South, got it, Toki turns back to the dinosaur, It'll be okay, buddy. We just need your help for a bit...
Dacknar nods to the others and starts to scout forward to see if there are any others laying in wait to spring a trap on them.
And like a someone some deer, Dackar just vanishes into the overgrowth. Cutting a line to be about 30 paces from the group.
The reptiles, not being worshippers of the northern gods or under their influence, seem to take well to Toki's gentle movements and offerings of lush leaves. Soon enough the bard has the creatures following him around the edges of the pen hoping for more handouts.
While to bard keeps the animals distracted, Gaius works on gathering wood. Dry tinder is difficult to find, but by digging into some of the thickest mounds of jungle debris he's able to find much that would work sufficient for his needs.
The work takes time. Time which Dacknar spends roving the surrounding area for signs of more enemies. Having dealt with the jungle for days, the elf discovers he's developed a feel for the finer techniques of moving through the dense undergrowth quick and silent. He stalks the outer edge of the clearing like a panther lurking in the shadows ready to strike at an unsuspecting monkey. Although the drums continue to echo through the ruins, Dacknar discovers no more trollkin in the area.
Beordt keeps a lookout.
”Indeed. Let there be no hesitation, we do what we must.” Rilkus intoned.
Toki unlashes the pen and steps aside...
Coming out of the jungle like a ghost, Dacknar moves to the group.
"Ah think I found a way in. It's hidden near the pens. A big chamber with two passages that lead from it, one goes west the other south. The only problem I find with it is that it could be a tight fit for Beordt."
Toki slaps Beordt on the shoulder, Beordt can suck in his gut, he'll be fine!
Beordt nods and stands with more graceful swagger. "I am wasting away. Been weeks since I have had honey."
Toki signals the pens are open and stands ready to help urge on the big pack dinos with Rilkus and Beordt. Having gathered a sizable pile of tinder and wood, Gaius is about to put flame to the material when Dacknar returns and reveals his discovery. What to do? Continue with the original plan or delve into the underruins using Dacknar's newly discovered entrance?
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Gauis pondered the new information and debated on the merits of taking the underground passage but leaving things as they stand. However, given most of the group's--including his own--all but physical allergy to going along stealthfully, he simply couldn't find a good reason -not- to add fire to their enemy's placid situation.
Of course, for most instances he couldn't see a reason not to add fire to it. So this was just following suit.
"Then let's be off!" Gauis says, sending a practiced fire bolt into the piled tinder and heading quickly for Dacknar's hidden passages.
Toki laughs at the artificer's antics and nods off on Dacknar's direction, Come on, Beordt, legends await no man...
The tinder and semi dry wood burst into flame with the artificer's urging. The pitch-filled wood crackles and pops and billows with smoke as a few more moments are taken to insure the fire is truly burning with sufficient vigor.
At the first snaps and hint of smoke the creatures in the pens begin to call out and grow restless. It takes only a few choice shouts from Toki and the others to send them scrambling out of the pen and charging off toward the center of the ruins. Their bellowing shouts of both fright and excitement echoing about the stone ruins and drowning out the ever present drums which lurch to a stop a few moments later.
Numerous horn blasts call from both the jungle and further within the ruins as the trollkin rally to the growing plume of smoke and escape the charging thunder of the massive dinosaurs.
By the time any arrive at the pens and the growing blaze, you all have safely found your way to Dacknar's forgotten opening and squeezed through into the darkness of the underruins.
As the elf originally suspected the initial chamber is empty except for a murky, shallow pool of water filled with moss, algae and a few harmless frogs and salamanders. Neither the west exit or the one to the south appear to have been traveled recently. Both are dark, dank, and partially wrapped in thick layers of cobwebs. Based on earlier scouting and his general knowledge of the area, Telos signals the western passage is most likely to lead toward the prisoner and slave pens.
Toki lets Dacknar take lead, but moves ahead with urgency...
Beordt keeps his greatsword ready happy to be in a place where foes will meet him on the ground. He follows close behind ready to act if the scout takes heat.
