After a while the rest of the expedition filtered through and Dr Munroe took great interest in the blinds. He inspected the strange glassed Edwin had found, remarking, "Cor these are strong, can barely see anything through them..."
Once they where distributed, he said, "I guess we'd better see what this does then."
With some effort the rather stiff mechanism was cranked and ever so slowly the blinds began to open, allowing in the tiniest crack of daylight. When nothing else seemed to happen the mechanism was cranked the whole way open and the giant blinds slowly moved to the horizontal position giving a good view of the cloudscape outside. Albeit one that was darkened by a mesh of metal.
Professor Dexter had been expecting a sudden blaze of light but when weak sunlight filtered through she gave the dark glasses an incredulous look as she remarked, "This is ridiculous, what have they got against light? Anyone would think they're vampires or something..."
Dr Munroe gave her an indulgent look before replying, "I've been thinking about that, from what little we know their species comes from the darkness between the stars. My best guess is they're just way more sensitive to light than we are. Still viewing the outside world must have been important for them, they obviously went to a lot of effort to build this place. Anyway now that we have ample light, lets see if we can find anything of interest..."
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Edwin looked around the room, and noticed several things. First of all, he saw a series of tactile dots, at human head height. Pointing them out, he told the others, "They seem to indicate an number of locations. This one seems to show ... yes, a concealed door!"
He opened up the door and exclaimed, "Costumes, Githyanki-sized!"
Looking further he found more concealed doors, leading to more costume storage. All in all there must have been two hundred costumes at least. Then he found another concealed door at the back, which opened to a secret corridor. Looking in he examined the inscriptions on the doors within and said, "There's some little rooms in here, numbered in githyanki. I think they might be changing rooms."
Look at all the costumes again, he sighed and remarked regretfully, "I seem to be inadequately sized to play a part in this production."
Maybe if we slept in the room with the stage we would get to see a play.
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Edwin recited something he'd read once,
"All the world's indeed a stage
And we are merely players
Performers and portrayers
Each another's audience
Outside the gilded cage"
Yukarii was in complete agreement on waiting on trying to reset the haunting later on. It was going to still be there when they were finished with the observation deck.
When they entered the deck Yukarii nearly panicked as the darkness was so encompassing that she couldn't see through it. That rarely happened to her given her ability to see in absolute darkness. Only supernatural means could prevent her from seeing in it and that always terrified her to be blinded so. Fortunately Yukaari was in her mind and Marek at her side. She squeezed Marek's hand tightly as they went through the darkness.
Once they were on the other side Yukarii looked around in wonder. The place was amazing and when she was given the goggles Yukarii put them on, took a seat, and watched as the shutters were slowly opened. It was an amazing sight to see but she felt very glad she wore the ultra dark goggles.
Once they had finished playing with the lights they made another discovery, one that caught Yukarii's immediate attention. "This is quite a find Whiskers-san," she quickly began to look through the "costumes", "well done."
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Maybe if we slept in the room with the stage we would get to see a play.
"Or, perhaps, we are the performers. Last time we slept in the ship, things got weird, after all."
That said, Xindyra, like Yukarii, browsed through the customes.
Yukarii finds a great variety of costumes from materials ranging from brocade to leather and wool to satin. As a rule they tended to be lavishly embroidered and gaudy, especially the one sown with thousands of reversible red and blue sequins. Lamentably all of them were far too large for humans although it would be possible for a skilled seamstress or tailor to cut them down to size.
"Sleeping in here might be an interesting idea, at least we've not found any corpses in this area..." replied Dr Munroe.
Noting the concealed corridor Edwin found with the dressing rooms he glanced towards the party and asked, "Shall we?"
Zendara nods, and proceeds down the corridor.
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Edwin checked the dressing room doors for traps, just in case. He couldn't see any reason that they would be, but he decided to be cautious anyway.
Once he was satisfied that they were safe, he looked inside the first one.
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Xindyra makes a mental note to take the chique dress when they finish the expedition.
"Ready to go."
The first couple of Githyanki dressing rooms prove to be interesting, and apparently all of the same design. A spotlessly clean 20' square room dominated by a large dressing table with a fancy mirrored-vanity with weak by human standards magical lighting (undoubtedly very strong for Githyanki). Each of the room contains an oversized cushioned stool, several empty clothing racks and what appears to be a drinks cooler.
The third one proved to be occupied... Inside this frigid room is the same spectral Githyanki woman you saw earlier, Iarala Maxim, sitting at the dressing table weeping. The khol from her eyes has formed dark streaks down her pale skin and has stained her pretty white dress.
Upon the dressing table is what appears to be an extravagant box tied with a crimson ribbon. This foot cubed confection is reminiscent of a gift box from a high end fashion outlet. It appears to have been daubed by exotic and no doubt expensive perfume.
