Under a Dark Sun(2nd Ed. AD&D)

[Armen]

Tamora

Tamora planted the butt of her new spear on the ground and pulled hard to raise herself to the vertical without putting any weight on her injured leg. That achieved she cautiously tested the injury while she listened to Lorath’s explanation about the portal. The leg seemed weak but stable and she nodded her thanks in response to a questioning look from Bas. She was more than a little impressed that the wizard possessed such a thing and that he knew so much about it. She could see the connection between this thing and the portal that had brought them here and wondered if Lorath could shed any light on the nature of that construction too.

She limped forward and helped to erect the thing as best she could, letting out a soft whistle when it snapped into place and activated. She looked across to Lorath. “Impressive,” she admitted. “Did you make this?”

[Kazilan]

Bas flushed at Lorath's rebuke, but did not back down.

"I'm sorry you and the others were injured, but I would place my trust in a wild creature of nature before I trust someone who so casually utilizes foreign magic."

Having spoken his piece and still visibly flustered, the druid stalked away in the direction the clearing, intent on searching the area where the thri-kreen were assembled previously in hopes of finding a clue as to why they were here.

[Man Who Fights Like Woman]

Lorath grinned when the portal's frame locked into place and activated. "Well," he began to answer, "it uses a wide range of rare materials and expensive metals, not to mention the huge amount of time that it takes to actually power it. It'd be nearly impossible for me to make another portal like this, at least on this planet. Though some of them are naturally occurring, and it's possible that this one is taking advantage of that by connecting to one which already existed."

He didn't mind Bas leaving to go look at the thri-kreen's area; he just hoped that no more followed him back. "We'll be safe inside, but someone should stay on the roof as a look-out to make sure someone or something doesn't close it and trap us."

[ 06-15-2007, 01:41 PM: Message edited by: Man Who Fights Like Woman ]

[PurpleXVI]

(Refer to the OOC thread for detailed descriptions of the content of the portal as well as it's appearance. Go ahead and post a question there if there's anything you need to know, or ask me on MSN.)

Lorath, Tamora, Anne

The portal snapped open and Lorath found the place as he had left it, the only difference being that there was a bit more dust around the place and that some of the skeletal corpses arranged in the throne room had fallen over, their bones having rolled everywhere.


Bas

A thorough examination of the clearing seemed at first to be a fruitless endavour. There were footprints on the ground, and damage to the nearby vegetation which indicated the Thri-Kreen had arrived from the northwest.

Then Bas spotted something odd about one of the trees on the edge of the clearing. From bottom to top, it had extremely scratched-up bark, as though something with sharp claws had climbed it. Sine they had, themselves, often sent Anne up trees to see the land ahead, it would stand to reason the Thri-Kreen had, perhaps, done the same with one of their number.

The only light that shed on the insectoids' agenda, though, was that perhaps they hadn't been entirely sure where in the world they were.

[Armen]

Tamora

Tamora watched Lorath disappear through the portal, walk across the rooftop of the fortress he had described and then descend out of sight into the building. She looked over to where Bas was scouting around the area where the thri-keen had gathered then back to the portal.

Although the idea of a safe refuge was attractive she felt very vulnerable at the idea of entering the structure. The frame of the portal seemed very fragile – suppose some creature or somebody knocked it over or took it away. From what Lorath had said the portal would collapse trapping them inside. That somehow felt like too much of a risk to her. She looked at Anne and voiced her concerns. “If you’d like to explore this fortress or if the idea of sleeping under stone again pleases you I will stay here to explain to Bas and then wait out here to guard the entrance.”

[Kazilan]

The druid ran his hand across the scratched bark and sighed. Satisfied that there was nothing further to find, he rejoined the others by the portal.

"We may want to keep our eyes turned upwards while we travel the forest, those creatures are able climbers." He gestured to the damaged tree to emphasize his point.

Bas walked a circuit around the portal and reached out a hand to touch one of its solid surfaces. When he spoke again it was with a low voice, as he was unsure how well sounds traveled through the portal.

