Zee moves into the room, putting her back to a wall. She sees the Tower Girl by the pillar on the north wall, and casts a spell. Ghostly Harrow cards fly out of her spell deck toward the woman, forming a shifting and complex pattern of cards floating before her.
Joanna, miraculously still balanced after crashing into Terisha, follows up her initial rush into the chamber with an almost pugilistic shield bash - the Tower Girl's nose explodes in a fountain of red... Ziomarra, calling upon the power of the Harrow, stops one of the girls in her tracks... her crossbow clatters to the floor as she gazes at colours and shapes that only she can see...
Spitting something unintelligible at Joanna, Terisha retreats from the fight...
The girl next to the retreating Terisha raises a small crossbow and, setting Teldon within its sights, lets a bolt fly...
The last of the girls, the one who had been working at the door, slashes at Arsith with her sword...
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"Anyone who surrenders will not only be spared but we'll help you start a new life, now that the Tower Girls are no more," Teldon calls out as he steps up next to Jo. Studying Terisha's stance he spots a potential opening and stabs at it...
,
these tower girls must have something against men... they always shoot at me first...
Aristh attacks her foe, using the strategical advantage provided by Brianna
Whilst Teldon and Briana, struggling against the acrobatic Tower Girls, miss with their attacks, Arsith is equal to her foe. Her mace crashes into the girl's ribs... the sound of cracking ribs tells how brutal the blow was...
Zee steps closer to the two Tower Girls by the door. She says, "We gave you a second chance once. There will not be a third."
She fans her harrow deck as she casts a spell, and throws the fan of cards at the two thieves. The cards all burst into flames as they fly at the Tower Girls, immolating them. Then, the cards magically reappear in Zee's hand, none the worse for wear.
Shadlah storms into the room, the stone beneath her feet rumbling as she draws power from it. Holding out a hand, she sends a barrage of stone spikes at the leader, but the unfamiliar composition of the stone throws off her aim.
Terisha, ducking behind the door, manages to avoid Ziomarra's blast of flames - the other Tower Girl is less lucky, catching the brunt of the sudden inferno...
Discretion proves to the better part of valour for Terisha and the girl with her; with the friends pouring into the room, the Tower Girls realise they are out of their depth... and run. Leaving behind the hypnotised woman and the girl surrounded by Briana and Arsith, they sprint towards the eastern windows...
...penned in, the remaining Tower Girl slashes at Briana, hissing, "You killed Ayala..."
...through tears, her attack is wild...
Teldon charges forward after the fleeing Tower Girl leader and attempts to incapacitate her...
,
As Terisha collapses at the end of his spear he calls, "Please, we would prefer not to kill you all; drop your weapons and let us help you."
Zee follows Teldon after the fleeing Tower Girls. She has a Harrow card in her had, ready to fling at them.
Terisha, running towards the open windows to the east, is stopped in her tracks as Teldon’s spear, expertly stabbed, pierces her armour… rasping against bone, the shaft of the weapon digs deep and the Tower Girl tumbles forwards – already sinking into blackness, she doesn’t put her arms out to stop the fall and crashes against the floor face down… and unmoving…
The other Tower Girl, running alongside Terisha, stops in her tracks as the erstwhile leader of the Sczarni gang is brutally felled… looking around at Teldon and at Ziomarra running into the room, she raises her hands in submission…
…meanwhile, in the other room, Briana’s mace is swung with force into her opponent… the wind is knocked from the Tower Girl… and when Teldon calls for surrender, she can do little more than drop her sword…
- remarkably, the faint signs of life - a shallow pulse and the lightest of breath - still come from the fallen Terisha... but she is fading fast, blood pouring from the ragged wound in her back.
Seeing that Teldon and Brianna have the two Tower Girls under control, Zee returns to the other room. She fixes the hypnotized Tower Girl with a stern gaze and hands her a set of manacles. "Put these on."
"Is that all?" Shadlah asks in surprise, looking at the unconscious and captive tower girls. After a few awkward moments during which she realizes she has nothing further to contribute, she shakes her head and waits.
Teldon quickly pats down the two surrendering girls and removes any weapons he finds.
He gestures for them to have a seat on floor in the large chamber and then asks his companions, "What do you want to do with them? Leaving them tied up for potentially a couple of days seems impractical, especially when there's a chance we might not be able to come back to feed them and... whatnot... but I'm not sure we can trust them to leave and not cause us any problems?"
The Tower Girl hypnotised by Ziomarra puts on the manacles without question – she continues to stand there, dazed and looking off into the middle distance, whilst the friends ensure the other Sczarni are dealt with… the girl that Briana and Arsith attacked, limping badly and wincing as she moves, starts to cry, ”What did we ever do to you? You killed Ayala… Now you’ve come back to finish the job!!!”
– none of the Tower Girls are ones that you recognise from the first time you came to the Crow.