As she regarded the box, Iarala whispered, "I can't believe it turned out just like Uncle Matvei said it would. How could he have known father wouldn't allow true love to blossom? How could he have know Norrie's fate would do to me?! I no longer wish to live! Oh Uncle you always knew what was best, what I needed before I did. What dark gift did you leave for me? You warned me to open this only in my most desperate hour..."
Slowly her hands stroked the box and gently untied the ribbon. She gingerly lifted the lid, and as she saw what was within she gasped, for inside was an iridescent purple ovoid which pulsated to some unseen rhythm. A voor egg.
With shaking hands she plucked the egg out of the crimson silk lined box and regarded it. It would happen soon, the warmth of her body was stirring what lay within.
Truly scared now she whispered, "Oh Uncle... This is going to hurt me as much as is them isn't it? One last show and then it will be over. For everyone..."
She brought the glistening egg to her lips and kissed it and suddenly it convulsed and something within it bucked and violently thrust it's way into her mouth and brutally ripped its way down her into her stomach. Like a spent sweet wrapper the now spent egg fluttered to the floor along with Iarala who staggered back to the wall before slumping down with her chest bulging as the baby Voor began to devour her from within.
With one last supreme effort she gripped a strange looking necklace with a heart shaped golden gem of some sort. She spoke into it crying, "HELP! GET FATHER! I HAVE BEEN ATTACKED..." A surprising quantity of blood welled out her mouth to stain the pristine floor and soak into her lovely dress. She struggled weakly unable to breathe before becoming still - yet not for long, her body bulged and strained as the thing thing within ate its fill.
After a few minutes this apparition faded leaving naught but questions.
Looking physically ill Dr Munroe exclaimed, "In the name of Elodin and all that's holy, I wasn't expecting that!! Gods... What kind of monster is this 'Uncle Matvei'?"
Zendara looks slightly green and says
Uh, I changed my mind. I don't want to sleep here.
When he heard the translation, Edwin could only shake his head. "So that's how at least one voor got aboard the ship. What a tragedy! The whole voor attack could have been engineered by 'Uncle Matvei'"
"Sounds like this 'Uncle Matvei' was a long term schemer.
Getting close to a girl, enough to get her to use the voor egg at the moment of deepest depression."
"But what faction would benefit from such a huge vessel's doom?", she muses out loud.
Yukarii watched the ghost of the Iarala Maxim go through her final moments. She couldn't understand what was being said but listened to the translation when it was provided. At the end, when the woman held the voor egg to her lips and it promptly tore down her throat and began to devour her from the inside out Yukarii turned more than a little green and resisted the urge to turn her face away. She resolved now to try and contact this spirit, to try and put her to rest.
Yukarii agreed with Zendara and said, "I agree, we should not stay the night here." Her gaze shifted to take in her group and Yukarii continued, "I think we need to find a way to determine if these are souls trapped here or simply haunts replaying the scenes over and over."
Dr Munroe nodded, "Yes I agree Yukarii, I'm no priest but I get the feeling they or some part of them are trapped here. But why? Something must have happened, I mean beyond what we just saw. We know the Voor must have multiplied like crazy and that they fell upon the Githyanki like a dark tide. Yet why didn't they win, why was that?"
With a weird intensity Prof Dexter replied, "That is the question isn't it? Given the number of Voor we saw in that dream, I can't help but feel the infestation must have gone unnoticed for a while. They must have had a huge advantage in the initial confrontation. But it seems they didn't win... How did the Githyanki fight back? What did they do?! It must have been effective whatever it was. I guess we're just going to have to explore the rest of the ship and see what we see."
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Yukarii contemplated what Munroe-sensei and Dexter-sensei said and reluctantly nodded as she said, "Something was effective, but I do not know what it was either. If the Githyanki did this them they must have killed themselves with it too. If they fought effectively and won why are they all dead?"
Yukarii shook her head, "I do not think they won, I think they sacrificed themselves to assure the voor did not win either. Maybe it was to protect our islands from what they had brought with them?"
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"Whatever it was, I don't think we'll find the answers here, Edwin commented. "Should we move on?"
Xindyra nods.
"We should move indeed. We might find more answers as we go."
She makes a note of the theories with a few key words in her notebook.
Dr Munroe nodded, "Right then let's retrace our steps see what's further down the well."
Again ropes are employed while traversing the wall of utter darkness, and ferrying everyone across takes a good ten minutes. The party then descends down the well a good sixty feet before finding a new landing pointing in the local south direction towards the bulk of the ship.
Once more there's a mirror door, this time with an unusually complicated lock but Xindrya manages to bypass it with some difficulty.