You rake aside cobwebs and set off cautiously down the western tunnel. Passing occasional side tunnels or chambers, few hold much of interest or travel far before ending in a rockfall that blocks the way. Occasionally, dirt and small stones tumble from above as the thundering of stampeding dinosaurs rumbles above.
For much of the distance, the air smells of damp soil and fungus and roots driving their way through stone and dirt. It is the change of smell that first signals you near your goal. The smell of unwashed, sickly bodies is faint at first, but grows stronger as you proceed.
Slipping forward along the darkened passages you come to a Y intersection. Left or right. The scent, stronger now, seems to come from either passage.
Left or right? Toki rubs his chin.
"oh there is more than one path. Gotta admit the smell like they lead to the same stop."
Toki nods and follows after the stomping artificer...
...and following behind Toki was the stomping gearforged.
Beordt nods. He slaps his blade against his hand. "This blade is eager to put down tormentors since it was liberated from one who visited such cruelties."
Dacknar nods his agreement. "Aye, I hear something down that way as well. But the voice sounds like a soft jibbering.
Would he know about any creature that would jibber as an attack?
Gaius tromps forward down the right hand passage. As he does so, the jibbering, which only the artificer heard at first becomes audible to all. The words ramble together too frantic and pained to really understand. But the feeling is there. Fear and madness. Filling the cavern with their unyielding weight and presence. Filling your minds with discontent and triggering your own dark shadows typically held in check.
Fear suddenly washes over him.
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A spider made of ice and fear creeps down Gauis' spine and of a sudden his feet are rooted to the spot. "Oh by all things good and decent, I can not believe that those we seek are down this passage. Whatever--and I dare not say 'whoever' for the throat that makes those sounds is no cousin to the race of Men--makes that noise can not be the target of our search.
If those of you of stouter heart than mine have the fortitude to go down this path, I shall not stay thy hand. But so long as that noise haunts this tunnel I fear my path must needs be away and along the other, more silent, left-hand fork."
Beordt leans over and speaks out the side of his muzzle. "Do you have any idea of what he just said."
”He said that he isn’t coming but he won’t stop us. Come, Beordt. We advance.” The gearforged intoned as he continued to walk forward.
Beordt nods with a puzzled look. He glances to Toki to follow.
Dacknar just stands there shaking and starring after his companions. Fear making his feet frozen to the ground, but his hart beat rapidly in hate. The hate that he no longer is in command of his body, the hate that he only can stand there and watch his companions walk to a danger that he can not.
"This feels wrong, these ones aren't cowards."
In the long ago when Zobeck was little more than a collection of huts at the edges of the Margreave and a handful of families gathered along a river soon to be named Nuria, mighty titans ruled the lands of the south. Glorious Umbuso was an empire of miracles and wonder ruled by gods who strolled across the land shaping its very existence and being to their whim and whimsy. For thousands of years their reign passed unbroken and unchallenged.
Then disaster. Near the same time mighty Ankeshel drowned beneath the ocean in the north, an arcane plague struck the glory of the south. The undying rulers of Glorious Umbuso were doomed as plague madness reigned. Catastrophe and atrocity ruled as titans and their followers fought each other out of fear, power, greed, despondence, or sheer insanity. Others, not yet infected, but knowing their time was at hand, passed on their divine sparks or hid them away before the madness could take them. A legacy of ruins and mysteries and magics were left behind to be built upon by subsequent civilizations or buried and lost for all time.
All to often dark, foul magics born during that time of collapse, chaos, and insanity find their way back into the world. It is upon such a horror that Beordt and Rilkus gaze as they creep forward to investigate the sorrowful, fearful sounds emanating from the ruined darkness ahead.
First, confusion reins as darkness and disbelief make it difficult for the two to comprehend what stands within the center of the wide chamber. A circular chamber of stone. An ancient amphitheater two hundred paces wide, sinking toward the center where a ring of obsidian obelisks surround a pool of viscous fluid and a sacrificial altar complete with slime slick gutters that drain into the pool.
