Re: The Road North
Group
After taking a day to restock supplies and buy some warmer clothing, you set out from Daggerford heading northeast. Lexi leads the way, keeping well north of the Laughing Hollow. Winter is starting to settle; there is frost on the grass in the morning, the skies are more grey than blue, and you can see your breath for several bells each morning.
Guided by Corym's research and map, you are eventually able to find the ruins of Wyrm Tower. There isn't much left, at first glance. Just a few low, broken walls and shattered masonry hither and yon. It takes Corym, with the group's help, several days to piece things together.
The tower is here, alright. But it was shattered in a massive magical battle. You find pieces of the walls hurled more than four hundred feet away from the foundations. The bumps in the rough ground that have been trying to break your ankles are actually pieces of the tower, dirt-covered and grassy after more than a thousand years. You dig a few up out of curiosity, and find scorch marks and acid pitting; remnants of a long ago battle.
With the tower itself lost, your attentions turn to its cellars. Guided by Corym, and working quickly before the weather turns any further and the ground starts to free, you dig away in what was once Wyrm Tower's kitchen. Towards evening, you find a staircase leading down into the earth.
It's packed with rubble, thick blocks of masonry that have been filled in between with wind-blown dirt. That might have been the end of the expedition, if it were not for Krackor. After studying the problem, the barakor shifts his spells and the next morning is able to shape a passage through the stone.
You descend into the earth. Krackor and Lexi lead the way, Kora walking beside Harun holding the light high. It's a bit of an effort for her to get her massive sword through the tunnel, but she refuses to leave it behind. The rest of you follow.
The stairs go down about fifteen feet and end in what was obviously once a pantry. There are still ceramic jars piled along the sides of the walls. Large ones seem mostly intact, smaller ones are shattered from where they fell when the shelves they were on succumbed to rot. The air is still, a thick layer of dirt and dust cover the floor, and a wooden door bound in rust-caked iron stands at the far end.
Corym checks the door carefully for traps and doesn't find any. He steps back, and Harun struggles to pull the door open. The wood has both swollen and rotted over the centuries, and after a final yank the entire door comes apart.
As its pieces rain down around Harun, an elderly male voice speaks from the air around you. "I... think..." It stops, stutters. "not... think... kniht... I."
Time around you slows. The door's timbers hang in the air, the dust shines in Kora's light. You can see yourselves, your perceptions both behind your eyes and in the room at large, watching as your heads slowly turn towards the noise.
Ribbons of light burst from the ceiling. They shimmer and sinuously snake through the air, each moment a different color. They are generally reaching towards you, but they stagger and sway, as though a cobra had spent far too long at the tavern and now wasn't entirely certain where the mouse was.
Your thoughts clear and fast but your bodies slowed like molasses on a winter morning, you're unable to move as the ribbons reach out for you. One leans through the air toward Krackor but sails over his head by more than a foot. It wraps around one of the large ceramic jars on the floor, then thickens and pulses. Both ribbon and jar wink out at the same time.
Frantic now, you try to run, but barely manage to lift a foot before more ribbons are upon you. All of the are flailing like blind eels, but there are too many for them to avoid you entirely.
Lexi is the first to disappear. A black ribbon edged in green wraps around her arm. It tightens and seems to suck light from the surrounding air. Then both it and her are gone.
Harun and Obar are grabbed around the ankles by a blue ribbon and disappear together. Karilla isn't grabbed so much as she is hit over the head by a red ribbon. She vanishes, cross-eyed.
Another ribbon flails towards Corym. It seems to want to wrap around his torso, but all it manages to do is slam into his stomach, while doing the same to Krackor and Kora.
Ice spreads out from the impact. Your mind tries to process while your body still hasn't figured out whether it's going to crumple. Then the ice flashes hot, and your vision goes black.
You're in a void, with nothing save an impression of flying and flipping. A scent of wet forest dirt an dry stone fills your nostrils. And then you are standing somewhere completely different.