As before the door's force shields dissolves with a pop and this time to your surprise you find a faint purplish-orange light illuminating the environment. Behind the force door is a short standard corridor made from the by now familiar grey Githyanki metal. The corridor opens out into a gigantic cave like opening, easily a mile across. Inside is an alien city arranged around a central complex on a low hill in the middle. There must be thousands of buildings here, curiously hewn from stone or made from bricks which makes a strange juxtaposition with the sleek high tech ship.
Most of the buildings are low with one or two stories and peaked roofs which is weird because presumably it can't rain inside a starship?! Although many of the houses have what you'd label as gardens if only they had plants in them. Some of the houses are much bigger than others, and there's a couple of tall towers. You can't see the central buildings clearly at this distance but they seem fancy even from here.
The outer band of the settlement is what appears to be naked earth without any grass or other plants. Had there been plant life you'd have called it a park, it may even have been nice although there's a faint musty smell that you all find somewhat unpleasant.
As the vista sinks in there's a collective sigh of amazement. Dr Munroe voices the sentiment by saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, now this is what we dream of... An entire alien town, seemingly intact!"
Bow strung and an arrow nocked, Mariam looked this way and that. Tensely she muttered, "Xavier I don't like it, it's too quiet. I fear we are walking into a tomb..."
"That's usually the case with archeology." observed Dr Munroe mildly although the smile didn't reach his eyes. "She's right though, we don't know what we're walking into we must be careful. Also we need to decide a strategy for searching this place..."
Edwin replied, "Let's check out one of the close houses to get an idea of what condition they're in." He approached one of the nearby houses to get an idea of what they might expect in the city.
Zendara looks out over the alien cityscape
She points about a quarter of the way around the wheel and says
There seem to be some petrified trees over there...
She also reads some of the signs on the bigger buildings, getting used to the Githyanki script:
"Imari school of Engineering"
"Xanthan Barracks"
"Motte Tower of Arcana"
That central building is a place of worship, although look at the roof. Above the amphitheater, that looks like a sea urchin shaped blob of utter darkness. Creepy.
Zendara also looks around, trying to identify the source of the musty smell, wanting to make sure it isn't going to harm anyone.
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Xindyr says nothing, but smiles modestly at the quick eye of Zandara.
The closest building turns out to be a simple two room dwelling with a tiled outhouse for sanitary needs. The tiles themselves are quite something, with abstract geometric patterns albeit in colors that are strange and muted to your eyes.
Outside is a raked pebble garden with what once might have been ornamental plants although they had all their moisture sucked out of them before mostly crumbling to dust.
Inside is an oversized kitchen with what might once have been an ice box. There are various oversized and clumsy looking knives and utensils along with shattered plates next to the desiccated corpse the owner. This old looking Githyanki man is quite well preserved but extremely fragile with his ostentatious clothes crumbling to dust at the touch. It seems he died suddenly and in terrible pain given his contorted position and clenched fists. There are no visible wounds on him.
The next room contains sleeping pallets and a simple wooden dresser continuing more fragile clothing. Some of the mans possessions might have been valuable for the silks etc.. but whatever happened here rendered them too fragile to touch. The decorative wallhangings in the sleeping room contain more abstract geometric art. None of it is quite to your taste although perhaps you could get used to it.
The next couple of building reveal a similar story and half a dozen more corpses, mostly civilians too by the looks of it.
After looking inside a couple of the buildings, Edwin commented to the others, "Going by these houses, the whole city is likely to be one giant grave site. We will have think carefully how to research this area without destroying artifacts through carelessness. The bodies and the textiles are extremely fragile.
"This site will require many years of work to analyze, by a large archaeological team. I think all we can do is report on the scale of it, and describe a few representative structures."
The scale of the ruins, and the work to examine them, was staggering. He didn't have nearly enough experience to guess at how much of an undertaking this would ultimately turn into.
He continued, "From what I have seen so far, the githyanki here seemed to have all died in a sudden catastrophic event."
Yukarii looked around in awe as they entered the long dead city. The place was so different and yet similar all at the same time. She couldn't believe all of this was inside the vessel they had boarded, it didn't even seem possible they could fit it all on here.
When they entered the first building and found the remains of the Githyanki man she made a gesture in reverence to Norala and muttered a prayer in her native tongue that the lost souls of this place had found rest on the other side when she came for them. The fact that it seemed so intact here made Yukarii very nervous and she worried that, if they all died like this poor old man did, that there would be some very restless spirits in here.
Once they stepped out of the house and began to discuss the place Yukarii spoke up and said, "Munroe-sensei, Dexter-sensei, I believe that we should be very careful. If they all died like that elder did then there could be some very restless and angry spirits in here with us and they may not be pleased with our presence."
