“I've got to give it to you,” Moridin said while looking up at the wall. “That's a brass pair you've got there.”
Telrunya was already hanging from the wall, about a yard up, and was climbing sideways to the chasm. Looking down was discouraged, he recalled. Kind of useless too, not like you could actually see the bottom of the gap from up there, or anywhere else for that matter.
The others stared intensely, wordlessly, while Telrunya clambered over the wall, timely holding onto vines to support his weight. He was hanging precariously far over the chasm; one misstep and he was going the long way down. Having the lantern attached to his girdle, he could see a bit ahead, and others could monitor his progress clearly. Progress was slow, but steady.
“The wall ends here,” Telrunya called out, breaking the long, tensed silence. “There's no foothold below, I'll see if I can go over it.” There wasn't a lot of room between him and the ceiling anymore; the vines grew remarkably thinner deeper down, and viable grip was gone as well, leaving his only way ever further up.
Suddenly, a shard of brittle stone broke off under Telrunya's feet. In a quick reflex, he snatched the nearest vine hanging from the ceiling, and hung idly in the air while pebbles echoed ticks on their long, long way down; he didn't really hear them hit the floor. He released his held breath, and thanked his lucky stars for grabbing a sturdy vine from all the flimsy ones.
“I'm okay!” he called out. “I'm okay!” He kept a smile on his lips in case others could see, then climbed up and took a few deep breaths to calm him down, muttering to himself: “I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die...”
Having regained his grip, Telrunya proceeded against the wall, over the ceiling, taunting gravity with little more to help him than vines and rocky protrusions. The alleged earthquake that passed eons ago had torn rock through stone, destroying the artificial architecture, perverting the room into a twisted reflection of itself as it would be in Nature.
Below him, the inky blackness exhuded a cold, stagnant breath, like the gaping maw of a deity calling for him to let go and embrace his fate. Telrunya quietly stared down a while longer, trying to discern shape, sound, anything from the darkness. If he didn't know any better, the world unmistakenly did end there, and who knew what lied beyond.
With a solid thud, he set foot on the other side. He could hear the cheers from the other side as soon as he called out he made it, and looked right at a tall, strange edifice depicting what seemed like the sun or the moon; he couldn't be sure in this darkness.
Now, the others cautiously climbed the wall, following Telrunya's previous lead, having memorised his steps, and following marks he left on the wall. Another obstacle crossed, another step closer to fulfilling the mission. Idly, he wondered how the other expedition fared.
°°°
“Now two to your left.”
White carefully leapt over the first tile to his left and landed on the second. He didn't really have a problem with these—it was just like the regular training he endured—but there usually wasn't such a downside to slipping up. Like being impaled on a pillar of flame, or falling in a pool of boiling magma, or other such thoroughly unpleasant events that presented themselves here.
The best part was that he hadn't even drawn the shortest straw. No, indeed he hadn't, but the guy who had was deemed too important to the expedition, so they had to pick someone else. There was no use protesting; someone had to do it, and that someone might just as well be him. But it still stung a little.
“Now, do you see a circle with a triangle sticking out from the left?” Ligressa called out, looking at the notes.
White looked about and indeed saw such a tile. However, the tile was a good three yards away, and he didn't exactly have a lot runway to gain some momentum. So he stepped back as far as he could, took a deep breath, and ran.
XtremeNL frowned. “A circle doesn't have a left side.”
Dust flew up from the glyphs as White hit every brake he had, timely stopping but bending over precariously, waving his arms wildly through thin air, before finally balancing on a single heel and taking a step back. He closed his eyes and took a few deep, calming breaths, pleading to his nerves to not let him burst into a whirlwind of incessant reciting of expletives. He barely succeeded.
“Well, sure it does,” Ligressa pointed in the notes. “See, it has a triangle with the base sticking out to the left.”
“Yes, you're right there,” XtremeNL admitted, “but the thing is that officer White can't see which side is the left side of the circle. After all, it's a perfectly symmetric figure.” He looked up from the notes, saw White had yet to jump, and simply smiled at him. “Oh, go right ahead, officer. We're just conversing.”
