The mighty eagle takes on its new fow with a visous series of attacks. It blocks the pathway of the creatures on the bridge and presses the attack.
Bite >>
Talon >>
Talon >>
Even though he has on armor Aaron leaps across the half wall. Acrobatics He slips a little but makes it without pause. He head south along the west wall and then turns east. Standing in front of the new kolbold he attacks with his short spear. >> He is obviously a bit distracted from all of the activity.
Rumble procedes due east jumping over the half wall. Clearing it easily, he comes to stop 10' east of Jar'kel and 10' north of the flanking kolbold.
Sorry that should be corrected to 10' west
...
Rumble procedes due east jumping over the half wall. Clearing it easily, he comes to stop 10' WEST of Jar'kel and 10' north of the flanking kolbold...
With profound joy filling his heart over his small victory Amarandlon move towards the rest of the party anticipating to be able to help them soon.
Cursing as the first arrow misses. Jar'Kel draws another from his quiver and losses it towards the nearest kabold. Die you filthy vermin.
Aaron's eagle takes out one of the new attackers, and moves to block the next. Jar'Kel removes one of the threats on Ax, as well.
Looking around at the mayhem, Jackson shrugs to himself. Arming himself with his whip, he casually saunters over to the entrance to watch the eagle engaged in mortal combat with the last kobold. He begins speaking to the kobold in Draconic again.
Jarkel crosses the to stand by Jackson. Peering out the doorway he watches the last of the Kabolds fight a despite battle with an eagle. Turnig to the other man with a quisical look on his face he asks "what in the abyss is a bird like that doing in here."
Not taking his eyes off the kobold, Jackson rubs his thumb on his whip handle. "I don' rightly know, but it doesn' seem nat'ral. I think it may belong to one o' th' others."
Rumble, standing not far from Jackson and Jar'kel says in his low gravel voice,"It's one of Aaron's. In addition to getting me here, he can grab a few animals. They don't stay around long, but they come in handy during a fight." Rumble waits to see what the remaining kolbold does.
The last kobold leaps off the side of the bridge head first, crumpling in a heap at the bottom of the gully.
Jar'Kel almost jumps out of his skin, startled by the unknown raspy voice. Heart pounding in his chest he notches another arrow and draws back his bow as he quickly spins around. Scanning the room for further threats his deep brown eyes meet and lock with those of Rumble. Tilting his head at an odd angle he study's the creature, easing the bowstring back to rest before speaking. "Well well, you and the young Mr. Aaron are just full o surprises now arn't ya, friend Rumble!"
Nodding to the creature, Jar'Kel turns his attention back to the doorway. The thought of how hard it will be to recover the kabold corpses from the bottom of the gully crosses his mind, as he watches the remaining kabold plummet from the bridge in apparent suicide. Filthy little coward. Wounder if four will be enough for a pair of boots?
He begins humming softly to himself as he waits for the rest of the party to gather
Let me tell you about the Strange things are happening to me
Strange things
Strange things are happening to me...
Ain't no doubt about it
Watching the kobold plunge to its death, the eagle returns to Aaron and perches on his shoulder. Aaron and Rumble meet up. It takes about 30 seconds before the eagle just disappears. Aaron grabs his large tooth comb and straightens Rumbles mane. Aaron also takes the time to remove the kobold bits and pieces from rumbles mouth. “ Great job there Rumble, I think you took out half of them.” Rumble and Aaron go back to examine the corpses of the dead kobolds.
The are looking for anything useful or any clue about the nature of this place.
Aaron looks to fox while doing his examination. "Fox, seems like you could speak some of that forked tongue language. What was all of that noise they were making?"
Jackson clicks his tongue against his cheek. "Tch, now that's just a darn shame. Waste of a perf'ctly good guide. Oh well," he says, shrugging. Turning back into the cave, he frowns. "Sure wish I'd thought t' bring a lamp." He starts a bit, almost falling down as Aaron addresses him. "Cayden's codpiece, y' startled me, kid! Y' can't be sneakin' up on old men like that!" Jackson takes a moment to catch his breath and his balance in the dark before responding. "I've studied Draconic extensively. When it comes t' books, if it's old, it's probably written in Draconic. The little critters didn' have much to say, mostly jus' orders t' attack us. One of 'em said somethin' about 'shiny good-good', so I expec' they were tryin' t' protect somethin', but with kobolds, y' never know. Scaly bastards attribute find value in th' mos' worthless stuff sometimes. Makes tradin' with 'em a total crapshoot. Hey, you got a torch or somethin' handy?"
