Though the meal is plain, it is far better fare than you have had for a while and all the more welcome for it.

When you are ready, Diker's servants show you to your chambers, and though they are not so fine as perhaps once they were, the beds therein are comfortable enough, and the with the Master's assurances that you are safe within the Halls, you enjoy a restful sleep.

Morning comes and the meal that greets you is much the same, but fills your bellies.

The sword has been found as Diker promised, and awaits you, secure in Calanor's scabbard and wrapped about in cloths.

Once you are done and re-provisioned as best as the Halls can provide, Diker conducts you to the tower, where the Portal now shows the stone bridge over the Yernaduin (black and turgid, unlike the clean flowing Elder River that once you knew).

"I can open the Portal at this spot at dawn and dusk each day," Diker suggests, "should you have need of it."

After a good night's sleep and a solid breakfast, Hamin prepares himself for the new journey.

Ayas will prevail upon his companion's friendship with Diker to try to source from him the components he lacks for some of his spells, along with some other more basic equipment that he lacks.

"If we are to enter this Drow stronghold, then best they don't get too close a look at me," the young man suggests. "Hamin and Brugar would pass as mercenaries, perhaps - no offence meant - while Yetta has proven her talent to assume other shapes at will.  I have a spell that will do the same, but can only use it on myself and for an hour and a half at most.. other than that I must trust to the concealment of a heavy cloak and hope anyone we encounter lacks curiosity!"

"Alasha'an, though.." he shrugs, hoping someone else, not least of which the lady herself, has some ideas as to how she might avoid detection.

The lady snorts, most unladylike. "I'm not worried.. our kin of the high forests or deep woods might attract the wrong sort of attention, but our kind are tolerated if not loved."

"Act like we belong there, and don't do anything to bring ourselves to their notice and they'll ignore us in the main."

The dwarf slept well and certainly did justice to the food on offer, so he was at least as cheerful as anyone else when Diker led them up to the tower and showed them the portal.

"Dawn and dusk, right, that'll be easy enough to remember. Thank ye for yer 'elp, Master Diker. Ah 'ope we be 'aving good news to report next time we see ye."

Though Ayas's fears are but party allayed (and the young elf makes sure to gather his thick woollen cloak about him, pulling the hood up to hide his distinctive features within its folds as best he might), the rest of you are more concerned about how you might determine which sword is the key to the final portal than about such trifles as concealment and recognition.

Well rested, better fed than you have managed for some time, and with supplies to hand, you thank Diker and pass through the portal ...

... finding yourself before the stone bridge that sits astride the dank Yernaduin, as it all but oozes towards the dark waters of what was known in the Fourth Age as the Kalibarian Sound, not far from where you now stand.

The warm sun shines down on you from above having banished the mists that cloaked the land for so long (and giving Ayas no few regrets in his choice of attire as he sweats beneath its folds, even at so early an hour as this).

The road is empty, the lands around little more than parched ground, with the rising foothills of Lonorod clearly visible about a league away.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the GM at 06:47, Thu 09 June 2022.

"Twelve miles if we travel across country, perhaps.. a third again if we stick to the road," Alasha'an begs the question as he waves her hand in a vaguely north and westerly direction.

"It is probably just as quick to stick to the road."  Hamin say, with a shrug.  He scowls down at the turgid river, but the warmth of the sun, eventually, brings a small smile to his lips.  "It feels like we are starting to get somewhere ..." he says to no one in particular, as he enjoys the sun's warmth for what feels like the first time in years.

"This alone was worth the fight," avows Ayas, to whom the warmth of the sun is something unknown.

The elf nods his agreement with Hamin's choice. "This.. daylight should suffice to cause the Dark God's servants to seek their hidey-holes."

With Alasha'an estimating it will take you the best part of the day to reach the area where she believes the ruins that Venelia spoke of can be found, you decide that following the road is the best option, if a slightly longer route.