“I thought you just said—”
“It's not like he can reach any of the other ones,” he adjected cursorily.
White shot a brief, pointed look at the assembly on the stairs and prepared for the jump. He wasn't as tall as Spire was, so some of the jumps were more difficult than they seemed at first, but he made this one with relative ease. Idly, he wondered how those bipedal lizards were supposed to cross these tiles. They probably didn't weigh enough to trigger any of the traps. Which made him wonder again why none of the females tried the riddle. Probably something about chivalry and stuff like that.
“Now, you need to cross four tiles for the one after this,” Ligressa said while looking closely at the journal. “That's just over four-and-a-half yards, so you're going to have to run and jump. The first one is three tiles dead ahead, the other is another four tiles through, and one to the right.”
Three ahead, then another four, and one to the right. White rubbed his hands, took a few deep breaths, and held his fingers to both his temples. Okay, focus, focus... you can do this, White. With a sudden dash and a burst of energy, White jumped for the first tile, then made a shallow turn and leapt as far as he could to get the second. It would be close, but he would make it, he happily found out in midair.
But XtremeNL frowned. Something didn't make sense in the journal. “Five!” he suddenly yelled. “It's five tiles through!”
Already soaring through the air, White's eyes opened widely, barely biting back a reference to excrements. He clawed his arms wildly through the air, as if he could actually grab it and use it to pull him up, but landed a tile short. Instantly, the brittle material succumbed to the sudden pressure, giving way to the searing magma below. Luck shone on White, as his forward momentum slammed his body flatly onto the brittle floor with a deep grunt, and slid him to the tile he needed while the floor behind—and partly under—him collapsed and melted few moments later.
“Ghastly handwriting,” XtremeNL mumbled while pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose.
There was a long silence before White opened one of his eyes, carefully peering around, his arms and legs clasped around the one square yard that held him aloft a fiery death below. A couple of seconds later, he opened his second eye, and looked around. Instantly, he sprung to his feet, waving his arms wildly at the party on the stairs, and simultaneously pointing down to the red mass of molten rock. “Frak! ... FRAK! I almost fell in there, you frigging academy dropouts! I'm gonna drag your frigging asses over here and personally kick you all the frig down, you frigging boneheads! Frak! Ass!”
Golden Arrow raised her brows gently, then returned her attention to Spire's notes. “Spirited little fellow.”
“Mm-yes,” XtremeNL mumbled, concentrating on the task of deciphering the handwriting. “I wish he invested the energy in jumping.”
“Officer, please compose yourself,” Anleth cut in, extending her arm to White, who was dozens of yards off. She tried to temper him with a sympathetic look, and it worked, partly.
White turned for the next-to-last jump, taking a few deep breaths in an effort to calm. He stared at the door so very close to him for the longest time, then suddenly spun around again and yelled at the top of his lungs: “Frakking
quacks!”
°°°
Tarbo dusted off his hands while looking at the giant edifice Telrunya was examining. There hadn't been a lot of progress in figuring out what it was, only that the door was barred and sealed; the seal apparently couldn't be broken by force. Sure, there would be a lever or combination of some kind to open the seal and the door nicely, but the expedition wasn't of an archeological nature, so there was no point in trying things by the book. “What've you got?”
Telrunya pointed to his left, kneeled by the door. “There is some kind of panel with symbols there. I'm guessing we should push the buttons in a certain order to open this door.” He tried sliding his sword through a crack somewhere, but had no such luck; the door was sealed tightly. It was both a disappointment as a hint of things to come; if someone would go through the effort of erecting such a structure and devising a lock mechanism, chances were real there was real treasure behind it, and not merely a few trinkets sacrificed to a lesser deity.
Ashnari frowned while staring at the panel, trying to decipher the meaning. He was all too happy to be of service, seeing as he had no particular fondness of heights—or depths, for that matter—and found crossing over the chasm to be anything but comfortable. “There could be a simple calculational order to this,” he muttered, “leaving us to find out what we're counting.”
“A calculus?” Telrunya asked him. “Do you mean the symbols represent numbers of a kind? Or at least support an isomorphism of some kind?”
