"Dammit! NO!"
Joanna drops her sword and shield to dive after Arsith.
Letting her sword and her shield clatter to the floor, Joanna moves to the very edge of the water – peering downwards into the murk of the filthy water, she catches glimpses of Arsith’s white hair… slowly sinking, she must be no more than five feet below the surface.
Seeing Arsith, Joanna dives in and grabs the woman, kicking to get them both to the surface.
Seeing Arsith slowly sinking beyond reach, Joanna takes immediate action – diving in, she gets a strong grip around the stricken Shelynite and then kicks for the surface… breaching the surface of the filthy water, she gasps for air and tries to move Arsith towards the side of the pool…
…the remaining sinspawn, moving freely in the water, breach the surface several seconds after Joanna… crimson blood trailing them as they move towards her. As the water starts to churn, the creatures attack without mercy…
Briana’s summoned weapon, floating above the chaos of the melee in the water, swings downwards and crashes hard into one of Joanna’s attackers… there is a hideous cracking noise and the sinspawn, suddenly stilled, sinks like a stone…
Joanna bites back her scream of pain as jagged teeth dig into her. She just focuses on getting Arsith to safety.
"Somebody grab her!"
As Joanna tries to push Arsith out of the water, Shadlah steps forward to try and end the threat posed by the remaining sinspawn… reaching upwards and clutching at the air, her brow furrows… and when she pull her arm back down, a lump of masonry falls from the ceiling above the swimming sinspawn. With a dull ‘thud’, it lands on the target of the Shoanti’s attack… and sends it, bloodied and broken, to the bottom of the pool…
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The white haired woman coughs a mix of blood and water, and sees Briana and Joanna taking care of her
Mmmm... I must be in the holy Lands of Love..Hello Sweetie pie, hello Brianna...
* * *
"Arsith!!" shouts Zee as the sinspawn drag the unconscious form of her white-haired friend below the water.
She looks pleadingly at her friends. "Do something! My magic will not work underwater, and I am a poor swimmer!"
* * *
Zee helps drag Arsith back onto the steps. She prays for the blessings of the Starsong, tossing her Harrow deck into the air. The cards become a flock of ethereal blue-and-silver butterflies that flutter to Arsith and seemingly disappear into her.
Joanna shakes her head when asked if how deep the water was. She just hauls herself out of the water and tries to ignore the sting in her shoulder.
"Give me a second and I'll swim across," she says as she grabs her wounded arm and offers her goddess a prayer of thanks for letting her save Arsith. There's a brief flash of light as the paladin heals her own wounds.
Testing her range of movement after patching herself up, she looks to Zee.
"I'd hate to ask this, but do you know a spell to patch up my clothes? At the rate I'm going, they're going to be rags before we get out of this place," she says with a chuckle.
Arsith gets up, and gives a knowing glance at Teldon
I think you're already visiting these lands, Brianna..Don't waste all your healing magic on me, I can cure my wounds, or yours, too. And maybe I should be less headstrong, and should rush into danger foolishly.
Listening to Joanna
As soon as we are out of this place, I'll buy you new clothes, sweetie pie. It's the least I can do for you after your heroic rescue.
She heals her wounds and some of Joe's
With the demise of the last sinspawn, the oppressive atmosphere within the large room seems to lift somewhat… dragging Arsith from the water, the friends ensure that she is fully healed before any discussion of moving onwards is broached. Eventually, after the friends have cleaned themselves up, eaten some provisions and stowed their equipment, it is time to cross the murky water… where, slightly disconcertingly, the broken bodies of two of the sinspawn float like perverse stepping stones…
Joanna is the first to swim across and, from the far side of the water, she throws a rope back to help pull everyone else across… including a botched together floating platform for an increasingly conversational Rowenna. With everyone safely across, the friends are finally ready to leave the domain of the petty fiends, Lord Baz and the Suzerain, behind them…
…through passages, winding corridors and long dead chambers, the friends press on – their footsteps and whispered voices, the first sounds to be heard down here for an age.
