July 14, 2001

Hook

Major Basil needs a group of people to escort a Lady and her household back home. Meet at the docks.

Plot Synopsis

Major Basil hires a crew to help him resuce a woman and bring her back home. The story eventually comes out that this woman's father knows Basil's boss and called in a favour (which is why Basil is even doing this job). Details are revealed over time as Basil's ship leaves port. Apparently this woman was abducted by a group of Priests of Anubis several years back and has been presumed dead (mostly because she was dead when they took her). The Priests it seems teleported themselves and a small island in order to move themselves to a safe spot while their city was at war. That should have mostly been the end of the story. However a few days before Basil arrived in Rougtero the woman had contacted her father and said she was alive and gave an approximate location of where she was. Her father contacted Basil's boss and Basil started hiring adventurers.

Basil opened the portal and took the ship through to the location he'd been given. That location turned out to be a nastly little sandstorm world that was determined to not be the correct place. The party hung out there for a day and waited for the portal generator to recharge. A new portal was opened to the correct world and the party found themselves in the middle of a huge swamp.

MacManus did some recon and discovered that they were about dead middle of the swamp which extended some 6 mets north and south, and 5 mets to the east and west. To the west was a village of what looked like orcs. The land to the East is all dead (rocky, dead trees, dead shrubbery, no living creatures). The swamp itself is teaming with life and has more than its share of floating dead creatures as well. Basil reveals that the woman is to the East.

The party puts a couple of rowboats into the swamp and start paddling toward shore. When they arrive they find things pretty much as MacManus described them. They start walking. After about 30 minutes they see another small village that looks deserted. There's a small discussion about wheather to go around or through the village. Its suggested that it'd take less time to kill all of the inhabitants (were they to prove hostile) than it would to walk around. The party decides to go through. Upon entering the village it does appear to be abandoned. No one comes out of the huts and they look in pretty bad repair. They party passes through leaving the village un-molested (very atypical adventurer behavior, impressively professional).

Another 40 minutes later the party reaches a spot of rock and Basil declares this is the spot.

The is some question of the woman being invisible or immaterial. Avolone, who happens to be a priest of Anubis, casts a summon undead spell. Almost immediately there's a lot of screaming and moaning coming from below the surface of the rock.

MacManus becomes ethereal or immaterial and goes down. He learns that the rock only extends about 10 feet and then opens into an enourmous cavern. At the bottom of the cavern (some 350' below) is a glowing lake. In the center of the lake is an island with a large tower on it. Around the lake are severl holes that appear to be cave entrances. Around the tower are several hundred people trying hard to climb or fly upward. MacManus returns to the surface and reports. When the spell runs out the moaning/screaming stops.

It is decided they have no clever way to break through 10' of rock so the plan is to send MacManus back down to try to follow one of the caves backward to find an entrance (preferably back to the abandoned village). Meanwhile the party will head back to the village and see if they can find an entrance there.

While MacManus is exploring the cave structure below the party heads back to the village. It is quickly determined that the village isn't abandoned so much as its occupants are dead. They apparently died in their sleep as most are found in their beds. No obvious cause of death can be determined. Harpo starts stacking the dead in one hut with the intentioned of turning it into a pyre and giving them a proper burial. Under one of the beds is found a trapdoor.

The trapdoor leads to a cellar of types with shelves lined with corked jugs, all labeled in an alien toungue. Opening and smelling one reveals it to be a stored biological liquid waste product. Its quickly recapped. Clause searches the cellar for hidden doors and succeeds in finding a button. Everyone steps back as he pushes the button. There's a click and a bit of a grating noise but nothing really interesting happens. Jimmy Ray steps up and pushes on the wall. It gives an inch or so and then starts moving aside by itself ("Musta been stuck").

Behind the wall is a ladder (made of sticks) leading downward. Jimmy Ray leads the way followed by Harpo and Claude. As Venn is about to get on the ladder he hears movement in the hut above. He does not investigate but, instead, heads downward. A the bottom Claude is attached by what looked like a part of the wall. As he was pushing against a section of wall the wall quickly enveloped his arms up the elbows. Claude initiated an electrical shock and the creature let go and fell to the ground. Harpo attacked it which his steel harpoon. The creature enveloped the first few feet of the harpoon and refused to let go.

After about 30 seconds of shaking the harpoon trying to get the creature off it the harpoon snapped throwing the creature to the floor. It started to run off only to be mini-bolted by Temidar. When the minibolt hit it the creature spasmed and released a much thinnger steel harpoon that it had apparently been ingesting. The party got more careful of the wall after that.

When the rest of the party got down someone asked where the boss (Basil) was. No one knew. Claude went back up to look for him. When he got to the cellar he became aware that someone was up in the hut. He called out and a skeletal figure looked downward. After a minute the skeleton jumped into the cellar with Claude. It didn't appear to be agressive so Claude gave it the nod and headed upward.

Outside he found the "dead" skeletons busily moving around their village preparing food and removing the shurbs and dead wood from the hut that was inteded to be a "pyre". Basil was helping them with this process. Claude hailed him, telling him about the ladder and the tunnel. Basil said a few words in a strange tounge to the skeleton and followed Claude down the ladder to the waiting party.

The party followd the tunnel until it came to a tee. They chose to go left and followed that passage until they reached another tee. This time they chose Right. Avolone disagreed with going right and waited while the rest of the party scouted forward. The passage continued right for a while until it reached a section that required the party to crawl for 10 feet. 45 feet past that and the tunnel dead ended. They party turned back only to find that the crawlspace back was now missing.