“I'm thinking it has something to do with prime numbers,” Ashnari mentioned, giving Telrunya some room to study the panel. “But I'm not sure we should just press the buttons, what with these holes here...”
Telrunya approached the panel and stared at the cavities Ashnari mentioned. Indeed, they seemed to have little purpose to the panel, so they probably were a defense mechanism of some sort. Which would be bad, considering there was no way to be sure which combination was the proper one. “So, how are we going to open the door?”
They stared at eachother for a while, then rolled their eyes to another member of the team.
“Oh, Stickman!” Ashnari called out. “Come give us a hand, would you?”
°°°
Earlier that night...
A dark, sandy chamber. Shadows shift about as figures move through them, nearing one of the corners. Finally, their faces become visible.
“Report,” the leader says, toneless.
“We've managed to rig one of the defense mechanisms,” one replied. “Justice... shall come from above.”
He nods once with a smirk, having at least some idea of what his accomplices have in mind. “What about the others?”
“We're keeping an eye on them,” another tags in. “Nobody's moving without us knowing about it.”
“The runes?”
“All but deciphered. We're piecing it together as we speak.”
A savage grin turns on the leader's face, showing one of his eyeteeth shining in the shallow light. “The council took a day off, yesterday. Let's make them regret it.”
°°°
Once White had passed the symbol test, he had pulled a lever that showed a hidden entrance, allowing the others of the party free entry through the alternate route without having to jump over the fiery pit, themselves. The gesture was much appreciated.
The room that the intricate seal had protected was a large, sober room with a dried fountain in the center. There was a distinct lack of pillars, and lighting was difficult with the lack of refracting surfaces, although a few strange crystals seemed to give the room an eerie blue atmospheric hue, sufficient to see. Of promised treasure, artifacts or hidden wealth, however, was no trace. A cold, dusty draft swept over the floor.
“Well, this sucks,” Darla finally broke the intense silence.
Anleth nodded in agreement, hands on her hips. Troves, alcoves, empty chests; there was every indication that this room was once filled with all manner of treasures. Now, however, it was void of anything of value, safe perhaps the glowing crystals. She tapped one of them to judge its strength, with the thought of possibly using it as an alternate lightsource, seeing how her lantern was at its dying breath.
From the room, a foursome of corridors and doorways extended to every quarter of the compass. One they came through, and unmistakenly led back the way they came; two others they proceeded to investigate with all haste and thoroughness, but their efforts were wasted and pointless. Finally, that left them only the single one due ahead of them, opposite the entrance. Chances were slim that the last one contained anything worth raiding—or even archiving, for that matter—but it was worth a shot.
The hallways were strangely wide, about as wide as they were tall, being about one-and-a-half, maybe two times the height of an average elf. This one even sloped up a little; it was a strange notion and had no architectural consistency with the rest of the structure whatsoever. But it wasn't the first abnormality the party had encountered, and they passed over it. After all, they weren't in Naggaroth anymore.
“Dead end,” Anleth sighed when light reflected off a wall ahead of her. All manner of symbols had themselves graven into the massives stones that made up the structure, but other than adding to the picturesque, there was no clear indication of what they meant. And their archeologist had gone on to greener pastures. “Alright,” she collected her courage and energy, “let's pat it down, check for any hidden switches.” She went down to her knees in the dust, and others followed her example.
“Wonderful,” White's mutter echoed out of the corridor. “I almost became officer of the Guard Flambé just so we can stare at the artistic leftovers of a lizard.”
“At least you made it,” Malevion noted. “Somebody up there must like you.”
“Like me... Yeah, right,” White snorted at the thought. “First they send me halfway across the world to steal some metal plaques from a jungle in the middle of Isla Nublar, then I get to dodge being kebabbed or roasted in some godforsaken triangle that hasn't been dusted off since the continents separated, and you tell me somebody up there likes us?”
Malevion lifted his shoulders and continued looking for anything that could resemble a hidden entrance. Surely, there had to be something to warrant such defensive measures? But what if the empty chest and alcoves and troves really were the remnants of a once glorious treasury, and were now... moved or possibly even raided before?