The day is warm, and perhaps uncomfortably bright after so long (for some more than others) in the mists and shadows, and without them the blighted land is revealed.  What once were fields, of grass and farmed crops, dotted picturesquely with the occasional shady tree is now little more than a dusty, barren plain.

For Hamin and Yetta, especially, the contrast to what they once knew is painful.

Around midday, when the sun is at its height (Ayas having long given up with his cloak while there are none around to see him lest he perish from the heat), you halt, those familiar with this road somewhat perplexed as it continues straight as far as the eye can see, with no sign at all of the intersection with the road that ran from the Grunhelm forest to the east to Kalibar in the west.

Certain you have not missed it, you continue on, scanning the sides of the road with care, until eventually Alasha'an spots a fallen marker, all but buried in the ground.  A road, perhaps once crossed here, but it has long gone, not overgrown as one might expect with the passage of years, but covered with soil, blown by the winds that scoured the bare earth.
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:57, Sat 18 June 2022.

"Not even so much as a trail, now, where once were a road fit for a wagon train?" Brugar observes. "Don't expect we'll be meetin' many travellers along the way then."

He studies the ground of the road ahead and the soil covering the supposed western road, looking for any tracks on either road to indicate how much traffic the northern road still carries and whether there is any sign at all of anything travelling the western way.

OOC: Brugar Armbuster rolled 27 using 1d20+13.  Survival skill check to find tracks.

The north-south route certainly shows the marks of wagon wheels, though Brugar cannot say how recent they are, for the road is in very poor condition indeed ... and while what was once the western route to Kalibar is heavily rutted, it is so overgrown that the Dwarf is confident that it has seen little or no traffic for a long time.

"Road, or no road, we still need to go that way.  Hopefully we will still find enough of a path to guide our steps." Hamin offers,  as he adjusts his pack.

Brugar looks down the line of the old road and shrugs his shoulders.

"We be lookin' for a city, right? Don't reckon it'd be easy to miss summat as big as that!" he declares.

Then he sets off along what remains of that western road.

"We're looking for some ruins," Alasha'an clarifies. "Kalibar lay much further on than the place that we seek, and besides it is no more."

The elf's lip purse as she looks to Hamin and Yetta in sympathy.

As Hamin says, road or no, your path still lies in that direction.

Though unused, perhaps for centuries, and all but reclaimed by shifting dirt and occasional low scrub, it does not prove too difficult to follow.  Several times you discover that you have wandered away from it only to find it again, mostly as you pick the easiest route where the road once tracked around landmarks or landscape that is no more.

As you make your way, you begin to find bodies, slumped at the side of the path, or even in the middle of it, left where they fell.  Curious you investigate the first few, discovering that beneath their cloaks lie the corpses of Drow, the skin of their hands and faces blistered and pustulent, no doubt burned by the rays of the bright sun above.  Whatever coin or weapons they had are gone, assumedly taken by whatever companions were with them, or by those who later passed by.

Indeed, as you continue on, you find the path all but marked out for you by a trail of corpses.

"Oh, it is still there." Hamin asserts, remembering his life before the veil started to thin, "Just in a grey limbo, and the borders between Kalibar and this new world are starting to thin.  Once we have lifted the last of the curse that this world faces, perhaps it will pop back into it.  If not, we will have to find a way to make that happen." He concludes with a grim tone, "For then Brislar's sacrifice will not have been in vain."
This message was last edited by the player at 07:09, Sat 16 July 2022.

"If we can defeat a few dark gods," Alasha'an suggests dryly, "then rescuing a lost city shouldn't even raise a sweat!"

"Our foe do not seem to be enjoying the sunshine much," the elf remarks of the corpses as she passes them by. "These were no easy deaths."

You press on, as the sun begins its slow descent, the trail of corpses only growing as you head westwards.  At length you notice other travellers on this long-buried road, but huddled in their cloaks as they are, they do little more than glance your way as they struggle slowly onwards.  Indeed, as you press on and their numbers thicken, you find yourselves part of this near silent exodus.