Seeing that the rest of the expedition is gathered and in relatively fine shape, Jar'Kel starts to traverse the swaying bridge. Half way over the span he is hit with a debilitating case of vertigo, causing his nerve to break. AWWW $#!@, IM GOIN OVER, IM GOIN OVER. Sinking to his hands and knees he slowly crawls back to the others.
Back on solid ground he takes a seat at the doorway to regain his composure. Studying the wreck of a bridge he try's to formulate an idea of how to make the trip across safer.
Aaron looks at Fox with a bit of disbelief. He was beginning to wonder if this was the right man to follow. Jack had invited him on an investigation of a gully with rooms on the side but did not bring a source of light; he could not remember Aaron’s name, and now, while Aaron is standing in front of him, short spear in one hand and a recently struck sun rod in the other, and Fox is asking if he has a lantern. Is this man addle minded?
“Here, you can have this. I just struck it so it will be good for 6 hours. I can use this, and with that he throws a light spell on his gauntlet. If we spread out a bit we can keep the place lit enough to see. Hopefully the other have brought something as well.
Rumble, who can see in the dark, starts across the bridge. to see what he can on the other side.
When Aaron looks around the room they just fought in, it appears to be some sort of observation setup. The half wall used to be glassed to allow a party on one side to observe the other without danger.
The bridge is a very rudimentary rope bridge, and the only real hope of making it more stable is to replace the ropes and several rotting planks.
Across the bridge, you see another room, built in the same way. This one appears to have once been some kind of laboratory. There are a few tables and gurneys around, and remnants of some surgical tools. However, there are also quite few rusting chains and manacle, and you recognize some tools as torturous. There is a spiral staircase in the SE corner.
Rumble too was beginning to wonder if they had hooked onto the right group of adventuerers. Granted, he and Aaron were a bit novice on this but, Ax’s flailing around in combat and Jar’kel’s reaction to this measly bridge was giving him pause. Aaron and he had, for the most part taken on half of this small hoard, even scaring one to jump to its death. Rumble investigates the torture room he finds himself in lloking for anything of use or things that may give him a clue as to the maker or use of this structure. He wanders through the room slowly approaching the stairs in the southeast corner.
. He relays his information to Aaron mentally in a mixture of Ignan, common, and Azlanti. Rumble tends to mix up languages grabbing the one he thinks best meets the scene he is seeing.
Aaron relays the information to the rest of the group.
“Rumble says the bridge is safe but rickety. Just try not to look down too much and watch out for the loose and rotting boards. He hasn’t found much over there. Just another room overlooking this gorge. It’s got tables and surgical tools, some torturous, chains and manacles. Don’t know what they were doing there, but we may have an idea what type of “experiments” they were doing here. There is a staircase in the southeast corner and he is going to investigate. I’m going to go over and see if there is anything we can use. Manacles may come in handy if we want to capture or question one of these lizards next time. “
With that he starts across the bridge .
Following Rumble's instructions he easily makes it across.
Jack takes the lantern, oblivious to Aaron's bewilderment. "Thanks, it was damn near impossible t' see down here. I'll be right back, jus' gonna go get my pack." Taking the lantern, Jackson quickly navigates through the cave from where the others came from, heading back up to ground level to retrieve his pack. Returning, with a lamp of his own, he returns the one he borrowed from Aaron just in time to hear Rumble's report. "Alright, go on ahead. Take Amarandlon with you. Ax, Jar'Kel and I will check f'r secret doors or whatnot over here an' join you if we don' find anything."
Upon inspecting the laboratory room, Jackson notes a 5' square shaft on the ceiling leading to what must be a hidden trap door on the surface level, but there is no ladder or rope. Otherwise, he is able to scrounge up 16gp in a small sack, and 3 small spears.
"Your animal companion is most useful" Amarandlon says to Aaron and continues: "I am prepared to continue if you are ready."
Why are they both talking about light, oh of cause you have better vision. Amarandlon thinks to himself.
|
Ax stands up and follows Jack up the stairs and picks up his own pack. As he walks down, he looks carefully at crevices and objects in general. . Ax does not see anything of interest. He continues down and joins the queue crossing the bridge. . Feeling the bridge stable, Ax continues across, and calls over to Jack, "Come on Jack, there does not seem to be anything of interest over there."Looking forward to Aaron, Ax sighs and thinks he perceives an over satisfied gait in the guy. "Well..." he tells himself "there is always one of those...
Aaron acknowleges the arrival of Ax, he seemed to handle the brigdge much better than Jar'kel. " Well Ax, don't know what was going on here but looks more complicated than what some of those lizard folk would be doing. You see anything useful here?" Aaron continues to look around awaiting the rest of the party.