°°°
“So, first the left one, then the right one, twice the upper one, and finally the left one again?” Stickman made doubly sure he had it right, standing in front of the mysterious panel that supposedly opened the door. He wondered how the others could be so very sure so quickly, but then again, they were supposed to be the experts.
“Yes, that's about it,” Ashnari yelled from behind a giant rock, where most of the others were hiding behind. “Let us know what happens!”
Stickman shook his head with a sigh and pushed the buttons in the order he was told. Left, right, upper, upper... hang on, which side was left again? He rolled his eyes up momentarily, recalling what he had just done and marrying it with the concepts of left and right. No match. Suddenly, a noise erupted from behind the panel as massive spikes sprung their trap.
It was remarkably quiet, Drakhan noted; maybe a little bit too quiet. He opened his eyes and dared a peek at what would be the deadest elf he had ever seen, but what he found was even stranger.
Stickman had managed to avoid each and every one of the spikes aiming to impale him, mimicking a silhouette of questionable grace and elegance, but an unmistakeable amount of luck, precision, and speed. He skipped his eyes about, otherwise not moving a single muscle. He didn't
feel impaled... “Let me try that again,” he called out.
°°°
“I can't find a thing,” Ligressa sighed. “And I would've noticed anything magical by now.” She polled her colleague, Golden Arrow, for any magical hints, but was returned a disappointing look. Nothing.
“Oh, come on!” White yelled out. “There's got to be something!”
“We're not giving up yet, officer,” Anleth replied while stroking and nudging some of the stones. She put her weight against one of them, but found that it didn't budge a single bit. Truth be told, her own conviction was starting to waver, but she wouldn't let the others know that; morale was already a bit low as it was.
“I can't believe this!” White turned to the left wall and kicked it once. “Damnation! I almost got combusted and all we find are some shimmering crystals and a handful of glyphs some lizard doodled? Is this why we got all the way out here?” Frustrated, he kicked the wall repeatedly as hard as he could. “Khaine's glory! My! Frigging! Ass!”
With the last blow, one of the stones suddenly gave and slowly retreated into the wall. A collective silence, intertwined by the massive brick sliding neatly into a compartment, fell over the officers while staring witlessly at White's accomplishment.
“...the hell?” the man himself added.
A sudden rumble shook the corridor, and a massive slab above the party moved aside surprisingly quick for a stone its size. White's eyes opened widely when he saw what the slab was supposed to hold: an equally massive, giant ball of rock. And once gravity had its way with it, it came right at him.
Malevion and Darla dove aside, barely missing the impact, while White took to the other direction, narrowly avoiding being squashed under the solid rock with perfect spherical symmetry. But then, the sloping ground and the strange dimensions of the hallway revealed their sinister purpose: accomodating for this death trap. Once down on the floor, the ball gently started rolling at White.
“Oh, you've got to be kidding me!” White turned sharply on his heels and started running while the massive danger lurked on him with waxing momentum. “Come on, I was kidding!” he screamed as he was chased down the hallway by the giant, granite ball. “I didn't mean it like that, I swear! I'll never do it again, never ever!”
Ahead of him lied the fiery trap he earlier had the questionable pleasure of breaking in. With nowhere else to run or hide, he merely went as fast he could, brutally ignoring the intricate sequence and soaring over while barely touching any of the tiles that crumbled behind him. “Come on, it's not funny anymore! Why do you hate me!?”
But then, he had a very dread notion as he saw the path ahead of him.
Dead end.
°°°
“Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we've hit jackpot.”
Tarbo grinned visibly when looking over the treasury the party had just found. The room was not as glamourous as one would expect such a treasury to be, but the contents would more than make up for the soldier wages, not to mention leave everyone, including the Temple, a nice share to live with.
Massive, dusty stones walled the equally large chamber, introducing a very sturdy, lasting, and humbling feel with everyone standing within. This truly was a show of impressive architectural understanding. But that wasn't why they were here.
