"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.."

With a look at the others, Hamin follows Alasha'an into the hole ...

"Didn't we just get out of one hole?" the young mage complains.

Though the prospect does not at all appeal to him, nevertheless Ayas does not shirk the necessity, bending low that he might enter with the due care that Alasha'an's warning requires.

Brugar chuckles softly at his funny, long-eared friends, clearly appreciating their jokes. Then he follows them through the narrow opening into the darkness beyond.

Alasha'an's question is soon answered, for the ladder descends only ten feet, though even the Elf's keen sight struggles in the darkness at the base and Hamin takes the lead down the spiral stone stairway that continues down.

The first twenty feet or so is marred by broken stonework, the granite disturbed by thick roots displacing flags and pushing through the walls, though thereafter the way is clear.

At the base is a ten foot wide tunnel with a floor of sand, lit by flickering torches spaced widely enough that they seem but a grudging sop to those few travellers who pass this way that do not possess dark-sight.

A little further on your feet tramp upon wooden boards that give but a little, and not long thereafter the sand gives way to stone as the tunnel widens to fifteen feet as it angles left then opens out into a small chamber.

The press of bodies before and after you that has served to guide you thus far now splits, a roughly equal division between those that continue through the passage to the left and those that head through the passage to the north.

Which way will you choose ?

Left?" Hamin asks the others, but a shrug of his shoulders shows that he doesn't really have a preference.

"Why not," Alasha'an has no better advice to offer Hamin, "one way's as good as another for now."

You follow the line that takes the chambers western exit, trudging alone behind the burned and subdued Drow down the dimly lit corridor.

You pass an opening to your right down which you can see a short flight of stone stairs descending to a pair of huge iron bound doors, before the corridor joins another, turning left then through an opening that once held a door but no longer.

Crossing the southern end of a chamber forty feet wide, you see it stretching over a hundred feet to the north, littered with the debris of what was probably once a grand dining room before it fell to wrack and ruin.  Another body lies slumped here to one side.

The corridor twists and turns and branches as you pass through another opening on the opposite wall, but as each person follows the one in front, you pick your way without hesitation ignoring side chambers and passages as you turn north into another large room, bigger even than the last, if not by much.

You cross the chamber, heading towards the opposite corner, picking your way between two thirty feet wide shallow depressions to the exit, then up a short series of stone steps. At the top there is another corridor, with an alcove opposite the stairway in which stands a statue of a hooded figure, head lowered and face hidden, fashioned from some white stone with a powdery surface.

East now, and up yet more steps as the passage turns north, leading almost two hundred feet past more darkened rooms and side corridors from which further travellers emerge to join the line, most like those that took the northern way at the start of your journey.

At the end, the passage turns to the west and more stone steps leading down, then a final turn to the north and you enter what would be a forty foot square room, save for a chasm which runs almost diagonally across.  The ceiling far above is rough rock with many uneven projections, though you note that the walls are smoothly carved in contrast to the stone blocks that you have seen thus far.

Across the chasm, leading to a ledge on the far side is a stone bridge, obviously fashioned much later and much more crudely, with more effort going into the function than the form.

The bridge proves as sturdy as it seemed, as the swollen line progresses slowly across it, following the now rough stone wall on the far side of the chasm to the south west, as it enters a tunnel that grows dimmer and, as you continue to follow along it, more and more endless ...

Brugar grows more and more restless as they follow the seemingly endless tunnel.

"S'posed to be unner the city, ain't it?" he mutters to himself. "Been walkin' so long we ain't unner the city no more, are we? What be behind them big ol' iron bound doors back there, Ah wonder? Least they be unner the city."

Hamin steps aside, out of the queue of Drow, and looks across at the others.  "You could be right." he says to Brugar.  "Perhaps these drow are just returning to the underdark, now that the sun  is bright in the sky again."

"The city we seek was supposed to be far beneath the surface," Alasha'an muses. "And many of those ten thousand blades that were undoubtedly employed in the subjugation of the Urthe above now return to their home."

"At least we've got company," the elf shakes her head at the tide of travellers flowing down the tunnel with her. "This time we'll have an audience to our heroics!"

The walk down the tunnel seems more and more endless as time passes.  The light is, if anything, worse than before for those to whom the darkness is not home, for the torches that light the way are placed at far intervals, and the path twists and turns, so most of the time you find yourself marching through blackness, those that cannot see relying on their hearing or the guidance of their companions in the main, though the frequent grunts of pain suggest regular contact with the rough stone walls.

You lose all sense of time down here, for the line of travellers does not stop for rest, though you assume that all are as tired as yourselves, the journey made so much worse by the increasing warmth as the path delves ever deeper into the bowels of the Urthe, your bodies dripping with sweat from your exertions.

Until at last the tunnel opens out into a huge cavern, the path now a dangerous, narrow ledge that is at least marginally better lit, which descends to the lights of what must be a city below.

Ahead there is what you assume was a guard post, though an attempt to check the flow of travellers has long been abandoned, for the line moves slowly past without challenge as the outer buildings of this city beneath the ground rise up.

"I've never seen a place where even a fraction of ten thousand souls congregated," the young elf looks about him, though a hand at the collar of his cloak keeps his hood tightly in place. "Do you think that number a reality or just a myth?"

"Ten thousand blades. There be no mention of souls an' Ah'd not be surprised if'n many who dwell 'ere 'ad foresaken their souls centuries ago," Brugar mutters. "But no, Ah wouldna doubt the number."

Hamin half smiles, as he hears Alasaa'an's comment about an audience.  "An audience that won't be cheering and applauding at the show." he responds dourly as he pulls his cloak tighter around himself and tries to merge with the other travellers around him, so that nothing looks out of place as they cross the guard point.

There's a snort as one of those in the line behind you overhears Ayas's remark.

"Ten thousand there once was," a gravelly voice corrects your young companion. "Then but a fraction of that number as they left for the world above."

"But now ?  Perhaps two or three times that, maybe more.  At least for a short time till food becomes scarce.  Nothing like an empty belly to keep the crowds down, and most of this lot need no urging."

Hamin ignores the comment from behind, and keeps moving forwards.