it worse. She could feel the bone splinters re-arranging themselves back into their original shape, knitting themselves together. The pain began to subside after a few seconds, as the initial flurry of activity came to an end, and then it was actually less than it had been at first.

Her leg was still badly bruised, to be exact almost the entirety of it was a deep purple flecked with red, but no longer were there any jagged shards of bone almost puncturing the skin and it didn't seem like anything had ruptured on the inside. It would probably make her pass out if she tried to walk on the leg right then and there, but if she sucked up the pain, it could be done.

"Impressive..." her and Tamora heard Balth mutter under his breath, as the magic worked it's... Magic, on the rogue's leg, Bas was too busy actually casting the spell to hear the elf.

"Do you think you can walk again?" Balth asked of Anne, as the spellcasting ended, helping her into a sitting position if she did not resist, "That fall you took could easily have killed you if you had landed wrong."

(Anne regains 8 HP, 22 HP remain.)

[ 02-27-2007, 11:45 PM: Message edited by: PurpleXVI ]

[Man Who Fights Like Woman]

Lorath, satisfied that the creature was apparently bashful about asking him to the temple dance, hopped off the pillar and started heading towards the other entrance. He moved carefully to avoid stopping on any of the shards, and walked over to the half-buried object. After clearing the shards away with his feet he bent down and picked it up, then put it in his pack for later examination. While he was down there he picked up a couple of the broken shards to possibly sell later, maybe after shaping them into something worth money, and continued on through the next door.

[ 02-27-2007, 11:52 PM: Message edited by: Man Who Fights Like Woman ]

[Armen]

Tamora

Tamora mentally rolled her eyes at Balth’s question. Gan’s absence could quickly become very important if they were attacked while Anne was unable to walk let alone run. She agreed with the underlying logic of their new friend’s argument though and didn’t want to upset Anne unnecessarily so kept quiet. Instead she watched Bas’ healing – impressed as always with the power that the Learned could channel – so she found herself nodding along with Balth’s muttered comment.

Anne’s condition and Gan’s absence both served to shake Tamora out of her feeling of tiredness. They were in a difficult situation here and this world was not one that tolerated weakness. She nodded to Bas in acknowledgement of his healing talent and smiled at Anne. “How are you feeling now?” she asked. “If you two are ok to rest I still think we should camp here tonight. Balth and I can watch.” She looked up at Balth as she said this waiting for an acknowledgement from the Sun Runner. Owing to her heritage Tamora did not need to sleep, only rest and meditate, so could watch for the whole group if necessary and with luck Balth would have the same ability. Balth and Bas seemed to be making Anne comfortable so Tamora went and spent some time with the erdlu before they settled down.

[Caleb808]

Ulik argued with a thunder god for what seemed like hours about what the best apple was. They had agreed that green ones were the best for eating by themselves, but couldn't come to terms on whether red or yellow were the best for cooking. Inevitably, it came to blows, with Ulik waking up after receiving the death blow from the deity's warhammer.



Feeling refreshed from sleep, he decided to check out the door that the symbiote infested woman had come from. Of course, he sends Evon in first.

[Kazilan]

Bas nodded at Tamora's suggestion of rest. "Thank you for offering to take watch. If you need me to take a shift, I can do so, just give me some time to commune with nature and regain my spells."

The druid turned to look at Anne. "Anne, is there anything else you need before I settle down to rest?"

Bas waited to see if he could help Anne to a more comfortable position before finding a spot of his own to meditate and regain his lost spells. He hoped to gain a sense of the land while meditating, unsure of what to expect.