The farther they go, the less grand their surroundings until, stepping down a short flight of stairs, the friends arrive in a thirty-foot square chamber with a cistern filled with dark, stagnant water taking up most of the floor. Troughs of this dark water run to the east, the south and the west through hallways alongside five-foot wide walkways. In places, where there are gaps in the walkway, soggy looking planks have been placed as makeshift bridges…
An ornamental torch made from onyx, the first light that has been seen for quite a while, burns in a sconce next to the hallway heading east – from which, the distant sound of singing can be heard…
Teldon silently gestures for quiet, then whispers, "we're getting very close... be careful though- whatever is down here has likely been here a very long time... It's likely powerful and crazed..."
Can't hear what it sings... it seems ...weird.
The langauge, as far as Teldon is able to tell, is Necril - spoken by the ravenous ghouls of the Darklands. It is a mixture of Aklo, Undercommon, and Osiriani, focusing on terms and aspects of a ghoul's morbid existence.
Teldon frowns. "The language you don't understand," he explains, "is necril: the language of the undead. If you have any thing to protect yourselves against such threats you may want to have them at the ready."
I promise to be more cautious this time, mommy.
She winks at Brianna
"I'll be up front. Maybe we'll get lucky and there's only one," Joanna says quietly before she begins to move towards the voice.
With Joanna taking the lead as the friends move single-file along the narrow pathway, the group make their way towards the source of the singing. The mournful tune echoes along the eastern corridor, its refrain now turning towards the way in which the corpse desiccates beneath the desert sun of Osirion… the only other noise in the network of tunnels is the constant drip, drip, dripping of water into the troughs that run alongside the walkways in the passages...
Drawing closer, another illuminated sconce casts a flickering light over the chamber some fifty feet to the east… and, quite abruptly just as the song was deriding vultures and other carrion birds, the singing stops…
With her sword in hand, Joanna leads the friends into the room where the singing seemed to be coming from – here a stone bridge supported by stone pillars curves through this cylindrical reservoir; the bridge leads to a set of stairs that head upwards from the southern end of the room. A few feet below the bridge, the dark water that lined the passageway fills the entire room… the most remarkable feature of the chamber is the mural, painted no more than an inch above the waterline around the perimeter of the room, depicting the skyline of Magnimar – painted with some degree of skill, the vista is complete with numerous ships and boats that seem to float on the waters of the room…
…at the southern end of the room, where a half-painted galleon sails around the Irespan, an artist’s palette and two brushes sit on one of the bridge’s stone supports.
"Hello? Is anyone there," Joanna calls out as the back of her neck tingles. "We do not wish to fight."
Seeing the palette, Joanna is struck by an idea.
"One of our number is a follower of Shelyn, the Eternal Rose. I'm sure that she would like to talk about the beautiful mural you are working on," she says as she walks further out onto the bridge, her sword held ready to defend, but not attack.
Teldon quietly reaches into his bag, draws a flask, and drinks it down.
Arsith gets a scroll out of her backpack, and reads it
I suppose whoever painted it used its memories of the place. I wouldn't be surprised the painting shows very old monuments, monuments that are ruins now. Nevertheless, it is splendid.
Arsith’s suggestion that the skyline of Magnimar would be of a previous age proves to be incorrect… the recent monuments, the stacks of warehouses along the waterfront, even the design and heraldry of the ships in the harbour suggest that this is a very contemporary painting…
The water in the reservoir of this room is, as the friends linger, showing the gentlest signs of rippling movement… there isn’t any running water anywhere, so far as can be seen, leading to the conclusion that something was previously moving in the water here. And when Arsith pulls out her scroll and utters the ancient words upon it, it becomes immediately clear that something no longer living is here… and, as Arsith focusses, she ‘feels’ its position – a strong aura of undeath that is no more than ten feet below the bridge…
– there is nothing invisible here…
Joanna calls out to whoever, or whatever, was here… and, for a few moments there is no response other the slightest of echoes – and then, with the gentlest of disturbances to the water surface, a bald humanoid head appears… blood-red eyes set deep into the gaunt face of the creature look at Joanna halfway across the bridge… and then, emerging to shoulder height, a rasping voice replies to the paladin, ”My painting is workmanlike at best – some small comfort for a life that is long past… but I thank you for your compliment”
This is a ghoul...with an artistic side. I surely wasn't expecting that.