Standing within the pool, oozing iron scented, sickly sweet blood is something that may have once been human or something similar. A head, grafted to a glass stone frame partially covered by a patchwork of multicolored skin. It is from the head, which somehow, some horrific how, still retains some semblance of life but little sanity that the jibberish flows. Atop the altar rests a slurry of viscera and remains, their rotting stench adding to the foulness of the chamber.
While Rilkus and Beordt wait still hidden at the entrance, across the way another exit reveals the flickering yellow glow of advancing torchlight. Pleading, begging cries can be heard advancing with the light until abruptly cut off by a brutal thumping sound. Moments later a trio of trollkin emerge, one dressed in strange robes of red and black carrying a torch and wearing a necklace of green beads with a red tucked skull pendent. The other two simple, familiar warriors drag a filthy, unconscious man by the arms as they descend to the altar.
”This is unnatural. It reeks of evil, and it must be purged.” While his voice was as monotone as ever, he felt naught but resolve to see this through. ”If I distract the trollkin, might you reach the head and end it’s existence?”
Beordt nods. "At battles end or the table of the gods we will speak again."
Beordt moves toward a path toward the monster.
Looking at Gaius and Dacknar, Toki slaps them on the shoulder, What is wrong with you? Valhalla awaits!
Turning to Beordt, Toki says, Remember that you have the grace of a cat, my ursine friend, let us force the gods to take notice of us, that Odin will have no choice but to give me a place at his table!
Toki slips up next to Rilkus and Beordt. Following the bard's words of encouragement, bearkin, gearforged, and human charge into the chamber. As they rush down the stone steps of the ancient amphitheater, the trollkin look on in wide-eyed surprise. The two carrying the prisoner, drop their charge as the acolyte shouts a command in some unknown southern dialect. But the pointing finger, snarling lips, and gleaming hatred in his eyes reveals the nature of the order all to easily.
From the center of the room, still standing in its gore soaked pool, the abomination releases an ear stabbing cacophony of fear and pain that echoes within the chamber and up the tunnel toward the three heroes hapless companions. Although not the rupturing blast felt by those within the chamber, the wave of menace and fear hampers attempts to overcome the dark magic holding their hearts and minds hostage in its courage chilling grip.
Toki starts to bleed from the ears but redoubles his efforts charging closer to the abomination hurling a hand axe as he calls out, Tor!
The waves of sonic energy buffeted the paladin. If he had teeth to grit, he would have. Instead he just barreled forward, charging straight ahead at the abomination, hammer raised. He didn't know if he would reach it, but he could at least act as a distraction so Beordt could get in unseen.
Beordt rushes in.
Beordt runs and round attempting to keep the monstrous creature between him and the trollkin.
The sound vibrates in his ears, fear like nothing he has felt before washes over him. Dacknar takes a step back from the sound. for the sound is like hell's gate has just opened and the flood of demon's are screaming to come get him.
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"By all that is holy do you hear that? Such a cry can not be heard by the ears of Men and not turn the knees to jelly and the spine to mush.
I say, good Dacknar, those three are made of sterner stuff indeed! How long can they withstand the screams of such an abomination and not succumb to all consuming despair?"
Toki, Rilkus, and Beordt rumble down the stairs toward the grim flesh and stone construct and the trollkin beyond. Toki sends an axe spinning through the air. The hard iron blade strikes the horror, but not in the head. Instead it cuts through some of the flesh stretched across the stone skeleton and then bounces away to fall with a sickly splash into the pool of oozing blood.
The contruct continues to fill the amphitheater with its ear piercing screams. The same screams that have both Gaius and Dacknar cowering and staggering backward in the tunnel.
Finally taking action, the two trollkin draw forth their short spears and charge down the steps with growls that are drowned out beneath the cries of the guardian. The acolyte or shaman or whatever he is follows slowly. A wild eldritch light glows in his otherwise black and death eyes as he raises a finger a points at the charging paladin. His foot catches on a step just as he finishes the minor incantation and the blast of twisting eldritch energy passes over Rilkus' head before shattering a few stone benches beyond.
Toki draws his stone warhammer, Tor watches, Beordt! Finish this abomination!
Dacnar crumbles to the overwhelming fear surging through him.
Beordt roars in greatsword raised ignoring the pain.