"Ayala, and the other wererats, gave us no choice. Your human sisters mostly left here alive, and the girls would love for you to also..."
Of the three Tower Girls that are bound whilst Teldon explains their choices, two stay quiet - defeated and ready to take Teldon's offer of leaving alive... the third though, is not willing to simply walk away, "What about Terisha... She didn't deserve to die... None of us did!!! What gives you the right!!!"
...to emphasise her point, she spits on the floor in front of her...
there is no scenario in which Jo is going to consent to executing prisoners...
"Are you sure?," Teldon asks Briana, "I'm not sure we can trust this one." He gestures toward the girl who spit, shaking his head. "The other two we can definitely take back down to the boats... You can take one of the boats ashore. I know the Tower Girls are not on good terms with some of the other Sczarni- we can give you a couple leads if you want to start new lives. And, I guess you can take Terisha with you...and this one?"
I hope that doesn't come back to bite us...
Arsith kneels near the Tower Girls
We always try to avoid to kill, if we can. There is nothing beautiful in taking someone's life. Open your eyes to the beauties of the world, get your heart rid of hate and fill it with love and joy. We meet as adversaries, let's leave each other in peace, with no ill intent.
Her words are passionate, and she obviously speaks with all her heart
As Briana and Arsith add their voice to the proposal, that the Tower Girls leave and never return to the Crow, the attitude of the argumentative woman slowly changes… the news that Terisha is not actually dead seals it, ”Fine… you’re welcome to this place anyway, anything salvageable has gone and there’s no way past this door. Besides, it’s creepy here – there’s voices and worse in the night...”
Agreeing to let the girls go, the friends supervise them as they collect their belongings and, working from the trapdoor in the fourth floor, lower their bags to the dockway… as Terisha, unconscious but stable, is gently lowered one of the girls remarks that ”We’ll tell her you let us go – that you spared us… and that you spared her… but she hasn’t forgiven you for Ayala – it would be well to keep your wits about you when you return to the city; if she recovers from her injury, I can’t promise she won’t seek vengeance. We’ll try to persuade her otherwise… but… she is a strong-willed woman… and she was in love”.
With their boat loaded and Terisha made comfortable, the Tower Girls unhitch the moorings and nod a final acknowledgement to the friends... silently, the boat slips into the fog that still shrouds the harbour…
"Well, now that the Tower Girls are taken care of... again... let us return to our exploration!"
Zee looks about the room to the east with the windows looking out to the bay. She ponders whether setting up a rope ladder out the window to the dock below would be a good dead to enter the Crow. She examines the central pillar in the room to see if there is a good place to anchor the rope.
"If you can't dissuade her from pursuing revenge by explaining our mercy, try reminding her how quickly and easily we defeated her," Teldon says with some clear frustration. "And she didn't love Ayala, she was infatuated with her. You see, the fact that she wants revenge demonstrates that the offense was that we 'took something of hers', like a child lashing out when someone takes their toy. If she was truly in love the offense would be that her beloved was gone from her and instead of revenge she would seek the means to bring her back."
He shakes his head aware, and disappointed, that his frustrations have gotten the better of him. "The other girls, there were six* of them, we escorted them to shore and helped them start new lives. We'd like to help you too... though, it sounds like your loyalties are still with the gang, if the four of you really count as a gang, and with your revenge-crazed leader who is bound to get you all killed..." as his emotions begin to assert themselves again he pauses and takes a deep breath before continuing "...We are not letting you go because we look forward to killing you in the future. We are letting you go because, as a group, we believe your lives are worth more than treasure or revenge. Worth more than our own safety, apparently. If you decide you want something different for your life, leave a sealed letter addressed to Pelius Crispin at the Bronze House and we'll do what we can to help you."
The troubled young adventurer watches them row away until they vanish into the thinning fog. "καλύτερα να κάνει ένα πτώμα από έναν εχθρό..." he mutters with a frown.
"Yes, you're right..." Teldon agrees, doing his best to muster a smile for Briana, "we should get back to work."
Examining his maps further and walking around the chambers that had been taken over by Ayala, and latterly Terisha, Teldon starts to feel uneasy... that something is out of place - that the massive block of stone in the window isn't structural... and, if it isn't structural then just maybe it might house a room... With that thought in mind, he examines each and every surface and finally, he sees it... a hairline crack around the western wall. Too regular to be subsidence or a feature of the stone, it is clearly a concealed door...
...feeling around, he pushes on a slightly depressed brick... and the wall, silently, pushes inwards revealing a dust shrouded room - a skeleton, lying on the floor and coated in dust itself, is the only occupant of the room... footprints lead to and from the skeleton; suggesting that someone else has been here recently. A rapier and a leather pouch containing gold lie on the floor next to the skeleton... and, around the neck of the skeleton, a white gold pendant...
