The Flooded Catacombs

We start out from Crowsong Fort, heading Northwards to the crypts. The road leads right up to them, ending on a sharp ridge atop a small hill. The crypts are marked by a stone archway and set of stairs that descends into the dark. The area below is a natural structure of hollowed out, carved stone. There are alcoves throughout, all filled with human skeletons.

Beryl tries to determine who built this place and for what purpose but knows so little of this world that he cannot draw any strong conclusions. It does not seem like dwarven architecture as the shapes are not so precise, it is not too oversized or small to suit either larger or smaller peoples.

The entrance hall leads left and right down two corridors. Gore leads us left, where a small chamber holds a tomb that excites Beryl terribly. He pokes around it and accidentally pulls a claw free from inside, while Gore lifts up the lid entirely to reveal a mummified body. It is humanoid in shape, but there are no items or symbols that identify who they might have been. From the tomb, we recover a small bit of gold and gems.

We resume our way down the hallway and behind a door at its end, we find an altar showing a seven pointed star – some symbol of light that we do not otherwise recognize. Gore leaves a picture of Cedric on the altar.

As we linger here, a chill sets and rising mist begins to fill the area. We dissipate it before it becomes too much of a problem, but the air remains cold as we turn to descend the steps on the left. The area below is entirely flooded.

Gore decides to throw a piece of half-eaten turkey leg into the water to check for disturbances. When nothing happens, Alrik retrieves the turkey leg and hands it back to the leonin, who stores the soggy thing in his backpack. 🙁 The splash alone is enough to upset Beryl, who hands me a ring then vanishes into it, unwilling to step into the water at all. Feeling much the same (about the water if not about the proposal), I climb up the walls and instead move along the ceiling.

The flooded hallway seems to loop back up to the entrance. Straight ahead and to the right, two passages are barred. Gore leads us right to one of the doors, beside which is the statue of a human warrior, adorned with candles all around it. There are again no symbols on it, or inscriptions. Gore tries to move the statue and it falls, splashing water everywhere except on the two of us who believe in an ounce of prevention.

I unlock the door and beyond it we find a room in worse condition than the others. It is partly caved in, and three crumbling pillars hold up the ceiling where the room is wider. Bodies fill the walls here as before. There is another set of doors and in front of one of them Adona spots the glint of gold. Perhaps some treasure vault?

We try the door (which is unlocked; most unusual for a room full of treasure) and find a wide flooded chamber. Beneath the surface of the water, the floor glints with piles of gold. These are closely guarded by the skeletons lining the walls, who animate and attack us as we enter. Another guardian must also lurk unseen, as something reaches out from the water to grab Gore’s leg, and pulls him down into the water.

While we deal with the skeletons, Adona tries to heat the metal of Gore’s armor as a way to get the invisible creature to let him go. This plan does not hurt it quite as much as it hurts Gore. It attempts to drag him away from the chamber and we follow it out. It is no small effort to defeat this enemy and even after we succeed it is hard to know what it was, as we could never see it.

We take a moment to patch ourselves up, then head to the room where the water creature was dragging Gore. I unlock the door and Beryl produces some illusory sounds to get the attention of anything that might be waiting inside. It is again very cold inside, and the chill seems to coalesce into a frosty column of ice that rises up from the water with malign intent.

The crystal recoils in fear of Gore’s daunting roar as he calls leonin spirits to bless us. Beryl creates a thorny area under the water to help keep the enemy in place, so despite its fear, it tries to focus its assault on Gore. We watch as the rough ice surface smoothes over into a mirror-like finish and shapes itself into an imperfect and mocking reflection of Gore. Adona tries to infuse it with negative energy and the magic is simply reflected back at her, immediately causing her to fall unconscious.

The battle continues to dire ends, with our most threatening actions ricocheting back at us, at several points leaving one or many of us near death. We wear away it before it can entirely put any of us down, however.

Once the threat is dealt with we can actually take in the room. There are chests on either side, from which we recover a fair amount of gold, and a large crevasse descending deep into the earth. Through the darkness, there is a glint far on the bottom, but exploring it would require holding one’s breath (or needing no breath at all, a privilege some of us enjoy) and much longer time to spare.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts


Archive