Going on the assumption that it was another of the rock creatures covering the space Jimmy Ray whacked at the wall for a while. When that proved ineffective the party started looking for secret doors and such. After an hour or so they discovered that the ceiling was signigicanly higher than when they came in so the floor may have been sinking. Indeed the chamber was also filling with water. MacManus again went immaterial and started looking for the way out. He found the missing crawlspace about 4 feet higher than it should have been. Jimmy whacked it, the creature moved and the party crawled out.

They rejoined a waiting Avolone who was still going on about how Right was a bad choice. The party took the left passage. A hundred feet later they found stairs leading dowward. They followed the stairs (hundreds of them) downward and eventually ended up exiting a cave in a huge cavern near a glowing lake. In the center of the lake was an island with a large tower that Claude recognized as Is'Damor.

They party swam across the lake to the tower. At the tower Llew knocked and was answered by a voice speaking Ferric. Claude answered in Ferric that they were sent here for Lady Chelsea. The door was opened and the party invited in.

Subesequent discussions revealed that all of the current residents of Is'Damor had waken from the dead when the tower came to this place. They want to leave this place and return to Centralia but fear that doing so will result in their return to death. Lady Chelsea herself stays in a dark room in the basement speaking only to those she knows. Apparently the residents above the 10th floor refuse to come out of their tombs and, instead, insist on remaining dead.

Apparently in the first year or so in this new place the priests of Anubis performed all sorts of expirements to determine why these people were alive and how to undo it (or at least repair their hideous damage). All unsuccessful. After that time the residents decided that the Priests of Anubis weren't in charge after all. Apparently Chelsea went so far as to make a deal with a monster inhabiting the lake (that would occasionally reach a tentacle into the tower and snag a hapless citizen for lunch) in which she had all of the priests of anubis tossed into the lake in exchange for the monster leaving the rest of them alone (as long as they did not venture onto the lake).

There is lots of discussion on how to get the tower returned home and how to insure that people stay alive. Its finally decided to summon the demon that brought them here in the first place and work another deal. The areas of the summoning are all delved by the priests of Tarus and the necessary tools of the summoning are created using the "reality" spell.

Chelsea and the adventurers to up the lighthouse for the ceremony. Chelsea is carried up in a chair and her facial features to not change ever, nor do her lips move when she talks. It is revealed that she wears a magical mask.

Chelsea conducts the summoning and a small, fat man appears and helps himself to a glass of wine. The demon reveals some details of the previous deal to demonstrate that he didn't break his end of it. Chelsea is unresponsive during this time so Claude conducts the deal. When the deal is reached Claude sends for the best barrister in the tower (lots of lawyers could apparently afford to be buring at Is'Damor). He gives the barrister instructions and the barrister sets to work hammering out a contract with the demon. The general details are: The demon returns the tower to Centralia and keeps everyone alive who wishes to remain alive. In exchange he will be given a warrior matrix gem. It takes a few hours to get all of the details right but eventually the deal is made.

The demon asks that everyone adjurn outside so that they could get on with it. Outside Claude gives the gem to the demon. The demon tosses it into the lake where a tentacle whips upward and catches it. The demon yells out over the water: "you heard the deal. Its a good one." More tentacles appear and then the monster rises from the lake. It stands a hundred feet tall and is covered in tentacles. Basil holds up a hand and says he has a question. The demon tells him to shut the hell up. Basil continues on that he really has just one small question: "Does this hurt?" So saying he pulls an object and points it at the monster.

Most people are stunned for a moment but Claude jumps into action, pulling his sword and cutting up the demon. The demon reacts by activating some sort of energy armor and the monster laughs at Basil and tells him to put away his toys. Some members of the party head into the tower, others step back to watch, Claude and a couple of others continue to attack the demon. Basil pushes a button and a beam of light extends outward to hit the monster. The moster responds by dropping a fireball on the party. The demon pulls his own button device and looks truly disappointed when pushing the button does nothing.

Over the next few seconds Basil starts yelling at the demon in an alien tounge . Claude, Temidor and Harpo attach with the demon with swords and grappling. Llew steps in and delivers a decisive blow to the demon's torso (90 on a piercing crit, very tasty). About that same time the monster shrank to nothing and got sucked into Basil's device. He reached up and caught Claude's matrix gem as it popped out: "I know that f&ck!n hurt!". He put the bottle in his pocket, tossed the Gem to Claude and told the demon to get lost (which it did, post haste).

Basil then revealed to the party that he had been fully prepared to take the tower back himself but when the opportunity to capture an "old god" showed up it was impossible to resist so he let the drama play out. Basil summonded his ship which portaled into the lake and his crew started unloading crates and taking them into the tower. Basil explains that they were going to build some sort of gadget which, when powered by a 2 and a half gem matrix, would augment the spell caster enough to dimension travel the tower back to Centralia.

Most players opted to take the ship back to Centralia with Basil to watch the toweres reappearance. A couple stayed and watched the matrix construction and spell casting. Before the spell casting, Lady Chelsea was tossed in the middle of the Matrix (Basil had earlier explained that his job was to bring her back and the rest of them were beyond the scope of his mission. If they survive, great for them. If not, no loss for him.).

The spell was cast and the tower was returned to Centralia. Will's met the party on the docks and rewarded the adventurers for their help (reward consisting of adamanting a couple of items, and a bit of silver). The party took Will's personal portal back to Rougtero (actually Gendal, but close enough).

Noteworthy Postgame Events