Rumble standing at the stairs and looks to where they are going. He checks for any recent traffic in the area.
It seems as though the kobolds didn't go down the stairs much, as there is still a layer of dust and dirt with only a few footprints, unlike the rest of the compound so far, which has been well-traveled and turned up. You also note that some of the tracks are not kobold tracks, but rather more humanoid.
Ax doesn't note anything that hasn't already been looked at.
"Companion Aaron and companion Jackson, I am not certain I understood where Aaron and I are supposed to go?" Amarandlon says while looking at the two.
" Well, not as much kobod activity here and I got some sort of huminoid tracks here," Ruble relates. "I'm gonna check out the stairs. Be ready to get me out of trouble if I call."
Rumble proceeds slowly and stealthy down stairs. Aaron readys an action to dismiss Rumble if he cries Help.
The stairs take Rumble down 10' and end in another room. This room is completely empty and dark, but Rumble can see that there are splotches all over the walls and floor, and notes that this room is quite humid. There is a closed and locked iron door on the eastern side of the room.
Rumble relates to Aaron, All clear down here as far as I can see. Feels a little humid. There are some spots on the wall, a door, looks metal. Won’t know more till you get down here with a little light.
Aaron relates this information to the party members. “Small room, humid with spots on the wall. One metal door. Nothing humanoid down there.”
Aaron proceeds down the spiral staircase, short spear in one hand and a sun rod in the other. Rumble sees his world turn from a black and white to a more colored palate. With the added light it is much easier to examine this new room. Rumble and Aaron look closely the splotches careful not to touch or disturb them in case the humidity has created mold or fungus. They move slowly and carefully and end up examining the metal door.
Following closely behind Aaron as he descends into the room Amarandlon still has his blade in his hands, but with the sword lowered he looks around in the room illuminated by Aaron's sunrod. "Aside from the door there does not seem to be anything of interest." he says.
The splotches on the walls and floor are obviously blood, now that they're in color. The door also has a small slide at eye level that can be slid open to look beyond the door.
Amarandlon walks over to the door and inspects it. After examine it, he slides the slide open.
The door is solid iron, riveted and barred. It was clearly made to keep something on the other side. As soon as Amarandlon opens the slide, everyone in the room is assaulted by a powerful odor - a wet, rotting, decaying smell.
Aaron watches Amarandlon open the slide, as curious as the elf to find what is on the other side, when the strong smell hit him in punch to the sternum. His guts heaved, his trail ratiions threatening to spill over his shoes. He looked for a small bit of cloth to shove up his nose to help dampen the smell.
Rumble, standing nearby, also was hit by the stench, but his time of being the willful scout for Aaron had put this creature in situtations that helped it endure it, if only just barely. Rumble wondered what could be on the other side to cause such a foul oder.
As soon as the slide is opened Amarandlons guts start turning, the stench hits him like a sucker punch in the gut and he steps backwards, now pale and fighting not to throw up. "By the green of Loth'Gola was is that horrible stench" Amarandlon forces out between two gulps of stomic acid.
"Stand back and let me look." Rumble, least effected by the stench, looks through the slit to see if anything is on the other side.
"Don't see anything, going to open this smelly mess up. Standback and prepare incase I missed something. Something left these bloodstains on the wall." Rumble braces to open the door. Aaron a few feet back has out his bow.
When Rumble looks through the slit he sees a round room with no floor. IT goes down at least as far as he can see, which isn't very far due to the size of the slit.
Upon opening the door, everyone is greeted by a sharp drop-off where the floor should be. The room is round, 20' in diameter.
Rumble, curious as to the nature of such a place, extends his head slightly to get a good look up and down the shaft. He is curious as to other access there might be, or an obvious way up or down such as a ladder or hand holds. [i] How deep does this shaft go, and what could its purpose be? [i] he thinks to himself.
At the bottom of the room, 60' down, there is an opaque pool of black goo. There are pegs in the stone where a rope or ladder could have hung from.
Rumble comes back to the group. ” So this is what I see. Round shaft about 20’ across. Goes down about as far as I can see and ends in a black pool of goo. Can’t tell how deep it is our even what it’s made of. There are some hooks in the wall where a rope or something may have been attached. I don’t fancy goin’ down in the muck before I know what we are gettin’ into.”
Aaron nods to his compainion in agreement. ” I guess we could tie something to a rope, cast light on it and lower down the shaft. Make sure it is heavy so it will sink through a thick fluid. See if it reacts with the light. It could warn something that we are coming but I, like Rumble, would like to have an idea what we will be standing in down there. Maybe we could even get up a sample and see what it is.”
Aaron looks to the rest of the group. “Anybody have any other ideas?”