Detecting magic on the pendant, a faint divination aura pulsates around it...
Whilst Teldon is examining the area, Ziomarra checks out the windows overlooking the sea and the structure around the windows... It seems entirely feasible that a rope (or better still a rope ladder) could be secured from any one of multiple anchor points and then lowered to the level of the dockway...
Maybe I could follow the tracks, if they aren't too old?
The tracks in the dust, in truth no more than fix or six separate footprints, are not trailed back outside of the hidden area… it seems that whoever was here was only in the room for a few moments and that, if they did then trail dust back out into the main room, it has dispersed…
An exploration of the area – and a review of how far the Tower Girls had progressed against opening the imposing doors to the west – reveals that this area has also been stripped clean of any valuables, that the excavation towards the north (previously started by the Tower Girls under Ayala’s guidance) has not progressed and that the Sczarni girls had failed to make any progress with opening the doors…
The main feature of the room that the Tower Girls were working in is the pair of metal double doors that lead to the west; and whilst there are many runes and sigils across the surface of the doors – the most significant features are a large sihedron (the Thassilonian seven sided star) and, below the sihedron, a small compartment that has hinged outwards. There are only two features within this compartment...
…an empty space where a dagger may previously have been stored and a roughly circular basin is carved into the bottom of the compartment...around the basin, which is little more than 3 inches in diameter and 2 inches in depth, intricate channels and ridges depict the rune of wrath and a short phrase repeated thrice;
"Well done," Teldon says to Briana with a grin of his own.
"Nobody has been through this door in ten-thousand years... It seems unlikely that something has been waiting right behind it that whole time." The usually staid young man actually seems fairly excited at the prospect of seeing things nobody has looked on for millennia. "It could very well be trapped like the puzzle box was though; I'll check it while you girls make any last preparations."
- there are, as far as you can see no trap mechanisms across the doors however it is obvious that these doors are incredibly large engineered pieces... who knows what kind of workings lie within the doors themselves? And as for evidence of anything beyond the doors? Nothing... but, once more, it is likely that these doors are thick enough to muffle noise...
Teldon glares at the door. "I don't sense any traps... but this door seems to have been somehow specially constructed to make it impossible to tell for sure..."
Should we knock?
Says Arsith with a little smile
Zee smirks at Arsith's suggestion. "I think we can be sure that anything beyond the door will have a good idea that company has arrived once the doors open."
Preparing the dagger and amulet, Teldon looks to each of the girls to make sure they're ready... His gaze rests for a moment on Shadlah- the new, unknown, member of their group who seems to have been standing around awkwardly, not saying anything for kind of a while... "Ready?"
Waiting for you.
Zee stands back from the doors with her Harrow deck fanned in her left hand. Meeting Teldon's gaze, she nods assent.
Still uncomfortable about Shadlah's lack of a committed confirmation of readiness, Teldon prepares to open the door.
"Without knowing for certain whether there are any traps, it seems... unwise for everyone to cluster by the door. Everyone, back up please."
Once everyone has moved back a bit he opens the door...
The medallion proves to be a perfct fit for the recess within the compartment - but that's not enough... recalling the answer to the riddle that had confounded him so the first time that he had been here, 'murder', and the discussions around blood sacrifice, Teldon tentatively pricks his finger with the ceremonial dagger... Squeezing his finger, Teldon watches as blood trickles into the medallion, circling around the channels etched into the surface before draining away.
For a few moments it seems that nothing is happening... that maybe the trip to Ravenmoor - and all that was lost - was a cruel mistake. Shadlah feels it first, a deep vibration that resonates through the very stonework of the Crow... and then the sihedron emblem, having been no more than lukewarm to the touch, suddenly sunbursts in a vivid red colour... pouring off a heat that threatens to scorch those who are standing too close.
…the smell of hot air and of burning dust are quickly accompanied by the sound of dripping – molten metal, a glorious orange colour, trickling from the join between the double doors and running into a drain in the floor. The sihedron seems to melt into the door, leaving behind an after image of the seven pointed star - and then, with a brutal clanking of metal, doors that have remained closed for millennia slowly swing open…
For millennia since the fall of Thassilon, the chambers beneath the Crow have remained untouched by the world above… but they have been far from dormant – ancient machineries, developed by a Runelord’s army, have inextricably linked this dead place with a backwater corner of Hell itself. Whilst those who lived and worked under Thassilonian dominance have long since perished, rulership of the area beyond the Siccatite doors has changed hands time and time again – an unending stream of petty devils building ‘empires’ that must inevitably collapse as new miscreants from the plane of the damned make their way to this place… a cycle repeating itself, over and over, through the ages…
…but today, as long dormant gears shudder into life throughout the Irespan piling – driving open a pair of doors hundreds of feet above them, the malevolent denizens beneath the Crow know that something has changed…