"Did you two see and hear that weapon Lorath was wielding? It was..." he paused as the sound of the demonic weapon drinking from the thri-kreen echoed in his mind, "an abomination. I worry about Lorath, that he so casually carries it with him. I would think that an object like that is as likely to corrupt its wielder as serve him."

[Man Who Fights Like Woman]

Despite the fact that he knew everything on the other end was dead, Lorath still didn't like staying in there by himself. It seemed like a huge waste of space, and the big, empty spaces with no sound but his breath was too much of a contrast to the world outside to not be disconcerting. He went back to the portal and stepped back through.

"If nobody else wants to use it or even take a rest, we might as well take it back down and continue on," he said.

[dplax]

OOC: much info given by Purple for this post. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Anne

When Lorath stepped through the portal and for several seconds afterwards, Anne silently stared into its depths. All she could see was a rooftop underneath a motionless sky. Finding nothing blatantly out of place Anne overcame her fear of this magical portal and stepped through it.

Finding nothing of interest on the roof, she took a staircase down, missing Lorath who just came up another one.

The interior of the castle was in stark contrast with the exterior. Nothing moved, nothing breathed...nothing existed in there. Only all those innumerable skeletons. Most had seemed to die peacefully as though in their sleep. But it was all wrong. Child-sized skeletons were also mixed in between the adults and not everyone could have died of old age. Not at the same time.

The throne room was even more disturbing. Here the skeletons were not undisturbed and peaceful. Someone, or something, had deliberately left them the way they were. A closer inspection of one of the skeletons even revealed that the bones were being held together by wire and string. And it wasn't the only one.

The arrangement reminded Anne of a puppeteer's show she had seen several years earlier. He had used wires and strings to stage a play. But if this had been a play, then who had pulled the strings? And why had several dozen people died? Anne had counted at least forty skeletons inside the castle, but there were several places where she hadn't gone.

All this unexplained death sickened Anne. She felt fear gripping at her heart. Whatever evil had worked here, she could not know whether it had left. Whether, if it was still here, it was active or not. She turned and ran from the throne room and up the closest staircase she could find. The sight of the blue sky and the portal on the other side of the roof were a more than welcome sight.

Still, all that she had seen, all of those, whom she thought of as innocents, dead without even having put up a fight, it sickened Anne. She fell to her knees and threw up on the roof.

She was still pale when she exited the portal. It took several minutes before she regained her composure.

"Why don't you tell me what you know about this place on the other side of the portal Lorath? To me it seemed anything but a safe place to sleep..."

Everyone in there, except those in the throne room seemed to have died in their sleep, she thought.

[ 06-17-2007, 05:33 PM: Message edited by: dplax ]

[Man Who Fights Like Woman]

Lorath sighed. He should have known that this would be a problem with this crew. It hadn't seemed to matter to Ulik and Evon, but then they were with him going into the ruins left behind by a dead civilization. These three had elected instead to go looking for the wonders of nature.

"You know skeletons can't hurt you, at least not these. I stayed there a couple nights while me and some friends were recovering from wounds more grievous than the thri-kreen gave us, the beds were extremely comfortable. Not the kind of thing you'd like to use for too long so that it won't spoil the feeling, but it's a lot better than sleeping on a rock under a tree getting bitten by bugs.

"You didn't touch anything, did you?" he asked. "I'm trying to preserve it as best as possible, both out of respect for the dead and to try and find out what it was that did that." He looked very serious as he said this to Anne, and said it with a stern tone.

[dplax]

Anne

"You do realise that almost all of those people had died in their sleep, or what looks like a sleep-like state? I simply don't think that sleeping there is safe. How can you be sure that whatever had killed all those people has left? I think that you had been lucky even to survive several nights in there. And what of all of the skeletons in the throne room. Highly unusual and anything but natural. They couldn't have put themselves the way they are..."

Anne paused.

"No, I didn't touch anything, but not out of interest of their fates. If I don't have to, I do not want to return to that place. It gives me the shivers. I did not touch anything, because I simply respect the dead."