The ghoul's facial muscles are stiff yet even Arsith can see that the ghoul seems genuinely hurt by her comment, "Please... would you call a leper a leper to their face? What makes my affliction any different? The name is Brast... Lockerbie Brast... and thankyou at least for recognising my artistic side. I can no longer wander the streets of my beloved city... but this helps me to remember".
Arsith only echoes what Joanna's thinking, but is seems that Mr. Brast has a point.
"Hello," Joanna says with as much cheer as she can muster, "and well met Mr. Brast. As Briana says, we find ourselves wondering about your tale. Perhaps we can tell some of ours in return?"
Teldon seems lost in thought as people talk with the ghoul...
Running his hands around the outline of the half-finished galleon, Lockerbie Brast frowns, ”I am… was... the captain of a fishing boat, the Liza Jane… not a big boat and often without a crew, but it was enough to put food on the table… a year or two back, I don’t know how long really - time doesn’t seem to matter anymore, I got caught in a fog-bank… before I knew it, the boat was over-run with things… ghouls I guess… I managed to fight them off but got bit in the process”. The ghoul rubs his neck absent-mindedly, ”I tried to make it back to Magnimar but, lost in a fever, I must have crashed against the Irespan… I ‘awoke’ down here… sometimes I make my way through the sewers and into the harbour… and then return here to paint”.
– you haven’t heard the name ‘Lockerbie Brast’ before
Turning the conversation around, the ghoul asks why the friends are down here, ”You are the first folk I’ve seen since my new 'life'… why are you here? Have you come for the derro?”
With heart racing, Teldon is back in the reservoir room as the ghoul talks about his past life…
"Yes," Teldon answers apparently having been paying more attention than he seemed, "they have been stealing people from Magnimar and carrying out terrible experiments on them. Out of curiosity, do you happen to remember the date you got caught in the fog?"
"I figured as much... sooner or later the city watch would work out what was happening and trace the derro back down here... there's four of them now, sadistic beasts they are...", and when Teldon asks about the date of the shipwreck, "It was a few days before the Golemwalk Parade... so that makes it early Pharast... and the year was 4704... mine and Liza Jane's tenth anniversary year", Brast dabs at his eyes... but there are no tears.
Brast considers Briana’s offer for a moment, ”There is something… I never thought to have this chance so it would be a blessing indeed”… Brast swims to the bridge then two blackened hands hold on to the side as the ghoul pulls himself from the water. Reaching into the leather tunic that he wears, he pulls out a small golden brooch – inset with several pearls and inscribed with the initials L.B. – it is an elegant piece of jewellery.
”Liza Jane, my wife, gave this to me for our tenth anniversary… if you could return it to her, tell her you found the wreckage of my boat and that I must surely have perished – she could hopefully move on with her life knowing that I died at sea…”. Lockerbie Brast offers the brooch to Briana, ”Could you do this for me?”
Teldon grips his spear uncomfortably as the ghoul moves next to Briana but tries hard not to offend the creature that was Lockerbie Brast by showing his distrust.
I want first to apologise for my rudeness, and will do my utmost to bring your gift to your beloved, as soon as possible.
"You will do it then? You have my gratitude...", and then Briana tells Brast how long it has been, "Ten years? A whole decade that I have been gone? I can't... I can't believe it". The ghoul considers his situation for a moment, "You will still take the brooch? Liza Jane worked as Laundress in Washer's Row... maybe she still does? The derro... what do you know about them?"