"I hope that is the case, but somehow I doubt it." Hamin responds to Alasha'an.  He grimaces as he sees the cowled and cloaked figures, and adds "I wonder what has caused that ..."

OOC:  Are these figures travelling in the same direction as us,  or the other way?

Brugar studies the other travellers for a while to see whether he can spot anything else about them that might prove enlightening.

Are they carrying any possessions or supplies with them or are they empty-handed. Do they have any animals with them? Do they look starved or sick or tired? Or dead? How do they smell? Do their feet leave tracks on the road?

Indeed, the travellers that you have joined upon this path appear to be heading in the same direction as yourselves, though they are moving much more slowly than you are as they struggle along.

It soon becomes obvious that most, but not all, of the travellers are Drow, the hoods of the heavy cloaks in which they huddle conceal the faces not from you, but from the sun above, though the blisters and burns you glimpse upon their skin mirror those upon the corpses you earlier examined and upon those you have since passed by, lining this sorry trail.  There is the familiar odour of the travel-worn about them, and perhaps a hunger about them, but most noticeable is their slumped shoulders and the look of defeat in their eyes.

None have animals, most have naught but their cloaks and some not even that, relying on blankets or heavy swathes of material for protection.  A few carry packs, but they seem rather light burdens.

And though one might think them but apparitions, doomed to walk this path for eternity, the dust their dragging feet kick up proves that to be untrue, though you are surprised first that they'd even venture out in daylight instead of hiding from the sun and travelling in the shadow of night, and second that they pay you little heed save the occasional glance your way.

Brugar finds the presence of the drow on the road in daylight rather worrying.

"Ah don't reckon this road would be a good place to be after nightfall. Let's press on quick as we can, aye?" he suggested.

OOC: We had an encounter shortly after reawakening in this Age (New Age - Hell on Urthe thread), where corpses slain by the Night Things rose as undead called the Fallen. Is that something we need to worry about here too? Is that a more common phenomenon in this Age or was it just specific to that location?

Both the numbers of Drow (and besides the small matter that they neither threaten nor attack) and the likelihood that the many corpses littering the track might well rise again as evil spirits take possession of the abandoned flesh give the normally dour Dwarf some reason for concern, and he urges you to hurry on in the hope that you can reach your destination before night falls.

And press on you do, your progress now slowed only by the sheer weight of numbers that swell before you as you come closer to your goal ...

... and at last the ruins loom before you.  Through the throngs that head towards it, you can make out the remains of an ancient and imposing stone building, perhaps a hundred and sixty feet long, though but a quarter of that at its widest, that looks as if it might even date back as far as the Third Age.  The walls are crumbling, though somewhat intact, though the roof has gone, the stone blackened around the niches where the roof beams once sat.

The floor of the ruins rise up perhaps ten feet above ground level, strewn with fallen and broken stones and other debris, though a taller tower still stands at one end, albeit in a perilous state of repair.

Yet the ruins themselves are not what you, nor indeed the Drow, seek - rather the line of misery that you are part of leads towards the north-east corner where a huge lightning-burned tree pushes its blackened limbs through the remnants of arched openings.

As you draw closer, you see those before you duck their heads as they shuffle through a large crack in the burnt tree trunk, no more than five feet high and three feet wide to vanish into the darkness therein.


OOC: the Fallen are not a common occurrence, but are not limited to any particular place (as Yetta might attest as she has some experience of them too) ... though you do not know whether the restoration of the sun to the skies and the banishment of the mists that have cloaked the Urthe for so long might now prevent that evil or even make it less likely.
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:57, Sun 07 Aug 2022.

"What could possibly go wrong?" the elf mutters as she shrugs her shoulders and follows through the narrow opening, ducking her head.

"Don't answer that," she adds, then "and watch the step - don't know how far down this ladder goes.."