Dr Munroe listened to Edwin and Yukarii and seeing the wisdom in their words he nodded, "I agree we must tread lightly and the more I learn the less comfortable I am about lingering here. Still it seems to me that if Edwin is right we have a duty to learn what snuffed the life out of what is effectively a city. But where to start?"
Looking pale Mariam shook her head slowly, put her hand on Xavier's shoulder and whispered, "I don't like this... I wonder if we should count our blessings and leave while we still can?"
She glanced at the rest of you, curious to see if anyone had a different opinion.
Unfortunately for professor Dexter, Xindyra had always been one to soak up information and, paired with a keen curiosity, was not dissuaded by the words of caution.
Even though she was smart enough to heed them, to extent.
"Leave, now? And miss out on learning about the reason for this city's current state?"
She looked over at the others, before looking back at the couple of professors.
They're definitely a couple in denial of the fact. ^_^
"Professor Munroe, we could start working our way outward to inwards. Scout out the residential area, before going towards the central tower."
"Caution in mind, however, and she looks at professor Dexter saying this, we could delay any advance, should there be apparent danger."
Edwin needed Zenara's help to spot the petrified trees. What could have caused that?
Dr Munroe listened carefully to Professor Dexter but seemed swayed by Xindara's words. He nodded replying, "I agree we should go inwards, cautiously. Zendara mentioned seeing a sea urchin shaped blob of utter darkness above the central buildings. I'd like to know what that is, it feels ominous somehow. Thoughts? There's a street nearby from their hub and spoke system that should lead us to the centre."
Edwin wasn't sure what area they should search. He was uneasy about exploring this city of the dead. What restless spirits could be lingering here? He mused aloud, "There must be records somewhere about what happened here. I wonder if we might find something in the tower of arcana?
"In any case, we should keep an eye on the dark blob, and be on the lookout for any changes."
Tower of Arcana sounds like a good place to start. Let's go.
Zendara starts towards the tower, keeping watch on the dark blob in case it moves or changes.
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The journey to the Motte Tower of Arcarna is downright eerie, the town is entirely devoid of life and on the outskirts you spot occasional desiccated Githyanki sprawled on the floor.
As you venture further into the town the number of corpses increases significantly, clearly there was a large civilian population here numbering in the tens of thousands. House after house repeats the same macabre scene with families huddled together in a room where they felt safe but there was no where safe in this town. The buildings themselves seems almost familiar to Yukarri yet strangely not, for one the ceilings are all too high and the dimensions and other details are wrong when she looks close. Even without the corpses the effect is more than a little creepy.
After quarter of an hour of walking down the wide arterial street you turn right and walk down a cobbled alley by what appears to be a low rocky hill upon which is a classical mages tower adjoined to a wattle and daub style house and lean to. This architecture is in quite some contrast to the rest of the town almost as if some god plucked it up from somewhere else and transported it here. To emphasize the otherness just off the cobbled street is what for the world looks like a post box with a little plaque reading in both Githyanki and common: "Meetings by appointmnt only. Xervish Motte, custodian of the Tower of Arcarna."
The front door appears to be locked and in good condition. You tap the wood and find it to be cold and hard like metal.
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Edwin felt a growing sense of unease as the group walked further into the town. What could have snuffed out this town? He commented, "It looks to me like they were running for their lives, but couldn't outrun whatever it was."
As they got closer to the tower he declared, "Writing in common! So perhaps there were some non-githyanki visitors here? Shall we try knocking? I don't suppose there's anyone alive here, but it seems like the polite thing to do."
He lightly tapped the door, finding it to be cold and hard like metal. "It seems to be made out of wood transmuted into metal."
Xindyra nods at Edwin's remark about the death pose.
"You're right. Dread to think of what it must have been, on such a large scale."
The door's composition, it was almost in her thought what it could be, but somehow it eluded her. Thankfully, Edwin knew.
Learning from the others about the strange things that they observe, Zendara casts detect magic and tries to identify the aura on the door.
Uh, Edwin, I wouldn't use that door knocker. There is a Sepia Snake Sigil on it. Don't read it.
Zendara goes to take a look at the post box.
"Snake sigil?"
It is some magical writing that will turn to a snake and attack you if you read it. Popular with reclusive mages apparently.
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"Huh, imagine that. Beats letters going BOOM in your face, i suppose."
"Though if writing a sigil could summon an animal to warn me of newcomers, i'd write one that summons a puppy or a cat. Behind the window though, wouldn't want the little fur to get hurt immediately, of course."
Dr Munroe raised an eyebrow when the nature of the trap was revealed, "Seems this guy valued his privacy... I note this trap is non-lethal which I guess is encouraging? Anyway lets have look around and see what we find."
Dear _________
Xervish Motte cordially invites you to attend him at the Motte Tower of Arcana on __________. This invitation will grant you passage.
Yours sincerely Arristol Abarth, tower custodian.