With the engineers now building a bridge over the chasm, shipping the treasures out of the chamber wouldn't be any real trouble. The question remained, however, of whether there were any magical artifacts contained, the real and only reason for their presence. That was an answer that could be given once the trinkets were catalogued, inventoried, and subsequently archived, a task the assembly could commence while the bridge was still being built.
There was a slow, distant rumble. Getwisteerd held still, honing her senses and concentrating her hearing. An earthquake? No, she told herself, it was too distant and high to be an earthquake as such, and to the extent of her knowledge, it couldn't be any safety mechanism either. Which made her wonder... perhaps it was a part of the pyramid collapsing? After all, the giant chasm proved that the structure had suffered extensive damage, and she had no idea in what shape the upper chambers would be. “Does anyone else hear that?”
Drakhan nodded and kneeled, pressing his hand on the floor. After listening intently, he looked at Getwisteerd: “Whatever it is, it's coming this way.”
Alarmed, the company looked about. Was this some intricate defense? Perhaps some crude, indigenous trap, such as the ceiling coming down on them, or the walls moving? Drakhan dashed to the walls to ascertain it wouldn't be the latter. He put his full weight against it, not in an effort to stop it, but to notice every detail in movement. The rumbling was getting louder and, more importantly, closer.
Curious, Drakhan carefully put his ear to the massive stones. He thought he heard... yelling? When straining his hearing, he picked a sudden but distant thud. He frowned.
Instantly, several grand slabs next to him shoved half a foot into the room under a massive impact, catapulting dust into every possible direction.
°°°
Back in the center chamber, where the parties had split up. You enjoy the brief respite you have, resting your tired muscles, and clearing the dust off you; some have seen more of that than others, and there is some mild rivalry between the two parties over their discrepancy in success, but you've been assured by Tarbo that is was a matter of luck more than skill or leadership. You imagine that's of little help to Captain Lareight who, as you've overheard her say herself, “managed to combust the only archeologist we have, not to mention sandwich a man between a rock and a metric tonne of granite.” Whether you blame her or not is in your own mind; you know better than to publicly question authority at this time, especially since she seems to be in charge of interrogation.
As you are still in the pyramid, albeit in a giant center chamber, you have to make due with what you have. You're all sitting near the centerpiece, some sort of obelisk piercing the sandy, stagnant air in the room. There is a constant background noise from people walking about, categorying the treasures, and guards securing the immediate area. While you 'rest' and come to your senses with rationed food and water, the topic of sabotage is raised again, and you find yourself holding session in the very chamber, slanted on the giant flight of stairs.
This time, your host is tentatively Tarbo, who is signing certificates and approving shipping of certain artifacts while keeping others here for further clues and investigation. After all, if this pyramid was filled to the nook with magical dojiggers, anyone with an inkling of magical affinity would've noticed, and noone has. So there should be a continuing search to pinpoint their location, for which you will need at least a few representative pieces.
In a corner to your far right, you see a makeshift interrogation room being made, with hot coals heating their irons, and a variety of tools that belong in either the advanced Slaaneshi parties or the new interrogation plus program. You're not sure what experience Captain Lareight has with this kind of interrogation, but she does seem to know her way around the tools at her disposal. When she shoots a glance at you, you quickly focus back on the council at hand.
_________________________
Players
- Moridin Nae'blis
- Telrunya
- Ashnari Doomsong
- SleekDD
- XtremeNL
- The Liger
- Stickman
- getwisteerd
- Malevion
- DarQ`Zar
- Drakhan
- The Golden Arrow
"Deaths"
- SBOD (Witch Elf) - Day 1
- Morvai (Paladin) - Night 1
- Spire (Archeologist) - Day 2 (inactivity)
- WhiteBoyPolka (Temple Guard) - Night 2
Team Slaanesh takes the lead!
It is now Day. You may converse as wished, although everyone is required to post at least once before the deadline passes.
The deadline is set to pass between Monday 20h30 and Tuesday 20h30, GMT.
). However, anyone who hasn't posted by the time the first deadline passes is removed from the game. Also, if I notice extending the deadline doesn't add to the discussion, I will cut it short.
